A small disclaimer before beginning: I don't care about the differences between the books and the TV show since they are two different means to entertain the public, some differences are required. I like a story that flows smoothly, I don't care if it is different than the book.
To some extent, my favorite season remains the first one. It is true that the events, or some characters, are more entertaining in other seasons. I could cite the marvelous behavior of Tyrion Lannister as Hand of the King, reaching its perfection in the Blackwater siege in season 2. Or the rise of Daenerys' power as well as the development of the dozens of subplots, or at last, the most entertaining season, the fourth one. However, in the first season we have 10 episodes where we can find two powers, pure and stupid honor on one side and politics on the other, that give start to a dance to their own survival. A dance that, episode after episode with no exceptions, moves the plot in an avalanche of events that is still, 5 seasons later, falling down and growing.
We can arrive at one of the reasons why I enjoy this show so much, its structure is extremely solid, it never required a "reboot" of events, in the first season they set the paste, the tone, the main plots, and everything is a pretty straightforward consequence of that. Of course, if you design your seasons to be a series of events that leads to the main one in episode 9, the risk to become predictable is concrete, but one thing is saving the show from that. Game of Thrones is a painful show for the viewer because it reminds us that no matter how fictional are the characters we are looking at, reality will punch you in the face and smash your skull. We start caring about a character, fascinated by its potential, the legend that is slowly drawn around it. As soon as we see that potential realizing, reality comes, that little fucker, and we realize that you can be the best badass ever, riding your horse with your shiny muscles under the sun, killing people with your bare hands, but you will die for an insignificant infected scratch. No matter how extreme is your power, and the nature of it, you will surrender to the events, you will be thrown back in the mud with the rest of us.
The disappointment that the last season gave me is for sure due to the high expectations. Every season somehow managed to surprise me, the fifth is not surprising, there are cool shots, epic moments and battles, but none of these things really surprised me like in the past. So on one side I settled the bar too high. On the other side, everything is painfully underwhelming!
We start with a flashback, a prophecy that takes out every tension from two story lines: the young Lannisters have to die eventually. One of them does it, the other is so meaningless that we don't care. On the other side of the sea, we can appreciate how boring is ruling with respect to conquering and we have to force ourself to ignore that the legendary Unsullied can't handle untrained fighters. In the meantime we see how giving power to homophobic religious fanatics can mess up with the political equilibrium, how unexpected!
The best episode takes place beyond the Wall, epic battle, epic Jon Snow, epic giant, etc. The last two episodes, however, do not live up to that. The feeling is that the producers tried to fill in too many events, too many emotions, they wanted to shock us like in the past, but they forgot to build up the tension, the expectations and to give us the necessary time to absorb the shock. One story line after the other reaches its high impact moment in a couple of episodes that we can surely define enjoyable, but do not reach the potential that the events presented should have reached in our minds. The main reason is that in the past seasons, the peak was always reached in a moment of silence, with different levels of surprise effects. These two episodes are loud, almost a white noise of crucial events. In other words, too much, too fast. I wasn't even THAT displeased when I saw Jon in the snow.
In conclusion, one bad season can happen to anyone, so I expect a sixth season that settles the bar high again. We can thus expect good things happening around the third or fourth episode, after an appropriate introduction.
All of that to say that, depending on how much I like what I will weekly see, we can meet again on this pages to comment what HBO will feed us.
No comments:
Post a Comment