Board Thread:TV Show Discussion/@comment-3035448-20170711230904/@comment-5014364-20170711234811

Season 1 was the most focused and many say that, though Season 3 is a close contender - it was more diverse but not so much that it had grown out of control (we got a lot of fun plot lines with Daenerys in Meereen, Stannis on Dragonstone, etc.)

Season 2 had a lot of issues because that's when they started....inventing scenes to show off the actors. They'd CUT OUT Arya and Tyrion scenes from the books, only to add back in invented scenes of the actors clowning around. Ugh. Back then they still worried about getting renewed, however, so they cut that crap out by Season 3....only to then go right back to it in Season 5 as soon as they got renewed forever.

Season 3 also of course benefitted from better budget.

Season 4 is slightly less good than Season 3....we got the Jaime/Cersei accidental "rape" which hung over it like a cloud, though looking back of course we can see this is just bad camerawork that the writers refused to own up to (dude, the actor is openly saying you never told him it was a rape scene nor did they play it as such).

Season 4 had the invented return to Craster's Keep arc, which wasn't terrible, or even unavoidable....splitting one long book into two seasons meant Jon simply didn't have much to do until episode 9. Nonetheless it kind of dragged. Filler. Not the worst filler, but filler. D&D have openly admitted, boasted, that they shoved Locke into it just because they like the actor. Threatening Meera with rape also lazy writing.

And of course, Season 4 took out the Tysha reveal at the end. Which was really the start of the downward trend (now that we know how bad Season 5 got).

So, I'd say it's a close call between Seasons 1 and 3, given that Season 3 whoever was in charge started reining in the excesses of D&D from Season 2.

Even so, while there were visible cracks in prior seasons we should have seen (even since casting Cersei, it turns out), my short answer is still "even casual viewers noticed a sharp drop in quality in Season 5, compared to Season 4".