HBO has renewed the fantasy series for a third season, making many a fan very happy. Season 2 of the show just got underway last month.
No word on what the season will cover, since Book 3, A Storm of Swords, is pretty long and involved. Perhaps split it into two seasons?
What say you about Season 2 thus far?
The wife and I are enjoying it but the frequent use of “long character-developing dialogue while we have explicit sex” is starting to wear thin. I’m no prude, but some of those scenes seemed really over the top.
The buildup to the [spoiler]Battle of Blackwater[/spoiler] is excellent. Hopefully they can pull it off or at the very least attempt to. My complaint of last season was they brushed over the bigger battles without any thought.
Ah yes, some fan sites are referring to those moments as “sexpositions.” It’s a bit much, I agree, but if the ratings stay where they are, I don’t they’ll go away anytime soon.
So far? Outstanding!
One of the Season 2 promo videos mentioned they were trying to use actual sets and locations rather than CGI as much as possible and I think the show is much better for it, even the most absurd architecture is still somehow believable. Some more ships in the Iron Island’s harbour would have been nice though; they are supposed to have a huge fleet so surely some of them would have been in port? The casting is first rate, it’s hugely refreshing to *finally* see a show use ethnicity to better give a sense of scale to the world rather than just smacking a coloured actor in there to be PC.
Acting, a bit early to call I think. Many of the key characters this season have yet to get much (or any!) screen time, so it’s hard to say – definitely no howlers though. Tyrion (Peter Dinklage) is still very much on form, and is now getting top billing in the credits which is nice to see, and I really liked the mental sparring scenes between Tyrion and Cersei, Varys and Slynt + Bronn – some great acting all round there. We’re starting to see a new side to some of the existing characters; the scenes with Littlefinger, Theon and Jon Snow particularly stood out for me.
Some interesting new characters to get to grips with this year too – Stannis’ and his court are all mostly how I envisaged them to be from the books; Stannis, Seaworth and Salladhar Saan were particularly well portrayed. Melisandre I’m not so sure on yet – she doesn’t quite seem to mysterious as the books have her, but perhaps that’s intentional – although it seems to exist, magic doesn’t really “happen” in the books either.
Oh, for more than 10 episodes in a season though… It’s going to be awfully hard trying to cram the later books down into that format without dropping a sub-plot (nigh on impossible!) or splitting a book into two seasons. And that’s including the ones GRRM already split into multiple books.
I won’t catch up with this until summer. I get to call my colleagues at lunch nerds because the most of them, old-school jocks, watch this.
Seriously, why aren’t we reviewing GoT?
To be honest, I was wondering the same thing. I imagine everyone’s busy with this and that, as there haven’t been that many reviewable things coming out recently.