The episodic threads feature people a lot of people talking about what a genius GRRM is and how the show writers are awful retards who are totally lost without him, and those threads aren’t a good point for this comparisons, so I’m going to respond here to see if I can move the discussion over.
This was something I posted over there that I probably shouldn’t, on account of the no book talk rules, but it was driving me nuts:
And a reply:
So yes, the show is dumber now. The writing quality in season 7 and 8 is definitely a disappointment. It’s clearly worse than 1-4, and generally worse than 5-6. It’s disappointing that the showrunners don’t have a better ending up their sleeves. And they’re worse (and seemingly less interested) at writing a good story in general as they were before.
But “but GRRM would’ve done it better and the show writers are lost without him!” is bullshit.
GRRM didn’t do it better. He’s not going to do it better. It’s way easier to write an interesting beginning and middle than landing an ending. He gets to run out the clock, pretend he’s going to write an ending, pretend it’s amazing, and then die. Then all his fans will say “OMG, GRRM’s ending to the series would’ve been the most amazing thing ever! Too bad he only had 15 years to write it before he died! He never had a chance to finish it!”
Here’s the thing: At every stage, the show writers are creating a better story than GRRM did. Seasons 1-4 are better than books 1-3. They’re an excellent adaptation, but a lot of the best material in those seasons is original to the show. Various scenes, like the Cersei-Robert scene in season 1 talking about their marriage, the Arya-Tywin plotline, and various others are original creations of the show and just as good as anything else. The idea that they can only adapt the material directly is bullshit. They used to be able to engage in great writing.
Now - it’s easier to adapt a story, generally, than to create one. So they had an advantage. They got to pick the good stuff, trim out the bad stuff, and add their own good stuff to an existing framework. So I’m not saying the show writers are better than GRRM. But I am saying seasons 1-4 are a better version of the story than books 1-3.
Now, season 5-6 of the show suffered a clear decline in quality, but still very good. Similarly, books 4-5 suffered a clear decline in quality too. If D&D had adapted books 4-5 as closely as they did 1-3, it would’ve been a boring mess. We would’ve had literally 4 hours of Brienne walking around asking every fucking person in Westeros if they’d seen a girl of 3 and 10 with red hair. We’d have Penny the Dwarf and even more time spent on the boring part of Mereen’s politics. Books 4-5 are meandering to a ridiculous degree. A direct adaptation would’ve been pretty boring. So even though seasons 5-6 are clearly worse than 1-4, I’d say they’re still better than books 4-5.
So seasons 7-8 are a clear decline from even 5-6. Things are just falling apart in writing here. Previous strengths of the series, like great dialogue and powerful character scenes, are just mostly gone. Plots become less logical. A lot more stupid stuff. So clearly the show here is worse than the books, because… wait. There are no books. Huh, that’s weird. Didn’t GRRM have a decade to make something happen here to finish the story? Oh, he’s been writing other series and more worldbuilding books for ASOIAF instead? Huh.
The show writers are faced with a necessity to wrap up and bring together a complex story and they’re doing a mostly bad job of it. Surely GRRM did better! Wait, no, he didn’t, because when he had to wrap up this story in a satisfying way, he just didn’t. He decided fuck it, too hard, not going to bother.
So now we’re saying the show runners are so terrible, they clearly don’t know how to write, they only rode the coat tails of the great GRRM, who clearly would write an amazing ending! Except, of course, he didn’t. Because when he lost interest in writing the ending, he just stopped. The show runners couldn’t do that and had to give us something.
Who’s to say that GRRM’s version of the ending would be better? “But he wrote a good beginning and middle, so he’d write a good ending too!” - well the show runners wrote a good beginning and middle too, and yet the ending is unsatisfying. You can’t assume GRRM has some amazing fantastic ending just ready to go, because all we know is that he hasn’t written an ending and very likely will not write an ending.
So - seasons 1-4, better than books 1-3. Seasons 5-6, better than books 4-5. Seasons 7-8, better than non-existent books that the writer gave up on because it’s too had to wrap up his story in a satisfying way.
No matter how you read it, GRRM is not a hero here. He had 10 years to give the writers of the show something to adapt as an ending, and he just stopped. He stopped being involved in the show at all, and gave them a vague outline at best. This is his dereliction of duty more than theirs.
So I’m really fucking sick of seeing “D&D had to finish a story GRRM has decided was too hard to finish, his non-existent version is way way better! D&D are terrible and worthless!” - lavishing praise on an ending they’re sure will be amazing even though it will never exist, and using that as a way to attack the guys who actually did have to write an ending to the story.