No such thing as too much nudity. Game of Thrones has no less nudity than Rome did. Never bothered me once. You're dealing with men of power. Anytime you deal with men of power in an ancient time, fantasy or real there will be a lot naked females in their lives.

I like the term "sexposition" for this phenomena.

Patrick Sweeney
I Blame Ninjas

"Sexposition." If Variety hasn't coined that already for their Hollywood jargon list, they should.

I've seen a few people say now that they were confused about that Maester Pycelle/young lady washing her particulars scene, but I thought it had a pretty clear purpose.

Pycelle spends the entire show creaking around, stuttering, talking slowly, and in general being extremely stereotypically old and frail. I thought that scene was a nice little reveal (at the end of it, when he does his odd little bit of calisthenics and is remarkably UN-old, if you will, in addition to the fact that he just entertained a prostitute) at how he's actually none of those things, and that it's a pretty well-calculated act.

I think the writers might have played that a little too subtle, because that's come up at least three or four times now. That's not an official statement from HBO backing that up, but I'd bet a dollar or two that that's the purpose of that scene.

@Nate: Sure, it's fun that the old guy is a jaunty dude with an active pecker and his mind is still active as well, but why is that important? How does that advance the plot? Is what he said in the dialogue important? Does it explain something? Set something up? I watched the episode with my oldest son (who has read all the books, is a big fan, and has seen all the GOT episodes), and I asked him, "What the hell was that about?" He shrugged and said, "I have no idea."

It could be a case where the writers were, as you suggest, being too subtle in their intention. But it underscores the point of the LAT article. This was at least the third scene in the series where they had exposition going on while in the background, graphic sexual content or explicit nude things going on. If the exposition is meaningful - and I keep coming back to it, moves the plot forward - that's one thing. But if not, then it comes across as Patrick says: "sexposition."

That said, also like McNamara said, the last scene in season 1 where the dragon lady stands up all nude, that worked. She'd just spent a night inside a funeral pyre. Her clothes were burned. Symbolically, too, it worked because it's like she had descended into Hell and survived. It was a terrific moment made even more impactful by her nudity.

But some of the other scenes just feel gratuitous.

Maybe that's my Dayquil talking or maybe it really just is a terrible scene, but it's important (subjectively) only in that it's revealing something about him that we didn't know: he's just pretending to be an old doddering fool. It's only a half-reveal, because the season ends before we get to see any more of why that might be significant, but just the knowledge that he's not all that he seems (in this case, he's far more than he seems) is sort of interesting on some basic level, right? Especially in a show filled with such devious, twisty bastards like GoT (I've also read all of the books and am a huge fan and I don't remember anything from the books where Pycelle pulls this sort of thing, so I'd guess its an HBO invention)

I'm not defending the use of gratuitous nudity, though. I'm just pointing out that the writer of that article calls it a completely pointless scene where we find absolutely nothing out and it's SOLE purpose was to show tits. Which. That's not the SOLE purpose. Just some of its purpose.

On the nudity bit, though, it strikes me as a sort of overindulgent way of selling exposition. We all know that the best way to get exposition across is to disguise the fact that it's exposition: make it happen in a scene that the viewers can't take their eyes off the action, or make it happen during a scene in which something's happening that we're focused on more than we are on the exposition. Having that device just always be boobs seems like a combination of it being HBO trying to live up to HBO's "image" and a overly male kneejerk reaction to "hiding exposition in plain sight." With tits.

I haven't seen the game of thrones scene in question, but to be honest, it reminded me of a scene in Sopranos a few seasons in ...

I don't remember exactly which year, but Tony and his crew went to Sicily on business ... Tony met a female mob boss and had daydreams of himself as a Roman general taking her as his prize.

Christopher spent the whole time high on heroin in a hotel room.

And Paulie Walnuts, back in Italy for the first time, banged a lot of hookers and wondered about life.

In one particular scene, he muses about life to the hooker, as she's in the bathroom washing her particulars ... no lie.

This reminds me of Battlestar Galactica, which I loved, but had gratuitous sex scenes in way too many episodes.

Often the sex was very minimal to actual plot or progression.

I became insanely bored.

@Nick: When a viewer gets "insanely bored" by sex in a TV series, then it's safe to say they've been featuring it too much.

HBO has made a number of poor choices in the adaptation of a Game of Thrones with regards to their seemingly mandatory tits-to-plot ratio. The most egregious of these came in the pilot where they decided to fulfil their quota of titillation during the Targaryen scenes (involving an abusive brother dehumanising Dany and then her rape scene).

Further to this, the sexposition fairy - Roz the buxom prostitute - is present for three bucketloads of exposition. These scenes are all pretty terrible, the worst being the hilariously overlong brothel scene with two fingerbanging.

The real problem is the behaviour this drives in the writers, worse than the blatant pandering to the misogyny crowd is the dialogue for Littlefinger - so on-the-nose at explaining his motivations and ridiculous foreshadowing for the future.

Those who say "this is necessary to demonstrate the power of men" are full of shit. You can demonstrate that without the same level of objectification that's on display in Game of Thrones. Many other HBO shows proved this.

@Scott. Agreed.

The Wire is one of my favorite series of all time and I had no problem (or enjoyed) all the sex scenes in that series.

They made sense to the narrative too. How profound.

I liked the books, but the series lost me a few episodes ago. Too much T+A that didn't need to be there. In fact it took away from the storyline. I look forward to reading the next GOT book that's out soon.

Just curious, for the people who've read the books, do you the sex scenes in the books not gratuitous (un-gratuitous?)? Is it different when it's not on the screen in front of you?

I agree that the "sexposition" in GOT is laughable. My favorite example was in the middle of the season when Targaryen and a prostitute had a conversation about dragons while having sex in a bathtub. Way to raise the stakes!

Something that also rubs me the wrong way about the nudity on the show is that it's very clear who has a nudity clause and who doesn't. Lena Headey, playing the most sexually manipulative character on the show, is always fully clothed, even during her sex scenes. At least have her take off one of her five layers of clothing, geez. In contrast, I refer to the Targaryen girl (I read here her name is Dany), as "Ever-Nude" because during the first few episodes Wardrobe didn't dress her in a single article that could count as clothing. I was shivering for her. Plus, I think her lack of clothing backfired. Wouldn't the last scene in the finale have been ten times more powerful if Ever-Nude hadn't ever been nude until that moment?

I've never seen the series. But I do know how a person reacts to prostitution, brothels, or sex in general goes straight to character.
The only thing I look for is authenticity. Keep it real. How a person reacts. to real life sexual scences speaks volumes about themselves

Maybe it's the Stone IPAs talking but my reaction to this is

so what?

And maybe this is irrelevant, but we're involved in three wars. We've killed thousands of foreign children, and crippled and maimed as many. We've blown them to bits, dismembered them, turned them into mist, destroyed and annihilated them in myriad ways.

And we're worried about seeing a few extra tits on a cable show?

Fuck Mary McNamara, and fuck us.

They are pay cable. Nudity is part of what they do. It's what sets them apart.

DEAD LIKE ME -- was getting a ton of notes because it didn't have enough nudity in it. Really, none.

LOUIS C.K. -- talks about doing a show for HBO and they wanted more nudity in it. So he offered to do an episode naked. They never bothered him about it again.

Just saying... if you're a pay cable channel, you need to be offereing what the other channels AREN'T. That's why people are paying for the premium channels.

CALIFORNICATION, SHAMELESS, and TRUE BLOOD cash in on this.

@ Nate Winslow

Books are different from film.
You always read alone.
You often watch a film in mixed company (though from the few bits of GOT I've seen it appears to be very much aimed at the single man!)
When it moves from exposition to tittilation, it just feels uncomfortable.

I haven't seen GOT, but just what Nate wrote about the scene in question was intriguing enough to make me wish I was watching. From Nate's interpretation, something big is being set up with this character, and that's always a good thing. The fact that the writers are taking their time with the reveal and playing it out is also a good thing.

Nate's observation, so you don't have to scroll back:

"Pycelle spends the entire show creaking around, stuttering, talking slowly, and in general being extremely stereotypically old and frail. I thought that scene was a nice little reveal (at the end of it, when he does his odd little bit of calisthenics and is remarkably UN-old, if you will, in addition to the fact that he just entertained a prostitute) at how he's actually none of those things, and that it's a pretty well-calculated act."

Ok, I learned an important lesson - don't drink and post.

I also haven't seen any of GOT, nor have I read any of the books, so I have no opinion on whether it should have more or less nudity.

So I probably should just shut the hell up. But even in the hot light of day, it's still sticking in my craw - I never cease to have my mind blown over how freaked out we USians are over nudity, considering the amount of fictional (and ACTUAL) violence we export. When Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake had their mishap years ago, you'd have thought he'd stabbed her to death onstage to judge from the uproar.

Anyway, what's gratuitous to one person may be fine for someone else. That's pretty clear just from this thread.

I think the Little Finger scene with the two prostitutes works both for him as a character and us as an audience. It is all exposition, but nearly every scene in the first half of the season was. It works for him because these two women are going at it feet away and all he cares to talk about is his lot in life and how that's gonna change, while he is also directing the girls about their craft. Basically he's constantly thinking about everything. Then for the audience he is telling you all this stuff and you're sort of distracted and may not really be paying attention, when you damn well should be. It's his MO, tell you what he's gonna do, but you only pay attention to half of what he says, so he is rarely dishonest, but always gets the upper hand.