Quote Quoting Irish (view post)
"Savage West Wing" is a great way of framing it.

I'm not sure about the books. The subject matter is a 'fantasy of manners' of the type that had gotten popular in the 80s. The prose is awkward in a lot of places, but still evocative and a far cut above most fantasy novels (which is still a low, low bar).

The biggest difference to me between this & other soaps is that it doesn't really have multiple subplots running that are resolved one after the other, like a West Wing or Six Feet Under or Sopranos.

The entire thing is about the war, and the struggle for the throne & every character is focused exclusively on that. Martin has set up a 'Lost' problem very early on -- he can't ever resolve the central problem because if he does, the story must end & there goes a lot of money & a lot of jobs.

That's at odds with the audience's interest, because they're only watching to see how that main plot resolves.
Not exactly, Lost didn't really seem to know where they were going with the narrative and it shows. Martin seems to know the broader strokes. I do agree though that I don't really care for the overall trajectory of the Thrones novels. I'm definitely much more interested in the white walker storyline than I am in a lot of the goings ons we witness instead. But I would say this series does have subplots which are resolved for any given character, but then there lives continue and there's another narrative thread which feature them. For instance the dragons have been born, etc.

Quote Quoting Irish (view post)
Stuff like Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time had the exact same issue, and that didn't turn out so well for the fans.
It turned out just fine for this fan. He definitely hit some stumbling blocks along the way but the biggest problem is just unnecessary extraneous characters, focusing a bit much on the enemy, a few needless subplots, etc. I personally think the overarching story, world building and mythos is fantastic though. If it were ever adapted it could make a fantastic show because you could cut out all the fat and get to the really good stuff.