I was NOT going to watch this show. The final four seasons of Game of Thrones ended up being such a failed gamble that I had decided I had had my fill of HBO adapting these stories, and I would just stick to the books. Whoops. I got sucked back in.
3. Season 2: War Tease
Season 2 of this overdelivering show promised too much and delivered too little. It feels a little too on the nose that the episode order was cut down from 10 episodes to 8, because it literally feels like there are two missing episodes at the end of the season. They asked a lot from the audience this season. They asked that after war was declared at the end of season 1 that the audience be okay with the main characters mostly just sitting in their homes talking and scheming and conspiring with no real sense of movement. They did some key jangling at critical moments to prevent too much restless, but it was clear this was a slow burn season. Right until the end when all the various armies, navies, and air forces are out on the move…only for the season to cut to black. Now, everyone has to wait two more years. On one hand, I think any show that is SO dependent on plot moving forward is clearly not all that special. But that is the point. This is a schlock! This is not Mad Men, Sopranos, Succession, or whatever the fuck. But here is the thing, those shows knew how to deliver SOMETHING by the season finales. Because that is what it means to be a television. We will have a clearer sense at the end of the show where the pacing could have been corrected, but man, this was bad programming on what was otherwise a fine season of shlocky television.
2. Season 3: Course Correction
Season 2 had the first real blunder for this slop-fest. They spent the whole season building to a big battle…and they ended the season without delivering. Season 3 immediately delivered said battle in the season premiere, and in general, the show seemed to make a concerted effort to deliver more newsworthy episodes for the most part. When dealing with slop, that is the way to go. The show is still missing standout performance, but they compensate for that by being knowingly dumb. It never aims as high as Game of Thrones, but it rarely misses given how low it aims. I think though this season illustrated why this story feels fairly stretched over 32ish episodes in four seasons; it probably either could have been a mini-series or 2-3 seasons. Ormund Hightower stands out as one of the most d-tier villains in the history of this world.
Much like the Lord of the Rings show, I had no intention of watching this show. I was just kind of over the whole thing and thought it was not worth getting sucked back in. But also like that LOTR show, I ended up watching it and actually enjoyed myself. It was just an entertaining genre show that had a clear idea of what it was trying to be and executed just well enough. It turns out that there is some life left after all in Westeros, and the first season of this new show gave hope to the idea that we should not abandon the world just because HBO hired a couple of goofs to make the first show.
The Reel World 