By Zach Sokol

Everyone seems to love Game of Thrones to the point of fetish. If people aren’t watching it on Sundays, they’re certainly pirating it. My friends, my roommates, and even my parents are avid watchers and I’m constantly bombarded with references to dire wolves and the mock version of the intro sequence. Despite the ubiquitous references to the show, I have never seen an episode and I don’t really give a shit that I’m an outsider of this pop culture phenomenon.

I know the basics of the program– it’s The Tudors meets Lord of The Rings, there are several ‘houses’ fighting in a total war-type situation, dragons are now on the show, and Peter Dinklage is supposedly a boss. That’s as far as my knowledge goes. I don’t know a single character’s name, nor do I have any context of what’s going on in Season Three (or any season, for that matter). Thus, we decided it would be funny if I watched last night’s episode — episode two in the season — and liveblogged my thoughts of the show.

I’m not the first one to approach criticism this way. At the same time, the only thing my roommates love more than GoT is “Game of Bones” where they crush joints (‘bones’) while watching this supposedly epic TV show. So last night, my two stoner roommates, one girlfriend, and me acted like Gandalf and blew dragon-shaped smoke rings and watched this overwhelmingly confusing episode of TV. I wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and I was convinced for 30 minutes that no one was speaking English — but really I just don’t know their names and they had British accents. My notes, after the jump.

Whole episode is 57 minutes.

Show opens: Roommate 1 starts repeating “Game of Thrones bitch/Game of Thrones bitch” while the opening credits roll. I picture a million nerdy Reddit-ers masturbating to images of swords and dragons in their free time.

2 Minutes: Roommates 1 and 2 say “I want some zombie action tonight. Ice zombies.” What the fuck? I thought Walking Dead ended last week.

2 Minutes 30 Seconds: A crow with three eyes swoops by. I jump and Roommate 2 laughs at me. I feel skittish.

3 Minutes 30 Seconds: Wolves appear on screen. This is so sick — I’m reminded of animorphs or like The Golden Compass. I want my dire wolf to be a house cat. Everyone on the show has British accents and I can’t hear any dialogue. Spliffs are lit. I’m so overwhelmed.

5 minutes: Roommates describe girl with long ponytail as “banging” — I ask what her name is (already broke my rule — but this was for clarity!) and Roommate 1 says “I can’t remember half their names and I read the books.” Roommate 1 then rips a Timebomb bong.

6 Minutes Thirty Seconds: Dude is getting tortured. He says “Where am I? Who are you?” and I couldn’t relate more. I can barely hear the dialogue so I go up to raise the volume. Instead I change the input and everyone starts shouting at me and saying “Party foul!” There’s a painful silence as they rewind the episode.

7 Minutes: There’s a kid who looks like Draco Malfoy. He obviously has power and is sexist — just like his father! (I imagine). Roommate 1 says “This Timebomb is killing me.” They then mock Draco and Roommate 2 whispers something contextual to his girlfriend who also has never seen the show before. I feel jealous, but I’m glad I have a teammate in this shit show of a plot.

21 Minutes: Garden scene — production quality and cinematography are both legit. One girl has cleavage and I wonder if people in the Middle Ages looked this hot. I make a note to look up if a Game of Thrones XXX Parody exists yet. An older lady who is the “widow of Lord Luthor” (?) says the line “Squirting the cream” and I laugh. There must be some Game of Thrones porn or fan fiction out there and I’m determined to find it. Both my roommates say this widow is “Spitting so much truth” and I nod in faux-agreement. She says something about “my son is riding a lion instead of a horse” and I get REALLY excited about that possibility. I think of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and want to see some lion action. The widow asks for lemon cakes and cheese and I get really hungry.

We take a five minute break to get snacks. I get guacamole, bougie cheese, and orange juice. No lemon cakes to be found in our kitchen.

30 Minutes: Ice scene starts and I really dig the wolf-fur coats. “Worgs” and “giants” are mentioned and I am now convinced that this show has cherry-picked from every popular fantasy series in recent history.

42 Minutes: Peter Dinklage shows up and everyone cheers. Roommate 2 talks about how he was wasted on The Daily Show a few weeks back. Dinklage talks about “fucking” a prostitute multiple times and I’m surprised they say “fuck.” I expect “arse” or “wench” but what? Peter Dinklage gets a blowjob in the scene and everyone says this clip was beyond gratuitous but no one cares. I bet Dinklage demanded from the producers that he receive some badass screen time in this episode. Good, good. They owe him after that stupid fucking April Fool’s joke.

44 Minutes: Back to Draco Malfoy. His bedroom is bigger than our apartment. The girl he’s with implies that her ‘traitor” dead husband may have been interested in men. Her husband never wanted to have sex, except one time when he came home drunk and asked to have a type of sex which was “painful and couldn’t produce children.” Draco says “I’ve considered making his perversion punishable by death.” The roommates and I agree he’s a little shithead. There’s some sexual innuendo as she touches his crossbow and Roommate 1 says he’s “into the crossbow-as-penis allegory.” I suspect Roommate 1 masturbates to images of medieval weaponry and bongs (or the combination).

49 minutes: Torture scene again. I have zero pain tolerance. I’d like to think I’m tough and whatnot, but if tortured I would tell my captors everything immediately.

50 Minutes: Kid named Brandon send off his dire wolf. I’m sad. I like the wolves — they’re very cute and I’d name mine something human-ish like Steve or Mark or Susan. I’d spoil it rotten — he’d be eating ice cream every night! Or like stew or some medieval shit. Brandon apparently has “The Site” and I roll my eyes. George RR Martin has created a boiler plate version of all fantasy fiction.

57 Minutes: There’s a fight scene on a bridge that’s pretty lame and lasts like 30 seconds. The roommates say they’ve been waiting for this duel for a while, and I think they shouldn’t have held their breath.

Episode Ends.

Post-game commentary: Roommate 1 (the really, really stoned one) says the episode was awesome. Roommate 2 says it was ok and that there are so many subplots that each episode barely makes real progress. They both lament the absence of Khaleesi and Jon Snow. I ask them what they liked best about this episode and Roommate 1 unapologetically says “Midget blowjobs are the shit.” I bring up how this show rips off every other fantasy program/movie/book and Roommate 1 hilariously says “Eragon? What are you doing in this episode!”

My head hurts, I wasn’t particularly impressed — though maybe this episode was less insane than the others. I’m convinced that Game of Thrones is one of those shows with so much going on in it that fans will take any little moment of sex or action and make it sound epic, just because it’s the only interesting thing that happens in a solid hour of television. I have zero desire to go back and watch the first two seasons. I think the production quality is sick, but I have a headache and feel like I’m swimming in JRR Tolkein or C.S. Lewis’ vomit. Why do all fantasy writers use initials in their names! Ok, I’m going to go look for that XXX parody video and research options for pet wolves. Night.

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