I watched it; quite liked it. I had a few major problems though.
For one, the writing is not great, especially in the opening episodes. Now to a certain extent this is fair enough; with a franchise such as Game of Thrones the amount of lore that has to be imparted to the viewer in order for them to understand the show is crushing, and it is inevitable that the series will fall into exposition from time to time. That being said; there is such a thing as doing this well, and oftentimes Game of Thrones does not accomplish this. Frequently (specially as I said in the earlier episodes) you will find characters participating in a dialog that blatantly serves no function other than to educate the audience. Exposition should be woven into the narrative, and when it causes the narrative to grind to a halt it is a sign of poor writing.
The other sign of poor writing is how one dimensional many of the characters seem. This is particularly prevalent with the antagonists, none of whom seem able to complete a scene without acting like a transparently evil cuntsack to everybody they encounter. Jaime Lannister, Viserys Targaryen and Joffrey Baratheon are the most obvious examples of this, none of them displaying anything resembling a redeeming feature at any point during the show. The only character presented as a major antagonist who displays any level of depth is Cersei Baratheon, and she only becomes interesting after the writer decided to start shamelessly plagiarizing The Lion in Winter when it comes to her relationship with the king.
All of that could be overlooked, but the thing that really pissed me off about the franchise was the pathetic, childish attempt at maturity the show took. Every Single female character who appears on the screen appears to be engaged in a contest of "who can get their tits out the fastest". When there isn't a female lead on screen the show tends to randomly throw ****es at the viewer just so that the twelve year olds have something to jerk off over. It's like in the Sopranos where they would always stage scenes in that strip-club, with topless women permanently on display. However; whilst the Sopranos was doing it to make a point about the objectification of women, game of thrones is just doing it for the sake of objectifying women (I think the show believes it is being erotic, although how anybody not aged fifteen and under could find that erotic is beyond me), and as a result makes me feel shifty for viewing it.
The pretense at maturity isn't limited to the gratuitous tits. Characters constantly swear at one another in completely inappropriate situations for no other reason that maintaining the mature tone of dialog.
Then there's the gore; like tits and vulgarity, gore is fine when it's properly used, and GoT misses the mark by quite some way. The graphic violence isn't shocking, and it's not presented so as to make it appear horrific or to engender an emotional response from the audience, it is doing what horror movies do, and simply trying to present graphic violence as cool, once again feeding into the fifteen year old male demographic.
Like I said, I actually liked most of the show; but it's the more immature piece of television I've watched all year. Which is a shame, because underneath all of my bitching there's some really good television there. The characters may be shallow, but most of them are at least entertaining. The story is rich and complex. The world is well built and there is more than enough happening across all parts of it to keep you interested. The first season concluded with three major plot threads that have me legitimately interested to see where they go, whilst most shows struggle to maintain one.
I'll probably watch the next season and enjoy it.
I just with the show didn't have to constantly market itself towards the lowest possible denominator.
