By Jacob Surpin
It’s been an unusually quiet week for Dear Television. Mad Men is currently on a mid-season hiatus, and there is no essay on Louie this week. Still, a quick glance at the LARB Main Site leaves no doubt the section is doing ok: Dear TV pieces currently hold the nos. 1, 4, and 7 spots on our “Most Viewed” list. Last week’s roundup is here; this week brought a singular essay on the new Game of Thrones.
Dear Television, June 8–14
- Sarah Mesle on the latest Game of Thrones episode, “The Watchers on the Wall.” Mesle’s coverage this week is, loosely, about genre. Picking out the central tension in the episode, and connecting that tension to a topic of debate in the intellectual community, Mesle, as usual, is at her insightful best toying with the big ideas oft inspired by Thrones. As she notes in her discussion of genre: “Rules and formulas are not the rejection of subtle meaning but rather the condition of their possibility… Perhaps Game of Thrones can help us remember that the question is less ‘is there a formula?’ than ‘what is done with that formula?'”
