re: I'm a weak man, I caved and re-watched Game of Thrones. Where it went off the rails...

I read entire OP post and agree. Well put. When they did that little recap at the beginning of that one show to show how "crazy" she was I knew something was gonna suck. The unsullied dude (the worm? Damn I forgot) was a character I always hated and hated even more at the end. I know that was the intention but was cheap on the writers part

did we mention Jaime spending 8 years on a character redemption arc only to run back to his bitch sister and die together?

The ending was so bad people have forgot the ominous signs that came in Season 5 (first season to move passed the books in a major way) and how truly bad and half baked the Dorne plot was

People were in here noting the big drop off in quality and I think I even defended those plots in here when it was happening live, thinking they wouldn’t continue to frick it up. By god was I wrong

Season 6 and 7 have moments that recapture the glory of the first 4, but even those moments were mostly death note to the show having a satisfying ending, because they would sacrifice logical paths forward in the name of subverting expectations, and then having no solid plan to move forward after whatever twist they went with

Biggest example of that is Arya killing the night king. Incredible episode of TV live and for a brief moment it reinvigorated the show, which was starting to hit the same beats over and over in the later seasons, but then you are left with the aftermath and you realize they basically sacrificed an insane amount of plot development that was crafted over 4-6 seasons in the name of surprising fans in the current season. And so we ended up sputtering to the finish like with another 4 episodes after that that feel like an epilogue to a disappointing story that ended with a single scene.

I’ll spare you the rest of my manifesto on the abomination that is the ending of GOTs for now

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That's because it's not really that bad overall

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It's not. The ending made me dislike it more than I ever would have imagined. I mean you could have stopped the show 20 minutes before it ended, before Tyrion came out and gave his ridiculous Bran the Broken speech, and I still would have been ok with it actually. I still would have hated how things ended in Kings Landing/Jon/Dany, but nothing compared to the hate I have for Bran being named King and the way he was named. Tyrion was just as responsible for Dany's death as Jon, yet he gets to be hand of the king in the end and Jon gets banished

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I've said before that I think the hate toward GoT will cool the further out from the ending we get

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The Game of Thrones episode threads in real time were something else. There was so much hatred for the show in there that it made you hate it more at the time.

Even though the show was in decline I remember watching "The Bells" the night it came out and when Dany was sitting there on Drogon on the city walls and she was staring at the Red Keep and the bells starting ringing. My heart was actually racing. Like ok, here's the moment we find out how the coin flipped with Dany, good or bad. Those were some of the most tense few moments of TV I've ever watched. I remember how disappointed I was when she started setting Kings Landing on fire.

Not sure there will ever be another TV phenomenon like GoT was.

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The ending was so bad people have forgot the ominous signs that came in Season 5 (first season to move passed the books in a major way) and how truly bad and half baked the Dorne plot was

People were in here noting the big drop off in quality and I think I even defended those plots in here when it was happening live, thinking they wouldn’t continue to frick it up. By god was I wrong

Season 6 and 7 have moments that recapture the glory of the first 4, but even those moments were mostly death note to the show having a satisfying ending, because they would sacrifice logical paths forward in the name of subverting expectations, and then having no solid plan to move forward after whatever twist they went with

Biggest example of that is Arya killing the night king. Incredible episode of TV live and for a brief moment it reinvigorated the show, which was starting to hit the same beats over and over in the later seasons, but then you are left with the aftermath and you realize they basically sacrificed an insane amount of plot development that was crafted over 4-6 seasons in the name of surprising fans in the current season. And so we ended up sputtering to the finish like with another 4 episodes after that that feel like an epilogue to a disappointing story that ended with a single scene.

I’ll spare you the rest of my manifesto on the abomination that is the ending of GOTs for now

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my brother in R'hllor preach.

I honestly never get tired of these threads.

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The showrunners did not expect to have to create a conclusion

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The conclusion is exactly what GRRM wrote. Read any other book by him.

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The conclusion is exactly what GRRM wrote.

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I doubt GRRM ever wrote an ending. He got stuck and he doesn’t know how to go forward, let alone end it.

Even if some bones of what GRRM has envisioned was what they based it on, the way they get there changes the context completely.

Like if Bran is who he envisions as the new ruler, I promise it won’t be because a group of the more popular characters got together and did a survivor vote on it, it likely would be much more intertwined with the overall lore of the starks and the three eyed raven

It’s very obvious some of the plot decisions made in the final 2-3 seasons were made with the explicit purpose of speeding to the finish line as quickly as possible.

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I doubt GRRM ever wrote an ending. He got stuck and he doesn’t know how to go forward, let alone end it.

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My brother in Christ, GRRM approaches Stephen King's level of being unable to stick the landing.

He is so enamored with subverting expectations he forgets that the reader/audience occasionally wants a payoff.