George R.R. Martin names his favorite TV series finale, and, nope, not that one

George R.R. Martin is both a prolific creator, and consumer, of pop culture, having often used his (always enjoyable) “not-a-blog” to express his thoughts on some of the TV shows and movies he’s taking in while taking breaks from the long, hard, and arduous work of writing other blog posts about how he’s gonna finish The Winds Of Winter one of these days, he swears. (We kid, we kid.) (We don’t entirely kid.)

Case in point: Martin’s response to a recent Vanity Fair piece listing off 25 of the best TV episodes of the last 25 years, which includes one that Martin himself wrote: “Blackwater,” the much-beloved penultimate episode of the second season of HBO’s Game Of Thrones. (In his typically charming style, Martin writes, “I have never claimed to be perfect… but if the good folks at VANITY FAIR want to say so, who I am to argue?”) Rather than engage in a protracted session of inward-facing horn-tooting, though, Martin instead offered up his thoughts on some of the other entries on the list. That included sharing his own thoughts on The Wire (he thinks “Clarifications” edges out “Middle Ground” as the series’ best), heaping some additional praise on Breaking Bad’s “Ozymandias,” and highlighting Black Mirror’s “San Junipero” for especial praise.

For fans hoping to trawl the depths of Martin’s opinions about the controversial latter seasons of Game Of Thrones (thoughts on which he typically keeps pretty close to his vest and small but fashionable hat), there was one especially notable bit in the piece: His praise of Six Feet Under’s rightly heralded final episode, “Everyone’s Waiting,” which he called “the best finale in the entire history of television, and I cannot imagine how anyone could possibly do better.” (While also noting, also not especially controversially, that the series as a whole was a more mixed bag, writing that “I cannot say I loved it as much as I loved ROME or DEADWOOD or FARGO or a few other shows missing from the list.”) Martin does not go on to opine on whether certain TV shows could have at least gotten a little closer to perfection with their own finales, but he is, after all, a very busy man.