Why Game of Thrones has become dull
Warning: spoilers for Game of Thrones s1–7, Breaking Bad, and The Wire.
I started watching Game of Thrones a long time after everyone else. Until about two years ago all I had to do with it was winding friends up by asking them what their favourite dragon was. Then I decided to give it a go, and was immediately hooked: the intrigue, the uncertainty, the breadth, the tits.
But for the last couple of series I’ve found it a bit dull. And this series is duller yet. Unsurprisingly, I have a theory why, and I’m going to compare it to The Wire and Breaking Bad to explain (if you’ve not seen either of these, this should still make sense, but spoiler warnings apply). Yes, I’m white and middle-class, why do you ask?
One of Game of Thrones’ strengths has always been its extremely well-drawn ensemble of characters. In this way, it’s a bit like The Wire; although McNulty was the constant, you could name ten other characters in any given series who were as important, and as fully-developed. And there were even whole series where you hardly saw his cheeky little face. Look at those cheeks. Don’t you just want to pinch them and give them a good shake?
It’s not, however, much like Breaking Bad. There is a clear ‘top tier’ of characters (Walt, Jesse, Gus), and a clear lead character throughout: the series is about Walter White. The other characters exist to interact with Walt.
There are ways in which Game of Thrones is more similar to Breaking Bad than The Wire, though. One is that both are character-driven rather than world-driven. That’s not to say New Mexico or Westeros aren’t important to those shows, but it’s a very different degree. Sprawling Westeros doesn’t feel like a place — we’ve not spent long enough anywhere. And New Mexico is just a backdrop that makes the plot work by being near the border and having plenty of desert. In The Wire, Baltimore is intertwined with the narrative, and each series focuses on a different part of the city (which, of course, is a microcosm of the US as a whole).
The other similarity is that both Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones have clear end points. We know Westeros is going to face a fight for its existence. We know Breaking Bad will have a conclusion — part of the brilliance of Breaking Bad was the way it constantly played with when that conclusion would be, using Walt’s diagnosis, remission, and relapse. (We also know when Game of Thrones will end, which further reduces the tension: it’s the TV equivalent of Jane Austen’s tell-tale compression of the pages.)
Not The Wire: we knew from the start Baltimore wasn’t going to stop existing at the end of the show. In fact, part of the point of The Wire is that it cheated us. It didn’t conclude — that was the point. Things carried on. There was a futility to it, an exhaustion. For all McNulty’s efforts to do the right thing, culminating in a storyline where he gives up on proper process and invents a serial killer to get budget, there was no winner. It was a strange storyline that seemed out of place at the time, but is it too much of a stretch to think David Simon was reflecting the exhaustion of the war on drugs and the exhaustion of McNulty’s patience with the exhaustion of realistic plotting? (It probably is. But I want to believe.)
The fact that The Wire was world-driven rather than character-driven also let it do certain things. Omar’s death in The Wire is well-lauded, but it’s worth understanding why it mattered so much. It was random, mid-arc, and reminded the viewer: ‘No-one is safe’. It kept the tension of the world the characters were in. (A micro-version of this was Stringer Bell getting gunned down before he could complete his sentence.)
Breaking Bad also could (and did) kill off important characters: Hank, Gus… Gale, I guess? Each was shocking, and each worked. That’s partly because the show didn’t ‘cry wolf’ for their deaths, but also because we knew the show’s conclusion would be specific, not general: Walter White, not the state of New Mexico, was what would face the final showdown. So we kept an interest in who’d be left hanging around later.
Game of Thrones is different. Its final battle will be existential for the Seven Kingdoms (so far less ‘who’ll be left?’ tension), and it relies on its ensemble of characters, not the world. So it’s much harder to kill them before that final showdown. That’s caused a problem: they’ve tried to add tension but it’s false: Oooh, is he going to die? No! But perhaps now he’s in greater danger?! No, wait, he’s fine. Fuck’s sake.
There’s no shortage of examples of this, but three that spring to mind: Tyrion being about to die and getting thrown into the water by Jorah Mormont; Bronn looking doomed before someone stabs his attacker in the back; Jaime charging at the dragon and at the last minute being rugby-tackled into some water. The last two were in the most recent episode I watched — it’s only getting worse.
Earlier in the show there were shocking deaths, that were both unexpected and added to the narrative. Think of Ned Stark, or the Red Wedding. I haven’t done the work for this because I’m lazy, but I bet if you charted ‘major character deaths’ by series you’d see a steady decline (and no, Olenna Tyrell doesn’t count, I don’t care if you think she’s your grandma). But now they’ve telegraphed the main characters’ deaths so many times that we’re not surprised when they don’t come, and we won’t be surprised if they do.
Prediction: these deaths will rely on huge wrenching surprises — betrayal, or character reversals, or big plot points. The fact of the death itself won’t feel enough, and the whole thing will feel forced — too much of the load will be on the context and the narrative.
This was probably inevitable as the story tightened to set up the end. It’s a consequence of the entire set-up of the show: Ensemble cast + character-driven + existential final battle = awesome until the net tightens.
So now the viewer’s lost trust in the show not to string it along. And the only reason to continue watching it is for a residual love of the characters, the sunk cost of having watched six damn seasons already, and the spectacle — which are not nothing, but they’re nothing like as good as the intrigue, mystery, and uncertainty.
