As someone who recently saw it, likes it, and has no delusions or prejudices around the matter and has only just had to think about their liking of it:
1. Winter not coming.
Could have set the tone and focus of the series, but ends up just being some kind of foreboding catch-phrase and setting the Whitewalkers up for later. But then things we actually care about happen and I for one am all for looking at the pretty battles and ignoring 'winter' apart from the bare minimum acknowledgement keeping the subplots ticking over. Yes, it's a sloppy execution, but I don't really care because winter's lack of punctuality means more room for anything actually exciting. But also no, not magic and otherworldly creatures. So far magic has been a rare, niche and not very broadly useful element and the Whitewalkers aren't shown as otherworldly until well after the show establishes that it is not about otherworldly creatures. Yes they say some fantastical things about them, they're superstitious and it would hardly be the first time something is set up in a TV show to be supernatural that turns out to not be that.
2. Erratic.
Can't focus on epic battles or personal relations or politics or whatever. Not a problem. In fact, a strength. Very rarely have I seen good fantasy that doesn't explore every level of intrigue. Often some of the best moments in shows or films are from the interactions between certain characters. Some of the other best moments are epic battles with daring tactics or unexpected reinforcements. You get it all here and I don't mind at all. Furthermore, they're necessarily intertwined because personal relations between the royal families is a HEAVY influence on politics and that leads to the battles and schisms. This is a world where marrying people off secures allies in a war. How do you expect a show to explore any of those elements alone for its entirety? Then the complaint would be "Why do we just see a bunch of people all the time and only get told about the war?"
As far as jumping between arcs, some of it is housekeeping (haven't checked in with Daenerys in a while let's have her take over a city), but books do the same thing. They show enough to get you invested in that arc and switch to another one to keep you guessing. If you don't like the show, that probably doesn't work, but it works for me. Except when they're following Bran, because fucking hell he never does anything interesting.
3. The names of the characters.
I don't even know the names of all of them after 3 seasons, but find the important ones reasonably easily distinguishable by looking at them. After about half of the first season I knew who Theon, Jon and Robb were in regards to each other and that's about as in-depth as you need. The old guys in charge of the Watch at the Wall, who cares. However, at least they do all have different names, not something I would necessarily expect in a medieval setting. As for older white dudes, that's what I'd expect from a medieval society in a cold climate, and I never had any problem distinguishing the characters that matter. As I said, most of guys in the north blur together, but I don't know how you confuse the eunuch with anyone.
4. The red wedding.
It was shocking as fuck to me. If you're looking to the show to make you care about characters you don't care about by killing them off you're a lost cause in the first place because you have to care about them for killing them off to having any impact. They haven't been doing anything for a while because that's the nature of TV shows. If they did things then main characters would come into contact/be slain more often and you'd be left with no people to talk about. Somewhat fair point though, but it was more the potential of doing things, being that they were really the one force that the audience was lead into supporting. Down on numbers but consistently wins, has a battle wolf, lead by a decent guy with battle sense and doesn't compromise on moral integrity, basically the legacy of the guy who was wronged to begin with, etc. The reason they had Stanis attack first was because we could support Tyrion without particularly caring that Stanis gets slaughtered. The show is really just trying to get value for air time out of the characters. Bit off topic but the point was you didn't care because you hadn't cared.
5. Sex.
Incidental, and I'm a male. It probably garners some views. But it's not so gratuitous or even shown that you would watch the show for it. Furthermore it would have actually happened plenty. You talk of maturity but the mature thing is actually to acknowledge sex as part of that world, be it leisure or politics. The most erotic thing I've seen so far is the lead-in to the torture scene (you know the one) and that was deliberate.
SimpleThunda said:
The thing that bothers me most is how it shows too much that the writer favours certain characters and sees others as expendable. That in and of itself pretty normal, but it is just so apparent in GoT that it becomes annoying to watch. The heroes of the show were chosen before it even started, and the rest of the show just seems character development for them, leading to them becoming horribly bland and unrealistic.
We all knew Sean Bean would die (but that didn't take a genius), we all knew the dragon lady would succeed in her extremely unrealistic rise to power, we all knew Jaime Lanister would get punished for being asshole, and the same thing for Theon. And these are just a couple of examples.
The problem with this is that the bland, "heroic" characters become uninteresting, whereas the asshole characters who get to endure all the crap become the most interesting. Sansa seems to be one of the only characters who sits somewhere in between being expendable and being favoured, and frankly I find her to be one of the only well-written characters.
Quoted for truth, I always know who I'm supposed to like and I do accordingly but the knowledge diminishes it somewhat, and I can constantly tell that events are happening in a certain way rather than another way so that two characters come into contact/stay separate. The problem with Sansa is that she doesn't do anything I'm interested in. The Hound on the other hand I find interesting becuase I don't know what he's going to do. He clearly has morals and is decent on some level but he'll also kill without mercy and isn't really loyal.
