^ I have zero familiarity with or interest in the ASoIaF books. By television narrative standards and the framework they had already established, there were no indications in Seasons 5, 6, and 7 that GoT's creators would haphazardly invalidate everything they'd set up previously - and everything that they'd said on record about characters like Dany, Jon, and Tyrion - by the time the series reached its conclusion.
Agreed. It's quite an achievement for the series to have dominated as strongly as it did to then so rapidly evaporate from popular culture. Season 8 left such a bad taste in my mouth it's soured the re-watch value of the entire series - haven't watched an episode since the finale in 2019.
That's what's going to happen when a series' creators spend most of its run blatantly lying to viewers about some of the characters and their attendant storylines.
Both. Certain characters - Dany primarily - were portrated in such a way over the course of Seasons 1-7 that certain expectations about them and their storylines were established, and the creators publicly reinforced those expectations over and over again, only to ultimately do things with the character(s) in the final episodes of the series that were a complete betrayal of everything that they had both previously established narratively and repeatedly reinforced publicly outside of the series.
Same. I've tried and just can't get into it. But maybe it's down to the fact that I have a hard time tolerating many sitcoms in general. It's the same with How I Met Your Mother, or even dare I say it, The Good Place.
The Office: I got about 4 eps in and just could not stand Steve Carrels character. Star Wars Clone Wars: Too juvenile and Jar Jar friggen Binks. (edited, referenced Rebels) Discovery Season 3: The first two seasons were much better. In general any show that is about the police, lawyers or doctors. Those stories have been beaten to death over the last 70 years of television. Coming soon....CSI: The Moon.
Big Bang Theory always felt to me like it was stereotyping all my friends by someone who understands nerdy references but doesn’t understand nerds at all. I disagree that the events at the end of GoT were lied about. The hints were always there, we just fell under the same spell as her admirers and chose not to see them because the victims were always people we thought deserved it.
If you never got to season two at least I recommend skipping the rest of season one and giving it another chance from there. It took until a couple eps into season two for them to figure out why the characters were good, just like Parks and Rec.
Hundreds of thousands of people didn't 'miss the signs'; the creators actively encouraged viewers to see certain characters - like Dany - as heroes both in their writing and public comments, and did so consistently up through the beginning of Season 8, only to turn around and betray all of their own setup and words with the final few episodes of the series.
^ Dany is the biggest character who was betrayed by the show's writers, but Jon and Tyrion also suffer from having been set up to behave a certain way only for the series to end with them being written to behave completely differently to how audiences were conditioned to expect them to behave.
I think it's less about that and more about the fact that they barely had any foreshadowing to imply it, nevermind the fact that they had a shorter season to do it in, which only made the transition all that much abrupt and unrealistic. It's possible the intention was for it to be more gradual in nature. But I guess that's what happens when your show gets cut down in length, and I could see that they were trying to stuff as much as they could into those final 8 episodes. What we ended up getting was very sloppy indeed.
What does the show's press have to do with the show's story? How the show is promoted is immaterial to the direction the show should take, only what we saw on screen matters. People saw what they wanted to see in her, ignoring she was consistently cruel and sadistic to anyone who didn't worship her because they baselessly assumed she would only direct that cruelty at slave owners and other people who deserved it. I agree it seemed rushed, and that was a mistake, but it wasn't a betrayal of the character, it was just failed pacing.
I wanted to like LEXX. On paper it sounded like my kinda show: weird, quirky, dark, irreverent. But it only worked fitfully for me.
I did enjoy GoT, but I admit I don't have any interest in reading the books. I've had the first one on my TBR pile for two years. I guess I'm in the minority in this thread, but I found Dany's fate immensely satisfying. She fully deserved what she got. The trouble with GoT for me was that every character was awful at least some of the time, and just as I was starting to root for a character, they'd do something horrid that made me go 'nah', they're no better than anyone else. A show I'd like to like is Lost, but I lost interest in it in the early 3rd season.
The issue with GoT's creators turning Dany into a madwoman and killing her isn't the timing of when they did it; the issue is that they did so in the first place. This argument is a load of bunk because of the huge numbers of Game of Thrones viewers that identified with Dany based first and foremost on how the writers presented her up through The Bells. All of said viewers weren't "seeing what they wanted to see"; they were embracing Dany because of what the series was showing them about her, and the creators knew it, as evidenced by the fact that they reinforced viewers' feelings about Dany outside of the show. That's why it's a betrayal of the character and audience for them to have used the final episodes of the series to turn her into a deranged madwoman who had to be killed. They actively encouraged viewers to view and embrace her as a heroic character even though they knew full well how how her story was really going to end, and so they absolutely deserve all of the vitriol they had leveled against them as a result.
From what I know, I would never have recommended Game of Thrones to anyone on the autism spectrum. In my country, it's 18 rated, but there are less restricted items I have found I myself have to avoid. You're not alone. Just a quick look at Wikipedia, the Dany villain arc (which wasn't even from a published book) shocked and disappointed many fans, even those who were never expecting a happy ending. Personally, I have found that fictional characters can be like the friends I just can't make in the real world. This means that, despite never seeing Game of Thrones, I have experienced what you have. For me, the worst instance was with Kes the Ocampa (disclaimer, this happened to me in 2012). She quickly became one of my favorite characters, and ultimately one of my biggest ever crushes. I thought her early exit was a waste – but then they turned her into a villain of the week! Yes, I wish I could enjoy Voyager like I used to when it was my favorite part of the franchise. Instead, for me the entire franchise is tainted by Fury, and I now find the part I enjoy most is TOS.