Television Review: Game of Thrones, Season Seven

Game of Thrones… Am I right?

I don’t want to be ‘that guy’ but I am. So here is a review of my pet peeves with this season of GoT.

Let’s go!

• Story arcs. Call me old fashioned but when I watch a TV show I’m hoping to get something that resembles a story or at least a theme. I really didn’t like just getting random drabs of information that might be useful in later episodes. I’m going to forget about it. I want to be able to enjoy one episode at a time. Without taking notes. It felt like a bad soap. A very expensive, bad soap.

I just realized how grumpy I am about this season. I thought it was only mild dislike. Okay, let’s go on…

• Timeline. I not going to pretend to be a massive nerd about the geography of Westeros or about the magical rules of this world. I’ve only read the first two books. So I don’t really know. But nowhere in those two books did any character at any point have the ability to travel quickly, or time travel.There has been no mention of portals or any other things that might help characters move quickly from place to place. Well, apart from the dragons. I’m just going to assume that the creators got lazy and impatient. OR! There’s a forgotten storyline about a dude from King’s Landing who perfected performance enhancing drugs for the horses. Yep, speed for horses. And that’s why everyone gets everywhere so quickly. Just an idea I had… ©
• Not properly explaining the fantasy things. In other areas, this show is great at explaining things. There are a million characters whose only job this season has been to provide exposition. Ehem, Bran… Tyrion… But in the one area where exposition is ALWAYS welcome, they just don’t do it.I’m talking about the zombie/White Walker thing. Maybe I just haven’t been paying attention but I had no idea that there were White Walkers AND zombie/skeletons until this season. I thought that the undead became White Walkers and that it was an army of White Walkers. It would take one scene where the kingpin over the wall does something other than standing around with his head crown and looking angry. One scene of lovely, exposition-y visuals…

Which brings me to…

• Dialogue that serves one purpose. Exposition. People don’t talk that way. Sometimes they do but GoT characters didn’t always talk this way. Where’s the intrigue? Where’s the banter? Where’s the comedy? Again. Someone’s gotten lazy and impatient. You’ve got to SHOW don’t TELL people! It’s screenwriting 101. Everyone gets one line of dialogue which must progress the plot. But to actually follow that story you have to wait for three episodes. It’s bad practice to write shitty dialogue. And it makes me sad.

And also about showing not telling…

• Filler shots. Never before has GoT had so many shots of random buildings and landscapes. Why? Why are they there? Are they there to fill up the time because they forgot to include a story or good dialogue? Possibly?It can’t be so that people know where the next scene will take place? At this point in the series, most viewers can recognize the different places surely? We’ve had 6 seasons in King’s Landing. We know that we’re now watching characters that live in King’s Landing. Why do we need to see a random street that has no purpose other than that it looks like it’s in King’s Landing? Gaaah! I’m so frustrated by them!

A few little things. Because I care mostly about the animal characters at this point.

• Dragons. Dragon armor. Please. There are only three dragons (well..ehem). Someone give them armour. They’re still babies. They don’t have proper scales yet.
• Wolves. Where are the wolves? I miss Ghost. There was that one weird scene where Arya talks to a wolf. But the real wolf-Stark relationship that needed to be kept was between Jon and Ghost. I’ve read a couple of articles about how they’re really difficult to animate and expensive. So I get it, I guess. But then just do what GoT does best and kill the wolf… And stop leaving me hanging with the Ghost screen time.

And just because I feel like I’ve been a little negative. Here are some memes of the bits I liked from this season.

Thanks for reading!