'Game of Thrones' finale delivers violence, nudity and a ratings high
June 21, 2011 | 2:49 pm
Thrones_dan Maybe it's the violence, maybe it's the bare bosoms, but HBO seems to have carved out a decent audience with its fantasy series "Game of Thrones."
Sunday's 9 p.m. finale delivered a series-best 3 million total viewers, according to the Nielsen Co. That easily bested the 2 million who showed up for the first airing of the premiere in April.
An additional 876,000 viewers watched an 11:15 encore of the finale.
HBO says that through the season, the nudity-and-gore-filled "Game of Thrones" averaged a total of 8.3 million viewers across all platforms (original airings, DVD and HBO On Demand).
"Game of Thrones" fared far better than another season finale Sunday night. AMC's mystery "The Killing" averaged a decent 2.3 million viewers. But the episode was excoriated by critics and many fans, some of whom dubbed the anti-climactic ending among the worst season finales in TV history.
Trackers, what did you think of the finales for "Game of Thrones" and "The Killing"?
'Game of Thrones' recap: Scooby-Doo at the Iron Throne
June 20, 2011 | 5:03 am
Catelyn We've come to the end of the first season of "Game of Thrones," but not, as we now know, the end of the series. That's a pretty exceptional scene this episode ends on too -- and it's yet another brilliant structural touch that we finally get an onscreen magical element to this series 90 seconds before the season closes, and it's been foreshadowed since the very first episode rather than coming off as a deus ex machina. For that matter, it's a scene that could never, ever be pulled off on network television.
For an episode that once again had to cover a lot of narrative territory, though, there also seemed to be a bunch of blatant filler this week -- scenes that could fall away without anyone noticing. Chief among those was the sequence with Grand Maester Pycelle and the woman going about her ablutions in his quarters. Is he supposed to be blind, or just philosophical? And did that scene have any bearing at all on the plot? Likewise, the dream sequence with Bran walking -- the third nearly identical such sequence -- goes nowhere in particular, and the subsequent scene with Osha and Bran in the catacombs doesn't tell us anything we don't already know. (It does, however, give us an additional appearance of Bran's younger brother Rickon, who's been seen so little that somebody set up a Where's Rickon Stark? blog.) So here's a thought experiment. "Game of Thrones" wasn't officially renewed until after the first episode had been broadcast; it's worth imagining what would have happened if the series had had a backup plan in place to ditch the narrative of George R.R. Martin's books and wrap up the story somehow this week. This is pure speculation, of course, but it's fun to think how they might have done it with the time freed up by ditching the superfluous scenes. (Scooby and Shaggy showing up at court to explain the plot wouldn't quite work, although I'd love to see Cersei declaring "and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for those meddling Starks!")
The single biggest dangling plot thread, from an emotional standpoint, is the inevitable comeuppance of slow-clapper Joffrey, who's had an entire season to scare up a single redeeming character trait but has evidently found that below him. (An enterprising fan has assembled a 10-minute-long montage of Tyrion slapping Joffrey over and over -- it's so satisfying!) It's easy enough to imagine the scene where Sansa notices that Joffrey is very close to a steep drop going in a rather different direction; that would also have made for a nice parallel to Bran's fall in the first episode. The obvious closing scene for a final-episode version of this week's show would be Robb spontaneously being anointed king by his followers. Here's a proposition for you: When the Dothraki chant "Rhaego!" it's supposed to be a demonstration of their barbarism; when Robb's army chants "the king in the north!" it's supposed to be a demonstration of their heroic good judgement. Discuss.
Wrapping up Danaerys's story this time wouldn't have been tough, either -- just end her section with her walking into Drogo's funeral pyre. That would have been ambiguous about her fate anyway, given her scene with the dragon eggs midway through the season. She gets some of her best sequences on the show with this episode, although the script resorts to some hand-waving about the resolution of last week's cliffhanger. (Paraphrased: "So, what exactly happened inside that tent?" "Oh, it was awful! And it would have been so expensive to film.") And all her sun-and-stars talk is neatly balanced by her realization that she's never seen the sun come up in the west.
Most of the other major characters get at least some degree of closure too. Arya, now a master of pointyendology, learns to take advantage of the fact that everyone keeps calling her a boy. Jon Snow and the Night's Watch get to recite the Green Lantern oath, or whatever that "I am the sword in the darkness, the watcher on the walls" spiel is. Tyrion finally figures out a way to effectively humiliate his dad. Catelyn learns what happened to Bran, and gets at least a taste of the revenge she craves.
And the magnificently creepy pair of Baelish and Varys have another one of their circling-predator dialogues, in which they discuss what's between their legs, announce how much they admire each other, and get as far as "So! Here we are," although they're interrupted before they get a chance to actually make out. Actually, that would have been at least as satisfying for the last few minutes of a final episode as Tyrion slapping Joffrey a few dozen more times.
The sex, violence and catchphrase tally:
Bare breasts: Four, courtesy of Grand Maester Pycelle's young friend and, in that magnificent final scene, Danaerys. Also, we get our third naked man of the series, Lancel Lannister. Cersei might be luckier in love if she looked beyond her blood relatives as a dating pool, you know?
Fatalities: Khal Drogo eats a throw pillow, Mirri Maz Duur sings soprano, and it appears we lost Septa Mordane offscreen.
First of all I am not a prude. If I want to see some hot babes having sex I will be the first to whip out a high quality porn video. My favorite is Chantilly Lace!
On the other hand I really don't like having wimpy sex scenes in HBO movies. I am more interested in the movie and if I really want to see hot babes having sex I would whip out a porn video. But ....
HBO, you're busted
By Mary McNamara, Los Angeles Times Television Critic
July 3, 2011
Although it has not quite recaptured the magic of "The Sopranos," there is no denying that HBO is once again in full stride. With Emmy-winning movies, a panoply of well-done documentaries, successful comedies and dramatic hits both popular — "True Blood" — and critical — "Boardwalk Empire," "Treme" — the premium network bursts with so much justified confidence that it took on the perilous realm of fantasy with the well-received "Game of Thrones."
So maybe it's time to tone down the tits.
I write the word knowing it is going to render my editors and readers apoplectic — why not use the less crude "breasts?" [ Sounds like the writer for the LA Times is a prude! If you don't like boobs, don't look at the show! We don't need any government or network censorship! ] Because I don't mean breasts. Breasts are what you see on cable during a lovemaking scene or when a character is caught unawares or when, as in the season finale of "Game of Thrones," the last of the Targaryens rises, naked and miraculous, from her husband's funeral pyre with three baby dragons clinging to her.
Tits are what you see in a strip club or a brothel, when conversations or action between men, which usually have nothing to do with said strip club or brothel, are surrounded by nameless and silent women lounging or gyrating about in various stages of undress.
In one episode of "Game of Thrones," the upper frontals got so gratuitous — two women teaching themselves the tricks of prostitution while a male character, fully clothed, muses about his personal history and definition of power — that fans took to Twitter to complain. Even the fine finale included a young nude woman washing her particulars while her elderly john monologued about the nature of kings.
These scenes have become as much a hallmark of HBO as historically accurate dramatic series produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Other cable networks, mainly Showtime, dabble in the fine sport of female frontal nudity, but no one can beat HBO for hookers — the pole dancers of "The Sopranos," Al Swearengen's Gem Saloon on "Deadwood," the record-breaking female nudity of "Rome," and now, "Boardwalk Empire." HBO has a higher population of prostitutes per capita than Amsterdam or Charlie Sheen's Christmas card list.
Despite their quite disparate geography and genre, the newer series practically revolve around brothels. In "Boardwalk Empire," this makes a certain narrative sense; where there is liquor and gambling there will also be houses of ill repute. In "Game of Thrones," the scenes are more gratuitous — not only do the male characters visit prostitutes with wearisome regularity, one character, a king's counselor known as Littlefinger (Aiden Gillen), owns what appears to be a chain of brothels, which he considers the safest places to conduct his political conversations. This would be fine except, as in "Boardwalk Empire," the only rooms available for meetings are already occupied by half-naked women, lounging about seductively and occasionally playing the harp.
Now, I have not spent much time in the brothels of Prohibition-era Atlantic City or the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, but I'm fairly certain they would include some sort of private office where madams and menfolk could talk. I also wonder about all this free nudity — doesn't money have to exchange hands before the clothes come off? Not to mention the dazzling physical perfection of the women involved, who all appear to be so saucy, sober and healthy that one wonders why anyone bothered to invent penicillin.
Although there is male nudity — men occasionally, though not always, appear shirtless and/or bottomless when they are having sex with women — there are no male brothels, no scenes of clothed women, or men for that matter, sitting around chatting in a room filled with naked men. Well, maybe there was a scene or two like that in "Rome," but you get my point. The brothel scenes are there, ostensibly to make a point about men and power.
But as important to theme and character development as it may be to point out, in case we missed it on the nightly news, that some men enjoy paying for sex and treating women as sexual furniture, HBO has played this card so often that the obligatory scattering of reclining females with their blouses open or absent now elicits laughter more than shock or titillation.
Prostitutes and brothels are obviously and regrettably simply vehicles to work the R rating, to give viewers, if you will pardon the expression and maybe you shouldn't, more bang for the buck. Which isn't just gratuitous and ridiculous, it's lazy and sexist. For all their many functions, women's bodies are not props and prostitution is not something that should be regularly relegated to atmosphere.
It is also hugely unnecessary, an example of HBO uncharacteristically underestimating itself. Perhaps there was a time when people subscribed to the channel in part for the F-bombs and the nudity, but that time has passed. Naked women rule the Internet, "Doctor Who's" beloved Billie Piper plays a call girl on Showtime for goodness sake, and reality TV has redefined prostitution (is it truly more moral to sell one's soul than one's body?). No one subscribes to HBO because of the nudity, gratuitous or not.
So stick with the breasts — the final scene of the "Game of Thrones" season finale may be the best use of female nudity on television ever — and put all the tits away.
mary.mcnamara@latimes.com