Thoughts About Game Of Thrones

We have been binge watching a lot of DVDs and streaming scams since March 2020 descended upon us.

We finally got around to Game of Thrones a few weeks back.

Tonight we watched the last episode: Season 8, Episode Last.

I was really satisfied with how it turned out.

But I have never read the books. 

I have heard that the last season or two of the HBO series outran  the book - Martin hadn't written an end yet.

I guess that pissed off a lot of Martin fans.

I guess that being pissed of by the Game of Thrones' divergence from Martin's books is sort of like donnie-lost-the-election denial: it's great stuff for Facebook hate groups.

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Seasons one through five, as I understand it, were based entirely on George R. Martin's books.

He even wrote some of the screenplays.

Season Six and Seven, as I understand it, didn't have any books as reference; those books haven't been written yet; maybe now they never will be; and the book fans were up in arms and the episodes were thought to be substandard - or some such.

I thought that the Martin-based first five seasons episodes were fun, violent, pornographic - both sexually and and corporally - and just on the keep-watching side of saying "this is bullshit" and moving on to looking for You-Tubes of Seth Meyers..

Season six, and into season seven, things got vapid and stupid, just as the Martin fans seemed to be saying; but by then we were too curious about what was going to happen to quit watching;

Somewhere into season seven the writing - non-Martin original stuff - became sublime.

And, from my point of view, so it remained through and including the last episode that we watched this evening.

Something sophisticated and wonderful had outrun the supply lines: Martin had been improved on, or maybe, bested, by good, creative, informed writing - at least from my point of view.

Seeing that happen has been really fun.