Game of Thrones

In my choppy breezing through the full series, I find myself watching more of S7 than any prior. It's a shorter season, so you might say it's denser, but I think more importantly, it's denser in that the people I care about are finally converging. There was just a scene with the Brotherhood, Jora, Jon, Gendry, the Hound, Davos, and Tormund all suddenly in the same place, recognizing each other in a web of positive and negative threads. The Starks kids are all reuniting. S7 is dense with collisions and clusters. At long last! I've been yearning for it for several seasons. That's largely why I like S7 & 8 against popular opinion: the things I care about and want to happen finally start happening.

So much for defending S7, as I disproportionately tarry there. Now to defend those who attack S7 & 8. I still don't fully understand the meaning of their attacks, but if we dumb some of it down to "the writing declines after S6", I can understand some germ of that. I didn't notice anything of the sort my first time around -- I was probably too elated with the collisions and clusters -- but now I cringe at for example the scene of Jon and Dany in the cave under Dragonstone. Jon guides Dany's betorched arm as she marvels at the cave art, in a typical romcom awe-sharing moment. Not only that, he seizes the tender moment to impress a lesson, trying to persuade her of the reality of the White Walkers. This is sappy and improbable, as this cave art is perfectly intact down to the bright-blue-painted eyes, and perfectly designed and perfectly placed for Jon to teach his lesson. Then there's the dialogue of the reunion moments throughout the season. Over and over, disparate folk reunite in S7 with a faux-serious quip that's broken by a smile and a hug. When Jon meets his brothers after resurrecting, when Arya meets Sansa, etc etc, it's the same formulaic conversation. I can see that the writing may have declined.

Now back to defending S7... Martin left the writers hanging. What should they have done? Stopped the series until Winds of Winter never comes out? I'm not saying I blame Martin, as it's his book series to do with as he wishes, but I'm also not ready to blame the show runners for deigning to continue in his absence. They had a tremendous thing going, so much hype, so much momentum, it would have been hard to halt indefinitely. Nor can you expect to pick up where Martin left off without some shift in style. The first 6 or so seasons are defined by Martin's pen. When that drops off (or, more accurately, picks up) you can't assume you'll satisfyingly replace him. I'm sure lots of writers think they can sub for Martin, but like being king, the tiny fraction most qualified to do it are the ones who know they can't do it satisfactorily and who probably don't want to try.