Answering Your Game of Thrones Questions That Obviously Aren't Questions

We are a few months out from the series finale of Game of Thrones, and "The Iron Throne" still inspires rage on the internet whenever it's mentioned. The script for the episode was recently released, and people were furious to discover... that it contained a handful of jokes that would only have been seen by the people reading the script.

Stubborn in my fandom, I continue to insist that "The Iron Throne" (and, indeed, the entire final season of Game of Thrones) was quite good. It's an unpopular opinion - I write this while huddled in a fortified bunker with the three or four other people on Earth who feel the same way.

But I like to be helpful! And I recognize that many of the show's critics have some questions about the way Game of Thrones ended. They have some mistakes or plot holes or logical failings that they believe they have identified and they would like those concerns to be addressed.

Totally fair. So here are answers to a few of the questions I've seen bandied about since "The Iron Throne" aired in May.

Why is there still a Night's Watch?

There are many, many, many reasons there is still a Night's Watch for Jon to be exiled to at the end of the show.

First: tradition. Or call it inertia, if you prefer. The Night's Watch is more than 8,000 years old, which is functionally indistinguishable from "been around literally forever." So far as anyone in Westeros can tell, there has always been a Night's Watch. An 8,000-year-old institution has staying power above and beyond its actual usefulness. The Senate filibuster has been around for a little more than 200 years, came about in a completely accidental fashion, has been altered repeatedly over the years and there are still people who believe that eliminating it is the legislative equivalent of desecrating Thomas Jefferson's grave. Institutions endure, is the point.

Second, there's the practical argument Tyrion makes to Jon: the Night's Watch is where the lords of Westeros send their "cripples, bastards and broken things." The Watch is an exceptionally useful escape hatch for leaders who want to dispose of inconvenient people but who, for whatever reason, can't kill them - how many times in the books and in the show did we see characters forced to "take the black?" The Wall is the only safe place in the world to send the criminals, lunatics, dissenters, extraneous children and political prisoners who populate any kingdom. The Night's Watch is, in essence, the Australia of Westeros, and that makes it indispensable as a governing tool.

Third...there's no more Wall, guys. That 700-foot-tall wall of ice did a lot of the heavy lifting when it came to protecting the realms of man, and now it's gone. Westeros is more vulnerable than ever to an invasion from the north. There might not be any more White Walkers, but eventually the wildlings are going to build their numbers back up. Are they on friendly terms with Jon Snow when the show ends? Sure, but Jon Snow isn't going to live forever, and neither is Tormund Giantsbane. It won't be long before you have an entirely new generation of wildlings who weren't around for that whole "Jon saved us and helped save the entire world" thing. And there will be no Wall to hold them back. Which means...you need the Night's Watch.

Finally, no one in Westeros actually knows that the White Walkers are gone for good. Sure, Arya killed the Night King and all the other Walkers disintegrated as a result, so folks probably feel pretty good about the situation, but that's different than simply assuming the threat is permanently eliminated. Bran is one of the few people in that world who knows the origin story of the Walkers, and we know he's inclined to a silence both mysterious and dickish in equal measure. For all the people of Westeros know, the Walkers could come back at any time - it's hard to rule anything out when you're talking about a race of ice vampires who can raise an army of zombies at will. So it's probably a good idea to keep the Night's Watch around, especially considering the whole "no more Wall" situation.

Why wasn't anyone trying to find Drogon? Just decided not to worry about the massive dragon with no master and a taste for human flesh flying around?

It's unfathomably rude to answer a question with another question, but still: who would have given this order? Who was arranging a dragon hunt?

Westeros doesn't have a ruler after Daenerys' death. It's probably safe to guess that some council or ad-hoc committee was running things - Davos was likely making a lot of the calls. But it was a tenuous, chaotic situation. The only people with the intellectual (Tyrion) or military (Jon) credibility to organize a dragon hunt were sitting in jail.

More importantly, whoever was running things in the interregnum between Daenerys' death and Bran's ascension had some pretty serious issues on their plate. King's Landing is a smoking ruin, which means the political, military and economic capital of the realm is a smoking ruin. The royal fleet is, say it with me now, a smoking ruin, and it's hard to cross oceans in pursuit of a dragon without ships. And the entire country is recovering from years of brutal, scorched earth civil war. Everyone is exhausted and there are no resources to spare on a dragon hunt.

Also: King's Landing is a powder keg. The Unsullied are one harsh word away from killing everyone in the wake of Daenerys' murder, and the Dothraki are hanging around King's Landing being very Dothraki-like. Yes, the flying, 747-sized fire-breathing reptile with a surprisingly firm grasp of metaphor is a concern, but "making sure the nation doesn't destroy itself again" is a more immediate one.

Which is why the issue comes up just as soon as Westeros has a king, things have settled down and a small council has been seated.

So Jon's Targaryen heritage was completely meaningless, huh?

People keep saying this and it's utterly baffling. Jon's royal blood plays a huge role in the story's endgame.

The revelation that Jon Snow is actually Aegon Targaryen, the son of Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark, drives a wedge between Jon and Daenerys. If Jon was actually just "Jon Snow," bastard son of Eddard Stark, then there would be no conflict between Jon and Daenerys - he wouldn't be a threat to her, he wouldn't have a terrible secret he'd feel compelled to share with his sisters and there wouldn't be that whole "incest" thing to keep tripping him up when the beautiful queen with the dragons tried to sleep with him.

If Jon isn't a Targaryen and the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, Sansa (probably) stays loyal to Daenerys and (definitely) doesn't have any damaging information to feed to Tyrion. Tyrion, in turn, doesn't have information to share with Varys. And Varys is less inclined to betray Daenerys, as there's no obvious heir to turn to in her stead.

The alienation between Jon and Daenerys plays a significant role in her decision to bathe King's Landing in dragon fire instead of accepting the garrison's surrender. In the run-up to "The Bells," Game of Thrones goes to great lengths to showcase Daenerys' isolation. She left Daario back in Mereen. Jorah is dead. Missandei is dead, killed in front of Daenerys' eyes. Varys is a traitor. Tyrion is either a traitor or, in Daenerys' eyes, so profoundly incompetent that she can't trust him.

Daenerys is utterly alone - Grey Worm is still alive, but he's a soldier, not a diplomat or a deep thinker, and he's so angry and distraught about the loss of Missandei that he's no help. He's certainly not a moderating influence. And when Daenerys, in the depths of her grief, reaches out to Jon for love and support, he rejects her, a decision he doesn't make if he's not her nephew.

Daenerys' isolation and paranoia are exacerbated by the revelation of Jon's real parentage. And without that revelation, the sack of King's Landing never happens.

Bran should be king because he has "the best story?" What the hell does that even mean? Arya and Sansa don't have compelling stories?

Man, this pissed people off.

Here's the thing: a lot of folks apparently read Tyrion's support for Bran in the finale as a substantive case for the youngest surviving Stark child - as though Tyrion was arguing that Bran objectively had the best story and therefore deserved to be king. But that's a mistake - Tyrion isn't saying Bran will make the best king because he has the best story. He's saying that the realm will find Bran's story the most compelling and unite behind him. Tyrion is basically making an electability argument.

Look at the realistic options* for the role. The guy with the best case, Jon, is in prison, and while it's hardly unprecedented in Westerosi history for someone to go from regicide to king, it might be a bit of a tough sell. More importantly, Grey Worm makes clear that Jon is utterly unacceptable to the Unsullied, and he might have murdered the entire grand council on the spot if they had chosen Jon. So Jon's out.

That leaves us with three choices: Arya, Sansa and Bran.

*Let's grant that, for dramatic reasons, the choices are limited to an extent they wouldn't be in real life. Even after the civil war there are probably a handful of non-royal nobles hanging around who would merit consideration. But you can't very well elevate the lord of Wolf's Raven or wherever in your series finale.

Arya has a great story, the show's critics point out. She saved the goddamn world! She killed the Night King! What more do you want? You can't sell that?

Here's the thing: Arya would be a crummy queen. We all love the character, she's awesome, Maisie Williams is great. People name their daughters "Arya." She's cool as hell.

But can you really see Arya presiding over feasts or tourneys? Can you really see her politely treating with foreign diplomats issuing veiled threats? Can you really see her balancing a budget or haggling over loan rates with the Iron Bank or figuring out how to fund a new sewer system? Can you really see her getting married for the good of the realm?

Of course not. Arya has a very specific set of skills, most of which boil down to stabbing things. And while those are very useful when you're trying to kill the Night King, they're of limited value when ruling a massive kingdom. The entire point of Robert Baratheon's story was to show what happens when you make a soldier a king and he runs into problems that can't be solved by stabbing them.

Tyrion doesn't say these things aloud, of course, but he has had front row seats to rule by monarchs whose first instinct is to murder their problems away. He's not setting Arya aside because he doesn't think her story is impressive - he's setting her aside because he doesn't think she'd do the job very well, and she's not the type to be a puppet queen.

What about Sansa? Unlike her sister, she has a compelling argument on the merits - we've seen how she navigates complicated diplomatic and logistical problems. She's smart, she understands politics, she was taught by a gifted (if profoundly creepy) mentor. Sansa would, almost certainly, be a good queen.

So why isn't she Tyrion's choice? Again, it comes back to the public perception. We know, as viewers, that Sansa has a great story - we've seen all of it. But it's not an easy narrative to sell to a larger public that hasn't been watching an HBO series over the course of a decade or reading a series of books for more than 20 years. Sansa doesn't have a famous military record (like Jon), she didn't kill the Night King (like Arya) and she doesn't have superpowers (like Bran).

Her skills are more subtle, her accomplishments hidden. Everyone knows Jon won the Battle of the Bastards because he was the guy on the battlefield - who knows that Sansa brought the Knights of the Vale and saved the day? Everyone knows Arya killed the Night King - who knows that Sansa played a huge role in organizing the defense of Winterfell? Sansa is just a harder sell.

And it's impossible to ignore the fundamentally misogynist nature of Westerosi society. The people of Westeros have, in their lifetimes, had experience with two queens: Cersei and Daenerys. The first turned out to be a murderous sociopath. The second burned King's Landing to the ground in the Westerosi equivalent of a nuclear attack.

Is that actually a good reason to disqualify Sansa? Of course not. But Tyrion is dealing with perception, and he's living in a society that likely views its most recent experience with queens as an affirmation of its pre-existing opinions of women in general. And if that seems ridiculous, keep in mind that Hillary Clinton lost an election three years ago and now Democrats are running headlong into the arms of Joe Biden because they're terrified that a woman might not be electable.

Which brings us to Bran. Tyrion's right about him, by the way - he does have a hell of a story. A victim of the loathsome incest between the much-hated Cersei and the Kingslayer. A kid who went north of the Wall and gained literal superpowers. A kid who looked the Night King in the eye and never blinked.

Maybe you find that less compelling than Sansa's story - fair enough. But again, Tyrion isn't actually issuing a verdict on the quality of their respective stories. He's talking about perception. And he has plenty of reasons - some substantive, some selfish - to elevate Bran.

Tyrion comes to the great council deeply skeptical of untrammeled kingship. He's not willing to support Sam's argument for a democracy, but he's seen what happens when kings and queens rule unchallenged. He explicitly advocates for an end to the hereditary monarchy. Is he calling for a 21st century UK-style constitutional monarchy? Not in so many words, but it's clear he doesn't want a dictator.

And that's why Bran is Tyrion's choice. He knows Bran has no interest in the day-to-day tasks of ruling a kingdom - he says as much, and so does Bran when he stops in at the small council meeting toward the end of the episode. From Tyrion's perspective, Bran is the perfect king - utterly selfless, without wants or demands, popular with the common people and willing to leave the hard work to Tyrion and his other advisers. King Bran won't be a puppet, necessarily, but he's clearly comfortable giving autonomy to the people Tyrion thinks are most equipped to run a kingdom. And yes, that includes Tyrion himself.

There's another point worth acknowledging here: Bran has literal superpowers. He can see through space and time - into the distant past and into the far future. This...this is kind of a useful skill for a king to possess. If it came out that John Hickenlooper could see the future it would be a pretty compelling argument for his candidacy. And it's a pretty compelling argument for Bran's.

Imagine a king who could see the future - who could see all of the threats facing his kingdom and see them decades before they arose. Now imagine that king has no earthly desires - not for wealth or power or glory or sex.

Choosing that guy...well, that's a pretty reasonable ending to his story.

Game of Thrones' Penultimate Episode Is One of Its Greatest

Series: Game of Thrones
Episode Title: "The Bells"
Episode Grade: A

For many years, one of the primary criticisms of Game of Thrones was that too many Daenerys storylines were resolved through dragon ex machina - Daenerys would seem to be in an impossible spot, her dragons would show up, Emilia Clarke would smugly say "Dracarys" and all of the messy plot complications would disappear in a stream of dragon fire.

In a way, "The Bells" represents the obvious narrative conclusion to that line of criticism. Daenerys Targaryen had brought herself from the desolate steppes of a distant land to the gates of King's Landing thanks to fire and blood. She had transformed herself from the chattel wife of a brutal warlord into one of the most powerful human beings on the face of the Earth, and she had done it through the liberal use of dragon fire.

And, in the end, that is how she took the throne she believed was rightfully hers. It was the only way she could - with fire and blood.

There are so many adjectives to describe "The Bells." Breathtaking. Extraordinary. Brutal. Tragic. Intense. All are accurate. But somehow, even taken together, they fail to truly convey the sheer scope and strength and greatness of Game of Thrones' penultimate episode.

"The Bells" is already catching flak for its treatment of Daenerys, for supposedly ruining a much-loved character. But if the moment when Daenerys sits astride her dragon, hears the church bells ring out across King's Landing, decides to ignore the agreed-upon signal of surrender and proceeds to incinerate the city was not inevitable, it did not, we must admit, come out of nowhere.

Daenerys has always solved her problems in such a fashion. And we have always cheered her on. We cheered in "And Now His Watch Is Ended" when we heard "Dracarys" for the first time, when Daenerys roasted alive the slavers of Astapor. We cheered when she crucified the Wise Masters of Mereen. We cheered when she burned Vaes Dothrak to the ground in "Book of the Stranger." We cheered when she destroyed the forces of Slaver's Bay in "The Winds of Winter." We cheered when she roasted the Lannister army in "The Spoils of War" and we cheered in that same episode when she burned alive Randall and Dickon Tarly.

We cheered these acts of horrific violence because we thought of Daenerys as The Hero, because she was killing bad people and she was going to end tyranny in Westeros.

And in "The Bells," she finally succeeds. She kills the evil tyrant on the throne and eliminates all of her supporters. She fulfills her destiny and accomplishes the mission we've been watching her pursue for the better part of a decade.

And it is terrifying.

"The Battle of the Bastards" was a master class in showing the brutality of a pitched battle between competing armies. "The Bells," for its part, is an extraordinary, heart-pumping exploration of the on-the-ground reality of a city's destruction. Jon Snow is here with the Northern army, but the episode - directed brilliantly by Miguel Sapochnik, who should be using this on his clip reel for the rest of his life - makes very clear very fast that the The Battle of King's Landing isn't about him. Jon has only slightly more control of what's happening than the hapless men and women dying in agony in front of his eyes.

No, "The Bells" is the culmination of Daenerys' arc, and if that feels wrong to you, well, Game of Thrones has always made clear the darkness within the character. She is, after all, the daughter of a literal Mad King, and she is convinced of her own righteousness and of the glory of her purpose. Cersei is the great evil befouling Westeros, and Daenerys has seen her brutality first hand in the execution of her beloved Missandei. She believes the man she loves has betrayed her, she believes her advisers are either traitorous (Varys) or incompetent (Tyrion) and she believes herself unloved in her kingdom.

The innocent people of King's Landing aren't the masters of Slaver's Bay, of course, which is why so may feel like this episode represents a betrayal of a character they love. But the Daenerys we see in "The Bells" is a version of the character that has always been lurking - once you've decided that cruelty is an appropriate response to evil, the other lines grow perilously thin.

Game of Thrones has always been about subverting the audience's expectations and dashing its hopes, showing the dark side of heroes and the nuances of villains. Daenerys is (almost) the last in a line of hereditary monarchs known for their cruelty, a woman who believes she has a gods-given right to a throne and who possesses the Westerosi equivalent of a nuclear weapon. If you believed she would only ever use it for indisputable good, if you believed she would only ever be a simple, straight-forward hero, well, you can't rightly claim there were no signs warning you of the danger ahead.

Daenerys is nothing so much as avenging angel in "The Bells," a winged figure of fire who cleanses the land of corruption so that justice might rule and she might break the final chains. Except "The Bells" doesn't keep the camera on the avenging angel - instead, it's a ground-level view of what happens when such a creature turns her attention on your home.

We see much of this through the eyes of Arya Stark, just two episodes removed from slaying the Night King and literally saving the world. She enters King's Landing walking side by side with The Hound, a confident bad-ass on her way to finally wiping the last name off her list and killing Cersei. But when The Hound points out that Cersei is already doomed and convinces her to leave, Arya begins a descent into the Hell of war, fleeing helplessly before the onslaught of Daenerys and her dragon.

Maisie Williams, always great, is extraordinary here, selling every inch of the character's terror and exhaustion as she desperately scrambles through the guts of a dying city, looking for some escape. She recognizes a mother and her child and tries to save them, but fails. By the end of the episode, she is bruised and bloodied and covered in the falling ash of a burning King's Landing, and we have witnessed Arya finally discovering the horror of full-scale war, instead of the clean, clever assassinations she had been trained in.

There are some truly breathtaking moments in Arya's journey, including an epic long take in which she maneuvers through the crowded, panicking streets of King's Landing and an extraordinary shot near the episode's end of Arya lit by a setting sun amidst the falling ash.

While there's still one episode remaining, "The Bells" feels like a culmination of everything Game of Thrones has been building toward, both as a narrative and as a viewing experience. It goes straight into the show's pantheon as one of its best episodes, and is likely to be considered an extraordinary film-making achievement for years to come.

Notes

• I wanted this to be more of an argument than a traditional recap review, so there's a lot that I didn't really cover. 
• One of my only disappointments is that Jaime really was coming to rescue Cersei and not kill her, as many of us imagined. The two die together, which is only appropriate, but it rather neuters Jaime's redemption arc to make attempting to save Cersei his final act.
• The long-awaited Clegane Bowl mostly justifies the wait. Some of the early sword fighting between Sandor and Gregor is too chopped up by camera cuts to really have an impact, but once Gregor removes his armor the fight becomes much more compelling.
• Euron also dies. 

A Series of Reunions Highlights Game of Thrones' Emotional Strengths

Show: Game of Thrones
Episode Title: "Winterfell"
Grade: B+

Long-running TV shows build a power, a kind of weight, a history that's created through years of effective storytelling and character work. It's the history that forges a connection between show and audience. And it can propel a show forward in its waning days, even when much of the show's previous energy and vitality have leached away.

The best example of this is probably Battlestar Galactica's series finale, a mostly crummy, nonsensical episode that still managed to hit some genuine grace notes through exploring the final moments of characters we had watched go through hell for years.

"Winterfell," Game of Thrones' last season premiere, certainly doesn't reach those depths. It is, in fact, a solid, effective episode. But that effectiveness is built on the show's lengthy history, leveraged through a series of heartstring-tugging reunions in an otherwise mostly sedate episode.

Objectively speaking, not much actually happens in "Winterfell." The big centerpiece of the episode is Daenerys and Jon's entrance into the titular castle in a sequence that deliberately echoes the royal procession into Winterfell in the show's pilot so many years ago. Down south, Euron Greyjoy returns to King Landing with the Golden Company and finally gets to bed Cersei, while Theon successfully rescues Yara in a disappointing and rather eye-rollingly quick and easy operation.

North of Winterfell, Tormund and Beric - who unsurprisingly managed to survive the Night King's dragon attack in the season seven finale - stumble across a horrifying scene in Last Hearth, the ancestral home of House Umber. It's a visually striking moment, the tiny young Lord Umber impaled on the wall of his keep, surrounded by the White Walkers' trademark spiral of severed limbs.

Other than the grisly scene in Last Hearth, the biggest moment in the episode is Jon's first dragon ride, a well-executed sequence that mostly succeeds in capturing the power and grace of the massive creatures, even if it doesn't really give Kit Harrington much of a chance to sell the character's sheer terror. It's a lovely scene, a rare moment in which Game of Thrones is able to really exploit its fantasy trappings for joy and fun and not just epic-scale death and destruction.

This lack of incident should be more annoying than it is. After all, "Winterfell" represents more than 16 percent of the show's final season. We only have six episodes left in the show's run - shouldn't some things, you know, happen in every episode?

But "Winterfell" works in spite of that ticking clock. It's built around a series of emotional reunions sprinkled throughout its runtime. Some of these - hi, Theon and Yara - are not terribly effective. But when Jon and Arya meet under the weirwood tree in Winterfell's godswood it's a moment weighted with emotional resonance - you're suddenly aware of the fact that these two haven't been on screen together since the first season all the way back in 2011. There's nothing particularly special about the dialogue here, which is probably a good choice - Arya and Jon aren't really the weepy, sentimental types. But the entire scene is fraught with the emotions that come from watching these characters go through eight years of hell - we literally watched Jon die. 

Arya, in fact, gets three great reunions in this episode, two in one scene. She finally runs into the Hound after leaving him for dead back in season four (she robbed him first, she helpfully points out), and they share the begrudging respect of two people who don't like each other but who at least have come to tolerate the other's existence. And Arya falls right back into her cutesy flirtatious energy with Gendry, who she forged a nice little bond with way back in seasons two and three.

Sophie Turner and Peter Dinklage get an opportunity to turn in their characteristically good work in the reunion between Sansa and Tyrion - husband and wife, you may have forgotten, since we haven't seen the two together since season four in 2014 (though one doubts these two crazy kids will try and pick things up where they left off). Turner, in particular, gets to showcase how much she has evolved with her character in those five years - Sansa is no longer the cringing, frightened child outclassed by Tyrion's wit and cynicism.

In fact, everyone in the cast is pretty much working at their peaks in "Winterfell." Even Harrington and Emilia Clarke, who've always been the weakest members of the show's extraordinary ensemble, seem truly comfortable in their roles - Clarke, especially, is a lot of fun when teasing Jon around the dragons.

More than anything else, "Winterfell" goes a long way toward proving that Game of Thrones is still capable of hitting its subtle emotional beats. There's no doubt that the show has placed more emphasis on huge setpieces and spectacular battles in recent seasons. But time and history are on the show's side, and one of the most anticipated season premieres in recent memory proved that Game of Thrones knows how bring to both to bear on its own behalf.

Notes

• Sam tells Jon the truth of his parentage toward the end of the episode. I'm thankful they didn't draw that out. Jon took it pretty well, considering he was just told he had been sleeping with his aunt - but then, once you've come back from the dead the whole "laws of gods and man" thing kind of loses its power.
• Bronn is back! He gets the show's requisite female nudity scene, which...eh, they've cut back pretty dramatically on those in recent years. The three prostitutes he's hanging out with talk a lot about all of the Lannisters lost in the famous Loot Train Battle, and it turns out "that boy Eddie, the ginger" got most of his face burned off. So, if you were wondering what happened to Ed Sheeran, there you go.
• "Stay back, he has blue eyes!" "I've always had blue eyes!"
• Still, the funniest moment of the episode is Jon keeping one eye on the dragon while kissing Daenerys and the dragon warily glaring at him the whole time. We've all struggled to impress the new girlfriend's pet, Jon. 
• Arya gives Gendry a weapon schematic, because videogame crafting systems are now truly ubiquitous. 
• Lena Headey doesn't get a lot to do in this episode, but her sad little smile when she's told the Golden Company didn't bring its elephants is perfection. 

Jason Mendoza belongs in The Bad Place. And that's a problem for The Good Place.

The Good Place wrapped up its extraordinary second season a couple weeks ago, and the show deserves all of the hosannas that have been thrown its way since. The Good Place is really nothing less than the best sitcom on TV - Michael Schur, his writing team and the remarkable acting ensemble assembled for the show have created something truly delightful.

But The Good Place has always been interested in doing more than just telling jokes, even if it's pretty damn great at that. A sitcom can't be said to succeed unless it's consistently funny, and if a sitcom is consistently funny it can't be said to fail. But that doesn't mean it's humorless or unfair to raise questions about other things a show offers.

And that's particularly true for The Good Place, which from day one has - with great skill - grappled with the big problems of moral philosophy and asked difficult questions about the nature of human betterment and how the motives of self-improvement affect its morality.

And the show has a very clear answer to those questions. You can pretty fairly sum up the show's philosophy with Michael's impassioned speech in the season finale:

"Because of my accidental experiment, these four humans got better. After they died. That's not supposed to be possible. Over and over again I watched as they became thoughtful and generous and caring...."

It's a good speech, and Ted Danson sells the hell out of it. It's a wonderful sentiment, beautifully expressed, and it serves as a succinct mission statement for a wonderful show.

It's also kind of bullshit.

Oh, it's not all bullshit. In fact, it's mostly true. It's true of three of the four humans Michael is talking about. Hell, it's even true of eternal Siri analogue Janet, whose character arc has been one of the show's great successes.

But it's bullshit when it comes to Jason Mendoza, the lovable dolt played with such skill by Manny Jacinto. Because to put it bluntly, Jason isn't better. He hasn't improved himself. In fact, Jason's pretty awful.

None of that is a reflection on Jacinto, who has been a revelation in the role. But there's an extent to which Jacinto's performance, which has brought a real depth of emotion to what could have been a one-note dirtbag role, has hidden his character's lack of development, and how that static characterization undermines - at least in some measure - the show's driving ethos.

To use the clickbait-y title I rejected but am not too proud to break out here, The Good Place has a Jason Mendoza problem.

Every other member of our charming foursome has, indeed, shown the improvement Michael raved about. Eleanor has taken huge strides to make herself a better person. Chidi has embraced a measure of decisiveness. Tahani has found self-awareness and (a little bit of) humility.

So it's weird that, in his big speech to the immortal Judge, Michael highlights Jason's supposed improvement, saying "And now he's so much better." It's weird because Jason isn't better.

Jason's the same guy he's been since his true nature was revealed in the first season. And that's a guy who - in his pre-rigor mortis days - would:

• Chuck empty spray paint cans at flamingos
• Sell fake drugs to college students
• Exhibit entirely too much passion for Molotov cocktails 
• Get himself killed trying to commit robbery

Of course, you could put together a similar list for Eleanor, who made her living telemarketing fake pharmaceuticals to senior citizens. The difference is that we've seen Eleanor evolve over the course of two seasons - above all else, we've seen her grow to regret her life and her decisions and to recognize her moral failings. We've seen her try to become a better person. 

Can we say that about Jason? I don't see how. He's positively proud of the flamingo assault ("When I was six, I hit one right on the butt!"). In "Rhonda, Diana, Jake and Trent," which saw the group briefly invade the actual Bad Place, Jason doesn't just get along with the demons he and Chidi have to interact with - he gleefully bonds with them, connecting in a way that's too earnest for the largely guileless Jason to fake. 

Jason is not a more thoughtful character than he was when we first met him. He's not a kinder person than he was when we first met him. He is fundamentally unchanged from the person he was when the series starts.

What we've heard about Jason's life, and what we've seen of him in the afterlife, doesn't paint the picture of evil or even maliciousness. But there's no great normative benefit to hurting people through thoughtlessness. 

This isn't just complaining about a fictional character's personality flaws - these flaws speak directly to the theme of the show. It doesn't necessarily undermine the idea at the heart of The Good Place to say that Jason has never improved as a person - three out of four ain't bad, after all. But when your North Star is the concept of betterment, of self-improvement and the power of human connection to spur positive changes in our lives, you need to at least grapple with the reality that a quarter of your data set doesn't fit the narrative.

Or, at the very least, your characters shouldn't act as though Jason's improvement is a self-evident thing. There's simply a huge dissonance between The Good Place's conception of Jason and the reality of the character as shown on-screen. 

This particular failure isn't fatal - even great shows have flaws, and The Good Place is undeniably a great show. But Jason's static characterization stands out - not just because every other element of The Good Place is so well done, but because character development is an intrinsic part of the show's DNA. It's arguably what the show is about, in a fundamental sense. 

The Good Place has earned the trust of its viewers - it has surmounted every hurdle that its premise and narrative would seem to suggest. If, two seasons in, the worst thing we can say about it is that one character is more a well-acted amusement than a dynamic human being, that speaks volumes about the show's quality. 

Still, as we look forward to a much-deserved third season, the big outstanding question for The Good Place isn't narrative in nature - we know Schur and company will handle that part fine. Instead, the big question is how - and if - the show will be able to reconcile its perception of Jason with the reality of the character.

Top 10 Television Episodes of 2017

By the standards of most human beings, I watch a staggering amount of television. But by the standards of those who are paid to write and watch about TV, I've missed an awful lot. That won't stop me from offering an unqualified list of the best episodes that aired in 2017, of course, but keep in mind that there's a lot of great TV I wasn't able to watch this past year.

That said, the list:

10. Speechless, "C-A--CAMP"

This is admittedly more of a season achievement award than anything else. Speechless was one of the highlights of the 2016-2017 new television season, a genuinely sweet, heart-warming sitcom about an under-represented community that never forgot to be funny. Speechless' greatest achievement is its ability to portray J.J., the high schooler with cerebral palsy who is at the center of the show, with dignity and grace, while still mining his teenage boy flaws for sitcom humor. J.J.'s not a saint, he's not an inspiration - he's just a kid, and that means he can be gross and weird and inappropriate.

"C-A--CAMP" is the season finale and a solid showcase for the entire Speechless ensemble. Exploring J.J.'s first real stab at independence, "C-A--CAMP" is, in many ways, a stereotypical network sitcom season finale: it's big and emotional (there's a helicopter!), and ends the season on a note of small-bore change that won't fundamentally alter the structure of the show. But "C-A-CAMP" is a reasonable representation of an outstanding first season (that has been followed by a similarly excellent second season), and belongs on this list.

9. Lucifer, "Off The Record"

Lucifer is more of an entertaining show than it is a genuinely good one, and it certainly falls far short of greatness. It does a few things very well, and it has a keen grasp of those strengths. It knows the right tone for its story and characters, and it hues to that tone with impressive consistency.

"Off The Record" makes this list, however, because it's one of the few Lucifer episodes to try something different. By playing with perspective and chronology, and diving deep into the psychology of a reporter (played by Patrick Fabian, who'll show up again on this list) who's new to the wacky Lucifer universe, "Off The Record" represents a rare bit of adventurousness and ambition from a show that's usually content to stay in its lane.

8. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., "The Return"

One reason for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s improvement since its disappointing and tedious first season has been the abandonment of standalone episodes. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D found its groove when it stopped trying to tell isolated stories and instead focused on longer arcs, which provided a more compelling framework for the show's characters.

"The Return" is kind of an exception to the overall trend, then, an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D that stands out on its own. It represents a fitting culmination to the Framework arc that saw the main characters trapped in a computer simulation in which HYDRA controlled the world. It compellingly explored the consequences of the actions the characters took while trapped in the Framework, treating them as meaningful choices with emotional resonance.

But the real highlight here is Mallory Jansen (formerly of the late, lamented Galavant) as Aida, the former "life model decoy" whose journey to self-awareness and - of course - super-villainy is the best character arc of the season. Jansen's performance in this episode was, quite simply, one of the best on television in 2017, though it was never going to get much recognition.

"The Return" asked a pretty fascinating question: what happens when a super-powered entity discovers emotion - including heartbreak - for the very first time? The answer itself wasn't terribly surprising - it goes badly. But Jansen's furious, grief-ridden performance gave life and energy to the end of the show's fourth season, and proved that even predictable stories have the power to move us.

7. Better Call Saul, "Lantern"

Some of the seams started showing in Better Call Saul's still-excellent third season, especially in the storylines involving Breaking Bad returnee Mike Ehrmantraut. Mike's scenes were smart, well-shot, intricately put together and, frankly, kind of boring.

Fortunately, the McGill Brothers and Kim Wexler were still around to keep things exciting. "Lantern," the season three finale, (likely) marks the death of Chuck McGill, played with smarmy brilliance by Michael McKean, who steals the episode with a portrayal of Chuck's episode-long nervous breakdown that's as exceptional as it is hard to watch.

But there's enough limelight here for multiple characters, including Howard Hamlin. As played by Patrick Fabian, modern television's finest douchebag, Howard had evolved from an empty suit antagonist in the first season to a man of genuine strength and integrity. The scene in which he tells off Chuck, largely sparking the older McGill brother's cringe-worthy breakdown, is as much a catharsis for the audience as it is for Howard.

6. The Good Place, "Michael's Gambit"

"Michael's Gambit" isn't on this list entirely because of Ted Danson's creepy, evil smile toward the end of the episode, but that smile sure is one hell of a kicker.

It was easy to be skeptical about The Good Place's basic premise, which saw Kristen Bell's Eleanor accidentally sent to heaven after her cruddy, undignified life ended in a cruddy, undignified death. But The Good Place quickly put those concerns to rest, immediately establishing itself as the best sitcom on television, a show defined by its hilarity, thoughtfulness and intricate plotting.

All of that narrative worked paid off in "Michael's Gambit," the show's season finale, which revealed that our core group of characters - Eleanor, Tahani, Jason and Chidi -  were actually in The Bad Place, test subjects for demon Michael's new theories on hellish punishments. Punctuated by Danson's masterful laugh, this was the best sort of twist: utterly shocking, but completely reasonable in hindsight.

5. Rick and Morty, "The Rickshank Rickdemption"

Another season achievement award. Rick and Morty had a predictably outstanding third season, combining unique sci-fi weirdness with a genuine willingness to probe the psychological depths of its thoroughly fucked up characters.

Did Rick and Morty occasionally wallow in cynicism and emotional darkness? A bit. And while Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland admirably deconstructed the mindset of a self-proclaimed evil scientist god, there was still an awful lot of straight-forward "Rick is an impossibly awesome evil scientist god" stuff this season.

But that's nit-picking. "The Rickshank Redemption," Rick and Morty's season three premiere, was the show at its best - gleefully weird and satisfyingly subversive, with an impossible to untangle combination of sincerity and utter bullshit.

For the record, other possibilities here include "Pickle Rick," "Vindicators 3" and "Rest and Ricklaxation."

And shut up about the sauce.

4. The Good Place, "Dance Dance Resolution"

If "Michael's Gambit" proved that The Good Place could pull off an extraordinary twist, "Dance Dance Resolution", the third episode of season two, proved that Michael Schur and his team weren't taking any steps backward after a great first season.

"Dance Dance Resolution" is a sitcom triumph, a hilarious episode of television that manages to address every concern critics and fans had about the show's second season while moving the plot forward in meaningful ways.

"Dance Dance Resolution" sees Michael resetting his Bad Place experiment time and time again, only to be foiled repeatedly when Eleanor (and, in one particularly embarrassing scenario, Jason) keeps figuring out the ruse. No matter which deeply mediocre food item Michael fills the neighborhood with, or which torture scenario he conjures up, something always goes awry.

And for extra-special bonus jokes, check out writer Megan Amram's exhaustive list of restaurant puns.

3. Better Call Saul, "Chicanery"

The creative team behind Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad have many strengths, but the greatest is their ability to make high-quality prestige drama that's actually fun. These shows are complex and challenging and well-made, but they're also enjoyable in a way that much of our modern prestige television industry just isn't.

This isn't to say that these other shows are bad (check out #2 below) - it's just that Vince Gilligan and company have found a way to make great TV that never feels like an obligation.

"Chicanery" isn't an explosive bit of pulp storytelling, like Breaking Bad classics "Ozymandias" and "Crawl Space." But in its relentlessly focused, skillfully claustrophobic portrayal of the fraternal battle between Jimmy and Chuck McGill, as waged in a bar association hearing that determines whether Jimmy will lose his legal license as a result of his actions in the show's second season, "Chicanery" makes clear just how brilliant this entire group of writers, actors and directors really is.

It's probably not a coincidence that "Chicanery," like "Lantern," keeps Mike off-screen. The story of Jimmy McGill and his evolution into Saul Goodman has always been the show's best, and "Chicanery's" laser focus keeps the tension palpable as we see just how far Jimmy is willing to go to save his own skin and destroy his own brother.

2. The Leftovers, "The Book of Nora"

I'll confess, I sometimes found The Leftovers to be a bit of a chore. I often appreciated it more than I truly enjoyed it - this chronicle of a world where two percent of the global population had disappeared without a trace or an explanation always took itself very seriously, and while the show's exploration of grief and trauma was well-acted and crafted with great care, it was also relentless and unforgiving.

Still, there was no denying the show's quality, and it went out on a high note with its third season and - especially - with its series finale, "The Book of Nora."

Mostly taking place decades in the future, "The Book of Nora" highlights the grace notes that were always a part of the show's ambitious symphony. It is, in the end, a story of the necessity and durability of human connection and of our ability to find redemption and love in the face of extraordinary trauma and even our own mistakes.

In some ways, it was unfortunate that Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrota decided to end the series with Nora's big monologue about discovering The Departed in another universe (it makes sense in context). It's too easy to obsess over whether Nora was telling the truth, too easy to ignore everything else that was great about "The Book of Nora." And for a show that stubbornly insisted there was no answer to The Departure, just the reality of the loss and the necessity to continue in the face of tragedy, it was surprising to see just such an answer.

Still, Nora's monologue is beautiful, and Carrie Coon throws everything she has into it. And, in the end, while the show provides a possible answer, the truth of it is as irrelevant as ever. What's important is Kevin's final line: "You're here."

1. Game of Thrones, "The Spoils of War"

I've already written at some length on why I disagree with the consensus that Game of Thrones is a show in decline. If you're the masochistic sort, you can read that piece here.

But "The Spoils of War" is the episode that needs no defending. It's a brilliant, thrilling hour of television, one of the best Game of Thrones has produced. It's spectacular and magnificent and utterly exhilarating.

"The Spoils of War" reveals a creative team in perfect control of the staggering effects resources - both practical and computer generated - available to them. In many ways, it represents the culmination of six years of waiting for Daenerys' dragons to be fully unleashed, and "The Spoils of War" delivered on that promise in a way that won over even the most skeptical of observers.

And perhaps most impressively, "The Spoils of War" manages to hit multiple emotional beats amidst the blood and flame of the Loot Train Battle that defines it. Peter Dinklage manages to imbue "Flee, you idiot...you fucking idiot..." with all the intensity we've come to expect from him.

There were definitely subtler episodes of television that aired in 2017. There were definitely more emotionally resonant episodes of television that aired in 2017. But there was nothing that aired on television in 2017 that was as simply great as "The Spoils of War."

Gotham Embraced Ridiculousness and Found Its Best Self

It's difficult to identify Gotham's worst moment - there's a lot of competition for that particular honor. But it might well have been the show's third episode, "The Balloonman," in which James Gordon and Harvey Bullock quite earnestly hunt a masked vigilante who is murdering corrupt individuals by tying them to weather balloons.

There are fewer options when trying to determine the show's best moment. I'm partial to the close of "Unleashed," which comes near the end of the show's second season, in which Penguin and his underling Butch use a rocket launcher to blow up the seemingly invulnerable Theo Galavan, brainwashed into believing he's the avenging paladin Azrael. After the deed is done, Penguin waddles away, while Butch waves a jaunty goodbye and wishes Gordon, Alfred and Bruce Wayne a good night.

The Why of "Better"

It's not always easy identifying or articulating how or why a show has improved. Sometimes there's a new actor or a new showrunner or an exciting new storyline, more money for production design or special effects. But there's often some ephemeral, hard-to-pinpoint thing that wasn't there when the show began.

ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D is a good example of the second dynamic. That the show is much better now than it was for most of its first season is essentially indisputable. Identifying the "why" is more difficult - you have to dig deep (the show has refined its core relationships, the actors are more comfortable in their roles, the writers have largely abandoned standalone episodes in favor of serialized storylines), and even then there's an element of post facto reasoning to the exercise.

Gotham is a somewhat similar example. The show, as it has since its pilot episode, blows through plot at a reckless pace, and its stories, at their best, do not stand up to careful scrutiny - and are utterly preposterous at their worst. It's still too reliant on generating audience goodwill by showing us people who are related (or even just similar) to iconic Batman characters. And it still has just two settings for its female characters - boring love interest and violent psychopath.

And yet, Gotham IS better than it was. It is, in fact, one of television's more consistently entertaining shows, even if we're compelled to admit it's nowhere near one of the medium's best, and that it even falls short of "good" status.

But for all its flaws, Gotham is genuinely fun. And it got there by abandoning all pretensions of genuine quality.

Finding the Right Tone

Gotham's first season was defined, as every professional critic observed, by its jarring tonal inconsistencies. These didn't just show up from episode to episode - individual scenes would be riven by these tonal shifts. Every actor seemed to be performing in a completely different show - Jada Pinkett Smith was channeling Eartha Kitt from the campy 60's Batman series, Donal Logue was playing the Jerry Orbach character in a bloody Law and Order reboot and Cory Michael Smith (playing Edward Nygma) was trapped in a cutesy romantic comedy. And poor Ben McKenzie was apparently working under the impression that he was in a prestige drama about a good man's fall and redemption, a delusion which would have been hilarious if it wasn't so sad.

 The issue was not so much that all of these performances were bad - Pinkett Smith was consistently entertaining, and I always got a kick out of the Nygma-Kristen Kringle dynamic (many, many others did not, it should be noted). The problem was that none of them meshed: a scene with Gordon, Bullock and Pinkett Smith's Fish Mooney would involve Logue wisecracking, Pinkett Smith purring her lines and McKenzie growling and glowering with all of the intensity he could muster. It was a mess.

The show's improvement over the last few years has been tied, above all else, into its ability to settle on the right tone and the right approach to its subject matter. That tone has, from day one, been exemplified by Robin Lord Taylor, the show's breakout performer.

Taylor's Penguin has always been Gotham's best character and most entertaining element. Taylor's performance has never been subtle, but he's always found a way to emotionally convey the character's alienation and ambition without ever losing his sense of fun. Penguin has always been the one character on the show who seems like a comic book character in the best sense - real without being realistic, heightened to the point of exaggeration while still commanding the audience's attention and respect.

Gotham has, in fits and starts, evolved to match Taylor's tone. That evolution is demonstrated by the difference between the two moments I highlighted at the start of this post.

"Balloonman" was the show's attempt to play a ridiculous and cringe-worthy premise with complete seriousness - you can't have two hard-boiled police detectives investigating murder-by-weather-balloon without the whole thing falling apart within the cold open. Gotham asked us to regard the entire scenario as something genuinely threatening (and even instructive for the young Bruce Wayne), and while one can squint really, really hard and imagine a brilliant writer-director combo making that work, Gotham didn't so much fall short as it stepped in a pothole and broke its ankle in front of the entire school within the first 10 seconds of the Homecoming Parade.

"Unleashed," which aired about a year and a half after "Balloonman," understood, by contrast, the ridiculousness of what was on screen and gloried in it. The scene in which Penguin and Butch blow up Galavan/Azrael is largely played for laughs - the episode doesn't expect us to see it as Galavan's tragic end or as a character-building moment for the future Batman. It's funny, and everyone involved plays their roles appropriately.

A Balancing Act

But the key to Gotham's improvement has been its ability to stay on the drama side of the drama/comedy line, if barely. The "Unleashed" scene plays Galavan's death for laughs, but while Taylor is clearly enjoying himself, he still inhabits Penguin's indignation and fearsomeness. That's always been Taylor's gift - his scenes are frequently funny, he is frequently funny, but Penguin remains a genuinely terrifying figure.

There's no doubt that Gotham is campier than it was in its first season, but it has managed to avoid falling completely into caricature. The show's new tone is a kind of dark camp - heightened, ridiculous, but with a Gothic aesthetic and a gleeful embrace of gore aided by some genuinely impressive visual effects.

 Gotham's second season, which marked the beginning of its ascendance, was sub-titled "Rise of the Villains," and its increased focus on the show's bad guys represented a change that was significant as it was welcome. The first season devoted plenty of time to the underworld machinations of Penguin, Fish Mooney and Carmine Falcone (a usually good John Doman, who always seemed out of place on this show), but the second season took all of that scheming, threw in the twisted Galavan siblings, mixed in a centuries-long conspiracy and evil goings on at Arkham Asylum and produced something much more interesting and entertaining.

That dynamic has continued through season three and first two episodes of season four. Gotham's villains - whether you're talking about Penguin, Nygma, Victor Zsasz, Tabitha Galavan (who survived her less fortunate brother) or Barbara Kean (Eric Richards, invigorated after being freed from the need to play Gordon's boring love interest in the first season) - provide a consistent spark of charisma and entertainment.

The "stakes" here are comically low, considering both that Gotham is a prequel and that death has long since lost its meaning on this show (Barbara was killed in the season three finale, but is almost certain to return at some point this year). But the actors playing these villains do so with malevolent glee, and the show embraces the villains' storylines with an enthusiasm it simply can't muster for Gordon, Bullock and Bruce Wayne.

Take, for example, Gotham's ballsy decision to kill off Kristen Kringle (Nygma's love interest) in the second season, then bring the actress back a season later to play a completely unrelated character who happens to look exactly like Kringle and happens to fall in love with Nygma herself. There's no conspiracy there - "Isabella" isn't a distant relation of Kristen Kringle, coming to Gotham City to wreak bloody vengeance on Nygma. She's just a random woman with the exact same face as Ed's dead girlfriend.

And then the show kills her a few episodes later just to drive a wedge between Nygma and Penguin.

There's something breathtaking about that, right? It's so impressively and unnecessarily stupid that it works, somehow.  It's a writing staff committing wholeheartedly to an ill-advised idea, then abruptly pulling the plug because they grew bored with it.  You want to hate it, but you have to admire the chutzpah.

The Aesthetics of Ascendance

All of these improvements in acting and storytelling have been accentuated by the show's distinct aesthetic sensibility. Put simply, Gotham is one of the most gorgeous shows on television, possessing a visual style that syncs perfectly with the show's newer, more successful tone.

Gotham's visual style is a mish-mash of different aesthetics, but it combines them in a way that works far better than it should. The buildings and interiors are all designed in a grandiose Art Deco style - check out this image of Theo Galavan's penthouse from the show's second season (image courtesy of the Gotham wiki):

I would absolutely live here

Street-level scenes, meanwhile, are all grit and grime and urban decay, and the show has never met a grate it didn't think would look better with steam pouring out of it. 

And all of the clothing styles seem like they're frozen in the years between the 30's and 50's, which can create some truly striking visuals, like this shot of Nygma in his 50's-style G-man suit:

Those cheekbones!

Everything about the show's visual palette is heightened and exaggerated - everything is sharp angles and bright colors set against dimness and darkness. None of it is unbelievably over the top, really, but it's all unique to the show, and it helps create the impression of a universe that is similar to ours, but noticeably off.

It's apparent, as we enter Gotham's fourth season, that Gotham is never going to be a great show. The show's plotting remains too enamored of its own twistiness, allegiances change with eye-rolling suddenness, scenes featuring our "heroes" are mostly boring and any real emotional depth (such as the surprising heart and sentiment that defined the Penguin-Riddler relationship early in season three) is quickly subsumed by the show's need for blood and betrayal. 

Still, in our Golden Age of Television, when there's a glut of high-quality prestige shows, there remains a space for Gotham's entertaining, unapologetic ridiculousness. 

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.

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.