Does GoT Have too Many Characters?

[Bridgeburners]

I'm talking about the show now, not the book. In fact, the book has a considerably larger cast, some of whom I wish we could see on screen (Strong Belwas).

However, when I judge a show, I try to judge it as a stand-alone piece of work, whether or not it's based on anything else. This means that I don't care how faithfully they stick to aSoIaF. I have no problem with creative license, even if it's works to stray away from some overarching point GRRM tries to make, as long as there are different points that the show writers want to illustrate.

The thing is, a show has to accept that it has to adhere to a completely unique format in order to tell a story. Sure, it has a hell of a lot more screen time than a movie, so it can tell a much more thorough and compelling story, and can engage the audience with its characters more.

ASoIaF gains its notoriety for being a fantasy series that engages the readers with its characters more than most fantasy series out there. Every character has a rich backstory that helps flesh out their motivation. Brienne has her unfortunate past with Randyl Tarly's men and their "contest", Cersei has her backstory with Maggy the Frog, etc. But it's not just about back stories - the characters have very well fleshed out reasons and motivations for their actions, which is very well illustrated by their dialogue and by their PoV narratives.

So if I were to find a TV show analog to aSoIaF, in terms of top of the line characterization, which show would I use? Certainly not GoT. The sheer cast size, compared to the size of each season, is not enough to really flesh out most characters, which unfortunately makes a lot of characters' screen counterparts far more shallow and archetypal than they are in the book series.

If I had to pick a show, I would say Breaking Bad. It has a lot less to work with in terms of its air time than GRRM has with his pages. So it makes up for that by having a much smaller cast. Five seasons to flesh out Walter, Jesse, Skyler, Hank, Mike, and Gus is plenty of time to make them as wonderful and dynamic as the many aSoIaF characters. It definitely acknowledges the limitations of the TV format, and doesn't make as ambitious a cast as, say, GoT.

See, I wouldn't mind if GoT would have had a smaller cast and less complicated plot. To me, it's more important to capture the essence of characterization from the book series than it is to simply get the events "right", and get all the "important" bits. This would have meant a redefinition and reformatting of the whole thing, but I could have lived with it.

What do you think?

[YTDN]

This is a common criticism of the show by professional critics. There's so many characters and storylines that it's hard to connect to everyone.

I wouldn't compare ASoIaF to Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad only has about five/ten principals (depending on your definition), which is actually a pretty small cast. Better comparison would be something like The Wire (which I've never watched btw), where there's dozens of characters and storylines. Also, Breaking Bad most definitely has a main character who carries the whole story through, which ASoIaF... doesn't.

The problem with saying they should have a smaller cast and a less complicated plot is that this is basically what the Hollywood execs proposed to GRRM- that they focus on one or two storylines and leave the rest on the cutting room floor. GRRM rejected that and for good reason. It wouldn't be ASoIaF that way.

D&D may have made quite a few misteps, but I think they have got the gist of the characters down, and did it well enough for the audience to connect with them despite the relatively small screentime we have with each character. It comes down to the medium. As you pointed out, the POV structure and internal monologue means we can get huge amounts of detail for each character. On a TV show you don't have that, so the only way to get as much richness is to focus heavily on the character, using character building moments and the actors performance. Breaking Bad could do that because they had five seasons of thirteen episodes to focus on a small cast.

I think what GoT has going for it is that it has a pretty universally amazing cast, who manage to work in so much subtlety into their performance. You can see they're fully realized characters even without the internal monologue. If the actors were average, the show simply wouldn't work.

I'm rambling, but basically my point it that you're right. GoT does have too many characters, which makes some 'shallowing' of the characters necessary (although I would argue it's not as severe as some doomsayers say). But it simply couldn't be done any other way. The sprawling plot and huge cast is what makes ASoIaF, and there was a reason that GRRM rejected the 'slimming down' approach of the Hollywood execs and went with D&D.

[Born Sinner]

I'm talking about the show now, not the book. In fact, the book has a considerably larger cast, some of whom I wish we could see on screen (Strong Belwas).

However, when I judge a show, I try to judge it as a stand-alone piece of work, whether or not it's based on anything else. This means that I don't care how faithfully they stick to aSoIaF. I have no problem with creative license, even if it's works to stray away from some overarching point GRRM tries to make, as long as there are different points that the show writers want to illustrate.

The thing is, a show has to accept that it has to adhere to a completely unique format in order to tell a story. Sure, it has a hell of a lot more screen time than a movie, so it can tell a much more thorough and compelling story, and can engage the audience with its characters more.

ASoIaF gains its notoriety for being a fantasy series that engages the readers with its characters more than most fantasy series out there. Every character has a rich backstory that helps flesh out their motivation. Brienne has her unfortunate past with Randyl Tarly's men and their "contest", Cersei has her backstory with Maggy the Frog, etc. But it's not just about back stories - the characters have very well fleshed out reasons and motivations for their actions, which is very well illustrated by their dialogue and by their PoV narratives.

So if I were to find a TV show analog to aSoIaF, in terms of top of the line characterization, which show would I use? Certainly not GoT. The sheer cast size, compared to the size of each season, is not enough to really flesh out most characters, which unfortunately makes a lot of characters' screen counterparts far more shallow and archetypal than they are in the book series.

If I had to pick a show, I would say Breaking Bad. It has a lot less to work with in terms of its air time than GRRM has with his pages. So it makes up for that by having a much smaller cast. Five seasons to flesh out Walter, Jesse, Skyler, Hank, Mike, and Gus is plenty of time to make them as wonderful and dynamic as the many aSoIaF characters. It definitely acknowledges the limitations of the TV format, and doesn't make as ambitious a cast as, say, GoT.

See, I wouldn't mind if GoT would have had a smaller cast and less complicated plot. To me, it's more important to capture the essence of characterization from the book series than it is to simply get the events "right", and get all the "important" bits. This would have meant a redefinition and reformatting of the whole thing, but I could have lived with it.

What do you think?

Who are you reffering to as not fleshed out enough? I think the "main characters" are pretty well characterised for example Margaery has even more layers than in the book.

[protar]

I only started really feeling this in S3, which introduced a lot of new characters (Tully's, Wildlings, Essosi) whilst also giving more prominence to old characters (namely the Tyrells) and sending off characters like Theon, Jaime and Sam on their own solo adventures.

I don't think this was unavoidable though, and rather was a result of D+D poorly managing the large cast. The Tullys where introduced later than they should have been, resulting in us not really getting to know them well enough. The inverse issue is true of Mance, who left too early. Theon was given far too much screen time, with not enough story to fill it out. On the flip side characters like Stannis and Bran had the potential for decent story arcs but instead where given very little - but despite this still appeared in episodes where they didn't have anything to do.

The main issue here was KL. In the books, not that much actually happens in KL during the first part of SOS and D+D pretty much stuck to the same plot as in the books, just with a lot of superfluous character interactions added in. The result was that KL remained the apparent main locale of the show, but with a lot less dramatic plot stuff happening, meaning that a lot of time that could have been used to flesh out other plot lines and the related characters, was instead spent in a vain attempt to assure audiences that KL was still front and centre.

D+D should imo, have been a bit braver and downgraded KL a bit, to give a bit more time to Robb's campaign and Jon Beyond the Wall, where the majority of the new characters were focused.

[Longspear Ryk]

Breaking bad only fleshed out walt jesse hank and a tiny bit skylar

Game of thrones is on an entirely different level

[juanml82]

Robb's campaign had enough time IMHO, it's just that they should have introduced the Tullys, or at least the Blackfish, in season 2. As they are, they aren't fleshed out at all.

The issue with Mance isn't about screentime, but about characterization. He's pretty much a generic warlord, which could have been avoided by introducing him like the books: a bard in colourful clothing who is suddenly revealed as the King Beyond the Wall. Even without going through his backstory, by seeing such a character, viewers will know there is a lot more about it than "generic warlord".

Theon had too much time of torture porn and, regarding Stannis and Bran, the source material is similar. Stannis doesn't return to the spotlight until he sails to the Wall.

In other words, I think they are handling the amount of characters as well as possible regarding the amount of characters. It's how they aren't fleshing out "minor" characters such as Mance or the Blackfish in as little screentime as possible that's the issue, IMHO.

I don't think greatly reducing the cast would work. Part of what makes GoT what it is is the vastness of the world, and that requires to many characters. That said, the series would benefit from longer/more episodes per season.

[Fightbringer]

difficult to say if GoT has too many characters from a sullied perspective, i remember when i was watching s1 for the first time (having not read the books before that) i had a bit of difficulty figuring out who was who, for example it took me until my first rewatch to figure out who Lord Commander Mormont was, and to figure out that the black brother with tyrion, the one who came to visit ned, and the one who rescued arya, were all the same people. But other than that, by mid season i had the main characters down, and quite a few of the secondary ones too, once you know the main cast and they add new characters one by one i found it easier to know who was who.

Though the unsullied i know often find it difficult to name anyone who isnt a main character in conversation (and even then, they sometimes find those hard)i get the sense they know who they are, maybe some characters like the tullys its harder to say whether the average viewer knows who they are, because there isnt very much warning by the show to say that that is where robb and cat are going, but i think with wildling characters for example its easier because your missing out on a key plot point if you dont realise that jon is with the wildlings, and is going to see mance rayder, so these people must be wildling leaders, and also mance rayder.

Ultimately having too many characters may be true of the show, but it makes the plot work a lot better this way, and if unsullied dont know who a minor character is, it generally wont effect to much usually. Also, as has already been mentioned if we go down that road of reducing characters, we wouldnt have much left, especially if you wanted it on the level of breaking bad, i'd bet there are more than 20 characters who are would be considered 'main characters' in aSoIaF, and there are only 5 or so in Breaking Bad, if that. That would mean at least half or so of the main characters would be cut, or at least greatly cut down, which would result in a version that was a pale shadow of the books. In my opinion actually, a large cast doesnt affect how good and how deep characters are, i'd say GoT would beat breaking bad on both those fronts.

[Daske]

...

So if I were to find a TV show analog to aSoIaF, in terms of top of the line characterization, which show would I use? Certainly not GoT. The sheer cast size, compared to the size of each season, is not enough to really flesh out most characters, which unfortunately makes a lot of characters' screen counterparts far more shallow and archetypal than they are in the book series.

...

I think plenty of people feel that GoT is still one of the best shows for characterization on TV despite the size of the cast. I think with less characters sure you may get a bit more backstory but honestly I feel they've given us enough for most of us to feel we know Ned, Cat, Robb, Arya and everyone which makes it a more impressive feat given their relatively short times on screen. And balancing out what detail we don't need is as important too. Sure Sopranos and The Wire are off the scale for characterization but this is almost their whole raison d'etre, with very little story or action so it's a difficult comparison.

I think the closest show to GoT for similar balance and characterization but with a medium-sized cast is probably Battlestar Galactica. A complicated universe and plot with fantasy and action elements but where most of the main characters have detailed, believeable backstories which are trickled down to the viewer slowly and each of the main characters is really well defined without being cliche. And no gender-bias which is refreshing. Galactica probably has GoT beat with the most grey and conflicted charcacter of any TV series too in Gaius Baltar.

[King of the Road]

I think given time constraints they've done a pretty good job. As you say, it'll always be limited due to the size of the cast, unlike Breaking Bad or Justified, but I reckon viewers have pretty clearly gotten to know most of the characters and get a clear idea of what motivates them and how they've changed, especially in the instances of Jaime, Cersei and Arya

[Janicia]

I think the show creators made the right decision of keeping the meat of the show in Kings Landing rather than trying to split the show evenly across the various major locations. Jon, Arya, Bran, Theon, and Dany's plotlines have to end up mattering/tying into Kings Landing, or it will feel wrong. Big Bang Theory recently pointed out that Indiana Jones' heroic efforts in Raiders of the Lost Arc had no impact at all on the events of the movie, and that realizing this ruins the movie. If these other stories are going to pay off, they have to lead back to Kings Landing.

So even when really great characters and scenes are hollowed out or skipped from the non Kings Landing storylines, I think that's just the price of adaptation. The show needs to be centered around Kings Landing more strongly than the book does because the show doesn't have the time to draw finely connecting threads between everything. It will be interesting how the show handles the hollowing out of the Kings Landing cast in season 5. It will be really difficult to pull off everybody traveling in small groups as a satisfying season.

[Bridgeburners]

I think plenty of people feel that GoT is still one of the best shows for characterization on TV despite the size of the cast. I think with less characters sure you may get a bit more backstory but honestly I feel they've given us enough for most of us to feel we know Ned, Cat, Robb, Arya and everyone which makes it a more impressive feat given their relatively short times on screen. And balancing out what detail we don't need is as important too. Sure Sopranos and The Wire are off the scale for characterization but this is almost their whole raison d'etre, with very little story or action so it's a difficult comparison.

I think the closest show to GoT for similar balance and characterization but with a medium-sized cast is probably Battlestar Galactica. A complicated universe and plot with fantasy and action elements but where most of the main characters have detailed, believeable backstories which are trickled down to the viewer slowly and each of the main characters is really well defined without being cliche. And no gender-bias which is refreshing. Galactica probably has GoT beat with the most grey and conflicted charcacter of any TV series too in Gaius Baltar.

I think a lot of people are mistakenly appraising GoT's dynamic cast of characters as "good characterization". GoT has a very dynamic cast with a great diversity of characters, and their behavior is very convincing and human. And it deserves a lot of praise for that. But in terms of actual character development - that is, the whole part about getting into a specific character, fleshing out their motivations, showing their transformation and the like - the show lacks a bit.

Take Tyrion, for example. (I'll try to be vague since I didn't spoiler tag the thread title.) The reason I used Breaking Bad as an example is because to me, Tyrion is the "Walter White" of aSoIaF (or more accurately I should say Walter White is the "Tyrion" of BB, since I read aSoIaF before BB came out). He's a very likable character at the start; he's very easy to identify with, and really makes you feel for his plight. But along the way, he does a lot of very morally questionable things, particularly after he comes back to KL. (Plus he has a scene at the end of aSoS which I can almost directly relate to a scene with Walter at the end of season 2.) In the show, however, there's really none of that moral ambiguity brought about at all. In fact, Tyrion is very much a white knight. His moral compass is centuries ahead of the rest of Westeros, and more in line with our modern moral standards (it sure helps in making him a fan favourite). I have another thread titled "How will the audience feel about Tyrion after S4?" Basically half the people guessed that they won't make Tyrion do what he did in the book, because the TV version is too whitewashed, and he's not capable of doing what Book-Tyrion would do.

But see, that's what I love so much about Book-Tyrion. He's such a morally ambiguous character that often it's hard to tell whether or not you should root for him. You get those same mixed emotions about him that Walter gives you in Breaking Bad. But in the show GoT, I can't say I ever felt anything so tremulous about any of its characters. Everyone is either completely purely sadistic and evil, or a paragon of good and morality. Okay, that may be too harsh; they did a good job with Jamie in terms of the moral ambiguity thing.

@YTDN: The Wire is a good comparison (and in my mind, just as good as BB and tied as my favourite show). But in my opinion, it doesn't have as strong characterization as Breaking Bad (it shines for other reasons, such as its powerful portrayal of the modern urban environment and political problems, which are extremely overlooked in real life). To me, Breaking Bad does a much more powerful job capturing the human element of morality and character transformation. That's the thing that aSoIaF is well known for, and that's the element that GoT is trying to capture. To me, no show captures the powerful characterization that aSoIaF uses better than Breaking Bad, and that's why it is the show I think GoT should benchmark against.

Now, is the solution to reduce the cast and plot complexity to fit the TV show format? I don't know... maybe it would be a disaster. So I posed it as an open question. One could also ask if Breaking Bad should have expanded its scope to match that of The Wire. And maybe it would have benefited the show immensely, who knows. But I'm sure it would have come at the sacrifice of its brilliant characterization.

[protar]

I think the show creators made the right decision of keeping the meat of the show in Kings Landing rather than trying to split the show evenly across the various major locations. Jon, Arya, Bran, Theon, and Dany's plotlines have to end up mattering/tying into Kings Landing, or it will feel wrong. Big Bang Theory recently pointed out that Indiana Jones' heroic efforts in Raiders of the Lost Arc had no impact at all on the events of the movie, and that realizing this ruins the movie. If these other stories are going to pay off, they have to lead back to Kings Landing.

So even when really great characters and scenes are hollowed out or skipped from the non Kings Landing storylines, I think that's just the price of adaptation. The show needs to be centered around Kings Landing more strongly than the book does because the show doesn't have the time to draw finely connecting threads between everything. It will be interesting how the show handles the hollowing out of the Kings Landing cast in season 5. It will be really difficult to pull off everybody traveling in small groups as a satisfying season.

I disagree here. I think that most audiences are quite clear on the fact that the stories at the Wall and in Essos especially, aren't going to be tying in properly to what's going on in KL for a long time. It's also clear that both of those stories are going to have some major importance in the series end game - perhaps more important than the political side of things. So I don't really know why it would even be necessary for them to tie into KL.

The show doesn't need to be centred around KL. D+D rightfully chose that to be the case in S1 and 2 when that was very much how the books went as well - but when they forced the formula onto S3, the show suffered for it. And that's not going to get better. KL can almost certainly carry S4 as the central locale, but what's going to happen in S5? With only one consistent POV in KL that's not really manageable, and meanwhile the Wall and Meereen become political hubs of their own. The three should be given equal attention imo. S3 (and 4) would have been a great opportunity to wean the audience off of having KL as the main location so that there's not some abrupt change later on in the show's lifespan.

[Ser Tahu]

Overall I think it is actually one of the show's greatest strengths that they can tell a coherent, engaging story that people love to follow without there being a single well defined main character. As to whether there are too many characters, I would say that they currently have a good number. Season 5, which is going to be the shows largest point in terms of cast size, will likely push it right to the limit unless they cut out major storylines altogether (which I don't think they are going to do, and hope they won't do).

As for the separation of the Wall and Essos: all of my non-readers friends are in the same category: although they want to see Daenerys invade, and want to see the fight against the Others, none of them really expect Daenerys to get to Westeros just yet, and all of them recognise that the fight against the Others will likely be the subject of the final season and although they look forward to it they are very willing to wait for it.

I'm sure that the most casual of viewers don't really remember the characters and might lost patience at Daenerys and the Others not invading yet, I think that anyone who even remotely cares for the show (which I like to think is most people) are willing to wait for the story to unfold on it's own terms and are willing to put in the small amount of effort it takes to remember the characters.

[Ahri Adaran]

I only started really feeling this in S3, which introduced a lot of new characters (Tully's, Wildlings, Essosi) whilst also giving more prominence to old characters (namely the Tyrells) and sending off characters like Theon, Jaime and Sam on their own solo adventures.

I don't think this was unavoidable though, and rather was a result of D+D poorly managing the large cast. The Tullys where introduced later than they should have been, resulting in us not really getting to know them well enough. The inverse issue is true of Mance, who left too early. Theon was given far too much screen time, with not enough story to fill it out. On the flip side characters like Stannis and Bran had the potential for decent story arcs but instead where given very little - but despite this still appeared in episodes where they didn't have anything to do.

The main issue here was KL. In the books, not that much actually happens in KL during the first part of SOS and D+D pretty much stuck to the same plot as in the books, just with a lot of superfluous character interactions added in. The result was that KL remained the apparent main locale of the show, but with a lot less dramatic plot stuff happening, meaning that a lot of time that could have been used to flesh out other plot lines and the related characters, was instead spent in a vain attempt to assure audiences that KL was still front and centre.

D+D should imo, have been a bit braver and downgraded KL a bit, to give a bit more time to Robb's campaign and Jon Beyond the Wall, where the majority of the new characters were focused.

I agree with this analysis for the most part. However, I think a lot of this happened more due to financial issues than anything else.

They've hired a huge number of good actors for this show and they only have so much budget. This means that they have to avoid introducing a new character late in a season whenever possible. It also means just not paying the actors all that much. To make up for the actors not getting paid that much, the show instead makes sure they get recognition. This means making sure that they get sufficient screen time to get noticed and appear in as many episodes as possible.

I think this is the source of a lot of the "hey guys, this character is still around but isn't doing much of anything this week!" scenes. I expect a lot of actors have contracts that say "appears in X number of episodes this season" and they had to make sure to hit that number while not having the episodes run too long, and often the best way to do that was to give us those stuff like the rabbit skinning scene.

The same goes for a lot of the KL filler in Season 3. Reading Unsullied threads I was surprised how few of them were noticing just how much filler there was. It was like the showrunners made a grid of KL characters and filled in each cell with a scene of two characters are in a room talking about stuff and nothing much happens plot wise. Pretty much all that happened was Sansa getting married and they really stretched that out. I can't really blame them too much since they have a huge stable of talented KL actors and they needed to feed them lines and scenes and episode appearances and screen time (probably a lot of it mandated in contracts). In any case a lot of those "two guys chatting in a room" scenes were enormously entertaining even though they didn't do much to further the plot, so I don't mind so much. At least they fleshed out a lot of the characters for when the fireworks really start going off in KL next season.

[protar]

I agree with this analysis for the most part. However, I think a lot of this happened more due to financial issues than anything else.

They've hired a huge number of good actors for this show and they only have so much budget. This means that they have to avoid introducing a new character late in a season whenever possible. It also means just not paying the actors all that much. To make up for the actors not getting paid that much, the show instead makes sure they get recognition. This means making sure that they get sufficient screen time to get noticed and appear in as many episodes as possible.

I think this is the source of a lot of the "hey guys, this character is still around but isn't doing much of anything this week!" scenes. I expect a lot of actors have contracts that say "appears in X number of episodes this season" and they had to make sure to hit that number while not having the episodes run too long, and often the best way to do that was to give us those stuff like the rabbit skinning scene.

The same goes for a lot of the KL filler in Season 3. Reading Unsullied threads I was surprised how few of them were noticing just how much filler there was. It was like the showrunners made a grid of KL characters and filled in each cell with a scene of two characters are in a room talking about stuff and nothing much happens plot wise. Pretty much all that happened was Sansa getting married and they really stretched that out. I can't really blame them too much since they have a huge stable of talented KL actors and they needed to feed them lines and scenes and episode appearances and screen time (probably a lot of it mandated in contracts). In any case a lot of those "two guys chatting in a room" scenes were enormously entertaining even though they didn't do much to further the plot, so I don't mind so much. At least they fleshed out a lot of the characters for when the fireworks really start going off in KL next season.

It is certainly possible that certain actors (especially characters like Tyrion) are contracted to appear in a certain number of episodes. But even then filler is used when it could have been avoided: If they needed to make Tyrion appear in every episode sans one, where was the Symon Subplot? That would give Tyrion screentime, show his more morally ambiguous side, and provide some development for his relationship with Shae which imo was pitifully strained this season.

More than anything though, I think that D+D is simply worried that in such a large cast people will get lost, and so make sure there are lots of reminder scenes that don't really serve much other purpose. And in doing this it actually makes the problem worse because it takes time away from meaningful development. It's not the audience which is overwhelmed by this huge cast, it's D+D.

[Colonel Green]

I think the "main characters" are pretty well characterised for example Margaery has even more layers than in the book.

Margaery's not a main character in the books, so that's not really a good comparison.

As a general rule, I think the POV characters are markedly less complex than the books (which was, to an extent, inevitable, from the loss of their inner voices), while the neutral POV of the camera and good acting can bring peripheral figures from the books into greater focus (though not always, as with Littlefinger).

[CelticAggression]

If you're too stupid to keep the characters straight, find another show. Changing something means you have to change something else. They already fucked up by taking Willas Tyrell out, making Margaery the heir after Loras bites it.

[Bridgeburners]

By the way, I noticed that several people in this thread completely missed the point. My gripe with the cast size has nothing to do with one's ability to follow the characters. If there are show-only people out there who can't keep up with the cast, that's fine with me. They can look it up, re-watch, or, hopefully, read the actual series which, IMO, is 10000x better than the show. That is not at all what I'm addressing.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there. I won't repeat my actual point because I think I made it abundantly clear in my other posts. If you can't be bothered to read it, and are just responding to the thread title (eg. CelticAggression), then I beg you, please do not respond.

[Mr Fixit]

If you're too stupid to keep the characters straight, find another show.

So, in the entire history of your illustrious, hopefully multiyear TV viewing you never ever forgot a character's name, confused a character with another one, or god forbid found yourself asking "who's this guy again, was he even on the show?"

If so, congrats and applauds.

[King of the Road]

So, in the entire history of your illustrious, hopefully multiyear TV viewing you never ever forgot a character's name, confused a character with another one, or god forbid found yourself asking "who's this guy again, was he even on the show?"

If so, congrats and applauds.

Aye, like when Justified re-introduced a minor character from Season 2 in Season 4 (pretty sure that happened), I needed a reminder of who the guy was.