De-Throned

Warning:

·         spoiler alert

·         content may be unsuitable for some readers

Proceed at your own peril.

I’ve done something I thought I would never, ever do.

I’ve cancelled my pre-order for Game of Thrones 2015.

It’s a small comfort to note that GRRM had a severely reduced role in the production of season five, and the plotlines veered wildly from those in the books, so I can say this without betraying my loyalty to the original storyteller. Season five was absolutely no fun to watch. It was unnecessarily graphic in the sex and violence department—a constant through the first four seasons, come to that—but I have simply run out of excuses to defend the series. Almost every episode had me wondering why I was tuning in when most of what I got was pornographic, misogynistic, borderline criminal crap.

I have a pretty high tolerance for sex, and I understand that we as a society have grown so numb that more extreme visuals are required to engage an audience when it comes to blood and gore. I hate it, but I get it. I myself prize clever dialogue over vivid pictures. The banter between Tyrion and Varys was gold, but also like gold, those few nuggets were buried so deep in the dirt as to have taken up perhaps ten minutes of ten hours. Instead, we were treated to more of Ramsay Snow—a man whom we already know is a sadist, so must we be continually reminded of it with ever increasing enthusiasm? Of course Sansa was in for a rape on her wedding night—we didn’t have to hear it while it happened. Also featured was the burning at the stake of a child, and it was not enough for the producers to suggest it was happening; no, we had to hear the girl screaming for her mother until the flames were pretty well extinguished. Oh, and then there was the public humiliation of Cersei, whose walk of shame was indeed written into the books (Sansa’s rape and Shireen’s fiery death were not) but which lasted on paper for as long as it took to read. On film, they dragged it out for a longer eternity to me than it was for the character.

Painful.

Brutally painful.

And the final insult? The series won best drama at the Emmys this year.

Mortifying.

So, now what do I do? I have yet to cancel HBO—The Knick resumes this month and yep, I’m hooked—but the reason why I signed up in the first place has gone sour. The first season was awesome (except for the obligatory gratuitous sex), the second slightly less so, the third perfectly awful for the torturing of Theon Greyjoy, the fourth started to stray from the books and the fifth, well, the fifth isn’t coming to my DVD collection any time soon. In fact, I may unload the second, third and fourth seasons if I can find a taker. My office buddy teases that I’ll be unable to resist season six in the spring, but I wouldn’t put money on that one.

I’ll just wait for GRRM to publish the next book.