It’s generally agreed that the last two seasons of Game of Thrones weren’t very good. Or, at least, were nowhere near as good as the previous 6 seasons. People get themselves into a right fluster over it, as if they’ve suffered some great, personal betrayal. The last season instigated in the twatosphere a petition to try and get the producers to actually remake it. More than a million and a half people signed it. A phenomenon that reveals not only what a bunch of entitled arseholes some people are but also how ubiquitous and pointless online petitions are too.
Being bothered about those seasons not being what they expected is fair enough, especially given we had to wait two years for the last one. But there’s something most seem to forget about the show which might help to explain why those last seasons weren’t so good. Usually the reason cited is that it’s at that point that the show moved beyond the books so Benioff and Weiss, the show runners, were developing from an outline G.R.R Martin had provided. But I think a more plausible explanation is this – it’s a show about dragons and zombies!
People who love the show often go on and on about how, ‘yes, it’s a made up world but it’s realistic and it’s based on real history, y’know, so the intrigue and characters are believable‘ etc etc In the earlier seasons the dragons/zombies/magical fire sex witch,
are just a rumour, save for a scene here and there. The zombies are way up north and the dragons are teeny tiny and not that much of a threat so the story had to revolve more around the political theatre, the betrayals, revenge, war and ambition. As the characters were well written we cared about how they were affected by these things and the show appealed to none fantasy fans because they happen in the real world so they could relate, sympathise and empathise.
What doesn’t exist in the real world are armies of zombies and big fuck off dragons.
So when they started to play a much bigger role in the story it became much more difficult to try and plausibly write how the characters would react to such an absurd situation. The result – a retreat to the more familiar fantasy tropes of simplistic heroism, villainy and boats that travel faster than jumbo jets. Martin might be taking so long to write the next book because of the difficulty that emerges from the logic of his own story and the genre it’s a part of. To try and make characters behave in a realistic or plausible way against such an unrealistic and implausible threat is a tall order for anyone. Martin, writing alone, has the luxury of time. The show runners didn’t. It was the most popular thing ever made for television, which is probably great but brings with it more deadline demands and responsibilities. It brings an industry. Like a dragon that needs to be fed.
So we get what we got.
Personally, I still thought it was a rollicking, fun adventure story. But then I didn’t forget it was a show about dragons, zombies, sexy fire witches and old men living in trees who can see everything that’s ever happened and is going to happen everywhere or something.
Being such a phenomenon it’s worth examining it in terms of its relation to the wider culture. People were endlessly doing this throughout its run, hurling their identity politics at it after every episode, for example, and one of the most common things people have discussed is that the winter that was coming for seven seasons was a metaphor for climate change.
Maybe, maybe not. The books began before that became such a pressing issue but it’s certainly one now and it can’t have escaped the attention of the people making the show. And while we point fingers at the show for the flaws of the last two seasons a very similar parallel can be drawn between the reasons I’ve just given for those flaws and why everything now, in the real world, also seems like it’s a badly written TV show developed from an outline in a hurry.
Our world today has its own zombies and dragons to deal with. We, increasingly, face that thrones/winter metaphor made real as extreme weather and mass extinction comes knocking at our door. We face an existential threat that the human race has never faced in history and, ultimately, our political pen doesn’t know how to write a better story to keep up with it. Coupled with this (and not unconnected) we face a rising, global inequality also never seen before and we’re equally baffled as to how to respond. As someone once said, it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.
So we get a racist TV celebrity as President and a we have a Prime Minister who achieved fame through appearing on Have I Got News for You and for getting stuck on a zip line with a wedgie. You would’ve been laughed out of the writer’s room if you’d come up with this outline even ten years ago, and things were bad then.
However rubbush you think the last two seasons of a fantasy TV show involving zombies, dragons, fire witches, an all seeing tree man and an immortal, elf created ice king thing was, I genuinely think we should cut Benniof and Weiss a break. We’d surely be better off with them writing us a new script for the real world than the one we’re in now.
In fact, I’m off to start a petition.
TONGUE 