Is ‘Game of Thrones’ Good? The Haters Get Our Pound of Flesh and Then Some.
“Game of Thrones” rated, 15 years later
When I first got my assignment to watch the first two seasons of “House of the Dragon” ahead of Season 3, not gonna lie, I was a little annoyed. You see, I’m one of the few, the proud, the “Game of Thrones” haters.
Let me take a step back: I assigned myself “House of the Dragon” because my staff doesn’t love “Game of Thrones” either, and they didn’t want to (re)watch it. So we’re a crew of haters, but alas, what follows is an earnest attempt to determine if “Game of Thrones” is worth watching.
Critics weigh in on “Game of Thrones”
Per a recent CableTV.com data analysis, we ranked “Game of Thrones” the No. 7 TV show of all time, surpassed only by prestige TV shows like “The Sopranos” and a classic comedy, “Seinfeld.”
We came to that very good ranking impartially, comparing scores from IMDb (93 points), Rolling Stone (89 points), and Variety (80 points) using the Borda method. Basically, the top show, “Breaking Bad,” scored 100 and is considered the top-rated TV show of all time.
And then there’s Rotten Tomatoes, which also influenced the trade publications above. “Game of Thrones,” as of writing, scores 89%, with “top critics” rating it even higher at 96%, on the Tomatometer. Not too shabby!
I think it’s safe to say that most TV critics think “Game of Thrones” is good, if not excellent, even if the critics here at CableTV.com couldn’t care less about the classic prestige fantasy drama.
Given the mountain of data in favor of “Game of Thrones” being good, I had to revisit my longstanding refusal to even watch it. Enter the spinoff series “House of the Dragon.”
“Game of Thrones” viewers are kinda split, but not really
Much to my dismay, “House of the Dragon” served as a gateway drug to the real TV crackrock that is “Game of Thrones.” After three episodes of the GoT prequel, I was thinking, “Hey, this is pretty good.”
Still, I didn’t want to commit to eight seasons of “Game of Thrones” based on “House of the Dragon” outperforming my expectations, so I reviewed some data from a recent CableTV.com fan survey. Spoiler alert: A lot of fans (i.e., not critics) think GoT is overrated. In fact, it placed No. 1 on our fan list of most overrated shows.
Woof! Well, “Maybe I shouldn’t waste my time,” I thought. But then I remembered we ran another, very similar fan survey about the most iconic TV shows of all time. Unfortunately, for me, “Game of Thrones” ranked No. 1 in that survey, too. “What in the Seven Hells?!”
Turns out a TV show can be divisive. Who knew? According to Rotten Tomatoes, 85% of fans gave GoT a rating of 3.5 stars or higher. In high-school-grading terms, that’s at least a C- from a large percentage of viewers. Fans tend to be hard on GoT.
The CableTV.com verdict on “Game of Thrones”
So, is “Game of Thrones” even good? After crunching the numbers and watching the entire franchise front-to-back (yes, even the prequels “House of the Dragon” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”), I can definitively say that “Game of Thrones” is good.
Call me a psycho or a masochist, but the moment I realized it was fantastic was when a certain lord pushed a certain lady through a certain “moon” window. “Damn,” I thought, “This show is savage.”
That said, I think it’s also fair to say that GoT ain’t for everyone. If you’re sensitive to gore, swearing, graphic sex, or incest, you’re probably not gonna enjoy bingeing it.
And even if you’re down with the disgusting, you should probably know that fans kinda hated the last two seasons, so prepare for at least a little disappointment.
For the rest of you fence sitters, what are you waiting for? You can binge the entire GoT franchise on HBO Max.
