The long-running, much-celebrated show
turned out not to be a metaphor
for climate change, feminist empowerment
or anything anyone at all hoped for really.

The show turned out to be just a symbol for itself,
for failed institutions, institutional disappointments,
a theme mined by a much better HBO program
that ended its run years and years and years ago.

Viewers were up in arms everywhere over errant
character arcs, unearned twists, abandoned storylines,
forsaken backstories, squandered character development,
the burning detritus of lazy writing atop a pile of false promises.

Every institution fails you in the end.
In the end, no matter how much it seems like a marble pillar
or Valyrian steel forged in a furnace of dragonfire,
every institution ultimately fails you in the end.