Game of Thrones means a lot to me, both personal and professionally. Writing about the program helped me build a career. But I can not pass my hatred on how it ended. That’s why I was determined never to look again – Tyrion certainly does not look blike watching the first half of the Oberyn / Mountain fight. But I was willing to watch the first episode before the tenth year of the show’s existence, and then the last thing I would ever expect happened: Game of Thrones immediately hooked me back. The turnaround means that the amazing storytelling that makes up the first six seasons of the show was precisely the reason why it so disappointed viewers in the last two, will ultimately be what fans remember most.
After a decade of immersion in the Seven Kingdoms, it’s easy to forget how good the pilot really is. ‘Winter is comingDo the impossible: It makes George RR Martin’s extensive saga accessible to viewers who know nothing about A Song Of Ice And Fire, all while setting the stage for a story defined by the TV-crushing idea that truly anything can happen and will. The premiere opens with a giant wall of ice, blue-eyed zombie children and ice demons. It ends with the crushing knight, who is caught having sex with his twin sister, the queen, who pushed an innocent child out of a tower. And in between, it successfully introduces a ridiculous number of characters, all with intricate relationships and history, spread across two enormous continents.
The premiere works because the features of what made the show amazing were instantly in place. After their first shot at a pilot, a $ 10 million disaster, fans David Benioff and DB Weiss quickly realized what changes needed to be made to make the series a success. The second pilot, with his liberal use of wide shots and impressive real-world sets, establishes the grandeur of the many incredible places the series would discover. The episode looks just as epic in scope as the story it tried to tell. The premiere also features costume and film-quality props, which have only gotten better over time. It was a big effort with an aesthetic adjustment.
None of that would matter if the artists and the screenplay were not. Although no one knew it at the time, Game of Thronesa cast, consisting mainly of non-stars and newcomers, is a driving talent. That impressive group was able to excel immediately because the writing was sharp, funny, informative and provided the necessary exposition without feeling forced or heavy. Go back and look at Tyrion’s interaction with a grumpy Jon, when Tyrion compares it to a dwarf with a bastard. This is as good as anything that has followed.
The pilot also holds the great promise that the program made later in the course of it – it points to an even bigger story lurking beneath the surface. Why do Jaime and Ned hate each other so much? Is that why Cat’s sister said the Lannisters killed the King’s Hand? What has this got to do with the creepy Targaryen across the Narrow Sea? You know, the man who feels his sister marrying a giant guy on a horse? No, the other guy feels his sister up. This is an episode that makes you look at the following. There is a reason why so many of us have done so for years. It’s the same reason we watched each episode several times, read all the theories and learned the history of Westeros as we prepared for a test – all the elements that made the program a phenomenon were fixed in the premiere .
You could not hope for a better pilot. I did not forget anything about it before I sat down to look at it again. (Jaime expressing Bran at the window is perhaps my favorite moment in TV history.) But what I did forget is how ‘Winter is Coming’ makes me feel. Since the show ended, I was too upset that Jon’s real parents did not really matter, and that the Night King was easily defeated because the White Walkers no longer paid attention. I did not think of that during my review. The beginning of the program is too good to waste time thinking about its end. And with six seasons of the feeling I have at my disposal whenever I want, it would be foolish to ignore all the amazing episodes I still love and never watch them again.
Game of Thrones will never be able to escape his last two seasons; those last 13 episodes will not get better if reviewed again. But when I saw the pilot again, I realized that one thing would improve over time: our ability to appreciate everything that came before them.