So the last episode of Game of Thrones aired yesterday and just like that its over. It's been a journey of close to 9 years with Westeros legends, starting first with the books when I started reading "A Song of Fire & Ice" by George RR Martin back in early 2011 when the (as on date) last published book was coming out and then after an year I started watching Game of Thrones. Along the way I became a huge fan, devoured the books and then the TV show had a great nostalgic value as it stayed somewhat faithful and turned out to be a really neat adaptation in the first few seasons. Pretty soon, I started following various threads on Quora, Reddit and likes which just took me deep down the rabbit hole. Suffice to say I was fully hooked to this.
After 2011, GRMM failed to publish another book so the show became the main reason to stay connected to this fantasy world that Martin so masterfully fleshed out through his books with dozens of noble houses, 50-60 major characters. He had created a complex web of story lines playing out in so many different places / continents with actions and consequences echoing across and propelling the narrative. It was oddly satisfying to see a fantasy series which I picked up 9 years back become a cultural phenomenon and one of the grandest television spectacle of all time, never saw that happening! Still baffles me on how this got such a huge following to make it a legit cultural event. But it did and I'm happy as this remains one of the few instances where I could experience and be part of a cultural phenomenon. It did start out as a nerdy stuff with complex and layered story telling and shocking twists which got folks hooked before becoming something massive. Have lot of thoughts on the actual show which I will cover in another post but for now will focus on something personal.
I moved to US in early 2013 and was a total outsider with some knowledge of popular culture through movies and odd tv shows. My work involved working with lot of Americans on the business/marketing side of things and Indians in the IT side. With Indians it was always easy to connect culturally but with Americans it was hard to form cultural connection as I did not ( and do not) watch American Football or Basketball which are huge conversation starters. I have watched Star Wars, Star trek and stuff so while I could follow conversations was not qualified enough to contribute anything significant. All that changed when my phone rang while at work a few times.
When I lived in India, my cousin Vaidya had the now famous GoT title track theme as his ring tone and I duly copied it from him. Now having moved to US, while at work my phone which I usually keep on silent mode rang while I was in corridor and the GoT theme was blaring loud. As soon as I finished my call and got back to my desk a young american colleague walked up to me and said he was thrilled to hear the GoT theme and said he simply loved the show. After that we used to catch up even after he moved to another floor in the same building, every monday he would drop by to chat about the Sunday night's episode. The same thing happened with 3 other guys over the next few years, even now I sync up with a some of these guys about the show on Mondays during the show run most of them figured I was a fan through that ringtone on my phone. In most of these interactions folks used to reach out to me because I was the only one who read those books ( and read tons of articles and fan theories) so was well versed with the lore and possible conspiracy theories ( *Spoiler Alert*) like R+L=J and Jon Snow's fate etc. I was on higher pedestal as long as the series was following the books, but after about 4 years or so the books were covered and show had headed into unpublished material and unwritten material territory and there I got reduced to pleb again.
Sometimes at work when meetings are late to start during GoT season as we wait for folks to come in the talk will veer towards the recent episode and some theories on where it is headed and it was one of the rare moments for me to be part of a mainstream narrative with strong opinions! Another interesting incident was a few years back when we started working on a new transformation project at work ( we usually have geographically distributed teams) and they brought people to a single location to meet as we started the project. New teams were formed and all teams had to choose a cool team name. This was when season 7 was airing and I choose 'Lannisters' as team name and a motto based on that theme and then later that year when we created another team I had suggested 'Night's watch' in both a nod to GoT and to the fact that we were working extended hours at times. Both names were big hits!
This year some folks told me that they were planning to rewatch the entire 7 seasons to prepare for finale and for a while I thought I had better use for my time. Then I figured perhaps not, did not take me much once a couple of guys who were doing rewatch started discussing certain things they noticed, I got on to the bandwagon too. I used NYT's guide for rewatching where they picked key episodes ( 5 out 10 each season) to watch and I got ready for it this year that way. My employer owns the company producing/airing the show so for the last 5-6 months most of the web pages I work on had GoT based images on it and kept reading about some retail stories of our company which were decorated in GoT theme with actors who played some of the key characters visiting the store to pose with fans and stuff and it was a proper mania leading up to Season 8. I think once when I visited the Dallas downtown office ( the headquarters) I actually saw a replica Iron Throne kept in the lobby.
When season 7 ended I got the history of Westeros books that GRRM had co-authored to deal with withdrawal from the show and retain some connection with that universe. Finally today the watching is over, having watched the entire series from Season 1 to now Season 8 in a span of 3-4 months I have a feeling of satisfaction of being part of a spectacular tale. While internet has gone nuts as it generally does over any such phenomenon like this where fan expectation and media/marketing hype in age of social media takes things to a different level, I think that is par for the course. Oddly I'm happy with the way things ended and finally there is a closure to this fascinating story I first started reading in early 2011. There is a sense of closure to an extent. While I do welcome any decently made spin-offs, I'm still looking forward to GRRM finally getting those damned books finished to fully wrap up this journey.
One thing I will really miss is the internet fan community abuzz with reviews, comments and various theories and takes. I mainly followed AV Club's expert version reviews of each episode and also NY Times episode reviews and additional nuggets. During season 8 I also started listening to some discussion podcasts but didn't really dig it. In a sense it was a group watch of a cultural phenomenon and that was oddly satisfying. So what next now? I don't watch TV that much and watch very few shows, for most of last 3-4 months this was the only TV show I watched. Now I actually need to figure out what next on HBO. I had started 'Westworld' last year but did not continue so probably can finish it and Watchmen which should air this year looks interesting as well. There is also Veep which I had left off after 4 seasons which ended recently so probably that will be a much lighter watch.
After 2011, GRMM failed to publish another book so the show became the main reason to stay connected to this fantasy world that Martin so masterfully fleshed out through his books with dozens of noble houses, 50-60 major characters. He had created a complex web of story lines playing out in so many different places / continents with actions and consequences echoing across and propelling the narrative. It was oddly satisfying to see a fantasy series which I picked up 9 years back become a cultural phenomenon and one of the grandest television spectacle of all time, never saw that happening! Still baffles me on how this got such a huge following to make it a legit cultural event. But it did and I'm happy as this remains one of the few instances where I could experience and be part of a cultural phenomenon. It did start out as a nerdy stuff with complex and layered story telling and shocking twists which got folks hooked before becoming something massive. Have lot of thoughts on the actual show which I will cover in another post but for now will focus on something personal.
I moved to US in early 2013 and was a total outsider with some knowledge of popular culture through movies and odd tv shows. My work involved working with lot of Americans on the business/marketing side of things and Indians in the IT side. With Indians it was always easy to connect culturally but with Americans it was hard to form cultural connection as I did not ( and do not) watch American Football or Basketball which are huge conversation starters. I have watched Star Wars, Star trek and stuff so while I could follow conversations was not qualified enough to contribute anything significant. All that changed when my phone rang while at work a few times.
When I lived in India, my cousin Vaidya had the now famous GoT title track theme as his ring tone and I duly copied it from him. Now having moved to US, while at work my phone which I usually keep on silent mode rang while I was in corridor and the GoT theme was blaring loud. As soon as I finished my call and got back to my desk a young american colleague walked up to me and said he was thrilled to hear the GoT theme and said he simply loved the show. After that we used to catch up even after he moved to another floor in the same building, every monday he would drop by to chat about the Sunday night's episode. The same thing happened with 3 other guys over the next few years, even now I sync up with a some of these guys about the show on Mondays during the show run most of them figured I was a fan through that ringtone on my phone. In most of these interactions folks used to reach out to me because I was the only one who read those books ( and read tons of articles and fan theories) so was well versed with the lore and possible conspiracy theories ( *Spoiler Alert*) like R+L=J and Jon Snow's fate etc. I was on higher pedestal as long as the series was following the books, but after about 4 years or so the books were covered and show had headed into unpublished material and unwritten material territory and there I got reduced to pleb again.
Sometimes at work when meetings are late to start during GoT season as we wait for folks to come in the talk will veer towards the recent episode and some theories on where it is headed and it was one of the rare moments for me to be part of a mainstream narrative with strong opinions! Another interesting incident was a few years back when we started working on a new transformation project at work ( we usually have geographically distributed teams) and they brought people to a single location to meet as we started the project. New teams were formed and all teams had to choose a cool team name. This was when season 7 was airing and I choose 'Lannisters' as team name and a motto based on that theme and then later that year when we created another team I had suggested 'Night's watch' in both a nod to GoT and to the fact that we were working extended hours at times. Both names were big hits!
This year some folks told me that they were planning to rewatch the entire 7 seasons to prepare for finale and for a while I thought I had better use for my time. Then I figured perhaps not, did not take me much once a couple of guys who were doing rewatch started discussing certain things they noticed, I got on to the bandwagon too. I used NYT's guide for rewatching where they picked key episodes ( 5 out 10 each season) to watch and I got ready for it this year that way. My employer owns the company producing/airing the show so for the last 5-6 months most of the web pages I work on had GoT based images on it and kept reading about some retail stories of our company which were decorated in GoT theme with actors who played some of the key characters visiting the store to pose with fans and stuff and it was a proper mania leading up to Season 8. I think once when I visited the Dallas downtown office ( the headquarters) I actually saw a replica Iron Throne kept in the lobby.
When season 7 ended I got the history of Westeros books that GRRM had co-authored to deal with withdrawal from the show and retain some connection with that universe. Finally today the watching is over, having watched the entire series from Season 1 to now Season 8 in a span of 3-4 months I have a feeling of satisfaction of being part of a spectacular tale. While internet has gone nuts as it generally does over any such phenomenon like this where fan expectation and media/marketing hype in age of social media takes things to a different level, I think that is par for the course. Oddly I'm happy with the way things ended and finally there is a closure to this fascinating story I first started reading in early 2011. There is a sense of closure to an extent. While I do welcome any decently made spin-offs, I'm still looking forward to GRRM finally getting those damned books finished to fully wrap up this journey.
One thing I will really miss is the internet fan community abuzz with reviews, comments and various theories and takes. I mainly followed AV Club's expert version reviews of each episode and also NY Times episode reviews and additional nuggets. During season 8 I also started listening to some discussion podcasts but didn't really dig it. In a sense it was a group watch of a cultural phenomenon and that was oddly satisfying. So what next now? I don't watch TV that much and watch very few shows, for most of last 3-4 months this was the only TV show I watched. Now I actually need to figure out what next on HBO. I had started 'Westworld' last year but did not continue so probably can finish it and Watchmen which should air this year looks interesting as well. There is also Veep which I had left off after 4 seasons which ended recently so probably that will be a much lighter watch.
