Sticking the ending is tough

Last night I watched the Game of Thrones finale, what with others in the household watching it & its having become such a huge cultural event, etc.

I had seen most or all of Season 1, but then quit although I recognized the quality as I simply wasn't in the market for another long-haul medieval dragons & kings fantasy. But I've seen bits here and there, and was familiar with the general story arc et al because it had become so culturally prominent.

My gawd but the ending was awful. Slow, portentious, pretentious, mawkish. They could have done the whole thing in 10 minutes, or alternatively they should have taken 6 weeks. And all the convenient happy ending bits, but also the oh-I'm-so-noble sorrow bits, were bad cliche.

Also the burning city was a bit too picturesque. Nicely curated little fires burning at regular intervals near arranged rubble. The set designer needed to go a bit more chaotic and rando.

But I recognize, from all I've heard about G of T online and in person from its fans, while this is the fault of the show runners it doesn't say anything against the high quality of the first 6 seasons.

All that said, sticking the ending is tough. The Seinfeld finale was awful - strained, unfunny, completely misconceived - although it didn't really matter since story arcs weren't key to the show, so it was really just a by then rare bad episode. (Early Seinfeld episodes are interesting in that one can see they hadn't quite figured it out yet.)

The famous, controversial Sopranos ending I thought was great, along with the entire series.

Breaking Bad I thought blew it a bit in the ending. Like Game of Thrones, they made things too nice and even rah-rah at the end, at the expense of everything that had come before. But at least it was a dramatic and fast-paced episode.

Luckily a bad ending to a miniseries doesn't do as much harm to what came before as, say, failing to land a plane.