Friday, April 29, 2016

Game of Thrones, Season 6, Episode 1

My friend over at Free Refills was originally going to do a few writing pieces on Game of Thrones this week, but due to unforeseen circumstances he hasn't been able to do so. These are dire times indeed, but never fear Internet, I am here and ready to step up to the plate and quench your immeasurable thirst for Game of Thrones commentary. I feel like Batman and the Bat Signal has just been lit. Just be forewarned, this Batman has no training in martial arts or detective skills, has no cool gadgets, is completely unfamiliar with Gotham City, and generally has no idea what he's doing.

This past Sunday I watched my very first episode of Game of Thrones with the Season 6 premier. Yes, you read that right. The first episode of Game of Thrones that I watched was Season 6, Episode 1. Putting that shocking truth behind us, let's recap what happened, as best as I can remember it. There was guy lying dead in the snow, some conspiring went on, a few people died, a blind girl got whacked with a stick, some people are running away and had to cross a river, a bald guy and a short guy walked around town and talked for awhile, a white-haired girl has been captured by marauders, two guys on horseback are looking for her, some lady's daughter is dead, and a woman in red decided to strip naked and then looked in a mirror and somehow turned old and decrepit. I also vaguely remember a dragon somewhere in there. Maybe it was just the recap or preview of the preceding or next episode.

Right off the bat, let me say that Game of Thrones has done something that up until now didn't seem possible in my mind, namely that we have a show that has so much murder, intrigue, and nudity, that, by comparison, dragons aren't that big of a deal. Normally when a TV show or movie has a dragon in it, the first reaction is "holy @#$% it's a dragon!" but in Game of Thrones the reaction is more like "yeah, yeah, whatever, tell me more about that person who just killed the other person." Moving on to other things, I don't know why, but I found it strangely hilarious that a man named Jon Snow is dead in the snow at the start of the episode. The rest of the show had lots of short scenes with lots of characters, which was fantastic for my first experience with Game of Thrones because it loaded me down with a ton of people who I don't know anything about, but thankfully a few of them died so my list got a little shorter by the end. The episode felt a bit odd, in that a lot happened, and yet it feels like almost nothing happened. That said, I'll concede that this is probably just my ignorance of everything that is going on in the show. I'm sure that seemingly random murder of the wheelchair guy and his son has big implications for something, somewhere, but I have no idea why. I finished the episode sort of interested in everything that was going on, though some of the storyline fragments were better than others. The full-body reveal at the end struck me as unnecessary and I suspect that Game of Thrones suffers from the pointless nudity that modern entertainment often succumbs to.

Am I going to watch any other Game of Thrones episodes? Right now I'm not sure. Given that the show is in its sixth season, I would have a lot of episodes that I would have to watch to get caught up with it and I'm not sure I have the time or interest to do that. It might be better for me to just stick with being the incompetent substitute for whenever Free Refills is unable to give a proper discussion of the show.

1 comment:

  1. I laughed like hell when I read this piece. It's such a succinct summary of all the nothing that happened in S6E1. And it was A LOT of nothing.

    If you want to watch another episode, let me point you to one in which a lot happens: S4E9.

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