The Penis-to-Breasts-to-Vagnias ratio for Game of Thrones season 3 is: 1-11-4.
Game of Thrones became famous for its sexposition scenes, scenes where one character has to give long pieces of expository dialogue and the show decided to spice up the narrative by inserting sex so you'd really pay attention. Sex became a particularly delightful window dressing upon which to hang a scene, and little more. Game of Thrones certainly has quite a lot it wishes to say about sex, sexuality, and gender, but those themes have become unmoored from the actual sex the show presents.
Obviously, what sex the show presents is both what the show is interested in and what the show perceives its audience is interested in. And that sex is the objectification of women. This is no more apparent then in a baffling scene where Robb Stark's wife tells him she is pregnant. The scene begins with the pair having just completed the act. Robb immediately gets up and gets dressed, his wife, however, remains on the bed, naked. She reveals this exciting and personal news in the middle of coyly posing as if she were shooting a Playboy cover. It is indicative of the way the show treats the genders, in a way far outside the scope of the fictional world they inhabit. Twice in the third season (first with an unnamed woman and Theon Greyjoy and then again with Melisandre and Gendry) a woman manages to have sex with a man while his genitalia are completely covered by pants. It is rather stunning since both scenes are entirely about the man's penis (as in the actual plot point involves the man's penis), and yet both make incredibly obvious cuts to make sure the penis the entire scene is about never appears (hence the impossible sex). I am bringing all this up just to prove the extreme disparity of the treatment of males to females, and how far out of its way (for seemingly no reason) the show goes to maintain that disparity. For some reason the sexual objectification of men is the singular line in the sand the show dares not cross.
Game of Thrones lacks the subtlety of walking the fine line of serving titillation while also criticizing that titillation. The show can make very cogent points about the social constraints placed upon Cersei or Arya, but the show lacks conviction and immediately washes those points away. Actions superseded beliefs, and the show's actions are that women are objects of sexuality. The show can not both be critical of patriarchal hegemony, while also having a relentlessly patriarchal hegemonic perspective.
All this would be fine if the nudity had thematic purpose, but mostly it does not. It remains simply what the show is interested in and what the show perceives its audience is interested in. This creates a circle around the audience, a delineation between who is a member and who is not. If you fail to find women's breasts titillating, it becomes frustrating. The show becomes alienating, as you have to sit through all those window dressing scenes lacking the prop that the show created to carry the audience through them. It is rather hard to enjoy a show that aggressively (if unconsciously) rejects your personhood and perspective.
Of course this is hardly specific to Game of Thrones. This is a truth of basically all premium cable dramas (outside of a few notable exceptions). Creators were given great creative freedom, and virtually all of them chose to use that creative freedom to show lots and lots of breasts. Hung was a TV show entirely about a penis that somehow never managed to show any penis at all, but lots of breasts. Sometimes this illuminates a basic principle of the show. The strippers populating The Sopranos acted as an externalization of Tony's perspective. But mostly they simply act as audience titillation. Gratuitous audience titillation given how the shows precisely cut around male nudity.
But it does not have to be this way. Spartacus was a show overflowing with nudity, sex, and sexuality, but Spartacus managed to handle those elements in a way that no other premium cable drama managed. Nudity always had a thematic point. Spartacus was a show about power and how those with power abuse that power. Sex was a tool of power and slaves sexuality were controlled, which applied just as much to men as to women. Varro was just as much a victim of the society as the slave girl he is compelled to have sex with. Nudity alternately functions as vulnerability, control, power. Lucretia might be naked in front of her slaves because they are not really people, and thus there's no reason to feel shame. Or Naevia might be naked to show how little control she has over her life.
There is an equality to Spartacus. It embraces all people. Spartacus's army is made up of all races, genders, sexual orientations. Even, shockingly, classes. And from the show's perspective, all those are equal. It does not single out one particular perspective to privilege, nor one group of people to objectify. It is liberating, rather than restrictive. Agron's male homosexual gaze is the equal to Gannicus's male heterosexual one is equal to Illythia's female heterosexual one. And because of that, the show embraces an egalitarianism that most premium cable shows staunchly reject.
The solution is not eliminate nudity or sex, or to hit some imagined quota, but to reassess and reevaluate. To find thematically appropriate moments for them, and to eliminate those unnecessary moments. Law & Order found ways to maintain audience interest through hundreds of interrogations without any nudity at all. It shouldn't be this difficult for the writers of premium cable shows to use the props of nudity and sex when appropriate from a plot or thematic perspective. It also should not be this difficult to have an open minded, egalitarian approach to nudity, one which embraces the many possible perspectives and desires humans have.
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