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The last season of Game of Thrones feels so wrong because its storytelling style changed from sociological to psychological
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- Title
- The Real Reason Fans Hate the Last Season of Game of Thrones
- Authors
- Zeynep Tufekci
- Word count
- 3114 words
I'm sure a lot of people are pretty sick of articles about what went wrong with Game of Thrones, but I thought this was an especially good one written by Zeynep Tufekci, who's one of my favorite writers/speakers about technology's effects on society.
Reading criticisms of Game of Thrones on Tildes became my favorite schadenfreude.
Tildes has some of the most insightful, well thought out and downright brutal criticisms I have seen.
It's definitely one of the better ones and good food for thought. That said, blaming the failure on the changing gears feels more like a 20% factor, when the 80% factor was just plain shit writing. If the writing had been up to par, the change in narrative style would have had little effect. Instead we'd be praising it as a show that had both and did both well.
There's a supercut of the finale out there with all dialog removed. It's over fifty minutes long. Think about that - take out all the dialog and character interactions around that dialog and you're still left with more than fifty minutes of characters just wandering around and staring at things. That is the reason the finale cratered so hard... there was nothing of any substance in it to begin with.
Was going to pass this one over until you mentioned the author!
Somewhat tied to this, I think GoT was good at making you see the story from multiple perspectives where the bad guy's pov was understood, even sympathetic. Their actions made sense in the political world setup and you get it, might not like it, but you get why they have to do it, whatever heinous thing they end up doing. The exception being the white walkers, who like a force of nature, they just are they way they are.
They totally dropped all pretence of this when they intercut Danny burning the city with John saving a woman form getting raped -- like being hit with a club.
I'd have liked a scene where we go into why Danny thought she needed to burn the city, she really was screwed with John as a pretender and would have needed to do something. Maybe even burn a city to cement her rule, they could have done it, made us feel like it was something she had to do, forced by the system. A few scenes discussing the possibility, weighing the options, put us on her side, even just a little bit. Instead we get Chekov's bloody church bells, mentioned a million times so we really know for sure, 100%, she is the bad guy now.
It felt cheap to not properly show this larger power dynamic, Varus or Tyrian were perfect characters to deliver this. Instead they immediately jump ship, and Danny becomes a cartoon bad guy that's just gone insane, because her friend got killed? bah.
Side question, what are some other stories told from this sociological perspective, be it books, movies or tv shows? EDIT: Finished reading the article, and it mentions the Wire, which I for sure agree with, I can think of BSG which also kind of does this but the story is on a smaller scale then GoT.
"I think GoT was good at making you see the story from multiple perspectives where the bad guy's pov was understood, even sympathetic. Their actions made sense in the political world setup and you get it, might not like it, but you get why they have to do it, whatever heinous thing they end up doing"
I think you hit the nail on the head here. Case in point, Tywin Lannister
He is, objectively, a horrible human being. He sanctioned the Red Wedding, sentenced Tyrion to die etc....And yet, his utter devotion to his House, to his family(minus Tyrion), makes his methodology, while reprehensible, understandable. The man would stop at nothing to ensure the survival and prosperity of House Lannister. And some of his more quiet moments, like with Arya, makes you think that, in a different setting, Tywin Lannister might not be that bad of a person.
Compared to someone like Ramsey Bolton and Tywin isn't so bad at all.
That's what the show did so well. Made even the bad guys understandable, if not sympathetic. Despite how evil Cersei could be, you never doubted how much she loved her children. How far she was willing to go to protect them. And she was madness done right, comparatively. Whereas Darth Dany was almost a 180, Darth Cersei was more gradual, each of her childrens deaths spurring her on farther into the monster she became.
The only "bad guy" who wasn't sympathetic in the least was Ramsey Bolton but he was just done so well. He was Westeros version of the Joker, chaos incarnate, burning down the metaphorical forests of the North just to watch them burn. But the characterization was consistent. You knew exactly what sort of person Ramsey Bolton was.
Yeah, the article goes into that:
It also recommends The Wire as an excellent sociological show, which I'd definitely agree with.
I finished reading the article after posting, well worth the read, feel like a fool for posting too quickly. And the Wire is fantastic, unfortunately I can only see it so many times.
Ah, hmm, if you've already seen The Wire, I'm not really sure what else to recommend. There really aren't many shows on that level. I just finished watching the second season of Fargo, and I think overall it did a good job of showing the many different characters' perspectives and felt a little more towards that style than most shows.
And I'm not sure if you've already seen this thread, but there are some pretty good general recommendations in it for higher-quality shows (not necessarily from a sociological perspective though): Long form visual storytelling - the best of TV
Battlestar Galactica would be a pretty outstanding one that fits the criteria I'd say (/cc @nsz).
The first season of The Handmaid's Tale also does this quite well, I think. Second season suffers from the same change/problem that Tufekci points out. And the first season has a perfect (if open) ending. You can safely ignore the second (and coming third) season and get a full well-rounded experience.
The Handmaid's Tale has the same problem as GOT. They ran out of book by the end of the first season. The book's pretty open-ended, but in a different way from the show. I don't want to spoil it on anyone, it's a good one.
I think you're right. Following Tufekci's analysis, 'running out of book' is the cause of the switch in narrative style/structure. Hollywood/TV are used to focusing on individual psychology and character. Literature is more often concerned with (and explores more in-depth) the more complex interaction between individuals and larger structures/developments and how the latter instead of the former is often the driver.
I think I'll give Fargo a shot, I've also had it previously recommended.
I saw the thread but it was early on with only a few comments, much more to readthrough now, woo!
It changed from a political drama to a soap opera.
Hey don’t give them any ideas. I wouldn’t doubt a daytime GoT soap happening at this point in time.