So, confession time: I used to think the Star Wars prequels were good. I did. I was seventeen back in 1999, when Episode I came out, and it was Star Wars, so it was awesome. Period.

As such, I would have to defend it to others. Many, many others… many, many times. This went on for about a decade, actually. It wasn’t until about 2008 that the veneer began to slip. After all the arguments and all the attention for that six year stretch (Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005) finally died down, because we nerds moved on to other things, I sat down to watch them again, now without all that opposition in place with which to filter and fortify my thoughts, so as to address later. And that’s when I began to notice things. Bad, bad things.

I’m not going to go all in to it now, because you don’t need me to, and it’s already been done time and time again. The bottom line is that I finally had to realize/accept that the prequels were not good movies. After literally an entire decade of kidding and convincing myself, I inevitably had to recognize what they were: Bad.

You Have a Friend In Me

I said all that to now say the following: Game of Thrones is currently, officially, a bad show. It is. It broke. It no longer works. They chunked it here in the final season. (It actually began back in Season 7, but let’s stay on target here; all of that was fixable — or at least forgivable — if they delivered this season.)

Now please, take a second. Marinate for a moment. I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening in your brain currently. Your now intrinsic, calcified need to defend the show at all costs — and likely come after me personally — has probably just been activated. You feel it coursing through your body: a reflexive, almost manic need to detail either just how wrong or just what an asshole I am.

I’ve been there.

Credit: Lucasfilm

But I am not wrong. I know this because I remember what it was like to be wrong, for ten years, and just how sure I was that everyone else was wrong, when they weren’t. As a useful metaphor, you are essentially a drug addict in this moment, talking to someone who sank lower for longer, before pulling himself out. Not only does he understand, he knows EXACTLY what’s going on with you. He knows the arguments/attacks you’re going to make before you make them. He knows the game you are playing, far better than you do.

This is so. Your feelings do not change this, no matter how powerfully you feel them…

Just like the show you love and invested SO MUCH of your time watching, thinking, and talking about becoming bad, so close to the end.

A Busted ‘Game’

Credit: HBO

Even more than this, however, your comprehensive, now almost instinctive need to go in to such detail about all the ways in which I’m wrong — or an asshole — is actually what is communicating to other people how bad the show is now.

Don’t believe me? (Of course you don’t.) OK, let me show you. Here are some things that happened in the third episode:

The show completely punted on the mythology and backstory, as far as the White Walkers, Night King, and Three-Eyed Raven storylines. It just did nothing with them. (Bran LITERALLY did nothing, except establish the Night King was, in fact, there and riding Viserion, when we already knew that.) The Night King was apparently impervious to dragon fire. Was this because he was secretly a Targaryen? Nope. Just cuz. Just cuz the plot needed him to. He’s nobody. The Dothraki Riders — Daenerys’ single most devastating fighting force outside of her dragons — were sent all at once at an enemy it could not see, right away, for no reason at all. The Army of the Dead takes out the Dothraki and most of the Unsullied, who constitute the bulk of their total forces, in about 15 minutes. Then it takes them hours to fight the rest. That pacing issue is compounded by the fact that the Nobody King raises all the new dead at one point, so our handful of survivors are now COMPLETELY surrounded by an overwhelming force when they are at their most depleted…and manage to fight them off at the same clip as the others before. Every time we cut back to them, they’re taking on two or three wights, instead of all being killed inside of 30 seconds, which is clearly what should have happened, based on all we just saw. (Oh, and the great majority of those survivors survive again, because of that wicked awesome plot armor.)

Credit: HBO

Pause. Before we go on, take stock of yourself here for a second. As you were reading that list, what was happening inside your head? Probably, it was a cascade of rebuttals and excuses, explanations and breakdowns, of just why I got all that wrong and didn’t really understand what the show was doing. You very likely had all that ready to go, and knew where I was going before I went there. (More on this in a minute.)

And, if you didn’t do that, you then almost assuredly said to yourself something along the lines of this: “I was never really into the White Walkers storyline or all that magic. To me, the show was about the human characters and their relationships. I’m glad the show got all that out of the way so we could focus on them.” OK, leaving aside the fact that the White Walkers were, before literally anything else, set up first — in the very first scene of the very first episode — I will give you that. The show is about relationships. Cool. Let’s focus on that in the next one.

Credit: HBO

Here is a second list of things that happened in episode number four:

We don’t see Sansa and Arya’s reaction to what Jon tells them about his identity. They cut away before we got to see them take this news. We don’t see Sansa really think about whether or not she should betray Jon by telling others about his true parentage, when she swore to him she wouldn’t; she just does it right after, as if there is no issue with that whatsoever. We don’t see Jon say goodbye to Ghost. We don’t see Dany really mourn the death of Rhaegal.

Remember just before when we were gonna focus on these relationships? And not blow by them to get to the next part? And that’s just the relationship strand. Here’s another list of major issues:

How did Dany miss an entire fleet waiting at Dragonstone, especially one she had previously just been warned about? How did Euron train his men to deliver three perfect Scorpion strikes — from a boat — at a flying dragon that they’ve never seen, using equipment they were just shown how to operate? How does Dany end up just outside King’s Landing right after all her ships were destroyed? Why does King’s Landing now look like Casterly Rock?

Credit: HBO

Credit: HBO

Again, pause for a second. Now what is happening in your brain? What excuses are being made reflexively? What evasive maneuvers are you employing? What are you screaming internally? What at-the-ready-explanation do you already have all planned out?

Will they cover all this in future episodes, like you figured they would last time, and the time before that? Well, we’re now down to two. Two episodes left. Total. So how much more, and how much longer, can they kick these cans down the road? They are LITERALLY running out of time.

And now maybe you’re thinking: “They’ll pull it out; this is all a setup, to make it more dramatic. They know what they’re doing.” Yes, maybe that one perfect card you need to stay in the game will actually flop. That is technically possible. But any trained, practiced card player will tell you: if you ever find yourself in that position, you already lost, and it likely happened many hands before.

The Point

Credit: HBO

So please, for a moment, think about the journey you just went on. All the explanations, defenses, reactions, evasions, rebuttals, and possibilities your brain just churned out automatically, pretty much without your permission. Just reflect on them.

Because you assuredly still think them, believe them, feel them. I know for certain that I did not convince you of anything just now, not even close. In fact, the odds are overwhelming that you are even MORE convinced of your rightness, and/or of my assholery. If this was an attempt for you to see/accept my side of things, I just failed spectacularly.

Except, that wasn’t what this was. This is just an attempt for you to experience and recognize EVERYTHING your brain did when met with criticism, when something you love and are committed to gets threatened. The point is for you to engage with and reflect on your reactions, just how deep and vast and quick they are.

Because that depth, that vastness, that quickness…that sophisticated, layered, comprehensive set of defense mechanisms IS THE PROOF of how bad the show has gotten.

Credit: HBO

Ask yourself: How long did all that take to assemble? How much time would you have had to spend seeking out the explanations, learning them, processing them, organizing them? How many questions have you had to answer, and how much effort have you spent remembering them at a moment’s notice for an argument you knew you were going to have, possibly repeatedly?

And then ask yourself this: Did you ever have to do this before Season 7? Was that exhausting process ever necessary beforehand? Did there need to be slews of online videos and blogs that were dedicated to defending the show on all these fronts in the first six years?

When did you stop just enjoying the show, and start shielding the show, protecting it from the onslaught of neverending questions and criticism, as if you yourself were at Winterfell, fighting off the Army of the Dead? When did you start going immediately to the internet as soon as you watched an episode to see who was disappointed by what, so you could start scouring your favorite websites for why they were wrong? When did the post-show explanations by the creators stop being this little extra add on, and start being something you made your friends watch when they didn’t get something important?

Seriously, think about that.

Credit: HBO

Because this is what I had to do, a little over a decade ago, with Star Wars. I had to remember a time when being a fan did not require nonstop, long, impassioned defenses that became engrained in my very soul. I had to remember that Empire Strikes Back did not and still does not need that, that no one has to write or search out blogs/listicles entitled “10 Reasons Why the First ‘Star Wars’ Is Actually Brilliant.” There is not a single forty-five minute video essay on YouTube right now that explains to you the ultimate resolution between Luke and his father at the end of Return of the Jedi, because it is just not needed. All it took to get and love it was simply watching the movie. That alone was more than sufficient.

Again, take it from someone who knows, who went through all this: there was once a time when you did not need these listicles and essays and blogs. There was once a time when you did not need to defend Game of Thrones much at all, let alone so comprehensively and instinctively. Pretty much all you did with your friends and coworkers, for years, was watch and marvel. And then that stopped, and your experience became something else entirely.

And that, right there, truly is all the evidence required to prove that which you are far more than likely to never accept or admit.

Credit: Lucasfilm

At least, not for the first decade or so…

(I’ll see you on the other side. We can watch Avengers: Endgame. Promise)