Wolves, Nipples and Whores

"This is the best television program, ever!" I declared.

Again.

"Oh really?" She stated, rather than asked, my wife with bemused half-interest.

"OK, no." I admitted.  Knowing that my big statement had little in the way of objective reasoning or foundation to support it.

Good, for certain, and among the best, certainly well worth watching.  More so than your unrealistic reality drivel that so many fawn for. It doesn't really matter that the fat girl can dance.  Who cares that the gay boy can sing.  And I couldn't squeeze out enough liquid shit to denote my level of interest in which hot blond chick the hot greasy dude will give a rose to.

Story is, of course, king.  As is character and craft.  Give me dark.  Give me edgy.  Give me something with wit.

Squandering my sacred evening hours watching mindless reality nonsense is akin to hanging at the bus station, begging for spare cigarettes.  Why live, really, if you are going to waste your precious few remaining hours so?

But there is, and has been, work worth watching.

And so it was tonight, having reached the end of the 6th episode of Game of Thrones on HBO.  HBO.  HBO...  How has one cable network become the singular epicenter of all that is epic and grand on television.  Sure, the subscription relationship allows the occasional expletive or the subtly swinging titty, but there is more, so much more, to the quality of their original programming.

Beginning with the dysfunctional Soprano family, through the Fishers and now on to the Starks; HBO has produced, by my calculations, most of the most-compelling programming in the last 10 years.

  
Carnivale, Dead Wood, Rome, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Boardwalk Empire, Treme, True Blood and now, Game of Thrones...  If I were to make my top ten all time list, which I am not, so just settle down,  there would be little room left for the likes of MASH, West Wing, Battlestar and X-Files with the fat load of throbbing HBO programing.

If pressed, I'd pick the Wire, I suppose, as the Best-In-Show, but only narrowly nosing out Dead Wood.  Carnivale, it could have been, if it had not been shut down before its time.

But now, it is the dark and plodding, vaguely-mystical, goth-o-drama from the mind of George RR Martin that has become the compulsion over which I obsess.  It is a world in which dwarves are wicked and witty, queens are incestuous, heroes are dullards, whores have perfect nipples, and nosey children get thrown out of windows.

If you have not sampled, I invite you to try, only start from the beginning and journey across the seven kingdoms to the Wall, and the white walkers beyond...

      
Kings Ruin
2 oz cognac
1 pint Dry Champagne 
Serve with a lemon twist