Our Watch Is Ended: Final Thoughts on Game of Thrones

I remember it very clearly. The year? 2011. The place? Los Angeles. Around my apartment complex the usual bus-stop ads were going up, as they always did, during "pilot season" and its aftermath, "rollout season." The one-sheets for this new HBO show, GAME OF THRONES, seemed unusually clever. Each depicted a different character in costume, with what seemed to be that character's tagline -- in the case of one, later identified as King Robert Baratheon, it was "Killing things clears my head."

That stuck with me. I didn't start watching the show, and I didn't start reading the books upon which the show was based, but that stuck with me. This guy? This fat bearded dude with the crown, sitting on that uncomfortable-looking throne? Killing things clears his head.

Good to know.

Full disclosure: I'm no expert on fantasy. On the other hand, I'm not completely ignorant, either. I've read every one of Frank Herbert's DUNE series, and the Harry Potter books, and several by Ursula K. LeGuinn. I've perused C.S. Lewis, Piers Anthony and Tolkien, too. But an expert? Gods no. In fact, when I began reading the eponymous first GoT book, on June 23, 2015, it had been sitting unopened and unwanted on my shelf for six full months. It was a present from my brother the previous Christmas, and only when I ran out of all other reading material and couldn't conscience buying anything new when I had a big, fat, unread novel at hand, did I turn its first pages. And in fact, it took me some time to warm to George R. R. Martin's prose style and the immensity -- it's the right word -- of the universe he created. Truthfully, I wasn't certain I'd even finish the book. But I did, and when I did, I realized my first order of business that day was to go out and buy the next volume, A CLASH OF KINGS. Without realizing it, without even knowing it was happening, I had become a GoT fan.

In the end, I read all five books yet published in the series -- all 4,228 pages of 'em. But during this time, which took five months, I never watched so much as a frame of the HBO series which was running at the same time. I didn't want the series to ruin the books for me, and I didn't want my mental image of the characters changed by what I saw on screen. In November of '16, however, having no excuse not to do it, I queued up Amazon Prime and got myself a-watchin'.

As with the first book, I wasn't sucked in right away. In fact, I don't believe I even finished the first season until July of 2017. But just like the books, once the series got hold of me, it wouldn't let go -- until, this past Sunday, it finally had to.

I won't say I enjoyed every bit of it. There were times the brutality seemed gratuitous even for the savage world in which the story takes place. There were moments of frustration when plot-lines withered away unresolved, lost in the immensity of the story. There were characters killed too soon and others who lingered far too long. There were departures from the book which I disagreed with. But by and large I thought it was a spectacular achievement. It gripped. In teased. It misdirected. It infurated and terrified and enthralled. It was epic fantasy indeed.

Every now and then a TV show comes along which becomes the property of the nation as a whole -- not just an audience, not just hardcore fans, but an entire country. M*A*S*H was like that; DALLAS was definitely like that during its heyday, and probably BREAKING BAD, FRIENDS, SIENFELD, CHEERS, THE OFFICE, FRASIER and a few others (BTW, isn't it odd the way sit-coms, a genre that produces the largest amount of garbage on television, should also produce so many of the most beloved shows in TV history?). Well, GAME OF THRONES most definitely qualifies as both water-cooler hearthstone entertainment. People discussed it at work, they discussed it at home, and they discussed it - incessantly, meticulously, capriciously, hopefully, imaginatively, exhaustively and often obnoxiously -- online.
And now that it has concluded, these discussions -- I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt by calling most of them that -- continue apace.

Contrary to what you might think, I have no desire to rake the still-warm ashes of the GoT phenomenon and discuss every particular, every character, theme, sub-plot, or plot twist. Nor do I want to repeat the comments I made on Facebook about my exasperation with the eighth season as a whole. What I want to do here is discuss the broadest strokes, by which I mean analyze what the show was really about. Because unless that is clear, understanding its phenomenon, its rampant and obsessive popularity, is impossible; so too is grasping the nature of the controversy surrounding its final season.

Wikipedia, that font of all knowledge, describes GAME OF THRONES as "epic fantasy." This is true enough in and of itself, but the fact is, calling GoT "epic fantasy" is like calling THE GODFATHER a Mafia movie. It's true, but it hardly tells the whole story. THE GODFATHER is actually a simple tragedy: the fact that the characters criminals living in 1940s America is unimportant. They could as well be European royalty, or South American politicians, or Asian billionaires, or anything you care to name. The story of the Corleone family is ultimately about the corruptive, destructive nature of power. And indeed, with most great works, it's possible to sum up the essence of their message just as simply. Examples:

WALL STREET - seduction.
APOCALYPSE NOW - insanity.
JURASSIC PARK - hubris.
SCHINDLER'S LIST - reclamation.
PLATOON - the loss off innocence.
JAWS - facing your fear.
SERPICO - the price of honor.
STAR WARS, HARRY POTTER, LORD OF THE RINGS - doing the right thing.
CASABLANCA - the price of love.
SUNSET BOULEVARD - vanity.
E.T., THE GOONIES, THE KARATE KID - friendship.
ROCKY - heart.

Now, you may not agree with these characterizations, but at the same time, you could probably substitute your own in just as few words; and in any case I'm not suggesting that these simple descriptions are all these movies are about. Just the crux, the bare essence, the logline, the thing which ultimately ensares people and won't let go. So where does that leave GAME OF THRONES in this regard? What gives it its appeal and resonance? What of its essence drew people to it in such numbers, and with such intensity?

Some contend that GoT was ultimately about feminism, or at least female empowerment, because the show, once some of the initial smoke cleared, largely seemed a contention between Daenerys I Targaryen and Cersei Lannister for the Iron Throne of Westeros. In addition, and just to name a few, Arya Stark, Yara Greyjoy, and Brienne of Tarth are not merely strong characters, but can fight on par with the best male warriors in the series.

Others contend that GoT was simply about power -- why people want it, how they get it, how they keep it, and in some cases, why they avoid, serve, or renounce it. Different approaches to the quest for, flight from, enjoyment of, or service to, power were embodied in Littlefinger, Viserys and Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei, Stannis Baratheon, Lord Varys, and Jon Snow -- to name a few.

Some maintain that GoT, like every good soap opera or prime-time drama of yesteryear, was simply a delightful exercise in all the things that once made soap operas and prime-time dramas must-see TV: intrigue, sex, lust, betrayal, incest, violence and deceit. And there certainly was enough of all that for anyone on GoT, up to and including Caligula.

Some contend that GoT is simply an analogy for the times in which we live, and that if you look hard enough at our political landscape, you can see direct analogs to such characters as Stannis or Tywin or Littlefinger. (I do believe I heard Hilary Clinton compared to Cersei about 200 times during the 2016 election. I also saw Trump equated to Joffrey quite often.)

All of this contains the truth. GoT is a master-study of power; it does feature a very large number of powerful female characters, and it certainly is a soap opera, what with all the escapes, long-lost relations, double-crosses, power-mongering, seduction, temporary deaths, abandoned plotlines, and brother-sister love. It too can be seen, if you care to see it that way, as a cartoon of contemporary politics (or just politics generally). But I'm convinced that everyone who categorized GoT as one of these things first and foremost found themselves extra-dismayed by the way in which the series actually ended. This is because, reduced to a single word, GAME OF THRONES was actually about family. Specifically it was about the Stark family, and even more specifically it was about Eddard Stark, who dies nine episodes in, and his wife Cat, who is killed in the third season.

In the broad sense, family dominates every aspect of the series from episode one. We meet the Starks, and learn their internal dynamics, their tensions, their traditions and strong and weak points. We meet the Lannisters and Baratheons and learn the same about them. We meet the Targaryens, ditto. Ditto, too, the Greyjoys, the Martells, the Tyrells, the Boltons and Tullys and Tarlys, the Night's Watch (which is a brotherhood), etc. and so on. And every time a new family is introduced, we get a sense of who they are, how they deal with each other, what they want, and what they fear. Far more time on GoT is devoted to family dynamics than to sex, torture, fighting, fleeing, questing, or anything else. And it makes perfect sense that this is the case. In my estimation, all the best TV shows are always in some sense about family, whether the characters are actually related or not. It is not the blood-relation which matters, but the dynamic, because everyone recognizes it, everyone relates to it, everyone gets it. And they get it all the more because TV and movie characters tend toward archetype, and GoT in particular is full of them. Let's face it: everyone's real-life family tree contains, in less dramatic and more watered-down versions, a Ned, a Cersei, a Littlefinger, a Sansa, an Arya, a Davos, a Jamie, a Joffrey, a Tywin, a Tyrion, a Stannis. These characters are simply mirrors for people already in our lives, or sometimes images of people we wish were in them -- the protective older brother, the kindly uncle, the loving sister, the wise old grandparent.

Among the families, the Starks are the first introduced to us, and it is they who produce the largest number of important characters on the show -- of the nine of them we initially meet (I'm counting Theon as a Stark, which, ultimately he chose to be), only Rickon is basically ballast. Everyone else is crucial, except Benjen, who is merely important. The Lannisters just about match this figure, but it's obvious from the moment they appear onscreen that this ruthless, incestuous, dark-scheming lot has only one really sympathetic member -- Tyrion, who is also the family shame, black-sheep and reprobate. Put another way, we know the Lannisters are the bad guys the moment we see them, and in knowing this, we also know the show is not truly about them. They are in the last extremity just an opposing force, the anti-Starks. All, or very nearly all, the moral force in GAME OF THRONES comes from the Stark family and their friends and allies.

But what was that bosh about the show being about Ned Stark, who dies in the ninth episode of the first season, and who never reappears, not even as a flashback, and Cat Stark, who only lasts two seasons longer? It isn't bosh, actually. You see, the old saw about a man's worth being shown through is children is basically the entire through-line for GAME OF THRONES. We see what sort of children the Lannisters and Baratheons and Targaryens and Boltons and Freys bred. In comparison, the Starks, even their presumed bastard Jon and their hostage stepchild Theon, shine in comparison. There is magic about this, no "chosen one" sword-from-the-stone bullshit. The Stark kids are good because Ned was a strong, brave, moral, ethical, and disciplined man, and because Cat was loyal, loving and kind. The parents die rather swiftly, but they live on through their children and the actions those children take.

Many people were dismayed and angry by Dany's fate in the series finale. I can only say that if your dismay comes from the fact that she did not live to take the Iron Throne, you may have misread her place in the scheme of the story. Dany, like Cersei, was a star of the show but never the star of the show. She was there to present a second external dynamic, the first being the Lannisters. It takes two forces to make a millstone, and the Starks were to be ground between these two very different slabs for eight years. The identical ambitions of Cersei and Dany were in the last analysis just different kinds of exterior pressures on the Starks, and since the show was ultimately about the Starks, the millstones had to be broken sooner or later.

The internal logic of this holds tight: if the Starks represent the power of a good family uprbinging, the Lannisters and to some extent the Targaryens represent the reverse. All the Lannisters are dysfunctional, and the Targaryen sibilings so damaged by their penniless exile that one of them is already insane when the story opens, while the other feels such a sense of entitlement to power that all her other qualities slowly drown. Neither family never really had a chance. As Sherlock Holmes once remarked, "How can you build a foundation on such quicksand?"

This is not to say I approved of the course of GoT's eighth season. Not at all. I thought the writing, plotting and particularly the characterization were lacking from the beginning. It was almost as if an entirely new set of writers, only superficially versed with the material, had been handed over the reins and told to go forward at a gallop. Everything felt rushed and forced, nothing was developed properly, Dany, Varys and Cersei behaved inconsistently, and the plot holes were endless. The absence of George Martin's hand on the tiller was palpable. Subtlety had been lost, and resolution of storylines was replaced by mere deaths. But the finale, riddled with WTF head-scratchers as it is, stays true to the basic internal logic I mentioned above, in that it remains about family -- specifically the Starks. It is their story. In that sense it left me satisfied.

GAME OF THRONES wasn't just a hit TV series. It truly was a phenomenon that offered, if not something for everyone, then certainly a lot of things to many people. It gave us heroes we could admire and villains we could despise, and set them in a spacious, well-appointed universe that was in some senses totally alien and in others completely familiar. It offered us sex, nudity, torture, violence, love, humor, pathos, philosophy and endless spools of intrigue. It was a soap opera in armor, a female-empowered show with plenty of T & A, a polemic about the price of power and thoughtful, intelligent fantasy that used the word "cunt" about 40 times a script. It was eight years of waiting for winter to come, and then, from fans, endless bitching about the temperature.

But mostly it was about family. And nobody can delight us...or disappoint us...quite like family.