I just watched the season finale for Game of Thrones. The finale was the best episode of season 6. Years ago, when I saw the first episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones I was turned off by it. The show was the very definition of gratuitous violence. Sometime later I read the 5 books by R.R.Martin. The books hooked me on the HBO series! I went back and watched the HBO series in a new light, ignored the gratuitous bits, and loved it up until season 6. While seasons 1-5 were epic story telling at its best, season 6 felt like a soap opera to me. It was flat. There was nothing epic about it. Clearly for me, what made the series was R.R.Martin’s imagination and writing.