You are right about a lot of this, they are definitely rushing it, but I guess that's what happens when actors get so famous they can demand multimillion dollar contract renewals and when actors age faster than shooting occurs. Also, I do not think anyone could have predicted how Martin didn't get his shit together and write faster once he knew the show could catch up, lord knows he has other project stuff he's been working on, but it's his story, if he wants to damage it, all we can do is frown, writing is tough, I'm sure this story more than others.
It should have been 10-12 seasons, ideally. Some of the major plot points of the season felt really forced and the whole season felt a bit dumbed down from the past, and a bit more typical. I think this is all kind of inevitable though when they build up to tings for so damn long.
I wrote a kind of analysis on the series as a whole and some of my favorite points. Feel free to check it out
will read this for sure when i get back from work :)
Well i dont blame George, you can't rush art, and writer's block is pretty common. It happens alot with other published works that have movie adaptations.