Is It Possible to Enjoy Game of Thrones, Then Mad Men?

How two great shows are actually ruining Sunday Night

By Steve Bryant

This post does not contain spoilers, unless you count the writer himself.

Sunday! The day when great TV descends from the network heavens. A day reserved for revering important shows. The Simpsons and The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones.

Sunday is to TV what summer is to movies. It's been this way ever since Tony blew up Vesuvio, 15 years ago. Sunday is blockbuster season.

Sunday also happens to be an emotionally turbulent time. You're prepping for the work week, but also dreading the work week. You feel vulnerable. Sunday is like an airplane that way. TV is always more riveting at 35,000 feet.

The problem with all of this — this embarrassment of TV riches — is that Sunday has become a giant pain in the ass. 

Take this coming seventh day, in which it will take a Reed Richards-like flexibility of the noggin to enjoy watching Game of Thrones and Mad Men back-to-back. 

HBO's Game of Thrones is an epic. Lannisters kill Starks, poisons kill Lannisters, dragons kill slaveowners, there's a giant ice wall, and oceans, and zombies (I think), plus some weird kid who's entirely too old to be breastfeeding. Watching the show, especially if you haven't read the books, is like struggling with a Dr. Octopussian assault of plot lines. Things keep happening. 

Mad Men, meanwhile, has all the pacing of a birth control pill. Here's what keeps happening: nothing. That seems to be the point.

Except for commercials. Commercials happen a lot on AMC. After an uninterrupted hour of Thrones, those commercials are loud and jarring — like when you're woken up by kids jumping on your bed. I guess the birth control didn't work.

My point is: these shows don't go together. One of these things is not like the other.

But, comes the rejoinder, you can DVR it, y'know? 

Yes, I y'know. But missing a Big Important Sunday Show has consequences. You're forced to tiptoe through the Internet on Monday. You avoid coworkers. Twitter becomes a chicken pox of spoilers.

You have very large #firstworldproblems.

Now, this back-to-backness isn't really a botheration. But when you're obsessive about television, it feels like one. Especially as we've all grown so accustomed to the moveable feast that is binge watching. Binge watching has ruined us for Sunday nights, i.e., the original time for binge watching.

The easiest solve for this, I guess, is to give up and watch back-to-back shows that require different cognitive efforts. There's a reason Silicon Valley works well after Game of Thrones. 

But what you really want is total network disarmament. For every network to release every episode of every TV show in the current season on Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video, and HBOGo etc. All at once. Level the playing field. No time slots.

Only then could you program your Sunday TV watching like a YouTube or Spotify playlist. That's what we really want, I think. TV that's as responsive as everything else has become.

Maybe one day that reckoning will come. 

But until then, we're all forced to endure a crowded Sunday, formerly known as the day of rest.