The Leftovers showrunner Damon Lindelof shrugs off controversy and offers effusive praise to HBO’s Game of Thrones.
“I love Game of Thrones,” says Lindelof, who is best known for his work on ABC’s Lost. The showrunner began his journey with the book series by George R.R. Martin, but decided to stop reading after finishing book 3, A Storm of Swords.
“I was like, ‘I would love to get to a place in this show where I am genuinely surprised [by the show,]'” Lindelof says. By season 5, the most recent and most controversial season, he was “experiencing the show completely and totally cold — and I was surprised” by both its story and its quality.
“As someone who makes television, I watch that show and I do not know how they do it,” he marvels. “I just don’t understand, on a sheer logistical level, of how they’re able to produce that qualitative of a product in the amount of time they have with so many different locations and so many different parts.”
From his perspective working in television, Lindelof feels that even mediocre episodes of a series do not impact its overall success.
“I think what people don’t realize is that in order to produce those excellent episodes, there have to be episodes that set that up,” Lindelof says. “And when I was watching [episode 8] ‘Hardhome’ this season, I was just like, ‘That’s one of the most excellent hours of television I’ve ever seen.'”
In fact, Lindelof boils the show’s creative success down to a simple equation.
“You only need to demonstrate excellence once a season for me to view the entire season as excellent, or the entire show as excellent,” he admits. “And Game of Thrones is able to do it at any one time.”
Given his emphatic love for the epic fantasy series, the Leftovers showrunner takes issue with what he calls “a clickbait-y media culture that exists to pick things apart.”
Related: HBO President confirms (?) Jon Snow’s fate, believes Game of Thrones will run 8 seasons
“I don’t watch television to find things to gripe about,” he says, admitting that he is “immensely forgiving of things that perhaps are not the strongest attributes of the show.”
But rather famously, other fans are not as forgiving, and this seems to frustrate Lindelof.
“I see people pushing against Game of Thrones,” he observes. “Literally from week to week, someone will say, ‘This is the most excellent show, this season is firing on all cylinders, it’s never been better.’ And then because of one story move — Stannis burns his daughter — suddenly [fans say] ‘I cannot watch this show anymore. I’m quitting you, Game of Thrones.’ And I’m thinking: ‘No, you’re not. Don’t be an ass.'”
Lindelof believes that fans can be fickle in their demands from the series, especially as it has ballooned in popularity.
“People say ‘it’s not as good as it used to be,'” he says. “People say, ‘If you kill this character, I will stop watching the show.’ One of the things that people fell in love with about Game of Thrones was its willingness to kill anyone — but you can’t kill Jon Snow, you know?”
“But I thought you loved the show because we killed Ned Stark!” Lindelof says. “He was the un-killable character! So we have to be willing to do that.”
In fact, Lindelof has some rather harsh words for fans who, fed up with controversial storylines, claim that they want to quit the show.
“If I were running that show I would call them up and say, ‘You are not allowed to watch my show anymore,'” he muses. “‘I’m going to f–king alert everybody in your life to watch you. I’m going to hire a private eye to tap your media consumption, and you better not ever watch it again. Are you sure you want to do this?'”
Lindelof himself has no intention of quitting Game of Thrones — “despite the fact that George R. R. Martin has flamed the Lost finale,” he says.
“There is a schadenfreude aspect of me saying, ‘Well, I kind of hope Game of Thrones sucks at the end, too, so they’ll know it feels to have somebody say that to you.’ But I don’t think the Lost finale sucks. And I want Game of Thrones to end awesome,” Lindelof says. “Because I’m a huge fan, and I have every reason to believe that it is going to end awesomely.”
Game of Thrones season 6 will air in Spring 2016 on HBO.
Source: EW
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