Why Season 1 of Game of Thrones Is SO GREAT

5:18 Fewer* episodes. Not Less, fewer. - Stannis the Goddamn Mannis.

Season 1-4: adaptation of the books Season 5-6: fan fiction of the books Season 7: fan fiction of the show Season 8: someone’s grandma who doesn’t watch the show tasked with writing an ending

The show went from “When you play the game of thrones you win or you die” to “She mah queen”

GRRM: "It will take 11 to 13 seasons to tell the full story." D&D: "Great, so in like 7 or 8 seasons you'd get the gist of it." GRMM: "What?"

My theory was that the limited budget for the earlier series forced the writers and directors to better utilize story telling compared to season 8’s boom boom dragons.

Tywins death on the toilet was a metaphor for the fact that after his death the writing went to shit.

Because Sean Bean was so damn good as Eddard

"After watching season 8 dozens of times" I am so sorry to hear Nobody deserves such an awful punishment

Also there was very little politics in the last two seasons. One of the big selling points for me was to see complex politics being played by realistic characters and have realistic consequences. It almost didn't feel like a story. It felt like history. The later seasons feel like a story of a blockbuster movie. Main characters get plot armors and the plans are all dumb as hell. Only Cercei and Danny are left who are still playing the game of thrones (badly) and then they both die and no one wants to play anymore. So Cercei's line from season 1 should be, "In the game of thrones, you either win or die, till all the players are dead, or don't want to play anymore." Imagine watching a game of football with the greatest players in the world but before the end all the players get red cards and there's no one left on the pitch to play the match. And the referee decides he's won. How disappointing would that be!

Bran in Season 8: "Yes I can. I am the King." Tywin in Season 4: "Any man who must say 'I am the king' is no true king".

S1-7 "Winter is coming" S8 "Winter came..for one episode!"

Seasons 1–3 are my favorites. They are complex and deep without getting out of control. They are medieval and feel like an old world, unlike the later seasons that turn into high budget modern cosplay.

I started watching Game of Thrones because of Sean Bean. I knew him from Lord of The Rings as Boromir and when I saw him as a similar character, the show got my interest. Season 1 was great but the moment I got hooked was the execution of Ned Stark. When I was watching the scene, I was saying "Nah, they will save him someway. They cannot kill the main character, this is how TV works" . When I realised I was wrong, I wanted to watch the rest of the series and know everything about GOT universe. Thanks to this, I read all the books and watched all seasons. In short season 1 is a masterpiece thanks to exceptional storytelling of George Martin, great choice of casts and their hard-work to get in their characters (of course Sean Bean takes the lead here) and smart use of limited budget. Every time D&D makes changes, they damaged the story and show. The funniest thing is , story was great when they did nothing. We all know what happens when they started writing story on their own.

Season 1's dialogue was almost shakesperean Season 8's dialogue was almost at a 5th grade level

Game of Thrones The show where budget went up and the quality went down

I fell in love with GoT due to the dialogue. When that decreased, my love of the show vanished

I loved how the first few seasons portrayed warfare fairly realistically. Even though there were no battles in S1, there were scenes devoted to battle planning and negotiations (the whole reason Robb agreed to a marital alliance with the Freys was to get extra troops and a strategic crossing). Despite S7 and S8 featuring huge battles, the phrases "vanguard" and "supply lines" are never said, and the armies just appear wherever they're needed.

I missed the times when Bran wasn’t some lifeless, useless rock that just weirded everyone out and was actually an interesting character that cared about his friends/family

If only the show itself had as thick plot armor as Arya, maybe it would have survived being violently stabbed to death by Dumb and Dumber

Later seasons can only be summed up in one Francis Ford Coppola quote: We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane.