Game of Thrones season two

Warning: spoilers ahead. If you haven't seen season two and intend to, read no further!

 

I enjoyed the first season of Game of Thrones. It was reasonably intelligent fantasy, with a few very good characters and a developing plot.

I struggled with season two. It was (in my view) unnecessarily grim, harsh and bloody. There were very few characters I liked (Tyrion and Arya) and the other “good” characters were either utterly thick (Catelyn Stark, I'm looking at you) or just dull (Jon Snow and Robb Stark would come to mind if they weren't instantly forgettable).

  

It also didn't help that each episode gave about five minutes of each plot thread before jumping elsewhere, making it difficult to get absorbed into any single story.

We haven't got Sky, so I'd bought the boxed set. By the time I got to the last episode of season two, I was finding watching the show hard work, and I was seriously asking myself if I was going to bother buying season three.

 

 

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The last episode changed all that. Suddenly we began to see that there really is magic in Westeros. There had been hints before, but nothing of any substance. Now the magic is becoming real. Magic is returning. Is it because the dragons are back? And the plot threads suddenly seemed to be going somewhere. Sansa had finally escaped the clutches of Joffrey; Jon Snow had reached the Wildling settlement; the White Walkers, so long just names, finally emerge from the snow. And Daenerys is realising that her dragons are more than just tiny lizards.

  

I think season two was poor, particularly after seeing how good the first season was. But the promise of the final episode is enough to persuade me not to give up on Game of Thrones.