(WARNING: There might be some spoilers for those who aren’t up to date on Game of Thrones.)
The end of football season in early February is so cruel.
A weekend during football season means 51 hours of enjoyment. It starts Friday at 5pm and goes right through Sunday Night Football. And those Sundays, oh boy, those Sundays…11 straight hours of football…11 straight hours of indoors, on the couch, getting your fat on.
A weekend during the other seven months of the year means a fun Friday and Saturday but a boring Sunday spent thinking about that dreadful Monday morning. Worst of all, you’re expected to go outdoors on these Sundays!
Unfortunately I don’t have a solution that will get you back in front of the TV for the entire day, but I can give you a few hours of awesomeness to look forward to starting this coming Sunday, April 6th.
Fine, I’m not giving this to you so much as HBO is giving this to you.
Starting Sunday we get a brand new and very promising comedy called Silicon Valley (the first date), the return of one of the best comedies you’re probably not watching, Veep (the great fling), and finally, as you may have heard, a little fantasy drama called Game of Thrones is premiering its fourth season (the complicated lover).
All on HBO. Consider me a subscriber for life at this point.
Let’s tackle these three shows in detail.
Silicon Valley – Series Premiere, Sunday at 10pm
I was in on this show the moment I heard the words “Mike Judge” and “Silicon Valley.” Mike Judge because he has an incredible track record (Office Space, Beavis & Butthead, King of the Hill). Silicon Valley because I lived there for seven years and have always thought there was plenty ripe material for a TV show.
In fact, one of the first ideas I worked on when I moved to LA was a TV pilot about a group of young sales guys making way too much money in Silicon Valley.
Judge’s Silicon Valley has this as its premise: “Six programmers live together and try to make it big in Silicon Valley.”
He went with programmers; I went with sales guys. He actually wrote it and followed through with the idea; I wrote enough first drafts to fill a warehouse but never returned to it. The lesson? The line between success and wannabe in Hollywood is razor thin.
It seems to me a comedy about the fast-paced world of technology on a channel that allows for plenty of swearing, sexual content and whatever the hell else this show wants to do is easily worth tuning in to on Sunday night.
Fingers crossed that this is a good first date and not one of those encounters that ends with an awkward hug at the car while the girl waits for me to say I’d like to see her again.
Veep – Season Three Premiere – Sunday at 10:30pm
I wrote earlier that this is the best comedy you’re not watching. Maybe you are watching it, but I just haven’t heard enough people say that they are. Either way, you should be. This is Julia Louis-Dreyfus at her finest. This is political humor, satire and subtle comedy at its finest. This is intelligent humor at its finest. In fact, if you try watching Veep and “don’t get it,” well, I hear there’s a great lineup on CBS that’s probably more your speed.
And to pat myself on the back just a bit, I’m the king of finding niche comedies right before they blow up and go mainstream (see: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, August 2005).
I’m calling this show the great fling because it shows up once a year for a short time (10 episodes), we always have a good time with each other, and there’s never any drama or seriousness. No emotional baggage. I love it when it’s around, but don’t think about it too much when it’s gone.
Game of Thrones – Season Four Premiere – Sunday at 9pm
And then there’s the complicated lover who leaves me with plenty of emotional baggage at the end of each season. This isn’t a fun, easy-going fling. This is an intense relationship with weekly roller coaster rides that leave me feeling exhausted.
But I haven’t looked forward to a TV show this much since the early days of Lost.
In fact, my GoT withdrawals got so bad a couple weeks ago that I ordered all five of George R. R. Martin’s books during a random Amazon.com binge. I haven’t read a book in quite some time so trying to take down roughly 4,500 pages of a fantasy world is going to be quite the feat. But I simply needed my Khaleesi fix.
Game of Thrones is currently the crown jewel of television. I won’t accept a single argument against that statement.
And starting on Sunday maybe we’ll finally get to see the good guys of Westeros live long enough to take down the bad guys. But based on past performance, I won’t hold my breath for that.
Game of Thrones…she’s a complicated bitch, but she’s my complicated bitch.
And now I’ll leave you with six random thoughts about the best show on TV:
- The best part of GoT is that it could legitimately go on for 10, 15, 20 years. It’s self-perpetuating. Who wouldn’t want to see these story lines play out over decades? The amount of family backstabbing, the juggling of power and priorities, the 150 or so different people with claims to the Iron Throne. I see no end in sight.
- At this point if you’re not rooting solely for Arya and Khaleesi (really the only interesting “good” people left), what the hell are you doing with your life?
- And if it came down to choosing, I’m going Khaleesi over Arya 100 times out of 100. And yes, it’s a completely sexual thing.
- There’s a very decent Game of Thrones the Politics of Season 3 playing on HBO this week. Watch it.
- This really has nothing to do with GoT per se, but all this talk about strategy, intricacies and roller coaster rides got me thinking about Settlers of Catan. It’s simply the greatest board game ever invented. And I just felt like giving it a plug. Try not to be confused when you play it someday and it has nothing to do with Game of Thrones.
- Even with only three seasons in the books, Joffrey has already established himself as a lead candidate for the most evil villain in cinematic history. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, makes my girlfriend’s blood bubble like the site of Joffrey (even when she once saw a picture of the actor not in Joffrey character in Entertainment Weekly). One more indefensible murder by him and I might think about permanently removing my girlfriend from LA so we don’t accidentally bump into Jackie Gleeson (the guy who plays Joff) some day and then 10 months later I’m sitting in a courtroom at my girlfriend’s 1st degree murder trial.
Enjoy Sunday night all you HBO subscribers (and those of you “borrowing” your friend’s HBO GO login information).