Clint's Game of Thrones

Warning: this post contains spoilers of the last season of the TV show, Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones is an eight season fantasy-themed TV show based on the novels by George RR Martin. If you don't know that, I am not sure why you would know me or read my blog. The series of novels is unfinished, and unlikely to be finished before Martin's death. The novels are a bit variable in quality but overall very good. The TV series has also varied in quality, with a steady decline after the action passed what was in the written texts. The final season was abysmal. My two main criticisms: Daenerys (who I was hoping would claim the throne in the end) was steadily portrayed through the show as an empathetic ruler trying to do the right thing and then went psycho in the last two episodes; the Über boss (the Night King) was defeated like a chump in episode three of six, so the rest of the season was anticlimactic. The dialog in the end scenes of the last episode was amateurish (although the response to Sam's call for democracy was amusing).

Despite these criticisms I really enjoyed the last season because I was not watching Game of Thrones, I was watching Clint's Game of Thrones.  My friend Clint has had me and another friend over to watch the last few seasons. We have had a delayed start to each season, timed to be able to watch two episodes a week. He has a projector, so we watch on a big screen. There is alcohol and he orders food for us. Appropriate mockery is encouraged, and it was almost constant this last season. We amused ourselves with our growing outrage at the course of the plot. Clint was almost weeping in frustration  during the later episodes.

The right kind of bad show can be quite enjoyable when watched in a group. Two others I remember are Twin Peaks 90-91 that I watched with fellow graduate students in NYC, and V in the Summer of 1983 in a Carlton dorm where I was staying for a Summer job at the NRC lab in Ottawa.