LogFAQs > #939927299

As a long time book reader (since way before the show was a thing), I always thought season 3 was the first major and noticeable dip in quality. This season did have its fair share of great moments, yes. But this was the first true departure where the showrunners started to take a lot of liberties with the source material -- namely in how they chose to pace the flow of story and information, as well as what material was cut and which materials were given extra focus -- and these things generally led to an inferior product overall.

I'm not saying season 3 was as bad as later seasons. that's definitely not true. but if you ask me when did the show START to decline, I would say season 3 was really it. this is when it "started."

however, the day the show truly went off the rails, to the point at which there was no longer any safe return, was the change in season 4 regarding tyrion, tysha, jaime, and tywin. this was a culmination of many small decisions to whitewash tyrion's character, and the director's refusal to adhere to the source material on the most flagrant display... in a way that changed the relationship between several characters, the motives for character actions, the very plot itself, for many seasons to come in an unprecedented ripple effect from which there was never any recovery seen. and it marked the time when the directors started to feel more and more comfortable making similar changes to the story. almost always for the worse.

I remember having an immediately negative reaction to this episode, while everyone else was still busy praising it. why wouldn't they? they all loved it, and it was still a great show at the time. but I knew much worse things were to come. season 4 is when I more or less stopped caring about anything that happened in the show, and resigned myself to just watch it for the sake of completing it.

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all the rest weren't so unfortunate
https://imgur.com/yv2eC4n