EW.com re-imagines Game of Thrones as a CW-style soap opera

As part of the magazine's year-end round-up of the best and worst everything in pop culture, Entertainment Weekly created a clever promo for Game of Thrones, if the epic aired not on HBO but on the CW.



While highlighting the pairings of Ygritte and Jon Snow and Daenerys and Ser Jorah was the obvious way to go, I quite enjoyed the way EW took advantage of the excellent chemistry between Peter Dinklage and Conleth Hill to imply a somewhat plausible romance between Tyrion and Varys. Plus, the Tyrion/Varys (Varion? Tyrys?) pairing would leave the door open for an excellent love triangle between the Imp, the Spider and poor, loyal, left-out Bronn. Spin-off series, anyone?

The CW is the future of television. It's also failing.

Why a network that's doing everything right can't attract viewers.

Clockwise from top left: The Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl, Supernatural and Nikita.

Todd VanDerWerff of The A.V. Club recently wrote a pretty fascinating think piece (disguised as a news report about the TCA press tour) that detailed the many ways in which The CW has become a ratings pit of which NBC would be ashamed, despite being the single most forward-thinking of the major networks:

If you were going to create a TV network that catered to the modern TV fan, it would be a network that aired lots of heavily serialized shows that were addictive and engrossing once you got into them. It would be a network that cared less about immediate Nielsen ratings and more about DVR plays and (even better) digital streaming. It would be a network that wouldn’t cancel long-running shows out of nowhere and would, instead, announce that a show was ending, but only after a shortened final season designed to wrap up its plotlines. Such a network would also feature a frequent focus on genre fare, because the modern TV fan likes that sort of thing. Maybe it would air longtime Internet favorite Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog in its television debut, coming up on October 9th. 

Here’s the thing: That network exists. It’s called The CW. It does all of the things above, right down to Dr. Horrible (coming on October 9th). And nobody watches it. 

[...] 

If you were to make an argument that the network will almost certainly be the first of the “big five” to die—and sooner, rather than later—no one would argue with you. The CW regularly loses to Univision and several cable channels. It’s not on the same level as the four major networks, and if you’ve ever spent time jeering about how far NBC has fallen, well, most of its shows look like ratings kings compared to even The CW’s hits. Parks & Recreation, for instance, would be the highest-rated show on The CW by a fair margin. The CW is starting from a very weak position, both in terms of ratings and in terms of “buzz,” whatever that means.

Five reasons The Vampire Diaries is better than True Blood

Left: Nina Dobrev on The Vampire Diaries. Right: Rutina Wesley on True Blood.

Spring has officially ended, and the good TV shows have gone the way of non-sweltering weather and the snowdrops outside my old apartment. (On a side note, I have a new apartment now, and my move from the one to the other is what has kept me from blogging. It takes a long time to assemble an entire apartment's worth of Ikea furniture.) Game of Thrones finished off its phenomenal second season with a threat from the perpetually icy North, and was replaced on HBO's Sunday night schedule with the considerably muggier atmosphere of Bon Temps, Louisiana, and the baffling fifth season of True Blood

At this point in its lifespan, True Blood mostly exists as a reminder of how much I miss the CW's infinitely superior supernatural thriller The Vampire Diaries. (Also as a way to see Alexander Skarsgard nude.) So, to honor the return of Bill, Eric, Jessica and Sookie's magic fairy vagina, let's take a look at a few of the many, many things that The Vampire Diaries does better than True Blood. (Note: SPOILERS for the third season of The Vampire Diaries and every season of True Blood abound.)

No irrelevant side plots that distract from the action

True Blood's first season (which seems so long ago) was almost entirely focused on a single storyline: the serial killer targeting women who had sex with vampires. Yes, there were digressions here and there where Sookie lost her virginity to Bill and Jason got addicted to V, but the action was all driven by the main plot and the problems it posed to the residents of Bon Temps. Not coincidentally, the first season was the high point of the show, which has since degenerated into a shapeless mass of unrelated stories stitched together into a tonally incoherent mess.

The Vampire Diaries, on the other hand, has a talent for pulling every side story, no matter how irrelevant it may seem, into the main thrust of the action. You might think that Tyler becoming a werewolf has nothing to do with the threat of the Originals, but then Klaus turns him into a hybrid and a whole new, emotionally compelling storyline is born. Elena's concussion might have seemed like a cheap way to build tension, but it paid off in spades when she drowned after being cured with vampire blood and turned into a blood-sucker. Speaking of which...