Boring Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch

It's been a few weeks since they aired the last episode of Game of Thrones.

Most people including me couldn't get over the fact that this series has ended. We loved it so much that some of us are not ready to let it go. They are signing online petitions, they are booing the producers, some are speculating the prequel and some are writing their own version of how the show must have ended.

I am heartbroken over the conclusion of Game of Thrones. Not that I didn't like the last season or felt betrayed by the abrupt ending of the Night King's storyline or the way Daenerys lost her mind. I always had quite a practical approach for this series - "it's just a fictional story, it won't matter if they kill your hero or how they end it". And I was honest about this feeling. I can say so because even though I haven't met anyone so far who is completely okay with season 8,  I, on the other hand, have a feeling of satisfaction and relief. I don't want to change anything about the 8th season. It is what it is and it is beautiful.

When I saw something like the Game Of Thrones: The Last Watch on the Hotstar the other day, I wasn't particularly thrilled about seeing another making of my favorite show or a movie. These 'making of ' videos have an underlying structure to it. Yes, it's sometimes exciting, but hardly have anything outside of the box. Few interviews with the director, actors, art designers, footage of shootings and that is much of it.

Still, I couldn't resist but to open this last episode about the game of thrones. Promising myself that it should be the last full-length episode I would watch of that series.

It was boring. So boring that I had to watch it in 3 sittings.

There were a bunch of extras, the production crew, and the makeup artists talking about the 8th season and how they faced bad weather, tight schedules and long shifts to make it happen. It was boring, the music was depressing, and the weather much so. But it feels like that was the point of this documentary. A show is as exciting as GoT has so many people working behind the curtain. They do it as their job. Probably more passionately than you and I do our day job but still it's their job.

Kit Harrington's reaction after knowing the fate of Jon Snow at the table reading

It got me thinking that when the series had started, they wouldn't have had slightest of the idea of how big it was going to be. All, including the main cast, would have been completely oblivious to the fact that GoT would become a massive hit. In retrospect, they now know how lucky they were to be selected for their role.

In case of the extras and the production crew, those were the people for whom it was a job of 8 years. From the work they had, it was quite clear that even though as an end product we see GoT as this piece of art, for them it was another Tuesday. The set designers, the snow crew, the makeup artists, the extras... whoever contributed to making this show a masterpiece did it as their regular job at most days.

And this is what struck me. We are in love with the end product. We do appreciate the efforts of the people working behind the curtains, but somehow we just revere the artwork so much that we forget that that was made with 1000s of hours of hard work by 1000s of men and women.

I like the result but I hardly love the process, but to create something as impressive as GoT, it is so important to love the process. The grunt work, the impossible deadlines and tiring long shifts realizing that the process is as is important as the result.

The Last Watch was boring. And I think that was the point.

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