"The Game of Thrones" ends - finally

Never thought I would say this, but I'm glad "The Game of Thrones" is over. 

Season after season, it was the best TV show I have ever seen - usually after a while I get bored with soap bubbles, but not this one, it was actually getting better with time. It was also clear where the producers had to continue without original novels that inspired the series, instead of fantastic dialogues and story, script suddenly shifted focus on special effects and big battles but that was also fine because we were all so starry eyed and caught up into it that we actually didn't mind - "Hardhome" and "Battle of the Bastards" were probably amongst the best episodes not just of this series but of all TV moments ever. However, now at the end the expectations were impossibly high and every single person had his own theory how everything will end so it just became too big for its own good. My impression is that David Benioff and D. B. Weiss probably did the best they could, but they never expected this will became a world-wide phenomenon and finally it grew so enormously popular and significant that it was simply impossible to finish it all with results that would make everybody happy. For one thing, the main story itself had way too much side stories that simply had to be left unanswered - the original novels were bursting with zillion sporadic characters and I remember having a hard time reading them and trying to remember who is who - impossible to squeeze it all into a TV show but still, when the last season finally came I had a distinctive feeling there was a serious problem with the pacing: some series had absolutely nothing going on, while the others rushed too fast and audience was not prepared for such quick change in characters behaviour. You can't have a important character being heroic and brave season after season and suddenly turning into a monster without any explanations how and why, etc. And I was deeply disappointed with the way producers just messed up something that for me was of huge importance, namely threat from White Walkers which for me was by far the most dangerous thing looming over the whole Seven Kingdoms - without George R. R. Martin on its helm, the show simply dismissed this danger that has been building season after season (winter is coming!) in one episode which was enormously hyped and than ended up being too dark to see (nobody can convince me it was done intentionally with a good reason, because the battle in the night is confusing and bla bla, it was just bad idea). Suddenly White Walkers were gone just like that and we were left with stupid question of who is going to sit on the Iron throne, which for me was not such a big deal actually - what is the point of the throne if zombies might destroy the whole kingdom? - now the series shifted the direction and I found myself watching it without interest, really. When the last episode finally came, it felt strangely anticlimactic, like its finished just because of the sake of finishing it. It was visually stunning but left too many questions unanswered, I guess I just have to wait for the darn novels and the writer is taking his sweet time to finish them, because he is busy with hundreds of other projects which is maddening because the whole world is waiting for him to just finish what he started.

On a different note, I must proudly note that after 6 months of not being able to read anything (because of huge changes in my life, relocation to new country, finding a new address, new job and basically starting everything from the beginning again) last night I started reading again. I thought that perhaps I will eventually focus on classics but curiosity got the best of me and I ended just checking out latest biography of late Aretha Franklin - David Ritz wrote her memoirs together with Queen of Soul some years ago but the finished product was maddeningly lightweight because Franklin basically blocked anything she wouldn't talk about. Famously imperious, Franklin permitted to discuss her life only on her own terms, which means "From these roots" ended up being a slim volume that basically said nothing about her, except few inconsequential opinions about food and fashion. Now, Ritz decided to correct this and wrote his own version of the story, which is by far more interesting and I am actually enjoying it very much.