Just to be clear, you’re still two episodes into the first season of a show that has run three full seasons and you feel comfortably qualified to judge the effectiveness or novelty of the story? After watching barely 5% of what’s aired so far, which itself is probably less than half of the overarching plot?
If so, that’s fine… but it sounds to me like you had that opinion set before you ever even sat down.
First of all, even if it was 100% unoriginal in plot and situation, I think it would still be enjoyable, and far superior to random SyFy fantasy movies and the like because the acting and production values are generally stellar. But I don’t agree with your criticism at all, although in fairness part of that is stuff that takes a while to see. At least some of the appeal of GoT is that it sets up what initially appear to be familiar characters and then unexpected things happen to them. So if you just said “well, I assume that this is a generic Tolkien-inspired fantasy ripoff, and here are some characters that seem pretty familiar, I bet I know where these plots are all going”, you would turn out to be comically wrong, because characters you think are going to win are going to lose, and characters you think are unremittingly evil will turn out to be sympathetic, and so forth and so on.
But really, what makes GoT stand head and shoulders above everything similar that I’ve ever seen is the writing and the acting. Look at this short scene. That’s the king and queen talking about how their marriage is a sham, which is a topic that’s more interesting and in depth than at least your more basic sword-and-sorcery epics would ever get into. And it’s just done… so… well…
I watched the first episode and it seemed interesting, but the ridiculous amount of boobs as wallpaper and general obsession with sex was really, really offputting. I don’t mind sex, but it felt like every other scene needed an excuse for someone to be naked or boning. Especially that whole thing with Danaerys which was just really unsettling.
Does it get at least a little better in that regard after the pilot? I understand that it will always have a certain amount of all that, but it kind of felt over the top and exhausting in the first episode. I really wanted to like it and appreciate what it’s trying to do, but… ugh.
Exactly. People like it because it isn’t a Disney story. It is a compelling fantasy story in a world that has actual people in it. Every single character is grey. Nobody ever really knows what the right thing to do is. Is magic real? Well…we don’t know. We know there have been a LOT of strange coincidences. And that is life too, isn’t it? The characters are making their best effort with the limited information they are given.
Also, is the word you are looking for “struck”?
To be fair, that part is *meant *to be. She’s a 14 year old girl sold by her own brother as (what they both think is) a glorified sex slave to some stinking barbarian in exchange for an army of not-Huns.
It’s not meant to be sexy, it’s very much meant to make the reader/watcher retch and/or feel very uncomfortable.
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Also, is the word you are looking for “struck”?
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That’s the little blighter. My brain, it farted.
I’m being serious when I say I have absolutely no idea why I watch it.
It seems to be the definition of a ‘guilty pleasure’.
At the risk of being accused of threadshitting, I have never read any of the books, nor seen a single episode of the HBO series. I may never do either, as well. Yet I hope Game of Thrones continues swelling into an even bigger success story for GRRM. The reason, and it’s extremely unlikely ever to come to pass under any circumstances, is that I’d like, scratch that, love to see an HBO series (or something on the same level) on GRRM’s Wild Cards. Of course, since he was mainly just the editor of that series (although he contributed directly to the stories as well), riding herd on a stable of writers that combined to form the “mosaic” novels, the chances of such a niche show being made are perhaps only slightly better than Firefly making it back to the small screen. 
Oh no, I get that entirely. I’m just saying that on top of all the other sex scenes and boobs every 10 minutes was a bit much.
That bit of squick is all well and good. The deal breaker was when she fell in love with her rapist/barbarian and began calling him “my sun and stars.”
Hey, what happen to the handy green rolly-eye guy? 
De gustibus and all that, but there is presumably some reason that your friend’s numerous volumes of pablum have never been made into a very high budget, prestige HBO series. Martin’s books are widely considered better than the vast majority of their workaday cousins. And while popular, they are not in the Harry Potter or Twilight territory where the sheer built-in audience of readers justified the financials of creating something from second-rate material.
Now if you just can’t stand medieval fantasy ( even “low-magic” medieval fantasy ) and you find the brutal machinations of War-of-the-Roses-style political intrigue and civil war off-putting or just not that enthralling…well…this stuff will not suit :). Personally I find sailing ship drama/adventure ( Horatio Hornblower et al. ) horribly boring most of the time. And I can understand how some people just don’t like gruesome violence ( no matter how intrinsic to the story or well done ) or a constant parade of HBO-nudity.
But relative to its genre it is considered top shelf material, even if not even all fantasy fans care for it. Comparing it to the likes of standard fantasy dreck betrays a lack of familiarity with both the dreck and Martin’s material IMO.
I read these books aloud to my late wife and we were both struck with the really remarkable absence of overt magic in the first part of this epic saga. I think she would have enjoyed the cinematic treatment that HBO has done with the original work. It feels more like a ‘War of the Roses’ writ large upon an entire huge world filled with ancient civilizations, many of which are distinctly non-European.
This is probably an overly cautious spoiler tag, but this thread is for folks who haven’t read or watched any of this series.
Having been a high fantasy fan of the first order since even before I read the Ballantine edition of the Lord of the Rings, I find it fascinating that this saga allows for such variance to the common themes to the point where they are completely subverted. There is no ‘Merlin’ to save the day, no true hero to save the maiden fair, no properly defined good versus evil. And yet it works.
My only quibble with Mr. Martin is that he has spread himself too thin and I fear his mortal existence will be terminated prior to a successful conclusion to this work. He needs to focus on his Magnum Opus, danggit! <waves fist in the air in exasperation>
If you’re telling a story (or series of interrelated stories) that involve cruel people, you will have to show cruelty or else fail as a storyteller. When cruelty is shown in such a context, it is not gratuitous.
Can you give some examples of television shows that have wonderful stories? That might help us understand what you find deficient about Game of Thrones. (Or at least allow us to properly dislike something you like, in retaliation. 
)
No, fwiw I think Amateur Barbarian’s is fair.
I dunno why you try to justify. Can’t you just accept it’s a mindless guilty peasure.
The entire goal seems to create enough ‘characters’ and enough ongoing story arcs for the audience to not notice there is no depth or nuance to any of it. The number of stories going on is bonkers. It’s a series of pantomime sketches.
The torture scenes are actually gratuitous, as they mostly occur offscreen in the books.
American Horror Story was mindless guilty pleasure ;). GoT in my opinion stands firmly in the camp with other high end HBO series like The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome and Carnivale. Very different from them and not for everyone, but very high quality of acting, production values and storytelling.
I suppose it just depends on what end you calibrate your scale of what is quality or not. GoT is quality TV. The Americans is quality TV. Justified is quality TV. Orphan Black is quality TV. Big Bang Theory is a guilty pleasure. MHO, of course.
c’mon, it’s the Big Mac of tv.
shrug Okay :).
hurrah!
That’s pretty much what I continued to think of it: costumes, rape, fighting. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Plus I don’t like that they take themselves too seriously. Not saying I want comedy, but it has this ridiculously ott air of seriousness about themselves as a show that I can’t stand. That’s just something that really irks me, though. It’s not as bad as Dexter. Just hearing his stupid voice forcefully sends my forehead into my palm.
I disagree. So do audiences. So do the vast majority of professional television critics.