Favorite TV

I was asked my favorite TV show. After deliberating, I said The Office, for sentimental reasons. It was tough not to say Game of Thrones. But then when I think about actually watching Game of Thrones, it's so easy not to say it. It displeased me so much. I'm not a GOT lover; GOT isn't my GOAT.

Game of Thrones is the most intriguing series I've encountered, as intriguing as any piece of media. The world-building and the story-building are thrilling, brilliant, fascinating.

So much for building... Art isn't just about the rising action. Where it all goes is important, too; or where it chooses not to go. Most of Game of Thrones felt like drawn-out (in the sense of hanged-drawn-and-quartered) rising action, that never got anywhere until the despised final seasons. That's why I like those seasons: they offer some sort of resolution, contrasting the miserable wandering of the central few (celebrated) seasons. Typically I'd consider myself patient with hard art, but I felt so unhappy through the midsection of the series, and so giddy at the allegedly cheap ending.

I yearn for GOT/ASOIAF content. I want to revisit all of it, but I actually exhausted the show by watching most of the best parts at least twice, and the books feel tedious knowing how little I care about some of these wretched subplots. So my yearning begins to sound irrational and short-sighted, not self-aware. Yet when I think about the franchise, I get these immediate instinctual impression of beauty and terror, like that flaming sun passing by the camera in the opening credits. I get that waft of icy fire every time I think about it. I long for more. It feels higher and mightier than most of the rest of fiction. But then I think about how it all panned out... how it limps along... weak not from an absence of conviction but from its very conviction to its own brutalizing. How it falls short of its grand promise. How S1 shoots for the stars, and seasons 2-5 land squarely in the heart of the shooter. Best setup for a series of all time; greatest letdown.