You should be asking this question about The Walking Dead.

You show me someone who hates Back To The Future and I'll show you a liar.

We're not really talking about "hating" anything here, though - the question was why do people like Game of Thrones, when for other people it's just meh.      I'm sure that many many people consider BTTF to be okay but don't understand why some of us are so obsessed with it.   

On the topic, I watched the first season of GoT before reading any of the books - but that inspired me to read all the books by the start of the second season.    The books helped me understand a lot of the relationships and connections that I'd missed from just watching the show, but that was just gravy, I was already a fan.

Me, I like the darkness of the show - which comes from the tone of the books, obviously - but it's great that dark tone made it to the screen mostly unaltered.    When a show dares to say "there are no heroes here per se, and the things that happen will almost never be "good" or "just" or "appropriate", well - I find that fascinating.  Because unlike most every other mass entertainment, that means I literally do not know what will happen.   

Because ya know what else is just like that?  Real life.    And mass entertainment almost never dares to be like real life.     True love wins, bad guys get defeated, blah blah, we all know the tropes.   Shows like GoT (and they're rare) are refreshing to me when they have the guts to not make happy endings for us.     So it feels less like a story and more like an alternate-universe medieval history.   

Interestingly, I just gave another HBO series a try, and I was shocked to find out that Deadwood is just Game Of Thrones in the wild West.  (Or rather the opposite, since Deadwood came first).    Deadwood has that exact same "fuck you and your desire for happy endings" attitude that Thrones has.   

And I loved it - burned through all three seasons in two weeks, and now am one of the many who lament that there won't be any more.

Fun fact - one of the reasons Deadwood has that random, "no one is safe, ever" vibe is... much of it is based on actual events.   That's real life for ya.

And of course, now having read all the books - I know all about the time bomb that's gonna go off in GoT season three.   Boy, people who don't know it's coming are gonna hate hate hate it - because it's something that few would ever dare to do in a story.  Usually only real life would dish out such a downer as that one. 

Trey, you make some great points and I certainly do like stories that are more realistic. But, there are times when I want a happy ending, I want love to win, even if it is not realistic. I may still be too young or not cynical enough or what have you, but things like Monsters Inc, Star Wars and Rapunzel-those are movies I love because of the simplistic message.
Not saying there isn't a room for realism because I enjoy it to, but I get enough of it in work and real life. I guess I need it in smaller doses than others
As I said, I may read the books and get into Game of Thrones but the pilot didn't give me anyone I felt I could relate to. The books could change that.

Oh god, it's like every day I find another reason I need to watch Deadwood. I think the universe is trying to tell me something

I watched about 5 minutes of Deadwood featuring Lovejoy saying "fuck" about 20 times and checked out.

What I get out of Game of Thrones is that sometimes you think the story is going one way and you're planing on it and expecting it and you can see it all working out and then it doesn't and I go GRRRRRRRRRRRR(M). But then it goes on and something else happens and it's not what you planned but it's interesting too and it's going to be ok. I think it's a metaphor.

As for the show, I'm with Spork that I watch it mostly to see how they adapt the books.

*sigh* I so miss Deadwood. Damn it, I'm going to have to watch them all again. What a tragedy 

Still, I do get to enjoy Timothy Elephant in Justified, where I like to think that his Raylan Givens character is a descedent of Seth Bullock.

Dude, Season/Book 3 is when shit goes crazy. I can't wait.

Yay! Someone acknowledged my post!

*Drunk post disclaimer.*

Though as I recall, book 3 is getting split into 2 Seasons, so we may have to wait on some things... It's taking so much willpower not to theorize and spoil.

Oh, and the last shot of this season will likely be the hateful eyes of a certain lady.

Oh that thing! The books all tend to blur into each other. Which one is basically all sand politics?