Game of Thrones, Season 7 (2018)

(On Cable TV, April-May 2019) Considering Game of Thrones’ nine-year run, its unusual status as an adaptation having outrun its original material, the sweep of an intricate plot with at least a hundred speaking parts, the rabid devotion of its fans to resolving even the most intricate of its mysteries and the sheer gall of attempting a small-screen adaptation of a high fantasy series, it’s almost inevitable that its conclusion would fail to meet most expectations. It’s been a predictable spectacle to hear The Internets wail about various missteps of the conclusion. I’ll be more enthusiastic, largely because having done my time in the fandom trenches (Babylon-5 forever!), I’m far more willing to accept whatever has been completed. I’m not going to deny that this last run has its issues—as with the last few seasons, the nuts-and-bolts details of the scripts haven’t always come up to satisfy its bigger structural ambitions. The six concluding episodes had a lot of material to go through, but the rush to get it done means that a lot of connective tissue was elided or missing. A few plotting decisions, defendable in retrospect, don’t always make sense on a minute-by-minute basis. (The twist of Episode 5 being the best example of this.) Some Dumb TV Tricks also create their own problems, with cheap theatrics and artificial suspense trumping a satisfying ramping up (I’m looking at you, end-of-episode-3 Big Surprise). Some character arcs are not resolved in an entirely satisfying fashion (oy, Jaimie), although considering the very large cast, I’m generally satisfying with the way their stories turned out. And that goes for the series as a whole—while I’m not completely happy with the way the show-runners stuck the landing (sticking it to King’s Landing was fine, though), it concludes the series decently, provides the bare minimum amount of closure, ensure that the series is of a coherent piece and even provides a clue as to what will await readers in the concluding volumes of the book series. (I expect details to change, but I can definitely see the structure of the season leading to the broad strokes of the conclusion.)  Away from the story, elements of this seventh season’s cinematography, music, acting and special effects are nothing short of terrific. Could it have been better? Of course. But considering the scope and sweep of the show-runners’ ambition at the beginning of the journey a decade ago, what they have accomplished with Game of Thrones is still nothing short of a landmark.