Yes, Game of Thrones is a great TV show - still

Game of Thrones aired its super-size season finale Sunday. I liked it - zombie ice dragon! Other people were less enthusiastic, which is fine - my pop culture opinions have not yet acquired the force of law. 

In and of itself, that's not really notable. I haven't been a journalist for about a thousand years, but I don't think "People Disagree On Merits of Television Episode" is much of a headline. But the reaction to Game of Thrones' finale and its 7th season - as well as the usual end-of-season "state of the show" think pieces - illustrates a really fascinating set of dynamics that define the critical conversation around HBO's smash hit.

It's fair, I think, to say that critics have turned on Game of Thrones. One need not rely on childish fanboy whining about people "hating" the show to make that observation - it's more or less objectively the case that most prominent TV critics are less fond of the show than they used to be.

A pretty representative articulation of that can be found at Vox's listing of the 18 best TV shows airing right now, curated by the great Todd VanDerWerff. Here's part of the Game of Thrones entry:

"Sure, Game of Thrones can be a little same-y and unbearable at times, but goodness, at least it's not you who's getting stabbed in the head. And it's still TV's most opulent drama, produced within an inch of its life and gorgeous to look at. The show might never be the all-time classic TV series it was once poised to become, but it’s still essential, if only to know what everybody else is talking about."

That's about as backhanded as compliments get. "Still essential, if only to know what everybody else is talking about?" But setting that aside, the most revealing - and typical - part of that passage is the implication that Game of Thrones is a show in decline - or, at the very least, a show that has fallen from its previous heights and has become something noticeably less than it once was.

VanDerWerff is hardly unusual in this diagnosis. You can find any number of pieces making that same argument. You can even find Adult Swim bumps to that effect.

There's no critical hive mind, of course, and every Game of Thrones skeptic came to that position at a different point in the show's run. But for most, the cut-off point was somewhere around the season four finale. For some, that point came a season earlier or later.

Regardless, the show's "decline" essentially comes down to a simple turning point: when Game of Thrones gained the resources it needed to really indulge in spectacle and grandeur. 

Or, phrased another way, critics mostly loved Game of Thrones when they could plausibly portray it as anything other than an epic fantasy series. It was a political thriller! It was a workplace drama! It was a road trip movie! It was a mis-matched buddy comedy! 

But, as Matt Zoller Seitz observed in a thoughtful and nuanced piece, Game of Thrones "isn't what it once was." And if it once was possible to downplay the show's epic fantasy elements, that time is past. Game of Thrones is epic fantasy, a fact it now has the money and manpower to show off more or less every week. It's not a coincidence that the critical consensus soured on the show once it fully embraced a soaring, sweeping ethos.

Allow me, then, to submit the following proposition: Game of Thrones remains a great show on track for all-time classic status. The show's current critical reputation has less to do with a significant decline in quality and more to do with a built-in disdain for genre fiction and a strong critical bias for small-scale, grounded, relatable drama.

It's not wrong to say that Game of Thrones has changed over the years. It is a bigger show now, more inclined to shoot for the Big Moment and the extraordinary setpiece. It's a show defined by spectacle and grandeur in a way that it never was before. 

And there's no denying that in the process of becoming spectacular, the show has lost some of its subtlety and nuance. There's less room for the smaller, character-driven moments that defined much of the show's earlier days. Quiet, candle-lit conversations between two characters have been replaced by dragon attacks on loot trains and zombie dragons spewing blue fire to bring down The Wall. 

It's possible to take this observation too far. Game of Thrones is still eminently capable of creating those intimate, small-scale, character-driven moments. The Sansa-Arya feud from this past season is an excellent example - the relationship between the two sisters is a fascinating examination of the way trauma sticks to even the best-intentioned of individuals, of how it can poison and subvert our closest relationships and most promising futures. The reunion of these two women was a triumphant moment, but it did not wipe away all they had experienced.

Instead, their pasts colored their views of each other and made them vulnerable to Littlefinger's machinations and manipulations. After all, Sansa had spent the most recent years of her life either living in a den of homicidal lions in King's Landing or married to a monstrous Ramsey Bolton. Arya had spent hers moving through a series of horrifying situations and environments in which any slip-up could have proven lethal. Neither Stark sister was in a position to trust, and into that environment Littlefinger slipped quite easily, taking advantage of Sansa through the classic abuser's trick of isolating her from friends and family and building a world in which she could rely only on him.

And for all that, the resolution - the discovery and unmasking of Littlefinger's plot, and the death of this long-running character - was both satisfying and earned. It was ironic and yet fitting that Littlefinger - the ultimate schemer, the man so profoundly in love with his own cleverness - would doom himself by giving the woman he loved the tools she needed to see through his scheming.

Still, storylines like these are more the exception than the rule in the Game of Thrones of 2017, and the opposite was true in the show's critical salad days. But here's the thing: the idea that subtlety is superior to spectacle, that small is better than large, that Big Moments are easy and the best drama occurs during quiet moments, is just an artistic value system. A perfectly legitimate one, to be sure, but also one that possesses no special claim to objective truth.

Game of Thrones is different than it used to be, but it is not worse. The show possesses an unparalleled ability to induce awe and wonder in its audience. The spectacle that critics invariably preface with the deprecatory adjective "empty" is, in fact, an extraordinary accomplishment, as worthy of critical appreciation as any quiet moment of depression from an intricately drawn anti-hero. At a time when our standards for Games of Thrones' big, effects-driven battle scenes should be un-meetable, the show continues to exceed all expectations for these moments.

Consider, for instance, the fall of The Wall in Sunday's season finale. As a plot point, this wasn't the least bit surprising - we all knew it was coming, going back to the end of season six. But though the moment was more than a year in the making, it surpassed expectations because no one saw a zombie ice dragon coming.

There's nothing subtle about a zombie ice dragon, of course, and there's nothing about it that's going to appeal to observers who consider quiet character work the foundation of great drama. But it's one of the clearest examples yet of a show that's more capable of accomplishing the extraordinary than anything else on television.

Whether in the wight-driven massacre of "Hardhome" or the record-breaking pyrotechnics of "The Spoils of War," Game of Thrones has showcased a once-in-a-lifetime mastery of spectacle and of the emotions its audience experiences while witnessing it. That ability to entrance viewers with moments they cannot find anywhere else on television is not a minor attribute to be acknowledged and quickly dismissed in a parenthetical nested inside a harsh critique - it is a staggering force and a dynamic worthy of genuine respect.

It is also why Game of Thrones remains a great TV show. And why it will be remembered as one of the greatest series in the history of the medium.

ZZ Ward returns with a strong sophomore effort in The Storm (Review)

Artist: ZZ Ward
Album: The Storm
Grade: B+

The Storm, ZZ Ward's second full-length album, cements Ward's status as one of modern pop's best musicians. But as it confirms that position, it raises another question: is Ward capable of - or even interested in - being anything more?

If pop music is defined by the tension between accessibility and authenticity, then Ward - along with Elle King, whose 2015 hit "Ex's & Oh's" is one of the best pop songs in recent memory - has shown a unique ability to reconcile those qualities. She is an absurdly talented singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a gift for crafting catchy songs that feel as though they're the product of a singular talent and not a pop song production line.

If nothing else, The Storm works as a perfectly solid demonstration of that particular gift. Album highlight "Cannonball" is the best example, a brilliant, bluesy track that serves as a showcase for Ward's musical versatility (you don't see a ton of skilled harmonica players in modern pop music) and is well-accented by Fantastic Negrito's soulful guest vocals. It's a toe-tapper, a song that mainlines straight to the listener's brain and burrows deep while reveling in Ward's unique talent.

Really, though, the entire album proves the point. There's not a bad song on the album, and from beginning to end The Storm is stuffed with quality. Each track is quality, well-crafted blues rock. They're disciplined, intricately engineered songs without an ounce of fat or an extraneous note - the 11 tracks barely exceed a combined total of 35 minutes, and if the definition of a good work of art is one that leaves the audience wanting more, The Storm certainly qualifies.

Ward has never been a particularly subtle lyricist - her favorite tactic is to wrap her arms tight around a central metaphor and squeeze every ounce of life out of it over the course of a single track. But even going back to "Put The Gun Down," her rollicking, 2012 introduction to the modern pop scene, Ward has shown an admirable willingness to write songs in which she's something less than a noble figure. "Cannonball" and "Bag of Bones" both evocatively paint a picture of weakness and desperation, while "If U Stayed," with its chorus of "And when you're holding on to your very first child/I hope you think of me and everything we had/And everything we couldn't be," conveys those ignoble feelings we experience in the aftermath of a breakup and in the face of our desire to be above such bitterness.

So why, then, does The Storm fall just short of genuine greatness? Why is there the gnawing sense that something is missing?

It's tempting to say that The Storm represents a step back from Til The Casket Drops, Ward's debut album, and, indeed, there's nothing here with the propulsive energy of "Put the Gun Down" or the smoldering intensity of "Blue Eyes Blind" (Ward's best song). And Ward's voice is less of a potent weapon here than on her first album, where she showcased a remarkable ability to range up and down the full length of the vocal register at will.

But though Til The Casket Drops was a genuinely brilliant album, that criticism is not quite on the mark. The issue is not that The Storm is worse than Ward's first album - it's that it feels like nothing more than a continuation of it.

Everything you can say about The Storm can be cross-applied more or less directly to Til The Casket Drops. Ward's style and approach haven't evolved much at all in the five years or so since her first album.

And, to be sure, there wasn't much need for evolution, or even room for maturation. Til The Casket Drops was already an impressively mature album, especially for a debut offering. If there was a flaw with that first album, it was in the lack of flaws - a slight failure of ambition that was noticeable, though eminently forgivable considering the talent on display.

Five years later, that lack of ambition is still forgivable, but it has only grown more glaring with time. There are no fascinating failures here, no epic, cringe-worthy nine-minute tracks on some issue that's close to Ward's heart, no songs that show a still-young musician perhaps a bit too eager to push the limits of her magnificent talent.

I wrote earlier that there's not a bad song on The Storm, and that's true. It's also true that she's yet to release a bad song at all. That is, in one sense, an extraordinary achievement, the reflection of a talented musician with a clear sense of who she is and an iron grip on her style. In another sense - one that's less important, but still real - that's a reflection of an artist who is, perhaps, slightly too comfortable with that style and unwilling to re-draw her boundaries. The basketball player who shoots 100 percent is impossibly, impressively efficient, but he or she is also taking only the easiest of uncontested shots.

There is a sense with The Storm - as, again, there was with Til The Casket Drops - of Ward checking off boxes in order to hit all the expected marks. Here's the stripped-down track that shows off the musician's authenticity ("Bag of Bones"). Here's the soulful, true blues track ("Cannonball"). Here's the tragic ballad ("If U Stayed"). Here's the spunky girl power anthem ("She Ain't Me"). To say that Ward is just checking boxes or hitting marks isn't to say she doesn't check those boxes or hit those marks with great skill - she clearly does.

But every track Ward releases seems precision engineered to achieve a specific goal or convey a specific image. And that is, in some sense, profoundly unnecessary - Ward's talent is obvious, and would shine through in any context.

One of the most insidious mistakes a reviewer can commit is to ignore the work in front of them and instead criticize an artist for failing to make the album/movie/novel/show the reviewer wanted. So it's not fair to say that Ward needs to do anything more than what she's doing or to demand an artistic evolution that's not really necessary.

But there are no surprises on The Storm. Every song demand's the listener's respect, but none demands their attention. There's nothing wrong with the road ZZ Ward is on, but it is well worn, and there's room for the occasional scenic detour.

The Mist and The Limits of Psychological Horror

Spike's adaptation of The Mist is bad for many reasons, not the least of which is that the show has very few good actors. Or characters. Or plot points.

It's...not a good show.

But if we're looking for reasons why The Mist has failed so spectacularly, it's worth considering a decision creator and showrunner Christian Torpe and his writers made, a decision that - at least in theory - might have worked to the show's advantage. That decision has, instead, resulted in even more unconvincing and unpleasant moments that fall far closer to "silly" than they do to "horrifying."

It's easy to forget that Stephen King's original story is just that - a story. It's not one of King's back-breaking brick novels. It's about 135 pages and first appeared in a collection of King's short stories. There's not really a ton of incident or narrative momentum in The Mist. The story basically goes like this:

• Guy and his son go to the store
• Thick mist rolls in
• Mist contains horrifying Lovecraftian monsters
• People barricade themselves in the store
• People occasionally die in horrific ways
• Lady in store becomes a religious fanatic, goes crazy
• Guy and his son break out of store, leave town

Really, that's about it. The Mist is a fine story, but not a lot really happens, all things considered. So if you're going to adapt it into a TV show, even just for the now-standard summer cable run of 10 episodes, you have some work to do in expanding the story to fill your runtime.

Torpe and company settled on a number of ways to do that, almost all of them cringe-worthy - the less said about Adrian, Alex and the pre-mist rape sub-plot, the better. One of the choices that has fared particularly badly is the show's laughable attempts at personalized psychological horror. Essentially, the mist of The Mist is a kind of personalized hell for anyone caught in it. 

Writers love this sort of thing, of course. "Psychological horror" is the respectable sort of horror, the sort that wins you applause from skeptical critics. After all, it doesn't rely on such cheap tactics as scary monsters or sickening gore - it delves into the psyche of characters, and in the age of Prestige Drama, we love nothing more than deep, probing character work.

Here's the thing: while much of King's horror work is psychological, The Mist is decidedly not. There's nothing personalized about the horrors that lurk in the mist. They're terrifying creatures from another dimension, massive clusters of tentacles and claws and fangs, warped pterodactyl-esque flying beasts, huge spiders that cocoon their human victims in nests of webbing, giant crab creatures that bisect people with a snip of a claw.

None of these creatures are subtle, and none of them are artisanally crafted for the unique contours of the victim's sub-conscious. They're just fucking scary, and they work on that level. They're huge, they're deadly, they're like nothing we've ever seen on Earth. That makes them effective.

Spike's adaptation went a different way. There are some monsters out in the mist, of course, though they tend to be very small scale - deadly insects, mostly. But in the show, the mist works in a different way - by playing on its victims' fears and memories. The mist presents its victims with visions that haunt and taunt, visions that drive victims insane with self-loathing.

In theory, at least. Our protagonists mostly just seem briefly annoyed by their visions before running away. 

Look, could this work? In theory? Sure. Better actors could sell the horror more convincingly. Better characters - with more fully developed interior lives and personal histories - would make these visions more compelling. And better writers could sketch out more dramatic and horrifying scenarios.

But that's kind of a cop-out - good writers, good actors and good characters can make more or less anything work. It's no great defense of the adaptation's decisions to say that they could, conceivably, have worked better in a world where everyone involved with the production was more competent.

One imagines that some part of the decision-making process here was driven by financial considerations. The Mist is a hilariously cheap-looking show, outside of one or two striking visuals in each episode and some occasionally effective gore effects, and it's obvious Torpe and his writers aren't working with much of a budget. Casting an actor for a one-off appearance as a mist vision is surely cheaper than creating a convincing Lovecraftian hell beast, whether you're using CGI or practical effects.

Still, I would submit that the fatal flaw here is the belief that personalized psychological horror is inherently superior to - and more dramatic than - the kind of creature-based horror of King's original story. 

Yes, the "psychological" horror of Spike's adaptation reads like an old person's stereotype of a Millennial's view of horror: "Sure, that 20-foot-tall homicidal spider is scary, but it doesn't really speak to me, you know?" And yes, the show's attempts at personalized terror have been limp and laughable - Kevin sees an image of himself...but a darker, more violent version of himself! Mia sees her dead mom! Alex is spared by a (legitimately spooky!) shadow monster because the thing a teenager fears most is rejection!

But the failing here goes beyond The Mist's unique shortcomings in writing. There's a place for bespoke horror that speaks to the unique psychology of specific characters. But there's also a place for the more universal horrors laid out in King's original story, for the kind of terrifying creatures and demons that - when done well - elevate us out of our individual fears and remind us of something more elemental in our natures. 

In other words, we're all scared of 20-foot-tall homicidal spiders that threaten to spin us in a nest of webbing so they can return later and consume us at their leisure. They don't remind us of the trauma we suffered on the playground in third grade, but they're still scary.

Much of the praise for psychological horror is rooted in a kind of disdain for genre fiction. Implicit in it is the idea that traditional horror - with its monsters and madmen and demons from hell - exists on an inferior plane, somewhere far below respectable literature that understands true drama is the clinking of silverware on plates in a tense family dinner. Bringing that keen understanding of a character's inner life to horror makes it far more like "literature," and is thus inherently superior.

And look, there's nothing wrong with psychological horror, or with horror that plumbs the depths of a character's psyche. King himself has tilled that soil quite well for decades. 

But King has always possessed a keen understanding of the right balance between the personal and the universal. One of the most terrifying scenes King ever wrote was the moment in The Shining where Jack Torrance, having finally succumbed to the evil of the Overlook Hotel, beats his own face in with a roque mallet while his son watches, the illusion of Jack's humanity finally gone forever. 

Yes, it's terrifying because it's personal - a son watching the shell of his dad perform such an extreme act of self-brutalization. But it's terrifying to the reader because it's also universal, because the visual of this...creature walking around afterward with a caved in non-face is sickening and horrifying. The scene doesn't rely entirely on psychology - it proudly and unapologetically calls upon forces that the critic might consider "lesser."

That balance between specific and general, personal and universal, is one of the central tensions of all storytelling, of course. That Spike's adaptation of The Mist fails to achieve this balance is no surprise - it fails at pretty much everything it tries to accomplish. But there is a lesson in that failure, one writers and critics alike might do well to heed - horror doesn't have to be psychological to be effective. There is no reason vivid, well-drawn characters can't exist in a story where the horror is grander than their own traumas.