I watched last night's ultimate Game of Thrones episode and of course I have my thoughts. However, my thoughts are somewhat outside of the scope of the episode and are also occupied with reactions not only to this episode, but also the previous one, "The Bells".
I liked this episode. I also enjoyed this season. I liked how the show indulged its audience in certain aspects. I feel as though, after such a long trudge through so much heart-ache and turmoil, the show has achieved a certain overall balance with this season, but within reason. These indulgences are also framed by how I experienced the previous season.
Funnily enough, I see a lot of the criticism towards this season being similar to the one's I had for the previous one. I hated season 7. I almost stopped watching it at one point, such was my disinterest. The previous season seemed to me too far-fetched and bending its own rules. For 6 seasons, the show achieved the remarkable feat of establishing a world of massive scope. The choices being made by the show, up until season 7, were nothing short of masterful. The show displayed an incredible knack with its source material. By not only touching on the major points, but also framing them within the finer details, the show created a world not as a stage, but as a character. Season 7 pretty much undid all of this. The world was no longer a place in and of itself, a place of betrayal, trickery and, though not often, seemingly divine forgiveness. In season 7, the world become a series of points in space, the distance in between being rendered insignificant and without serious merit.
Season 8 didn't necessarily remedy this, but the misdeeds of the previous season established a very low bar for me and I was pleasantly surprised by season 8's premiere episode, "Winterfell'. The premiere episode stuck to a single destination, more or less, and it was this steadying, this decrease in the erratic pace displayed throughout season 7, that hooked me to rekindle my enjoyment of the show.
With that exposition out of the way, lets get into the finale. Like I mentioned, I liked it and there's a lot of reason why. Firstly, the show's sense of observation and exploration was re-established, but was geared towards its narrative instead of its lands. The show became something to watch instead of something to be fulfilled by. I didn't know what was going to happen in this episode, and that's an achievement in my book. Whether or not the answers fulfilled my expectations, or completely up-ended them (which is as similarly misguided as the former), I came away from the experience not with 'right' or 'wrong' answers, but simply answers. The fact that I was asking questions in the first place is all that really matters to me.
Now, this isn't to say that all answers to one's questions when it comes to storytelling are valid, so long as there is desire to know within the audience. The answers have to have reason within the world established and I would be highly skeptical of someone who said that what happened in season 8 didn't make sense. Everything that happened was a valid possibility. Dany, Bran, Jon, Sansa and Aria all made choices that, though some obvious, others shocking and others safe, all seemed to not only be reasonable, but to also give the characters some new aspects. What the show betrayed, or what it seems to have betrayed in its viewers based on my (admittedly shallow) overview of the audience attitudes, is the sense that these characters development should be finished. Fuck that. These characters are still, and always, developing. I think it's incredibly unreasonable to ask that a character's motivations, decisions and personality be finalized simply because our time with them is. These characters are still growing because, in their world, they don't know that their life ends in the next 6 episodes. A storyteller shouldn't be expected to concern their characters with the limits they set upon themselves.
Presentation wise, I can understand a lot of people's concerns. Tyrion's speech is pretty hackneyed. The actions of the dragon upon discovering their mother's corpse was reaching, though I appreciated what it added to the discussion of potential political change, a change echoed by Samwell and eventually laughed off by the rest of Westoros' elite.
But I liked the episode's ending. Yes, watching the protagonist walk off into the sunset, leaving the audience what their going to be up to next, is loaded with pretension. But how it made me feel seemed justified. I wasn't asking myself what Jon was going to do next, so much as I was trying to figure out whether or not he was happy. Harrington contorts his face wonderfully in this last sequence. Jon's feelings towards his present and future seem vague. Sansa and Aria's presents are displayed, by with far less ambiguity. Their stories are ended with a dutiful allegiance to their respective narratives. The show goes a little further with Jon and I think this is the last vicious, though thoughtful, stab into the GoT audiences hearts; a stab of bitter-sweetness we think we don't want, but we really do (after all, we're all still watching after the 'Red Wedding'). Jon's last moments with us are filled with an emotion that cannot readily be pinned down making him feel more human than ever before. After the show, all I could think about was, "God. I hope Jon's happy." This makes the finale a success in my heart.
コメント