thread: 2011-06-19 : Previously on Game of Thrones
On 2011-06-19, Vincent wrote:
Sure! So the interesting characters are the ones who fit poorly into their circumstances. Tyrion, the horse dude queen, the little Stark girl, Joffrey. What I'd hope from the show would be for larger-scale decisions to be thrust onto these poor-fit characters, but that's never what the show does. Instead, so far without exception, the show does one of two things:
(1) It carefully reserves larger-scale decisions from the interesting characters. Here in episode 9, for instance, Tyrion, who would make a game-changing general, got clocked in the head instead of leading his wild men into battle. Story of Tyrion's life! Put him in a position to make decisions and he'd change everything, and so instead they keep him scrupulously to the side.
This is why Jon Snow isn't on the list of interesting characters. He's a potentially really bad fit, which is great, but he got shunted out of relevance practically as soon as they introduced him.
(2) It robs the characters of their interesting qualities, fitting them squarely into their circumstances, so that they can make the larger-scale decisions from the position of the boring status quo. This is what they did to Joffrey here in episode 9. When he was like "wait a minute. Why would Stark say that I'm not the legitimate heir? What's going on?" he was interesting. I'm like, (spoiler!) if you knew you were a child of incest, not of the king's line, what kind of king would you make? That's an interesting position for a kid to be in! But no, they closed his eyes to it and they made him into just another boring frickin' Lannister.
By the time the horse dude queen becomes relevant to the main action, I predict, she'll be just as boring as the rest of them. By the time the little Stark girl does, I predict, if she ever does, she'll be too.
Now, I haven't read the books, so all I've got to go on is the first 9 episodes of the show. Whether the books are better, and whether the show will get better, well, sure, maybe so. I'm not confident!
