I refused to give in to the hype of season three because exceptional TV shows are usually cursed to peak by the third season and dismally peter out. This was admittedly somewhat difficult as I was confronted by promotional posters with various steely glares that followed me in tube stations, but in a bid to remain objective I forced myself to enjoy the adverts for the new Jeffrey Archer novel instead. At the end of season two, I came to the realisation that Game of Thrones was just so much better without all the magic crap of the white walkers. The show attempts to include too much material in order to hook viewers from across all genres, when in reality all the viewers really want to see is nudity and violence (sometimes at the same time), and lots of it. However, on a nice Saturday night, curled up ready for the carnage, I pressed play. The first five minutes were stylistically tense and eerie, but then they cued in the music for the title sequence, and I got all excited (I’m a big fan of theme tunes; The Big Bang Theory was my alarm for the longest time). But that’s about all the excitement there was.
Thinking back about what possible spoilers there could be, I realise rather bemusedly that nothing actually happens in this episode, so no spoilers could be given no matter how much I wanted to ruin your life and your viewing pleasure. If you want a shiny new season to be epic, you want there to be some sort of narrative intrigue. Unfortunately, all that this episode offered was a semi-recap of last season: the time difference between the two seasons being so short (only a matter of hours) that nothing novel was introduced. Unlike the bridging from the first season to the second, there was no horrible aftermath to be dealt with, so the series could focus on emotion rather than action. However, the primary problem with the semi-recap was that aside from the three or four main characters, my memory of everybody else was non-existent. Consequently, subplots involving lots of old, bearded men conspiring against some regime were completely lost on me. The overall effect was that the first episode was slightly bland and lacklustre in plot; dwelling too long on irrelevant parts of the narrative. It may also be the fact that there was not enough man-candy time in the form of Jamie Lannister or Jon Snowe for it to be a stellar episode, or that an hour is inevitably too short for scriptwriters to inspire the hatred for King Joffrey that had sustained my anger throughout the last two seasons. Never judge a season by the first episode though, and there is still the potential for writers and producers to salvage what appears to be a disappointing start to a widely anticipated season.
