Game of Thrones Fifth Season was, to me, it’s weakest, and it broke the record for number of Emmys won, so see what I know. Fans of the show are frantically re-upping their HBO subscriptions so they’ll be ready for the return of the drama. Season Six, which begins this Sunday night, will take us beyond the written material published by George R.R. Martin. Book 6, The Winds of Winter, still is nowhere on the publication schedule and writer’s block is understandable, but Martin has no one but himself to blame. The definitive version of this epic for most fans will be the TV show. Sales of the rest of the series will no doubt be hurt by Martin’s inability to keep pace. Even though the show and books have wildly diverged in some places, people will figure, “Why bother?” when faced with an 1100 page book to which they’ve already seen the adaptation. It’s tragic and unprecedented, and part of me wonders if he really can ever finish it at this point.
We’ve been waiting five years to see these dragons really show what they can do. One of season five’s major plot lines involves Dany losing control over the city of Mereen. Trapped and cornered by enemies and betrayals, it looks like her reign is at an end. She is the Queen of Dragons indeed, and HBO did not disappoint in giving fans what they’d been waiting all these years to see.
My cultural awareness has been flagging during the past few years. You really have to commit to these shows, and I can’t seem to find the time. But I’ve made a decision: after binging on Daredevil season one (which seems like a manageable task) I’m going to plunge right into GOT.
Have you been following Gotham? IMO the show has hit its stride. It’s so wonderfully bizarre. There are scenes that remind me of the old Adam West series, except for the violence. The show’s not perfect, I didn’t like the introduction of Mr. Freeze, and I’m not sure about Hugo Strange (between this and Jurassic World, BD Wong has been playing a lot of psychopaths lately, hasn’t he?) but the strong points of the show (Gordon, Penguin, Alfred, and Bruce) have never been stronger and bringing in Paul Rubens as the Penguin’s dad was a masterstroke.
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Daredevil may make Gotham look tame to you. The first two seasons plus Jessica Jones are stellar. Can’t go wrong then diving into GoT. I currently don’t have TV service, so I’m on the LALALALALA method of avoiding spoilers until seasons come out on Blu Ray or Netflix, but I do actually have Gotham 2 pre-ordered. Hugo Strange is a great character, I wondered how that was going.
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If Gotham has a problem, it’s that the villains are taking on their full-blown identities way too fast. At this point, some of them have nowhere else to go. You can’t call them supervillains yet, but I didn’t know these guys were hanging around for ten years (with their trademark personas) before Batman entered the scene. There was an opportunity to go deeper into these characters’ psyches than anyone had ever gone before, but at this point I’m not sure Gotham will be able to sustain itself.
For now it’s a really good show though, and like I said it’s discovered its identity. And I just love that Reubens has now played the Penguin’s father in two completely different versions of the Batman universe. I love weirdly specific typecasting. Ian Holm has played Napoleon four or five times over the course of his career, and the woman who played Shmi Skywalker also played the Virgin Mary. She’s the go-to mother of immaculately conceived children. Good stuff.
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