Asking the Wrong Questions

"It never happened. It will shock you how much it never happened," quotes Aaron Bady in his review of "The Last of the Starks", the fourth episode of the just-concluded eighth and final season of Game of Thrones . Aaron--whose reviews this season, alongside Sarah Mesle and Philip Maciak, have remained the gold standard for talking about this much-talked-about show--is referring to the battle against the army of the dead in the previous episode, whose fallen are eulogized in "Last"'s opening scene. "This is why the show needed those fiery pyres and a big speech from Jon about how no one will ever forget; otherwise, we might notice and be shocked that it didn't matter, that everyone is going to forget, and that it never happened." But in a way that he might not even have realized at the time, he is also articulating the approach of the entire season. Rather than tying off and concluding its storylines, in its final season Game of Thro...

Well, this season of Game of Thrones was pretty shit, wasn't it?  That comes as a bit of a surprise, to be honest.  For years, I've taken an attitude of fond indulgence towards the show.  What's wrong, after all, with watching a bunch of generally quite fine actors enact a complicated plot with stratospheric production values and the occasional fantastic action scene?  Sure, the show wasn't actually about anything, and its writers had blind spots on issues of race and gender that were often glaring .  But if you're able to put that aside, what's left is a genuinely enjoyable, well-made soap opera whose main appeal is the desire to know what happens next.  It hadn't occurred to me that this was a formula that could be screwed up, but at the end of the shortened (and yet seemingly endless) seventh season, there's really no escaping the conclusion: Game of Thrones may not be a good show, but there is a palpable difference between good Game of Thrones an...

Yesterday afternoon, before I'd watched the final episode of Game of Thrones 's fifth season, I read this essay by Aaron Bady about the show, in which he argues that it has overshot its natural ending point, and therefore no longer has anything to say: What has changed, I think, is that tragedy has become pornography. Not literal pornography, of course, because very specific forms of gratuitous sexual titillation have been consistent throughout. Put some boobs on screen is one of the boxes each episode needs to check off, and consistently does. But what is the point of evoking terror and pity by hurting characters like Sansa or Cercei? Watching Ned, Catelyn, and Rob die was horrible not only because they were good people, but because we were watching the patriarchal fantasies of Good Kings dying with them. They represented something, the possibility of a return to the way things should be: the tragedy was coming to realize its impossibility. The Starks were the tragic heroe...

Jaime: When we make camp tonight, you'll be raped.  More than once.  None of these fellows have ever been with a noblewoman.  You'd be wise not to resist. Brienne: Would I? Jaime: They'll knock your teeth out. Brienne: You think I care about my teeth? Jaime: No, I don't think you care about your teeth.  If you fight them, they will kill you .  Do you understand?  I'm the prisoner of value, not you.  Let them have what they want.  What does it matter? Brienne: What does it matter? Jaime: Close your eyes.  Pretend they're Renly. Brienne: If you were a woman, you wouldn't resist?  You'd let them do what they wanted? Jaime: If I was a woman, I'd make them kill me.  I'm not, thank the gods. Game of Thrones , "Walk of Punishment" Despite the title, this post isn't intended as a review of Game of Thrones 's recently-concluded fourth season, about which I feel largely the same way I felt about the third and the second --I ...

A bit surprised that this hasn't had more play: in an interview with Empire last week, Neil Marshall--who directed the penultimate episode of the second season of Game of Thrones , "Blackwater"--has this to say on the subject of the show's use of nudity: The weirdest part was when you have one of the exec producers leaning over your shoulder, going, "You can go full frontal, you know. This is television, you can do whatever you want! And do it! I urge you to do it!" So I was like, "Okay, well, you're the boss." This particular exec took me to one side and said, "Look, I represent the pervert side of the audience, okay? Everybody else is the serious drama side. I represent the perv side of the audience, and I'm saying I want full frontal nudity in this scene." So you go ahead and do it. (The original quote is in a podcast.  Here are two text reports, both of which seem quite cheerful about HBO courting the pervert demograp...

By a lot of conventional yardsticks, the second season of Game of Thrones is less successful than its first.  It lacks the commanding, gravitational figure of Ned Stark at its center, and the strong throughline of his investigation into the death of his predecessor as Hand of the King and the maiming of his son.  It's a more diffuse narrative, flitting between an ever-increasing number of locations and characters, and not properly a story at all.  Most of the season is spent laying the groundwork for a single battle in a war in which no side has a particularly strong claim on the audience's sympathies, and that battle turns out to be not only far from decisive, but perhaps not even very important in the grand scheme of things.  And yet it can't be denied that the second season of Game of Thrones is better and more engaging than the first, that over the course of its ten episodes the pull of its narrative, of the various clans warring for control of Westeros and the...

Earlier this spring, HBO cancelled Luck , a show set in and around a struggling Southern California horse-racing track from Deadwood creator David Milch, then several weeks into the filming of its second season, following the death of one the horses used on set.  Two other horses had already died during the filming of Luck 's first season, and in the face of intense criticism following those deaths the production promised to tighten its safety protocols.  When these proved ineffective, HBO and Luck 's producers jointly came to the decision to pull the plug.  I never fell in love with Luck , which outside of its tense, riveting horse racing sequences always seemed a little too benign for its subject matter, but I did enjoy the first season and was looking forward to the second.  Nevertheless, the news of the show's cancellation came as a relief to me.  I was deeply troubled when I learned about the first two horse deaths on Luck 's set, and the third one le...