S8 is the most disastrous thing I've ever seen on TV. I'm sure Dexter was worse but just I dropped it before the final seasons.
Terrible writing and the character assassination was worse than Dany killing innocent people right and left.
"see how bad Daenerys is!! muahahaha"
Dragon fire just blowing up stuff now? Castle walls? Really? It was like a hot knife on butter. Why did she need an army?
Where is Bron?
What has Cersei done this season?
How did Euron show up right where Jaime was?
How did Arya survive?
How could Jaime walk after being stabbed in the fucking belly?
Dexter was worse. Battlestar Galactica was worse. Lost was worse.
GoT is still awful though.
I the end though I feel like all of these suffer from the same kinds of problems.
The endings have all felt very careless. Like the writers have at some point just thrown their hands up and said "fuck it".
I've been wondering a couple of things. Is the writing ultimately "rushed" in some way so that the writers literally do not have time to sit down and ask "is all this even any good" and sort of figure out where they are going and how long it will take to get there. Or is it "we need 6 screenplays on the table in the next 2 months just do it".
The second thing is the potential legal issues of being accused of "copying" from the Internet.
I can't believe that writers on these shows don't look to see what's out there online and once in a while they must surely stumble across something that makes them think "jeez, that's really good". Problem is if they lift an idea from a forum then could they be on the hook for "plagiarism" to some extent?
This seems especially relevant for Lost and GoT as there was such a massive amount of online speculation and "fan theories" that inevitable some of these would be really really good. Then the show has to try and compete with that.
GoT was always going to struggle as they came into the home stretch with social media people waiting to "react" to whatever happens.
Unfortunately, the attempts at "subverting expectations" are at odds with things like character building and investment in characters and just doing stuff that feels logical or "right".
"The Red Wedding" made sense in that the political wheeling and dealing behind the scenes that led to betrayal were realistic and believable.
"Arya comes out of nowhere to kill the Night King" is a bit less weighty and believable and so it kind of falls flat.
So here we are with Daenerys "heel turn" and it just feels rushed and not very well set up and it's just a big disappointment.
It's too late in the game for them to redeem themselves also. This is what we are left with.
I feel like The Wire, The Sopranos and Breaking Bad are still the gold standard in that long form story telling that delivers slowly developed characters and big meaningful shocks and "gut punch" moments.
GoT (and Lost, still) deserve credit for trying to do that in a more fantasy setting that encouraged fan theories and more outlandish possibilities but in the end they probably played it too safe by coasting for a few seasons before being forced into a conclusion that was not well considered or thought out.
Meh.
