Can we say that GoT is not THAT good anymore?

As promised, I waited few weeks before coming back to you. HBO has aired 3 episodes so far, therefore do not go any further if you didn't see episode 3. 

Just to give few lines of safety for those that do not want to know any detail on the first three episodes of the sixth season of Game of Thrones, I will start with a comment that does not regard the plot. 

HBO, please, please, a thousand times please, turn the damn light on! In 150 minutes of show, at least half of them were shot in complete darkness or with (dark) shades of blue. Most of the times I had to guess who was speaking and which storyline was developed at that moment. The line between a cool mysterious dark shot and the black screen can be very thin sometimes and HBO has always been an acrobat walking on that line in past 5 years. However, in this season, I have to admit that they completely lost sight of the fact that a lot of people may not have perfect screens or, you know, may have some other light in the room and spend the all episode bending forward, gasping for a shred of a frame.

One of the brightest moment of the season

I want to start with the positive aspects of this season. On the Wall, everything is going as scheduled, I can't see (and, as said before, sometimes I literally can't) how they could do it any better, that bastard of Jon came back and that asshole of Olly is hanging. It is the most promising part of the story for those that look for pure entertainment, an invincible army from the north, a sadistic dog lover from the south, the first good choice of Sansa, hopefully a smart plot involving Rickon and Osha, Ser Davos being a politician. They can play that very well, let's see in they can keep the promise and when or if Littlefinger will make his appearance.

Arya(/Daredevil) and Tyron are separately keeping the interest for the rest of the world alive, but with two so cool characters is too easy, I expect more screen time in a couple of episodes or so. They are building a lot of expectation on Bran, the last flashback gave us the best sword fight so far (ok, one of the five best) and, although I'm a little skeptical about the utility of such flashbacks for the main plot, it is becoming very intriguing.

As you may have guessed from the title, however, I'm still disappointed by the show, in the same way the last season disappointed me. They decided to remind us the last season's prophecy, the one that took out every tension from a story line. We lost Myrcella as expected, we will lose Tommen as hoped (he is so boring that I'm cheering for the return of a zombie Joffrey as new king) and I don't see this reminder to be useful. Take as an example the second season of Breaking Bad, we saw that floating teddy bear for 12 episodes, wondering why, building expectations, creating a tension in the plot that was resolved in the season finale. Here we already have an insignificant king, at least make his death interesting somehow.

Speaking of not-occurred-yet deaths, the High Sparrow is still alive, I don't understand why, it makes no sense at all, those religious bullshits are taking too long to be eradicated from the show. I don't like them because they never surprised me, in two seasons they have just been playing the expected role of the homophobic fanatics, nothing new from any historical event ever happened. My fear is that they are building the Sparrows' story line so much because they will play a major role in the entire plot. This is both the only acceptable reason to tolerate their presence for so long and one of the main reasons of disappointment. In a world with dragons and undeads, do we really need religion to make something big happen?

The general impression is that they are pushing ahead too many story lines at the same time. In every episode we jump around to follow as many characters as we can, but the effect is a very slow and sometimes anti-climatic development. Something that never happened so consistently in the past seasons. It is true that the first episodes are always introductory and the fourth episode is a good one to kill the High Sparrow, but the show is heading to the wrong direction. It is becoming a show that you watch only because you care about the characters, not for the story, that keeps our attention alive just with a few brilliant punch lines or some funny scene of big men crushing small men. I'm not saying that the show is becoming a new version of The Walking Dead, but it needs to change the paste fast. 

The material to be great again is there, let some characters meet, it is time to cross their stories, and probably this rushing from one side of Westeros to the other is the price to pay in order to make it happen in the few episodes left (in the worst case scenario, season 7 will be the last one). See you again in 3 or 4 weeks.