Game of Thrones: Perfect Reception
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Before Game of Thrones, a couple of series had to set the stage. Something as elaborate and expensive as Rome couldn’t survive on HBO, but its brief run was worth the shot. Genre series like Battlestar Galactica could be applicable in the new Golden Age of Television (especially since these series could blend real world concerns, like politics and war, with extreme fiction). We were entering a new age of TV: one where risks were paying off (see The Sopranos, The Shield, and more), antiheroes were getting their own airtime (let’s toss in Walter White and Don Draper, who were shortly on the air by this time), and the capabilities of the medium were being fully explored. Furthermore, George R. R. Martin was four books deep into his acclaimed A Song of Ice and Fire series (the first book, A Game of Thrones, being released in 1991). It just seemed like the perfect time to see where HBO could go next.
As we all know by now, Game of Thrones — clearly named after the first book of the series — shortly came after. Released in 2011, the first season was HBO’s way of testing the waters for both the series and television overall. The initial cast was insanely huge, and was led by Sean Bean. Each season’s budget was incredibly expensive. This roll out was strategic for HBO, who bought the rights to A Song of Ice and Fire in the late 2000’s (once some of their other acclaimed series of note were wrapping up). They wanted something massive, but done right. George R. R. Martin was to be involved as an executive producer, with his contributions to writing at least one episode per season locking his voice in place. Otherwise, the showrunners D. B. Weiss and David Beinoff — known online as D & D — would assume as much control as possible.
There were two sides of the series at first. There were the avid readers of the novels that were awaiting their favourite stories being depicted on the small screen, and there were the newcomers that hadn’t a clue where this story would go. Either way, the first season’s reception started a little typical. Here was a fantasy, medieval war epic that was fairly boilerplate for these kinds of genres. This was true until the penultimate episode of the season, where the lead character (Bean’s Ned Stark) flat out dies a gruesome death (a beheading, naturally), and from that moment on, Game of Thrones was clearly going to be television’s next big event. In the way that Seinfeld was the water cooler show that needed to be shared, or Lost was the show texted around where viewers needed to find out what they had just watched each week, Game of Thrones was the online sensation of wondering the most important question of the series’ run: “will my favourite character die?”. Of course, readers of the books knew the blueprints for the most part, but seeing these insane demises hit a little harder (the show was ruthless, after all).
The question about dying characters could only cloud the next big questions for so long (“will Martin finish the books? If not, how will Game of Thrones resolve?”). After season one, however, things were golden. Season two performed slightly better, but it was around season three when the show was catapulted into a whole new echelon of television. Before we get into what it was about this season that worked, we must begin to look at the mythology that drew everybody in. Of course, Ned Stark was executed, but who was he? He was the patriarch of the House of Stark, and the king within castle Winterfell. House Lannister of the Westerlands, House Targaryen of King Landing’s yesteryear, and the other families and locations were crucial to the scope of the story as well. Slowly but surely, audiences were aligning with different clans, armies, settings, and beliefs (including the rituals and catch phrases of characters).
This was all dependant on the viewer. Did they wish for the redemption story of the Stark children, wanting to avenge the unjust murder of their father and destruction of their reign? What about the bitter, twisted rulings of the savage Lannister family? Then, there’s Daenerys Targaryen, who stood up as a symbol of perseverance, freedom, strength, and equality. Of the minor storylines, there were so many that could stick out more than others. For me, I was especially affected by the tortures of Theon of House Greyjoy, whose existence in a majority of the series was incredibly challenging to endure. Either way, there were shirts, social media profile banners, merchandise, and other signifiers that people would don to show the support of whatever house they rooted for. The truth is that there wasn’t really a right answer (not at first, anyway). Every family had its evils. Every character did wrong. Game of Thrones was all about the manipulations of families (pretend love via marriage for power, or the use of sex to persuade another), or the straight up slaughters of competitors to obtain control over the Seven Kingdoms.
While this scheming and merciless destruction is going on, there is another story that is much more worrisome: winter is coming. The army of the dead is on the rise, thanks to the powers of the Night King and the White Walkers (who reanimate the fallen for their own troops). The Night’s Watch are protecting the wall that keeps this unknown territory and the Seven Kingdoms separated, and any intruders out. This time, however, the threat looks just too big. While politics are claiming lives and destroying armies, the undead are on their way to claim what’s left (they are grossly ignored at first). We’re always aware of what’s going on with the undead during the entire series’ other inner-workings, so the threat of everything coming to a frigid end always hovers over our heads.
Now, let’s get back to season three. By now, the possibility of your favourite characters dying is at an all time high, and no one is safe. Things in Westeros are only getting worse, so that whole army-of-the-dead thing is becoming more real. Then, we get one of television’s biggest explosions: The Red Wedding. Shown in one of the finest episodes (“The Rains of Castamere”), the main event of a holy union is obliterated by a surprise attack by House Frey due to Robb Stark’s marriage to Talisa Maegyr; her unborn child was murdered along with her. The suddenness of the massacre remains chilling to this day, and it was the second last episode of this phenomenal third season. This leads into the fourth season, where the promotional material was labeled by a strong line of marketing: “All men must die”. After The Red Wedding, that could mean anything.
That was exactly the case. By this point, the detestable villain Joffrey Lannister — who assumed the Iron Throne all the way back in season one — also wasn’t even protected, as he got a dose of his own toxic medicine and died just short of halfway into the series. In this instance, the death was highly cathartic, so the series was even using death as a positive reinforcement (not many shows could do this, to be fair). From then on came surprise after surprise, twist after twist. Our investments with each character was so strong now. We could feel when Tyrion Lannister defends himself at his trial for the supposed murder of Joffrey, because he has had to answer to being a dwarf his entire life (by now, we’ve seen the misery he has had to endure). We feel sister Cersei Lannister’s devastation when her son Joffrey is poisoned to death, despite both characters being rather monstrous. The build up to these moments (basically all of seasons one and two, and a major portion of three) made these payoffs something quite exquisite. Game of Thrones wasn’t just brutal or unforgiving: it was gorgeously written as well, like a climaxing crescendo waiting to burst.
By now, things were looking good. Martin released book five (A Dance with Dragons) back in 2011 (around the time of the show’s start), and he was known to be a perfectionist writer, so what was another couple of years to write the last two promised novels. D&D were knocking these adaptations out of the park. The show was becoming one of HBO’s greatest successes. Despite its insane budget, the series was performing well: almost too well. Game of Thrones became the most pirated series ever, since enough people wanted to be in on the hype without buying into HBO. HBO, however, have dealt with piracy before: television series DVDs became popular once HBO released The Sopranos on disc to prevent the illegal sale of the series to Canadians who couldn’t get the service. In the case of Game of Thrones, enough word-of-mouth or won-over viewers (who would subsequently pay for the service to keep watching) occurred thanks to these downloads, so they worked more or less in the station’s favour.
So, things kept going. Season five worked on being a slow burn to a massively satisfying conclusion (in the shadow of the unparalleled fourth season), and season six performed similarly, which led up to one of television’s finest hours: “Battle of the Bastards”. D&D were writing symphonies at this point, with all of the proper build ups and conclusions to turn these stories of death, lust, betrayal, and justice into swirling euphorias, and this episode was clear evidence of this. Everything built up to this cathartic explosion of warfare, and the series delivered exactly what it needed to. The one-shot take of Jon Snow in the middle of a bloodbath is breathtaking. Him climbing out of the battling bodies and fallen corpses to seize his revenge is triumphant. The entire scale of the battle is titanic. Everything built up to this moment.
Part of this build up is thanks to the technical and artistic departments of the show, which brought the series to whole new heights. Ramin Djawadi’s score may be one of the best in all of television: his epic orchestrations are beyond beautiful, and they’re often the heart found within some of TV’s greatest, bloodiest horrors. For a show about fantasy, wars, orgies, and evil, the cinematography — especially the use of natural (or convincingly natural) lighting — was beyond words to watch; the use of Renaissance-era framing escalated many moments as well. Need I say more about the detailed costumes, endless sets (both practical and digital), and hairstyling found within the Seven Kingdoms? The believability of this fictitious world felt tangible. Lastly, the CGI is worth noting, especially because the series managed to break the stereotype that underfunded visual artistry on TV would always pale in comparison to film; the CGI went from decent in the first seasons to impossibly near-perfect later on. All of this contributed to “Battle of the Bastards”: an hour that felt like a film that managed to find its way onto the telly.
By now, the Song of Ice and Fire books were done. By that, I mean the source material was reached by the series, and there was no where else to go. Martin hadn’t finished the next two books yet. D&D had to forge their own paths. This seemed like it would be okay, since HBO would be more than willing to back one of its greatest triumphs, the ending was somewhat near in sight, and everything was golden so far. Well, as we know now, this sadly just wasn’t the case. Even as early as season seven’s premiere, the difference between book and no-book Game of Thrones was painfully apparent: Beinoff and Weiss didn’t know how to expand on Martin’s lore without his help. This is especially true since Martin was no longer writing one-off screenplays for the series, as a means of trying to finish his books even more quickly (still no sign of these final two novels in sight, by the way).
What was the first problem? The pacing of the series went completely to the trash can. What gradual growths of development and plotting once existed were now replaced with instant bursts from moment to moment. You can’t just have a Red Wedding happen for no reason. It was the history before it that made it count. The same was true with “Battle of the Bastards”, and pretty much every iconic moment of the series. What was clear was that D&D were given the blueprints of the final portions of the story, and they followed them a little too closely. Meticulously built plot threads were now sudden realizations, turning dramatic moments into soap opera fare. Dialogue became heavy handed and inauthentic. Twists were now shoehorned in, because they had to be there. Any of the previous joy of the show was now gone, and the actual game within the Game of Thrones was replaced by the highlight reel; there’s no effect when there’s no context. What was once a story was now the CliffNotes version.
Season seven was tricky enough to witness, but it did okay. It was season eight — the final part — where Game of Thrones really tripped down the stairs (the largest flight of stairs) quite heavily, and resolved its descent at the very base as a bloody, unrecognizable mess, completely devoid of life, structure, or spark. The high point of the series was an episode dedicated to war, but so was the low point. “The Long Night” is exactly my point. The entire series built up to this fight, where the Night King and the undead descend upon the now-aligned armies of the Seven Kingdoms. It was meant to be the climax of the series. It was actually the most irritating part of it all. For an hour and twenty minutes, most of the fight is hard to see (and being told you must watch the series in a dark room on a great television set in the 2010’s when the medium can be consumed in many ways is just presumptuous and out of touch). The fight itself doesn’t need to be this insanely long; it drags out beyond one’s threshold. Furthermore, the actual actions within said fight are beyond disappointing, with tame, safe resolutions ruining the possibilities that seven years promised us. Actually, make that eight: the final season took two years to make (only to underwhelm).
The final three episodes aren’t the worst, but they could have been much better. All of the biggest deaths are left for here, but they don’t leave the impact they are meant to. The deaths of both Cersei and Jaime Lannister — in each other’s arms — is stunning, but none of it felt like it mattered narratively. Missandei is beheaded after many years of service and growth, but the season’s lack of structure makes this death barely noticeable. Daenerys sets fire to literally all of King’s Landing, and the poor handling of this plot thread makes this Khaleesi a monster no one can root for, rather than a loving queen who broke (keep in mind, many daughters were named after her in real life because of her previous heart of gold and boldness). The Iron Throne is eventually burned down by the last remaining dragon of Daenerys, and there’s an important metaphor here, but it just doesn’t matter, even though the photography is exquisite and Djawadi’s score has frankly never been better.
It was clear that D&D were rushing to finish the series, to move onto greener pastures. The once careful series was now being forced out like a machine creating materials. The revelation of the Stark children overtaking various parts of the Seven Kingdoms should have been the ultimate reveal, but it just doesn’t matter when the final parts of this epic were barely loved by the creators. This was clearly the ending from the start, considering how their father’s execution dispersed them all over the nation, as they had to find their own ways back as courageous, independent thinkers and warriors. Again, none of it mattered by this end. I wouldn’t call the finale one of the worst ever, but this series collapse certainly cannot be ignored. Despite being pleasing to look at or to hear, these last two seasons felt mostly like a fan fiction attempt (or, at its worse, like a farce). The notoriety felt like it was the entire world putting Game of Thrones on too high of a pedestal, but these gaffs are borderline unforgivable.
Nonetheless, the majority of Game of Thrones secures it as one of the greatest series of our time. At its lowest, the show lets down what came before it, and what came before it is so much glory: complex storytelling of governance, war, and the unknown. Even during its low points, the boundaries of TV have been pushed further than they’ve ever been. These massive scaled series with the highest of budgets could exist. The legacy of the series still exists. We have six stellar seasons, which contain a handful of the greatest episodes in TV history. The characters are unforgettable, and so are their stomping grounds. A prequel series is in the works, and it doesn’t feel too silly (even with the burn of season eight still hurting most viewers). Game of Thrones cannot die, because of the initial impact it had all over the world, and its everlasting punch it delivers to every single viewer even now. Spoilers are still spewed everywhere (they would come out minutes after an episode would air, to be fair). Conversations on the best houses will never die. Game of Thrones deserved a much better resolution, but its greatest years allow it to not be completely dismantled by two disappointing seasons. Yes. It has that much power. It could have been the greatest show of the 2010’s, but at least it will remain one of the finest series of this era.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.