Arrested Westeros: Gem of the Internet

*Warning: This Blog Contains Game of Thrones Spoilers for Season One*

The entertainment realm of culture is truly fascinating. There are certainly examples otherwise, but the current generation is living amongst a golden era of television. Currently, there is substantial programming, in both quality and quantity, such as dramas like Breaking Bad and Mad Men and comedies like Parks and Recreation and Modern Family. These shows manage to hook viewers in with their characters and plot, but also with the underlying subtext of each episode. To surmise briefly, Breaking Bad and Mad Men deal with personal struggle, Parks and Recreation give a feminist perspective, and Modern Family tackles moral quandaries within everyday life.

So when the subtexts of one of the greatest comedy series, Arrested Development, and one of the best dramas, Game of Thrones, come together in one extraordinary place, only magic can ensue. And it does, at Arrested Westeros.

 
Arrested Westeros is an incredibly clever Tumblr dedicated to captioning stills from Game of Thrones with quotes from Arrested Development. If you have not seen either show, the jokes may go over your head, but rest assured these vastly different television shows have more in common than you think.

Arrested Development is a sitcom about the Bluth family, a formerly wealthy, eternally dysfunctional family, as they deal with the patriarch, George Bluth, going to jail and its aftermath as their social status changes.

Game of Thrones takes place in Westeros, a fictional land made up of seven kingdoms, as multiple noble families fight for control of the Iron Throne.

Though from different genres, both shows illustrate power struggles and their aftermath. In Arrested Development, the family owns a company where there is constant internal strife between the father, George, the oldest son, Gob, and the middle son, Michael. Though Michael is the most honorable and deserving of all of them, both his father and brother constantly plot against him.

This power struggle is reflected in Game of Thrones as well. The current king is the despicable Joffrey, who is more focused on keeping the throne from his own family than the any of the other families. Much like Gob, who was briefly president of the Bluth Company, Joffrey tries to rule using fear and is constantly suspicious of his family, even his own mother.

The other element linking these two shows so fantastically is family. Both series deal with very incestuous relationships, sure, (Cersei and Jamie will always be worse than George Michael and Maeby), but it goes even deeper than that. The very characters themselves resemble each other: Lucille’s icy parenting style can easily be interchanged with Cersei or Tywin Lannister; Ned Stark and Michael Bluth both claim honor above all else; even Buster and Joffrey share that their father is their uncle (though in different ways).

Arrested Westeros is television match made in heaven. It takes two great things and makes you look that them both in a new light. If that isn’t the aim of the entertainment world, then I don’t know what is.