There will never be another show like Game of Thrones. As our pop-culture consumption is increasingly determined by individual, algorithm-driven home screens, the HBO fantasy drama is one final vestige of the monoculture — the last thing in America, besides maybe Thanksgiving, that can bring woke millennials and their conservative uncles together. Coming at both the tail end of the Golden Age of TV, and the advent of the social media age, The premiere of Game of Thrones aired six months after Instagram hit the App Store. it also holds the distinction of being the most covered show on television. Now that TV was great art, spending hours on Tumblr reading fan theories about secret Targaryens wasn’t a waste of time, it was serious artistic analysis.
As Thrones prepares to make like Elissa Farman and fade away into the sunset, Yes, Westeros has sunsets. it’s time to take a look back. Maybe you’re a new viewer who is currently binge-watching the entire run, maybe you’re an old hand who just needs a refresher. Either way, enjoy this re-creation of what it was like to follow along with Game of Thrones as it aired, think piece by think piece, surprise death by surprise death.
Season One: Winter Is Coming.
When Game of Thrones premiered back in the spring of 2011, Donald Trump was still hosting Celebrity Apprentice. Country singer John Rich would win. HBO’s biggest show was True Blood. And mild-mannered fantasy author George R.R. Martin could still walk down the street like a normal person. In other words, it was a different time. The show’s pilot, The original pilot was ordered back in 2009; Vulture covered it beneath the news that Mindy Kaling was getting her own TV show. The whole thing was reshot, apparently because the first version was very bad. We will probably never see it. “Winter Is Coming,” brought to life the world Martin had created, a world of noble Starks, scheming Lannisters, and dispossessed Targaryens — and immediately, viewers had trouble telling everyone apart. Except for Jon Snow. Everyone remembers Jon Snow, possibly because he’s always called “Jon Snow.” Astoundingly, in retrospect, the show’s early ratings were not that great, The pilot saw roughly 2 million U.S. viewers; the season-seven finale had 12 million. possibly because it was gaining a reputation for being dark, grim, and difficult to follow. This was a show that ended its first episode by throwing a little boy out of a window, and then ended its second episode with a father murdering his daughter’s pet dog.
After the excitement of the premiere wore off, we settled into the first season’s long sexposition-y middle. In “Lord Snow,” Daenerys Targaryen got pregnant the same week as the real-life royal wedding. “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things” introduced sad-sack Samwell Tarly, who made everyone cry. “The Wolf and the Lion” treated us to an unexpected nipple-shaving scene. Remember the nipple-shaving scene? That was the same episode we saw a mother breastfeeding her preteen son. It was by far the nippliest Game of Thrones episode ever.
Along the way, Viserys Targaryen’s murder-by-molten-gold in “A Golden Crown” proved that, in Game of Thrones, “crowning” meant the opposite of what it does in an OB/GYN ward, and in “You Win or You Die,” Littlefinger delivered one of TV’s great finger-banging monologues. Also, Daenerys ate a horse heart. It was gross, but also awesome.
There was a whole lot of buildup around the Lannisters and Starks going to war, Characters said “there’s a war coming” approximately 4,000 times. and around episode eight, those who hadn’t read the books wondered if all that dramatic tension would eventually pay off. (Those who had, if they were nice, kept quiet and tried not to spoil anything.)
I think it’s safe to say they pulled it off because the ninth episode, “Baelor,” is the one where they killed off Ned Stark! (Sean Bean was okay with it.) And then in the season finale “Fire and Blood” the dragons were born! More than anything, this is the moment when Game of Thrones went from moderately popular HBO drama to genuine watercooler phenomenon. The ratings would steadily rise over the first four seasons, plateau slightly in seasons five and six, then jump up for season seven. Ned’s death remains the most widely mourned on Slate’s digital graveyard, and the countless reaction videos to his beheading on YouTube will undoubtedly be a valuable primary source for future historians of early 21st-century interior design.
Then, just like that, it was the first of many long off-seasons. Jason Momoa spent his Conan press tour lobbying for a return to the show, He got his wish, as Khal Drogo came back for a dream sequence in season two. while HBO vowed it would continue airing the series until it reached the end of the story, though few at the time could have predicted that the show would complete its entire run before Martin finished The Winds of Winter.
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