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It's Coming...


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Well, the time has finally arrived!  For what?   The beginning of the Final Four March Madness count down?  Nope. The canonization of 2 Catholic popes?  Nope.  The official announcement that Obamacare has reached its goal?  Nope.  The location of the missing Malaysian jetliner's  black box?  Nope. What?

 

Tonight's premier epsode of the new season of - Game of Thrones!  Me, along with millions of other fans have been patiently awaiting the return of this fantasy saga.  Why, you wonder, would an octogenarian like me be anxiously anticipating the return of a series reminiscent of a video game?  I dunno. Why am I not more excited about the movie based on the old biblical epic Noah?  Why am I not looking forward to the next installment of Sweetie Pie, Oprah's reality series about a feisty senior citizen?  Why am I not totally preoccupied with "Scandal", the nail-biting nighttime soap opera about a trouble shooter with jungle fever who is the power behind the POTUS? Well, my other favorite series "Boardwalk" which takes place during Prohibition takes up that slack. Mostly because I am a sucker for period dramas.  Other eras are so much more interesting to me than those taking place in the present.  Oviously I am into escapism.   

 

Whatever.  All I do know about my Game of Thrones jones is that I am enthralled with this tale of dragons and swords and wars and kings and queens and the supernatural - captivated by a complicated plot fraught with treachery and violence and confusion and mystery. I guess it's the scope and the grandeur of the settings, and the fascination with the characters with unpronounceable names, all vying for the power that will elevate them to a throne that will make them the supreme ruler. They all speak so eloquently and dress so elegantly.   

 

The fact that all of this takes place in a different time and a different world adds to the intrigue. I'm bored with the dull, aimless world I'm stuck in.  Everything is so senseless and unjust, and everyone in the public eye so devious and shallow.  Similar, yes,  to Game of Thrones except that, unlike planet Earth, this parallel universe benefits from better direction and special effects. The production is very well coordinated and the actors good at their jobs. And there is no FaceBook and Twitter and tablets for texting.  

 

 I'm a stranger in a strange land.  Always have been. But television, so often maligned by others, is a gateway for me. Tonight, I lose myself in another dimension, a place where winters last 10 years. I can identify with that,..  

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You are not alone. Yep, all of my responses have been music influenced. We are officially shutting down the house to watch tonight's season opener. it's perfect timing to since the Walking Dead finished last week.

 

You have a fellow fan riding with you Cynique!  Lannisters always pay their debts.

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Yeah I liked Game of Thrones.  I like many of the HBO programs.  The ones I have watched, all or most of the episodes, are Six Feet Under, The Wire, The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Games of Thrones, and True Blood.   Over that last decade or some these have been the only series that I made an effort to watch--at least since they stopped making new episodes of Star Trek.

 

I think the writing and character development on the series is excellent.  But the challenge of HBO is consistency.  True Blood and The Sopranos for example simply fell apart in the later seasons.  I watched the last two seasons of The Sopranos and felt like I completely wasted my time.  The same goes for the past season of True Blood--what a waste.  I will probably not watch it again next season.

 

The Wire was good until the last season indeed it improved each season I watched the first 2 seasons over the course of a week and I was hooked (I interviewed Snoop once), I was sorry to see it go off the air.  Six Feet Under was excellent until the end, culminating in the best season finale of anything I've ever seen-save the final season of Mash, which I seem to remember being very good.

 

HBO seems to really focus on a lot on sex particularly on homosexual sex.  Both of these are really a turn off for me.  I'm sure I sound like a prude, by today's standards, but some things really need to be left to the imagination.  I'm just not interested in seeing to people go at it; that is what pornography is for.   HBO's programs introduces too many scenes which are simply pornographic.

 

HBO's shows are also over the top in the violence department.  This past year I started to consider whether I'm being adversely effected by watching so much gratuitous violence on HBO.  I mean it can't be good for you; can it?  Somehow, I can't help believe that my spirit is being adversely impacted.  I think I need to either avoid all the graphic violence HBO loves to display or at least balance it out with more positive or beautiful images.

 

I find myself spending a great deal of time in nature.  It helps.

 

Now Game of Thrones is full of violence and sex.  But I have watched every episode.  Typically watching them in clips of 2 or 3 at a clip.  Perhaps I need to restrict my viewing to just one episode a week ;-)

 

I did not watch the season opener yet.  But I will.

 

I get older I find myself questioning not only what I put into my body, but also what I put into my mind.  This does not bode well for future HBO programs.  I'll wean myself off rather than going cold turkey.

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Yes, there is a lot of gratuitous sex and violence in Game of Thrones, as you will see when you view in the first episode. I guess the producers want art to imitate life.  "True Detectives", a 6-episode series on HBO starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey was another well cast and well produced show that just completed its run. Its settings were very compelling and eerie, and altho its plot was murky, the characters were riveting. 

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See that is just it Cynique, I don't think the sex and violence in the HBO shows actually mimic life--at least not the life the vast majority of us live the vast majority of the time.  I believe the probability is very high that I will never have to kill anyone in my entire life.  The probability is even lower that I will not engage in sex with a man.  Even the majority of police officers never fire their weapons in the line of duty in their entire careers.  Despite the hype we are just not that violent.

 

I will check out the Harrelson and McConaughey series--one episode at a time ;-)

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Awwww lighten up Troy. It's just television ( I actually wrote an article in complete opposition to what I just wrote, lol.) Seriously, I watch Game of Thrones, Walking Dead, Scandal (yep that again) and a lot of different shows. I watch them as a writer and as a fan. I enjoy the story lines. Like any show or book that stays on for too long, you eventually have a storyline that loses its power. Except in the case of Breaking Bad. That show was good from beginning to end.

 

The gratuitous sex, drugs and mayhem doesn't bother me so much since I've always been a big fan of gore and horror (classic gore and horror, not this crap like Hostile and Saw- Saw 1 was actually okay but it was downhill from there). I think if you allow yourself to watch as a fan and not a critic you can kind of disengage and let it go. The shows do stick with you though. The same tension that the characters feel is the same tension that I often feel when watching, which in some ways I agree it can't be a good thing.

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Ok, Ok I'll lighten up :-)

 

Sure a hallmark of good writing is that the characters stick with you--because you care about them.  HBO as been pretty good at that you even care about the bad characters.  Like Tony Soprano, started out to be a complex character who grew on you--became liable even despite his heinous behavior.

 

Funny as I was commenting on HBO propensity for violence http://aalbc.com/tc/index.php?/topic/2616-hbos-propensity-toward-violence-is-good-for-us/.  In which one of the guests said this fake violence we see on TV and in video games is actually a god thing as it satisfies a primitive blood lust that was previously satisfied with actually violence. 

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