LogFAQs > #929979872

i believe @neonreaper might have asked about best seasons, but commenting on this discussion now:

- Season 1: one of the more consistent in quality. There are definitely bad parts, but everything clicks nicely here. Ned and Dany have excellent single-season storylines and you've got other fantastic supporting one-offs in Robert Baratheon and Khal Drogo. Jon is a low point and Littlefinger sucks, but otherwise it feels tightly woven with an intentional sort of unraveling at the end as the characters continue to spread out.

- Season 2: Tyrion defense of King's Landing from Stannis is another of the single-season plots and represents a lot of fun. Some mediocre players are introduced here - Stannis is dour and Brienne sucks - but the way things simmer here throughout most of the season is great. Another fantastic single-season subplot, though by far one of the grimmest of the show: Theon in Winterfell. It's almost inexplicable that the character managed six unremarkable seasons after such an astounding one-off. But it's a season where plot progression in the War of the Five Kings feels like a bit of a slog as we start trying to track lots of different characters. Both Dany and Jon have bad storylines here.

- Season 3: One of the most consistent seasons. Tywin and Tyrion hold down the fort in King's Landing with Margaery and Sansa adding some levity. The Stark-Lannister war comes to a violent and total end at the Twins. Jaime Lannister shows why he's called the Kingslayer and... whoa. Outside of the Seven Kingdoms, Dany performs the most enjoyable of the show and Jon actually smiles. If there are issues with S3, it may be that the plot feels thinly spread and appears to be slow at points up until the end. Lowlights include Stannis moaning for an entire season, Theon and Ramsay's torture porn, Sam's increased screentime, and Jojen Reed's actor.

- Season 4: Arguably my favorite season, it has perhaps the highest highs of the series, delivering most of the climaxes of the first trilogy (Red Wedding aside) and some interesting new lows as the writing flaws start coming in. The writers begin to have more freedom here and some of it is great - Tywin educating Tommen on ruling is one of my all-time favorite show-only scenes, and giving Kit Harington a chance to exact some violence in Craster's Keep ain't bad (though the torture porn to establish the villains is rough). The Red Viper becomes the single best character introduced after Season 3 and has probably my favorite fight and dialogue scene; Arya and the Hound have one of the best buddy-cop romps I've ever seen. But the way Shae and Tywin's exit is handled, the bizarre skeleton fight, an aborted Greyjoy rescue, and Brienne randomly deciding to fight the Hound portend the drop in quality to come.

- Season 5: Jon has his best single-season arc here with Hardhome as one of the latter half of the series's best episodes, but the lack of and poor quality of source material really start taking their toll here. We essentially lose Tyrion as a good character; The High Sparrow is the opposite of fun; Ramsay's torture porn returns; and Dorne is just straight-up bizarre in its badness. Character deaths are risky, and we can finally start to see them taking a toll, as the show loses a lot of the fabric that knitted it together, stabilizing, charismatic presences: Tyrion's wits, Tywin's command, Aemon's wisdom, Robb's daring, Joffrey's unique blend of cowardice and psychopathy. The show leans more on other characters, some of who can bear the load and others who can't - Roose Bolton is admirable, but Ramsay is no Joffrey - his Mary Sues isn't nearly as fun as the boy's shrill incompetence. The collapse of Arya's subplot hurts badly, while Dany spends the season with her dragons chained. Definitely one of the worst seasons.
---

yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness