To Catch a Critic:

Dueling queens Margaery Tyrell and Cersei Lannister are growing more tense by the moment. This season may be when fans get to see the royal battle they've been waiting for. 
Photo Courtesy of gameofthrones.wikia.com

Medieval demographics and outlandish fantasy themes collide in one of the world’s biggest television obsessions. Game of Thrones, based on the bestselling book series by George R. R. Martin, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” has been a global phenomenon since it’s television debut in 2011. The show is known for being wildly unpredictable, even for those who have read the books, and for killing off beloved characters in gruesome but admirably creative ways. It boasts a 9.5 rating out of 10 on the Internet Movie Database and an incredible 97% approval rating from perhaps the Internet’s most brutal collaboration of critics, Rotten Tomatoes.  

Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, Game of Thrones boasts an all-star cast, including Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, and Kit Harrington. The graphics and costumes are pristine, giving the illusion of truly being transported to another world, full of gallant knights and crooked royalty. This realism doesn’t come without it’s own price tag, however. According to an International Business Times article entitled “’Game of Thrones’ Big Budgets Bring Huge Success; How HBO Series Make Money With High Cost Per Episode” by Alex Garofalo, each episode takes a staggering $6 million to create, winning Game of Thrones the title of “third most expensive show of all time.” Luckily for HBO, who owns exclusive rights to the “ratings juggernaut,” so they enjoy all the profits from the show itself as well as toys, costumes, and other Game of Thrones inspired merchandise,  

Sunday, April 12, played host to the long awaited premiere of the show’s fifth season. A whopping eight million viewers tuned in to watch the HBO hit, and that only includes those fans that soaked in the bloody goodness on traditional television, not those that pirated the episode from the internet or watched on HBO’s newest addition, HBO Go, a Netflix-style streaming service dedicated to the network’s most popular programs. That’s 17% more viewers than tuned in for last year’s premiere of season four, an especially impressive feat considering the aforementioned HBO Pro, which was supposed to launch in conjunction with the season five premiere as incentive for fans to subscribe, was rendered effectively useless for the first four weeks of the season after the first four episodes, a whopping 40% of the entire season, was leaked online the day before the scheduled premiere. Before the show had officially premiered on Sunday night, an estimated 800,000 illegal downloads of the leaked content had been committed, with that number growing by the minute. Still, although many ravenous fans resorted to Internet piracy to sate their appetites before their more patient counterparts, the HBO network enjoyed the highest tune-in rate in Game of Thrones history.  

Fans waited an agonizingly long year for the premiere of season five, punctuated by teases from cast members like Emelia Clarke, who plays fan-favorite Danaerys Targaryen, and Martin himself promising the most shocking season yet. Anyone who has endured previous seasons can attest to how frightening that comment really is.  

During the premiere, fans once again met up with favorite characters and picked up where season four had left off last June, continuing the exploits of the banished and on-the-run Tyrion, the aforementioned Danaerys, the perpetually pouty Jon Snow, and even the queen every fan loves to hate, Cersei Lannister.  

Compared to the fast-paced, sword-clashing, skull smashing action that Game of Thrones fans are accustomed to, the premiere of season five was surprisingly tame. Instead of action and gore, this episode really seemed to focus on setting up plot for the rest of the season. Admittedly, an easier transition back into the cutthroat world of Game of Thrones was almost refreshing, if not a bit unnerving. After all, fans have been promised the most grotesque, soul-crushing season yet, and the relatively soft premiere means there are now only nine episodes left to deliver on the grisly vow, and that lost time has to be made up somewhere.  

Although comparatively more tame than some of the more infamous installments of the world’s latest and greatest television obsession, the introduction to the newest season of Game of Thrones did not disappoint its adoring legion of fans. The brief break from intense violence paved the way for plot setup, leaving viewers sure that this season will be just at intricate, if not more so, than previous seasons. There will be twists, turns, betrayals, and more heartbreaking character deaths than any season preceding it. Perhaps the most unnerving thing about the premiere is that it didn’t give fans many footholds to start speculating on what the season will hold.  

Only one thing is certain. In the immortal words of Cerise Lannister, “When you play the game of thrones, you win or you die.”