‘Game of Thrones’ 7.1: Winter Soldiers
I’ve made no secret of my apathy for HBO’s Game of Thrones; by far the worst TV show that I voluntarily watch season to season (I obnoxiously refuse to be excluded from the broad cultural conversation that surrounds it). It’s by no means awful — in 2016, there were at least 2 inferior HBO dramas — but the hype is massively disproportionate to the quality of the show. It confounds me when otherwise intelligent critics laud it as one of ‘the defining programmes of TV’s golden age’; other than increasing expectations of production value on the small screen, Thrones has done little to improve the medium.
As it enters its seventh (and, mercifully, penultimate) season, it has abandoned any shred of internal integrity: “Dragonstone”, the season premiere, features a horrendously-misjudged cameo from Ed Sheeran, the human embodiment of stunning mediocrity, who performs a verse from “a new song”. It’s unclear whether this gimmick is an intentional distraction from the shallow discourse in the proceeding scene, but it certainly succeeds in pulling our attention away. Thrones’ writers are fond of this: the crowded nature of the cast crates a tiresome rhythm whereby most episodes are merely a sequence of long conversations, bookended by (admittedly impressively) footage of swooping dragons or White Walkers lurking in the icy mist.
The seemingly-endless exchanges between two characters, with topics ranging from “preparing for war” to “the aftermath of war for which they were not prepared” often lead me to zone out of an episode for several minutes, exponentially increasing my overall confusion: every character on Thrones seems to have three names (Aidan Gillen is alternately referred to as Petyr, Littlefinger and Lord Baelish) and I simply can’t keep track. It’s not that I’m stupid — I’m perfectly capable of following vast casts on Breaking Bad, Parenthood and Lost — but on shows like House of Cards and Thrones, I cannot engage with the ensemble deeply enough to learn their contact information.
For the most part, I find the writing on Game of Thrones as emotionally disengaged as the angry nerds who will inevitably comment on this article. There are occasionally bruising moments of brutality, but almost never the bursts of ecstasy or existential struggle that one should expect from a genuinely great TV drama. I like my fantasy epics to be poetic and transcendental like The Lord of the Rings; everything about Thrones is too cold, too practical. That said, the result of trying to imbue this sort of clumsy narrative with philosophical meandering is a show like Westworld, so perhaps Thrones could be even duller. There are tragic attempts at moral lecturing: as Jon Snow rallies his men, a young girl stands up and demands to fight. Please, there are easier and more intelligent ways to inject some much-needed feminism into an overwhelmingly brutish show. Perhaps my biggest peeve with Thrones remains the anachronistic profanity: Cersei uses the C-word flippantly. Remind me when and where this show is supposed to take place…?
And it isn’t all the writers’ fault: I find at least half the cast extremely wooden — this episode’s Kit Harrington/Sophie Turner scene is literally two actors trying to outdo one another’s overpronunciation of the word ‘Muhhduh’. More charismatic performers do shine through: a scene involving newcomer Jim Broadbent and John Bradley’s Samwell (the show’s most laughable Tolkien plagiarism) conveys more heart in 5 minutes than the other 55 combined. Where once Thrones’ two most enigmatic figures, Daenerys and Tyrion, were given equal shares of an episode’s running time, they’re now working together and sharing a storyline — meaning both characters sharing half the coverage. It’s like they’re trying to make me lose interest.
Yet I march valiantly on, watching these episodes first thing on a Monday morning before gleefully bashing them online. I genuinely do enjoy many elements of this show: the opening credits for instance. And I can’t deny that this episode’s cold open, as Arya pulls an Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible, is enormous fun. In the past, Thrones has tested my patience like nothing else on television, but with only 13 or so episodes remaining, the pace seems to be quickening. About damn time.
