What it boils down to is that they were shitty storytellers. It was good in the beginning because they stuck close to the books, and where they deviated, at the time it was accepted as adaptational necessity, but it was actually them not understanding the source material at all, and whenever they had to stray from the printed text, they were hopelessly in over their heads, but the material success of the show made them far too arrogant to learn or improve.

"A little long" he says, referencing Game of Thrones/aSoI&F on a former WoT fan site. But yeah, it's interesting on its own as TV commentary. And in many of these points, it's about the difference between show & books.
And this is the point in the books. Dark moments are there not to say that the setting is dark and evil, but to make the point that they are dark, not the norm. The point of the Red Wedding is not "this kind of bad thing happens sometimes", but "this sort of thing is forbidden for a reason." Catelyn Stark, as a result of the Red Wedding, is turned into a merciless avatar of revenge. Some people might look at this and say "well, that's how dark aSoI&F is, rather than righteous justice, it's just another vector for evil massacres." Except the point of the narrative is that doing evil (massacring guests) unleashes evil (Lady Stoneheart). D&D looked at Tywin Lannister and took the lesson "he 'won' the Game of Thrones, because no one defeated him in battle or politics, so his ruthless ways of doing things are the way to go." The lesson the books are trying to teach is that for all his wealth and power, he ended his life helpless on a toilet, murdered by his weakest child, because of how shitty he treated people. His legacy is collapsing around his family before his corpse is buried and if Tyrion hadn't killed him, it would have fallen apart around him. Like his son, he is not nearly as successful as a shallow glimpse suggests. Tywin needed a lot of good luck to survive the first book and even lucked into his victory by a lot of own goals scored by the Starks' allies. The books are not dark, despite all the bad stuff happening, because their lesson is that evil methods fail in the end, and the story points to an ending where all of the bad stuff will not be enough to destroy the Stark family.

The thing here is, I don't believe the writers recognized that Tyrion failed so much. The guy telling everyone what they should be doing in the final episode is not what you would expect from his track record of bad advice. There's no sense during the conflicts of the season that Tyrion IS someone fallible, that Daenerys is right to blow him off. Instead the one bit of pushback and rebuke from her is framed as part of her descent into madness.

This kind of analysis is not helping. Daenerys is a victim whose agency is exercised by surviving in the beginning, and being alert to realize there are ways to take advantage of her position, and eventually benefits from a miracle.

But a lot of victims never get the opportunity to take advantage of their position, because their abuser isn’t a powerful warlord whose pride extends to glorifying his property over other men. Daenerys is in a position where she CAN lash out at lesser abusers like Viserys, whereas Sansa cannot.

The show writers failed to recognize just how badass Sansa is, even at the outset of her victimization, and the writer is buying into their un-nuanced portrayal. One of the changes the writers made was in the riot scene in Season Two, considered one of the best seasons by many. It starts off with Myrcella being sent off to Dorne. In the book, her little brother is weeping and Myrcella is being brave and comforting him. Then when Joffrey mocks Tommen for crying, Sansa points out examples from history and legends of cultural heroes and exemplars of masculinity who cried out of love for their siblings. She builds Tommen up. Whereas on the show, they had Myrcella sobbing as the boat carried her off (and when next we see her, she is happy and enjoying an idyllic romance in Dorne, making her seem silly to have been crying in hindsight), and Tommen’s little sniffles receive the mockery from Joffrey, to which Sansa retorts “I saw you cry.” First of all, it’s negative, tearing someone down instead of building someone up, and it reinforces the idea that crying automatically equals weakness. Does anyone remember the extraordinarily successful movie trilogy without which a high concept fantasy TV show would never have been made, where one of the last lines spoken by the wizard character is “I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are evil.”?

And Sansa does other things, in spite of her total lack of power, like saving Dontos, an incident minimized by the show’s decision to get rid of him for more than two seasons and only have him show up when they remembered they needed a patsy for the Red Wedding. Right before the riots, Sansa speaks to Joffrey as he is about to trample a poor woman with a dead baby and instead he throws her a gold coin. Sansa in the book, actually succeeds on more than one occasion, at getting Joffrey to not do the most awful thing possible. In a situation where the smart or sensible course of action in her shoes is lay low and avoid his notice, to simply support and approve everything he does. She is actively given this advice by multiple characters, and a lot of her agency is, in fact, exercised in this manner, consciously taking active steps to do whatever she can to maximize her chances of survival in this situation. But she still tries to help, in spite of the risks to herself.

She can’t always protect herself, which is the difference between innocent victim and incompetent player, but she also learns to watch and observe and make assessments, while on the show, until the end of the fourth season, they treated her like the voice of naiveté and stupidity. They refused to give her any lines indicating her perceptions are improving or even her innate intelligence being handicapped by her lack of information. The more common reaction is for people to treat her as dumb. The one exception, where out of the blue Tyrion remarks that Sansa might outlast everyone, is a show invention that serves only to glorify Tyrion and reinforce the whole “smartest guy in the room” issue. In the books, Sansa utterly fooled the Smartest Guy in the Room, leaving him with absolutely no idea she was plotting her escape, and coming up with an excuse to avoid the hindrance of his protective custody. She figured out before he told her that her servants were spying on her for Cersei, whereas Tyrion only seems to have gleaned that datum by Tywin actively throwing the intelligence so obtained in his face.

When the show finally allows Sansa to show some political mastery, they appear to believe they are indicating this by dressing her like a Disney villain in the Eyrie, in her last appearance in the fourth season. Then all this accomplishment is promptly walked back to insert her into Ramsey Bolton’s storyline as his victim the next season, in a clumsy bit of plot-driven mis-characterization, where the marriage makes no sense for either side, Sansa has no reason to agree to it, Littlefinger gains nothing by it, and it’s an act that would set both Littlefinger and the Boltons at odds with the crown. And yet, as soon as he arranges the marriage, Littlefinger feels compelled to answer a summons to court, where he basically does nothing, and Cersei doesn’t even seem to understand why he came (to separate him from Sansa, so she would have no support in her horror story, duh).

When the Stark sisters are finally reunited, Sansa and Arya feel the strange need to compare their ordeals, and come to the conclusion that Sansa would not have survived Arya’s experience, but Arya “probably would” have survived Sansa’s. Funny thing, in the books, on at least one occasion, Arya comes critically close to the bad guys and gets captured, because she can’t recognize their heraldry, which, at the time, Arya recognizes Sansa would have. Sansa would have known from just a description that it was Gregor Clegane’s army and not gone anywhere near him. And Arya, with her outspoken nature and subpar ability to perform conventional femininity, would probably not have done as well as Sansa in evading the negative attention of the powers at court and retained the freedom to take the escape opportunity when it arose.

Another character misused by the show at the outset. In the books, she was the political brain of the family, urging Ned to accept the Handship for the gains to their family, and to accept the marriage proposal for Sansa, because in that setting, it’s a good thing. Meanwhile, the show has her rolling her eyes when Sansa wants Joffrey to like her. Since Sansa is going to be in his power for the rest of her life that’s kind of a vital thing to be interested in. Sansa, in the first book/season, is doing and wanting the things she has been raised and trained to want, that she has been taught since childhood are good things. Yet the show treats her like a shallow idiot for wanting this stuff. She’s being sensible, according to her education and culture, not simply fan-girling over a fashionable sex symbol.

When Ned sees Catelyn off from King’s Landing, he tells her to be careful of her temper, for some reason, and the next episode she arrests Tyrion. Almost like the show is saying she did a dumb thing because her temper got the best of her. Instead of turning a moment of having her cover blown into a political advantage. When traveling with the captive Tyrion, in the books, he’s utterly furious at having been outwitted by Catelyn and not particularly pleasant in his thoughts about her. On the show, he calmly susses out Catelyn’s ploy, in what reads as more of a gracious tip of the cap to a worthy opponent and dominates the ensuing conversation despite being captive, in a foreshadowing of the oft-derided trial in the finale. Catelyn is on the back foot and defensive, while Tyrion talks over her and the narrative treats him as the sensible one. Meanwhile when the tribesmen attack, Book-Catelyn fights back, and Show-Catelyn cowers, doing nothing but cutting Tyrion’s bonds after a brief argument. Tyrion not only saves her but kills her attacker single handedly. In the book, his diversion allows her to cut another man’s throat.

Even freeing Jaime. This writer credits it as an act of strategic mercy, but the show doesn’t seem to know what it was. On the show, she freed Jaime to keep him from being killed by a lynch mob, with her decision to send him back to his family making sense as an attempt to get at least some value from him but the subsequent reaction is as if she freed him in a vacuum, and her decision was motivated solely by her desperation to save her daughters after the apparent death of her younger sons. On the show, Robb and Cat express the belief that the boys might not be dead, for some reason, so she doesn’t even have the desperation allowance. Neither of them, in discussing her “treason”, bring up the fact that if she hadn’t released Jaime, he was going to be killed by Karstark’s mob, utterly wasting his utility as a hostage.

And Ros’ entire portrayal before her death wasn’t exploitative? At least her actual murder was off-screen. This is the problem with these Johnny-come-lately critics of the showrunners. What did we expect from a character whose entire reason for being on the screen was to display her body in a sexual context or to be a prop to demonstrate how evil some characters are.

How can you expect the showrunners to recall the nuance of the character portrayals, when they can’t even remember that in this conversation, Robert & Cersei are confirmed to have had a child, which, a. undermines the evidence that led people to realize she was not bearing Robert’s children and b. rendered false the Maggy’s prophecy that she would only have three children! They even changed the number of children Robert would have in Maggy’s prophecy for no reason, since neither book nor show enumerates his offspring (IIRC, the show cited a higher number than book Maggy did, even though they excised one of the more prominent altogether, in Edric Storm).

Except he did. Again, this was something the showrunners don’t seem to realize they were portraying. The only reason Ned falls is bad luck. Despite a couple of principled errors, he had the Lannisters trapped and at his mercy. Cersei bet her entire cause and the lives of everyone she loves on the ability to roll snake eyes three times straight and somehow it happened. Robert can dismiss a lot of things because he does not want to be bothered, and because he feels awkward about all the money he owes the Lannisters, but Tywin & Gregor attacking a party under the king’s banner, sent out in the king’s name, is direct defiance of his authority and pride and something Robert cannot forgive. If Robert is even crippled or injured to a lesser degree by his hunt, Cersei doesn’t live an hour past his return to the castle, royal orders go out for Tywin’s & Jaime’s heads, and her kids only survive if Ned manages to get them out of there. Tywin brought the death penalty on himself the minute he attacked Thoros and Beric’s group. Except through no action or knowledge of his, Robert died and Tywin’s grandson took the throne. And the books make it clear, the Lannisters have no friends. If Robert declares war on them, the Starks, Tullys and both his brothers are piling on. The Martells hate the Lannisters for Elia, and even Lysa wouldn’t be able to avoid joining the entire rest of the continent. She certainly isn’t going to side with the underdogs. Aside from the Tyrells’ favorite son having a grudge against Gregor for the tournament and being in love with Robert’s brother, the chance to replace Jaime & Cersei in the kingsguard and royal marriage with Loras & Margaery won’t be something they pass up. And the show doubled down on this by having Ned summon Tywin personally to court to answer for Gregor’s crimes.

But the show insists on treating Ned like he’s dumb and out of touch. They have his brother tease him about looking like a bear in a trap during a feast, even though as a feudal lord, holding feasts is the main part of his job, it’s how you get people to like and follow you, and his people love Ned bigtime. He arrives at the Red Keep and disregards a pointed suggestion that he put on nice clothes for his first ever Council meeting. Even if the writers in a 21st century mindset don’t understand how filthy you get riding horses long distances, there are actual horses on the set. You don’t notice how gross they are? Or you could, you know, faithfully adapt the text of a book series well-known (however undeservedly) for its realistic details of a medieval world, where Ned, upon being told of the meeting, says, “one sec, gotta change.” He has arguments were the other characters make a point the writers seem to think is a clinching argument and Ned stands there stupefied instead of making an obvious (often book-featured) retort. When Cersei tries that false equivalency nonsense equating Ned’s actions with his enemies’, he shuts her down with “I don’t kill children.” “When you play the game of thrones you win or you die” is a line in the books that speaks to Cersei’s limited perception and inability to accept anything less than total power. The showrunners see it as a badass thematic statement, to the extent they have any interest in 8th grade book reports, and explaining how they took away from the novels the notion that Ned is a failure and loser and Tywin is the bestest politician evar.

When debating Daenerys’ assassination, instead of “frozen faced fool” Robert calls Ned an “honorable fool” reinforcing honor=foolish to the viewers. When Ned points out the unreliability of trusting the word of a traitor, Jorah Mormont, Littlefinger smirks “he’s a slaver, not a trader” and frames Ned’s indifference to the distinction as another instance of honor-driven blindness. This show-invented dialogue utterly misses the point that Jorah is BETRAYING Viserys and Daenerys! He IS a traitor by the very action that Ned cites, making it directly relevant to his reliability. And that’s without getting into whether his joining their entourage is an act of treason as they claim Robert’s crown or whether enslaving his own people was not a betrayal of his oath as a feudal lord. But the show loves humor based on semantic distinctions and grammar nazi corrections. How else can they show that a character is smart? Well, they show them doing smart things, but it’s pretty clear that the writers have no clue what a smart course of action actually is, so that’s right out.

“Most” is a funny way to write “less than half”

Agreed.
Blackwater was such a success, they kept trying to duplicate it. Meanwhile, they attached very little military logic to their scripts. Robb’s campaigns teleported around the continent with no known rhyme or reason, undermining the significance of Edmure’s fuckup and the fact that contrary to the assertions of a sassy, foreign, paleofeminist field medic, Robb actually did have war goals and plan to win. The Battle of the Bastards and the Long Night battle were utterly nonsensical in military logic and execution, however spectacular they looked, examples of the show’s repeated priority of style over substance.

I don’t understand this point. The article is defending the show’s lack of attention to backstory detail in the beginning, then explains why the details are important and goes back to the point that having to learn the backstory can be uncomfortable…without ever saying how the show failed this in later seasons. It’s not like text crawls or lectures on the history became a thing aimed across the fourth wall. Rather, the show failed to adequately set up and service the parts of the backstory which would be important down the road, like examples of how bastards in the past were legitimized or took power, to explain Catelyn’s issues with Jon Snow and her perception that he poses a threat to her own kids or how people can proclaim him King in the North, despite six seasons claiming this is all impossible for a bastard, while his sister and the rightful heir to Winterfell (not to mention the reason for half their troops even being there) is sitting right next to him. There are simpler ways to explain how Dorne practices absolute primogeniture and has more liberal sexual mores, without reducing the Dornish national character to “fight and fuck”. I don’t even know if show-only fans are aware whether or not Dorne is an independent kingdom or subjects of the Iron Throne. And let’s not even get into tossing all the stuff from the first book seeding R+L=J, and not even bringing it up until Bran’s vision, where Ned is pointlessly retconned as a lying braggart who took credit for Meera’s dad’s kill.

Shocking events are an end in themselves

There used to be a thing called a watercooler, around which people would gather and talk about last night’s television. I’m not sure what it was—I think maybe if you were gambling with water, the watercooler would show up and try to kill your lucky streak?

Anyway, Thrones was very good at getting us all to obsess about the various colors of wedding, and all the other decapitations and things…

But it was also very good, especially in its prime, at making us care about people before they got beheaded or caught up in the Teal Wedding or whatnot. And for a long time, the shocks were unexpected because they weren’t a regular occurrence.

You didn’t even need it. The Red Wedding was not a surprise in the books. It was built up to, and foreshadowed heavily. It’s raining incessantly throughout the book in all the chapters of the PoV character through which the Red Wedding is seen, in a demonstration of pathetic fallacy. One on-line blogger claimed the description of the meal was a clear signal that the Freys were not wasting good food on a bunch of walking dead men. There were incongruities of the involvement of the Boltons in the story at various points, and their intersection with the Freys. The Frey’s home and sigil is a double castle called “the Crossing”. A Double Crossing! He was not being subtle about it. And it still worked, it was still infamous throughout the fandom, and was, I believe, one of the motivating ideas inspiring the showrunners to work toward. But buzz became more important to them than telling a good story.