The Man Who Never Saw Game of Thrones

I have always been slow to get in on the latest trends, especially with regard to television. To be honest, I consider that a good thing.

Almost all majorly hyped television “events” and “experiences” have garnered barely a “meh” from me as millions of people fell all over themselves to hop on the trend-train. Most people seem to want to be part of the TV-dictated in-crowd; for them, the worst fate would be to miss an episode and not be able to talk knowingly about it at work the next morning.

But not me. I’ve never really cared about that, and I don’t think I’ve missed much. After all, who wants to waste life sitting on a sofa watching television? It’s much better to sit at a desk for hours looking at a computer, right?

Actually, watching television is probably better for you than staring at a computer screen. Television allows you to sit further back from the screen and enjoy the comfort of a nice sofa, recliner or easy chair. And on that sofa or in that chair, you can change positions: you can sit up straight, lie on your left side, switch to your right, put a pillow behind your back – the possibilities are endless.

Computers, on the other hand, demand that you sit in a bad chair at a desk with your spine curved forward and your head bent over. Often you rest your upper body on your elbows, and your vertebrae are almost continuously pinched down at the front and lifted apart in the rear. I’m sure any orthopedic specialist would recommend television watching over hours in front of a computer screen.

And as I think about it, I really don’t remember having any back problems in my sofa and TV days. And I was actually more active then, running, softball, evenings at the gym, etc. But watching movies and documentaries on my computer just might be the biggest culprit in my chronic back pain – that and working most of the day at a computer.

I remember my favorite chair-TV combination: it was a wonderfully comfortable reclining easy chair I had when I lived in Japan. During sumo tournaments, I would come home, settle into the chair, and then watch the day’s matches. Sometimes I would fall asleep for a bit, but I would always jerk awake toward the end when the best guys – the yokozuna and ozeki – were fighting.

I had another really comfortable TV chair in my Parker, Colorado, home a long time ago. My cats really liked it too, especially when I was in it. When I moved to the mountains, it became my meditation chair.

But I digress…

Television "Experiences"

There have been several big television “experiences” that I have missed in real time over the years. For example, I was slow to warm up to some of the popular situation comedies of the 1990s. I did become a regular watcher of Seinfeld and Friends in the early days of those shows, but that was mainly because a bunch of us regularly met in the bar at our apartment complex after working out in the gym in the same building. So it was more of a social compact. And exercise was a part of it, so it was a good thing.

Perhaps the biggest TV thing that I totally missed out on was The Sopranos. When I first heard about it – after I realized it was not about opera singers – I dismissed it as some tacky rip-off of The Godfather and countless other Mafia movies. Besides, it was on HBO, which required a subscription to watch. I wasn’t going to pay extra just for that, so I paid it no further mind.

By the time The Sopranos finished its run on HBO and a “cleaned-up” version began airing on A&E (without all the bad language and occasional nudity), I caught some episodes and was hooked. Back here in Ukraine, I found a site where I could watch every episode from each season in the original HBO “adult-content.”

And I could binge-watch, which was great because I didn’t have to wait a week to find out who was going to get whacked. Immediate gratification – it’s a wonderful thing.

But the best thing was that I got into it because I wanted to, not because it was trendy.

A few years after The Sopranos finished its run, HBO began airing another “experience”: Game of Thrones. By this time, I was already more than three years into my exile in Ukraine and barely watching television at all – with the exception of consuming all the old episodes of The Sopranos and finding episodes online (for free) of a new gangster series from HBO called Boardwalk Empire.

So I caught Boardwalk Empire from the beginning – a nicely written and well-acted show, but not an “experience” like The Sopranos or Game of Thrones. That’s just how I seem to do things.

Game of Thrones?

When I first heard of this show called Game of Thrones, I thought it was some kind of stupid reality show. So, just as with The Sopranos years earlier, I paid it no further mind.

Now I’m kind of sorry about that.

As I understand it, Game of Thrones has all kinds of things that I would love in a TV “experience.” The setting is sort of medieval northern European, and I’ve always liked those kinds of movies. I am told that it includes all sorts of intrigue and plot twists, not to mention lots of swordplay, epic battles and similar stuff. So I was thinking Lord of the Rings or Braveheart – more of my favorites.

And from a few trailers and clips I’ve seen on You-Tube, there are a lot of beautiful women, many of whom often dispense with their clothing. Woah! Count me in!

But, alas… six seasons have gone by, and I’ve never seen even one episode. So I have no sense of the story, which makes it too late to start watching now. And finding a way to watch it for free online in the original English – as I did with The Sopranos – seems increasingly difficult these days.

I sort of feel like I’ve really missed something this time. But, then again, can you really say that you’ve “missed something” when that something is just a television program? Probably not.  But still, I’d like to see it someday.

So what’s a boy to do? I can’t just pick up with the current season and start watching it (supposing I could even find it for free online). I would have no context in which to understand what was happening.

I suppose I will just have to wait until some day when I have enough time to find Game of Thrones on DVD and watch it from the beginning. I will binge watch it, just as I did with The Sopranos. What a fine waste of time that would be.

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