Game of Thrones: Season 7

(Oh shit, left this one hanging for a week.)

So for the second straight year I found myself in Europe for the Game of Thrones finale. And maybe that's influencing the way I'm watching these finales, days late and minorly spoiled and all, and maybe in turn that's giving them this larger than life feeling and really exaggerating what a watercooler show Game of Thrones has become - the lone remaining TV show that's appointment viewing anymore - but for the second straight season, I've come away from Game of Thrones with more concerns than excitement about what's to come. Scattered thoughts will follow - it's bullet time!

• The writing on Game of Thrones used to be its strong suit, back when writing was just adapting because George R.R. Martin had already more or less written every episode fifteen years prior. But ever since the show has had to write its own seasons and episodes, it's gotten so much worse. And the shortened, condensed season length this time around made things even harder no doubt. It's as if the showrunners know that they want certain episodes and seasons to end with or include very specific benchmarks - here's where this big event happens, here's when that milestone occurs - but they have no great ideas for how to get those things to happen without making their own characters behave irrationally or stupidly or what have you. The reliance on deus ex machina has been overwhelming, not just this season but starting somewhere during the last.
• Arya, in particular. Ugh. Great character, good performance, but it's clear the show has no fucking clue what to do with her and hasn't since, like, Bravos. The entire Faceless Men arc didn't make sense, but Arya'a behavior this season made even less sense.
• Jon also makes no sense anymore. This is the shittiest leader, commander, king, what have you, in a show where it was established early and often that good intentions get you killed if you're not shrewd and tactical and scheming. Unless they intend to retroactively justify his absolute plot armor with some kind of "prince that was promised" chicanery, I mean, what the hell? Ned was honorable as hell and lost his head for it and that's what put this show on the map in the first place. Robb was less honorable, sure, but let himself get just a bit too comfortable, and bam, it was all over for him. But Jon makes just the dumbest fucking decisions time and time again, and he's not only still alive, but poised to become the goddamn King of Westeros. Speaking of which....
• Jaime. This is a guy who pushed a small kid out of a window early on because that kid caught him having sex with his sister. Then over the course of the series we gain some empathy for him, particularly after he goes through some hardships, and so he becomes one of the "good guys." Yeah - he should have died this season. You all know exactly when. And having survived that, he should have left King's Landing and Cersei for good. Hell, he should have left her last season after she did exactly the thing that Jaime killed the last king to stop him from doing! But then when does he finally leave? Only after Cersei has what is, all things considered, a very good plan. Jaime decided his honor requires him to go fight alongside his enemies, under a truce that by definition will expire once they've successfully beaten their common enemies. This is dumber than anything Ned ever did! Why has the show gone soft? Why is it that suddenly every character is either a supervillain or someone with an unimpeachable sense of honor?
• Littlefinger. How'd he not see that coming? Where was his escape plan? The master schemer, the grand manipulator, and he can't even pull one over on two feuding sisters?
• Space. No, wait.
• Space and time. What the fuck, guys? This isn't just a nitpick. How much time is passing between some of these scenes? It's been established just how big and vast this continent is, and how a journey from King's Landing to Winterfell is supposed to take, like, a month. But now we have armies literally marching across the continent in the span of an episode, ships sailing around the continent like it's nothing, and in the most absurd sequence in the show's history, we have a blacksmith sprinting several miles through the snow, a raven flying halfway across the continent, and a dragon flying all the way back across it all in the span of... what, maybe two days? A lot of people would argue that, one, who cares about what's realistic, it's a show full of incest and dragons, or, two, who cares about the little scenes, we're here for the zombies and dragon wars. And to both these camps, sure, fine, you do you. But the Lost finale had its defenders, too.
• The Iron Islands and the Greyjoy plot. Theon's arc was sloppy, but he's one of the most tragic and bittersweet characters in the series. Cocky and shitty at first, dragged into doing some terrible things and betraying his foster family by a misplaced sense of honor to his actual parents, then captured and literally physically emasculated, tortured, broken, tormented. Then he redeems himself by saving Sansa, and frankly, with so many characters and storylines and actors on the show, that's probably where he should have died. But no! Instead we were treated to another act of cowardice on Theon's part, two seasons after his redemption arc was finished, and now, what, we get to do it all over again? With the shitty villain that is Euron? There are six episodes left. Supersized or not, with everything hanging on the line, do we really need to devote any amount of any of those episodes to this shitty Greyjoy C-story?

Guys - I don't have high hopes! And if I have to wait two years to see this story wind down, imagine how poorly it might sit, marinating in my bad memories and shark-jumping fears. Gulp! Okay, back to hoping for the final two books to come out soon.