I just finished season 1. I don't understand the hype. I liked it and the cast is fantastic but so far I think that the plots, arcs, and dialog aren't anything special. Imdb says there are nine noble families. Nine? That a silly amount of stuff to keep track of. I feel like I'll need a conspiracy theory like board with red string so I can keep track of everything. But that's more of a commitment than I want to make.
And I was surprised that there's some formulaic stuff make reddit and reddit-like audience cheer. The fucking scenes seem almost funny to me. They are so fake and wooden. I assume the wolf dogs are in the books but in season 1 - they seem less scary and more like a cool plot device.
At Imdb it has a rating of 9.2/10 • 2.2m. I can't believe it has millions of ratings but it's still above 9. I think the series is has an effectively higher rating than The Sopranos which is 9.2/10 but it only has has 1/5th has many ratings.
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How can it be so highly rated?
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What would you rate the series as a whole?
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Why do people love this series so much?
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Is season 1 typical of the series? Worse? Better?
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How do you rank the seasons best to worst?
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Is there more dialog that needs subtitles? I don't like that at all. I don't want to read subtitles for a fantasy series.
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Is the finale even worse than The Sopranos'?
I think that's what sold a lot of people. Budgets and production values had never been this high for fantasy TV shows, even now it's difficult to nail that "polish but not camp" field (Rings of Power didn't pass the vibe check, for example). Using real life locations that looked fantasy-like whenever possible helped, too, to make the (already pretty decent and sort of realistic) writing and dialogue appear grounded instead of shakesperian.
It's a line to walk to, mentioned Rings of Power and even though the had the budget, Amazon spent through the roof on it, only HBO had the actual craft to make something that passes over the nerd uncanny valley into real watchable TV for normies. People got into it.