Sometime during last season's Game of Thrones, I came across an interesting interview with series creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who were chatting about the often-mocked, overly graphic sex scenes which have become synonymous with the show. According to the two, the television show has nothing on the books in terms of under-the-royal-covers, and the gratuitous sex is actually quite purposeful. "Sex grabs people," Weiss is quoted with saying in Mother Jones, and while we are all being viscerally grabbed by Littlefinger's nudey prostitutes, we may be more inclined to pay attention to his long, boring back-story about such and such.
The term has been coined as "sexposition," meaning that while necessary plot points are being introduced, the directors throw the audience some eye-candy to ensure that they don't tune out. Good lord, what did we all do about keeping up with a narrative before cable television and boobs?
Whether you buy into this theory or think that Benioff and Weiss are just a couple of pervs, Game of Thrones is far from the only HBO program that is overly-sexualized. In fact, if you didn't know that you were watching the acclaimed, award-winning network, you might just assume you turned on some random a skinflick.
Cue the hilarious video that has been circulating the Internet and causing in-depth conversations about girth on Reddit, "It's not Porn, It's HBO." The video features actors describing actual scenes from HBO series, such as Girls, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire and True Blood to horrified friends and family members. By the actors' summaries, one might think they are giving a play-by-play of a movie that you order off of one of "those" websites, which you can only find with keywords that scare old ladies, that ship their DVDs in packages with fake labels like "Sunshine Club" so that your co-workers don't find out about your filthy habits, and then you watch them alone in your basement while your wife and children are at taekwondo and afterward you take two scalding hot showers to try and purge yourself of the burning sensation in your eyes and then you cry yourself to sleep while your wife reads the latest Philipa Greggory novel. That's exactly what this Youtube video sounds like they are talking about, except it's all about HBO.
There is no doubt that HBO has gotten more and more filthy over the years in the name of high art, but integrating sex into its series is nothing new to the Home Box. Here are the top five dirtiest HBO shows. 5. The Wire The Wire? No way Jose! The greatest show ever to grace our television sets is all about gang wars and saving Baltimore's youth and corruption in the navy yards... and McNulty bedding every piece of tail he comes across. Must I remind you of the prostitute episode in which he was "required" to let two hookers give him you know whats in the name of justice? That show saw more action than a toilet bowl at a Denny's after a bulimic convention.
