Grigory Lukin.com

I really wanted to like Game of Thrones… I’m reluctant to start reading a book series that hasn’t been finished yet, so I avoided the books and the TV show for the longest time, all the while valiantly dodging spoilers and skillfully extricating myself from GoT-related conversations.

But then I saw the free week-long HBO trial that’s available on Amazon. After binge-watching all of Westworl, I decided to finally give GoT a try. It is well known that TV shows shouldn’t be judged on the quality of their first episode. Or the first few episodes. Or, sometimes, even their entire first season. (Case in point: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek: The Next Generation.) That said, I can’t quite explain why I binge-watched 80% of the second season as well before finally cancelling my HBO trial once and for all. I plead boredom.

And so, in no particular order – and without any particular spoilers, first impressions by a complete GoT newbie who only watched the show and never touched the books:

• The whole thing could have been avoided if a certain 10-year-old with ADHD could have been kept in check by his parents.
• Or if a certain couple didn’t decide to copulate with a window wide open, despite being in a new location. (I assume the GoT world had binoculars, spyglasses or telescopes.)
• Incest. Sooo much incest. I don’t think there’s a baseline for incest in medieval-themed shows, but if there is, GoT is definitely ~400% or so above it.
• If the king’s kids don’t look anything like him and the queen’s brother is perpetually single and never dates any men, women or livestock (the sheep option was actually mentioned in one of the episodes), does it really take a dramatic plot development for their royal subjects to put two and two together?
• What the hell kind of orbit is that planet on? If you keep getting spontaneous miniature ice ages that occur at random intervals and last anywhere between 3-15 years, you probably don’t live in a garden-variety solar system. A solar system with multiple suns would kind of make sense, but it doesn’t look like they have more than one sun in the show. (I know, I know, that’s what I get for bringing sci-fi logic into the fantasy world. I’ll leave my phaser at the door next time.)
• Considering that all of the main characters are from the top 1% and most of them spend their overabundant free time being insufferably posh/incestuous/suicidal/arrogant, who exactly am I supposed to root for here?.. This is like the Dune, only with 5% more social mobility.
• Do the messenger ravens have miniature jet packs? Because I’m pretty sure they routinely cross the continent in less than a day. (Whereas, by comparison, it takes the king months to make the same journey on foot.)
• If a large segment of the population ended up living in the northern wilderness for 8,000 years, with extremely limited contact with the so-called civilization, why do they look the same and speak the same language with the same accent? (Read up on the Ainu people and how they differ from their Japanese neighbors – and that’s without a giant wall between them.)
• In addition to jet-pack ravens, we apparently have telepathic direwolves? Not sure if the concept got explored in the future seasons, but after the rather cliché scene in the first season, I was expecting to see more.
• If your entire empire can descend into a bloody civil war because of a single hyperactive 10-year-old kid, maybe it wasn’t such a good form of government in the first place, and maybe whoever gets the throne in the end will only perpetuate more of the same.

As always, I welcome an intelligent and/or snarky discussion in the comments.