2.7.15

"Game of Thrones" : Season 5



Previously I have rhapsodised around here about my current all-time favourite TV show and what a compulsive viewing that was. Not only that, but I got a lots of my colleagues hooked on it and we spent quite a few sleepless nights watching season after season, discussing it in the morning with red shot eyes. I still think its probably the best TV serial I have seen so far in my life, but let's be honest, season 5 dragged in the beginning and I had strange feeling that it became routine. Initially I was little confused because I really loved it until now - could it be that I overdosed on it, I asked myself? Characters were all here, scenery was the same but somehow I felt that spark was missing. "Just you wait" my colleagues told me "something really big is going to happen" but it took quite a few episodes until I really got into it, in fact it wasn't until episode 8 (I think) and a final arrival of "white walkers" that I felt the same old excitement. It was truly epic and I don't ever recall seeing this kind of big budget apocalyptic clash on TV screens (usually this was something reserved for blockbuster movies).

Now I have seen the last episode - "Mother's mercy" - which was the darkest, bleakest, the most brutal episode until now. 
It really was just death, blood and punishment left and right. And not only bad guys who you would expect to get punishment but some of the main characters. Which somehow make me think about George R.R.Martin being more than just little bit sadistic, I mean, guy created all these characters and now he drags them (literary) trough the mud, blood and shit. I couldn't help but recognising the parallel between cruel people in gladiator arena who are thrilled with fighters brutally killing each other for their entertainment and TV viewers who are watching this. And how about "walk of shame" (gloriously filmed in Dubrovnik) where previously proud and arrogant queen Cersei is forced to walk naked trough the crowd that throws insults and shit at her - actress Lena Headey (who apparently had body double) was magnificent and it was stroke of genius to show everything from her perspective, resulting in unexpected sympathy we feel for the character previously universally hated and feared. She starts her walk determined and brave but eventually breaks down and cries and my God, we feel sorry for her. Her sweet, gentle daughter dies poisoned, Sansa and Reek narrowly escape sure death and more torture, Stanis Baratheon is defeated and probably killed, his little daughter pointlessly sacrificed and her mother hanged herself, worse of all, final episode has one of the main and most beloved characters probably killed (a scene that caused unprecedented uproar all over the world and has upset half a planet). So it was really a lot of torture and suffering which made me wonder why on earth are we watching this because it surely isn't uplifting or happy experience, in fact you just feel disgusted and upset afterwards. 

Now we came to very interesting point where there are no more books so people who read them can't feel so darn special and smirking at the rest of us who don't know next chapter. Now nobody knows next chapter. How will TV show continue without actual next two novels being written at all is anybody's guess. Would producers simply make up their own story or would George R.R.Martin give them some kind of rough script? We just have to wait until 2016 and see than how things turn out. I think that there is no sense in killing off so many of the main characters because they kept the story going + there are quite a few people who somehow got lost along the way (whatever happened to little Bran, Gendry or Benjen Stark?) so I guess we might see them unexpectedly again. 


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