[qubex]

I don't know why you've been voted down.

I definitely feel the same way: the books were brilliant and as long as the TV series was showcasing the previously written material the plot and dialogue were very solid. Since they ran out of books to show I've perceived a very sharp decline in quality, and they've fallen back on cliffhangers, twists, sex and violence to keep the audience riveted. Unfortunately, for this particular viewer at least, it really isn't working very well.

[Noos]

The books were junk, honestly. They were the same kind of doorstop novels as Wizard's Last Rule and the Wheel of Time, just with more nastiness, and they are showing the same flaws as those books. Do a standard epic fantasy, bloat it into at least seven novels, and add some transgressiveness to make it spicier.

I think the SF/f genre has really struggled lately...stuff like Brandon Sanderson writes feels so lightweight compared to even the second tier authors of the past, and there's very little flavor in books now; it's formulaic and narrowed to such a tight audience.

[kasey_junk]

Sturgeons law applies, survivor bias applies. There is lots of great SF/fantasy out these days it's just swamped by the not great stuff. Just like in the past.

[monocasa]

> Since they ran out of books to show I've perceived a very sharp decline in quality, and they've fallen back on cliffhangers, twists, sex and violence to keep the audience riveted.

When was that not Game of Thrones MO?

[EnFinlay]

It's a subjective thing, but I feel that in the past GoT was a cake where the base was characters, dialogue, and world, topped with an icing of cliffhangers, sex, and subverting audience expectation. Now it feels like a lot of icing with too little cake.

Put differently, yes, those things were always there, but now they are ALL that is there.

[mercer]

Agreed. The writing can be downright terrible at times, and it's usually when they deviate from the source material.

I've noticed something similar with Westworld. I love the premise, and I'm a huge fan of Anthony Hopkins in particular. But the writing just feels so bad most of the time. I don't think it's a coincidence that the best scenes involve Hopkins, and what makes them good is not primarily the dialogue.

It's really... jarring to be watching something that clearly cost a lot of money to produce, involved a lot of very skilled people, and yet manages to be absolutely atrocious when it comes to dialogue or plot. It always makes me wonder how the showrunners managed to get the gig.

Both Westworld and GoT are HBO shows, so maybe that has something to do with it. While I do enjoy both shows, it's more for the cultural buy-in and the budgets involved. The writing pales in comparison to that of many other shows on other channels (FX being my favorite, followed by perhaps AMC)

(Incidentally, this is something I've been confused about for a while. How was Moffat allowed to ruin Doctor Who so utterly over multiple seasons? How did Braga/Berman get to be showrunners for Enterprise when at least one of them (don't remember which) was generally disliked for his contributions to earlier seasons?)

[qubex]

I'm curious to see what will come of Westworld now that Hopkins' character is (apparently?) out.

As for quality of material, I don't know whether to list Mr Robot as an example of good writing or not. It's got good dialogue (and accurate hacking scenes!) but overall the plot seems to be borderline-ludicrous and the Anonymous/Occupy Wall Street ”stick-it-to-the-man” objective seems so... puerile?