You’ve heard my thoughts on the plot elements of Game of Thrones‘ first season (and believe me, there are still thoughts to be had), but today I’m here to share my opinion on the season and why I thought it was so great.
First of all, I have to start out by saying that Game of Thrones will probably rank up there with LOST as far as game-changing genre shows go. Sure, it doesn’t change the field as drastically as LOST did, but it’s a show about dragons and swordfighting that is appealing to a mass audience. It’ll be fun to watch the success of the series influence the shows that other networks put out in the future. What further influence Game of Thrones will have on our culture, I don’t know quite yet. I’d love for it to instigate a resurgence of fantasy into the pop culture bloodstream. It has the potential to do just that, if its numbers keep going up with the second season.
Game of Thrones might just urge on other, just as faithful adaptations of books to the small screen. Shows like True Blood and The Walking Dead follow their source material loosely, to varying degrees of success. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, adhered its source material (A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin) so closely that even the pickiest fans could only gather complaints such as “Jon’s direwolf isn’t supposed to bark!” and “Sansa and the Hound are supposed to have a rapport by now!” (Yes, I admit it, I’m picky.) With Neil Gaiman’s American Gods adaptation coming down the pike at HBO, could we be seeing another such faithful adaptation in the future? It’s entirely possible.
The series did a masterful job at bringing us wonderful characters, through both writing and acting. Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister was an obvious standout with wonderful dialogue delivered with witty sarcasm or believable poignancy, whichever was required. The newcomers that the show introduced us to, from Emilia Clarke (pictured above) to Kit Harington to Maisie Williams, were all absolutely spectacular in their roles. The casting department chose well enough to satisfy the most dedicated fans of the source material while creating a cast that would market to the HBO television audience (Sean Bean was the sausage they dangled to hook fans before he was – literally – cut away).
Speaking of Sean Bean being cut away, the series also had an uncanny ability to unbalance the audience, whether with the shocking death of Sansa’s direwolf in the second episode or the more subtle scene in which a troubled Ned watched as his youngest daughter learned swordfighting techniques. It wasn’t a typical episode cliffhanger, but it set the tone for the rest of the series all the same. Perhaps subconsciously, it prepared us for the inevitable: as written in the books, Ned Stark was beheaded at the end of the penultimate episode of the season, “Baelor.” Fan reaction was sharply divided, as anticipated, a fact that only lends credence to the emotional power of the series (Maisie Williams, who portrays Arya Stark, made the scene heartbreakingly real). The show’s inability – or refusal – to compromise with what viewers wanted as opposed to what the story demanded made it difficult to watch at times, but emotionally rewarding in the end.
Even the sex was difficult to watch at times, such as the scene that occurred at the end of the first episode, during the forceful consummation of the marriage between Daenerys and Khal Drogo, or the deliberately taboo lovemaking of Cersei Lannister and her brother Jaime. Sometimes the sex could be gratuitous — Littlefinger’s perfectly delivered monologue at the beginning of the episode “You Win Or You Die” was set during a decidedly sleazy lesbian sex scene — but it always seemed to stay within the show’s own gratuitous, indulgent world, never going so far as to pander to the audience.
The world itself was so well constructed, so brilliantly designed, that it can easily be said to be unique on television. There’s no show that looks like Game of Thrones, and the more I watch the series, the more I’m convinced that no show should try to look like Game of Thrones, because any attempt would obviously fall short of the lavish and varied colors of Westeros.
Perhaps I’ve gone on long enough. My opinion of the first season is painfully clear: it’s my favorite new show of the year so far, and one of my favorite of all time. I couldn’t possibly ask for a fantasy series more unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The juxtaposition of the fantasy genre with a storyline more akin to The Sopranos or The Wire is something I never expected to see on television, but I’m so glad it’s here. Season two can’t come quickly enough.
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