Thread by @asymmetricinfo

The GoT finale was simultaneously a tribute to George R. R. Martin’s gift for character and narrative arc, and the show runners’ complete lack thereof. All the ingredients were there for a brilliant finale, and they just lay there, inert.

And hey, the people who delivered that garbage will now be taking on Star Wars!

Okay, now I gotta explain that tweet because a lot of people are disagreeing with me, only I’m not sure they disagree with me.

People saying: I liked it, it wrapped up all the loose ends in a surprising and satisfying way”—I agree the plotting was good. The plotting is George R R Martin’s. But as an episode of television, it was appalling.

The dialogue was a half step above a Hallmark movie. The pacing was somehow both glacial and rushed—largely because they just randomly cut any interim scenes and skipped from plot point to plot point. The result was all the dramatic tension of over cooked spaghetti.

There was one good visual—the CGI dragon, of course. The characters were wooden.

And why, my children, was this SO bad? Because show runners Benioff & Weiss wanted to get the thing over with so they could move on. So they shotgunned out all the plot points as fast as possible

Jon’s decision should have been an entire episode, at least. It got two scenes. Same problem with every other major storyline. All the interstitial material that might have built some actual drama or character development was cut. Plot holes gaped like a dragon’s maw.

The result was like watching a visual Cliff’s Notes of a good show from an alternative universe where the show runners cared about actually finishing what they’d started, instead of getting onto their other projects ASAP

So if you liked the resolution of the plot—yeah, me to. But after eight years, I also wanted a finale that was emotionally and artistically satisfying. This was not that finale.

And this is ENTIRELY the fault of the show runners. HBO offered them as much time as they wanted. They *decided* to race through the ending in thirteen episodes rather than taking enough time to do it right. Because now they’re famous, and I guess, bored.

I’m sure it’s exhausting and I don’t blame them for wanting off—but in that case, it would have been better to hand it off to someone who, you know, cared, rather than shafting the fans who made you superstars

But maybe I’m being too harsh and they really didn’t realize they were short-shrifting the story; maybe this really was the best they could do. In which case, it’s an even greater tribute to Martins storytelling, that it could survive such poor writers overseeing the adaptation