Game of Thrones

Okay, I'm officially caught up on Game of Thrones. I was really excited about this show when it premiered. The promos were beautiful. I'm all for any medieval show that doesn't revolve around Merlin-type magic. I thought the first episode was a little meh, but the second episode got better, and the third episode was a little better still, and then it pretty much tapered off.

There are a couple major problems with the show that violate basic screenwriting rules taught in every beginner screenwriting class in America, which is why I find these problems so irritating. I'm going to try and keep spoiler-free. I'll list some plot points, but not give away any twists and turns. And there are 800 characters on this show and I can't remember any of their names, so there won't be any of those either.

Basic Screenwriting Knowledge Violation #1: Show, don't tell.

This is the most exposition heavy show I've ever seen. We're in this beautiful world, and all everyone does is stand around and talk. It is freakin' boring. The whole show starts with the inciting incident of someone noteworthy being killed. But the person is already dead, and everyone just stands around talking about how the person is dead and who killed him. And they somehow all figure out who did it (still don't know how they got from A to B on that one) and then they tell the guy who did it they know he did it and he admits to it, and nothing comes of it. Um, then why couldn't we have just seen that person kill the guy as the first scene of the show? The whole thing would've been a lot less confusing. We would've known the killer was a bad guy right off the bat, and we wouldn't have been wondering who the guy was who got offed that everyone kept talking about for three episodes.

On a recent episode, a major character was attacked by a boar during a hunting expedition. Sounds interesting, right? But GoT would choose the least compelling way to have a boar attack. The seqence went something like this:

Character announces he's going hunting. Character's friends race back yelling that Character was attacked by a boar. Character lies in bed and tells how the boar attacked him and how he still killed the boar.

Wow, that was exciting, wasn't it? So much more exciting than seeing Character kill the attacking boar. The show could've used a little CGI boar, all I'm saying.

GoT clearly knows its exposition is boring because it's now trying to hide it instead of just getting rid of it. For example, during a particularly graphic sex scene, someone just happens to be talking about his past love throughout the entire scene. Awkward. And, hello, no one is listening because we're distracted by the, um, showing and don't care so much about the telling when there's naked people going at it. On GoT people also like to have deep conversations while bathing. And in two scenes in last week's episode, dead animals were being butchered during conversations to make it seem like something was happening. Yeah, we weren't fooled. It was still all just talk, talk, talking. Thanks for thinking that I'm dumb, GoT. Speaking of dumb people...

Basic Screenwriting Knowledge Violation #2: Characters make stupid decisions for no reason.

Ned Stark, the lead character, doesn't seem like a stupid guy, but he makes dumb decisions all the time. And it makes no sense! I don't even need to go into this because BuzzFeed has done the work for me and it's very funny (contains Spoilers): Introducing: Stupid Ned Stark.

GoT, please cut down on the exposition, and make Ned Stark a little brighter. And try to put Peter Dinklage in every scene. He's so, so good, easily the best part of the show.