The Case against Game of Thrones the TV Show

Disclaimer: This writer is no prude and therefore not liable for direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or other losses and damages incurred from acts of censorship including but not limited to viciously hacking off graphic sex scenes and bleeped out cuss words in a beloved television show resulting from a perusal of this column.

It must be unequivocally admitted that George RR Martin, author of the wildly popular series A Song of Fire and Ice, commonly known as Game of Thrones is all kinds of awesome. However that has not stopped his more rabid fans from frothing at the mouth, when the sexagenarian failed to make good on a promise to finish the hugely anticipated sixth instalment of the series, ‘The Winds of Winter’ before HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 6 premieres later this month.

For some, this is hardly the equivalent of the sun failing to rise in the morning or a similar catastrophe of devastating proportions but for the rest of us, who devoured his five offerings in the series, each thousand – page epic tomes of fantasy at its finest only to come to the calamitous realization that he is nowhere close to finished and tends to take a minimum of six years before books it is truly the end of the world and have been known to bawl uncontrollably into our pillows.

After venting their outrage on social media, the great man’s legion of fans have taken to praying fervently to every God out there to preserve the life of the old timer who looked alarmingly feeble and too overweight for the good of his heart when he held up his middle – finger on camera in response to all those who were selfishly worried that he would kick the bucket before writing the last line of his addictive saga set in Westeros.

Others like myself have chosen to take a principled stand against the television show which kidnapped the notoriously slow author, seducing and holding him captive with fat paycheques and impossibly skinny hotties who were very obliging when it came to leaving out the no nudity clause in their contracts with the unhappy result that GRRM has allowed the deadlines to whizz past while simultaneously pissing on every fanboy’s ardent desire to hold the next book in their hands and devour it whole to find out if a certain beloved character is truly dead and a notoriously wishy washy Queen has stopped shitting long enough to save herself and bring her winged monster to heel.

If that were not bad enough, the damn show is not a patch on the book. Initially, I refused to watch it, sticking to my decision to boycott the show for daring to distract GRRM from his noble labours, though others had given in to their desperate need for a Game of Thrones fix, in whatever format, with an embarrassing lack of resistance which made me go tsk and urge myself not to despise them for being weak.

It pains me to relate that my addiction got the better of me as well and forced me to throw myself at the feet of primetime television. And it was all for naught. The show is the book’s poor, plague – afflicted cousin. There are lots of ridiculously pretty people who jump each other’s bones at every miserably contrived opportunity acting on the instigation of their makers who compound their unforgiveable errors by daring to take liberties and diverging from the original script.

In the book, the characters are real and the writing is brilliant. Even the good looking ones get hurt, pass wind and suffer from hair loss, chopped noses and stretchmarks like normal folks. There is sex aplenty but it has the master’s touch which makes it engaging and arousing not groan – worthy like in the TV show, where nearly everybody is groomed to within an inch of their lives, boasting buff and hairless bodies as they moan and groan en route to the earth – shattering orgasms that form the climax of all that simulated sex. Who cares about the realistic dialogue when the sex scenes are amped up to the point where it is hilarious?

The entire thing is a blatant crime against good fiction and should not go unpunished. On behalf of fans everywhere, I beseech GRRM to save us before we once again fling every semblance of dignity aside to glue our eyes to the television screen in order to get high on Game of Thrones, even if it is a cheap fix.

An edited version of this was featured in The New Indian Express for my awesome fortnightly column, For Crying out Loud!