Please forgive this one comment on the Game of Throne finale: The chuckles of the lords and ladies over Samwell Tarley’s plea for a democratic resolution nicely encapsulated the show’s most consistent weakness. Far worse than the final season’s many notorious failings was the show’s lack of interest over its entire run in the lives of ordinary people.
Not to take anything away from Arya and the Hound and other worthy characters, but it would have been nice if a few commoners had had a part in the great events other than as victims or as cannon fodder for the aristocrats and their factotums. Of course that’s all they look like when stories are told from the viewpoint of the high nobility. But a show that was mostly about the lethal inadequacies of that exact viewpoint should have taken a lesson from itself. The princes are always prone to thinking that they’re the only people who matter, and they are always wrong about that.