woweezowee

First of all (The Wire season five spoilers) . Second, he certainly isn't presented as a perfect character, as the term Gary Stu suggests - he looks grotesque, his actions are in many ways reprehensible. He is very good at what he does, which means that other characters are frightened of him. He's not a very realistic character, but it is internally consistent that he terrifies others, and that as a result they don't want to fight him. If you want to talk about ridiculous Wire characters, though, I'd certainly give you Brother Mouzone. Not saying it's perfect. :) Anyway, erm, this is getting a bit off-topic so I'll shut up about other television shows now.

So, (The Wire spoiler) Spoiler that particular example doesn't make much sense, right? I would hold it up as a gold standard. I wasn't suggesting that it was entirely realistic; I was suggesting that it was more than just entertainment, and I would add that I think it's remarkably internally consistent considering the vast world they create.

I'm saying that the TV series (as opposed to the books) sets out to be slick entertainment, and succeeds. The dialogue is interesting and often funny, it's consistently well acted and generally pretty exciting. At times, for the sake of making a scene interesting, the writers have the characters do some implausible things. But most people a - don't notice, and b - wouldn't care if they did notice; not everyone over-analyses in the manner of some book purists on here. Yes, I'm saying that a scene which doesn't strictly make sense if you sit down and think about for twenty minutes should be absolved from criticism, provided it's exciting and has great dialogue (like the Jaime scene). As much as I love the ASOIAF novels and enjoy speculating about their future direction on here, I don't think the characters are as nuanced, the writing as good (or, indeed, the world as fully realised) as The Wire, which is one of the best-written works in any medium. So yeah, it is the gold standard as far as I'm concerned. Feel free to disagree :)

One thing I'd add re: changes from the books. A common criticism of the changes (made repeatedly in the reviews on this website) is that they mostly make for worse, not better, TV. The reasoning for this is often along the lines of 'it's implausible that the character would do this!' or 'that's inconsistent with scene x!' or 'it was unnecessary for the character to do that!'. But I think these 'problems' are only perceived as problems by Martin obsessives who scrutinise the show extremely closely. A large majority of viewers simply don't care about them. On spoiler-free discussion of the episodes, these scenes are often praised as particularly strong, and any inconsistencies waved away with a laugh. Take, for instance, the scene last episode where Jaime killed his relative. One response could be: 'that's absurd, he didn't need to kill him!'. But who cares? It was an exciting, well-written scene, dramatic and tense precisely because it was clear he was going to kill him. It was entertaining television. AGOT is not The Wire; it's just entertainment, and it was never going to hold up to the level of analysis some fans want to apply to it.

I gave it an eight. I liked that they slowed down the pace and allowed in some interesting character-developing scenes. I also liked that they didn't try to shoehorn in a silly cliffhanger, which has been a problem this scene. I mostly agree with LeggoMyEssos's articulate defence of the show, particularly the point that I've really enjoyed the series. I can see why people who are extremely emotionally attached to the characters in the book might find changes difficult to accept, and there's the occasional alteration which I think hasn't worked - for instance, the complete change in Littlefinger's character has made him less interesting, and his role as a wandering exposition-machine could have been better served by an entirely new character - but, for the most part, they've got things right. Many of the best scenes this series weren't in the books.