SPOILER ALERT: The opening of Monday's episode of Game of Thrones spotlighted a character introduced at the end of last season, the mute giant Ser Robert Strong. Raised by necromancy to serve the fantasy drama's royal schemer, Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey), Ser Robert killed a commoner by crushing his head against a stone wall with one vast hand. He's lumbering, inarticulate, repetitive and dedicated, much like Game of Thrones itself.

The sixth season of HBO's epic where the dungeons and the dragons are literal has launched to all the usual hoopla, including massive viewing and illegal downloading audiences. In terms of ratings, media coverage and fan chatter, Game of Thrones is a phenomenon, but that doesn't necessarily equate with lasting worth. The show's flaws are being magnified, and what was once shocking is now crude, and what was once thrilling is now merely satisfying.

Adapted by the writing and producing team of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss from A Song of Ice and Fire, the shelf-filling but still unfinished fantasy novel series slowly penned by George R.R. Martin over the last two decades, Game of Thrones is supposedly heading for a finale. Martin is at work on his penultimate novel, and the showrunners have two or three seasons left to compress the vast narrative into something enduring. Merely resurrecting the previously slain Jon Snow (Kit Harrington), a wholly predictable move, won't suffice.