Why the ‘Game of Thrones’ coffee gaffe was the last straw

I have been a die-hard “Game of Thrones” viewer since the beginning — or at least since water cooler buzz made the show must-binge TV on the level of “Breaking Bad” or “The Wire.” So it’s been difficult to admit that I don’t care anymore who will sit on the Iron Throne — but something about that whole coffee cup brouhaha (or brew-haha?) has jolted me to my senses.

Maybe it’s because we know the show must wrap this season, and all the attendant hype, that the latest installments of the once-organic series have seemed more like a product I’m obligatorily consuming?

Perhaps it all began when Disney star Raven-Symoné was sent by publicists to visit Page Six and demonstrate a “Game of Thrones” Mountain Dew can, which plugged the show, in a dippy demonstration involving dry ice? The show’s also partnered this year with Bud Light, Johnnie Walker, Shake Shack, Adidas, OkCupid, Oreos and AT&T (which now owns HBO and Time-Warner). Perhaps reflecting the new corporate culture, an afterparty for the show’s gala premiere — with waiters in “Game of Thrones” hoodies — felt more “Game of Phones.”

But we’ve spent so many hours watching this thing, we have to find out how it ends! Right? In deep postmortems on the latest episode with friends, others have sheepishly expressed that they’re losing interest in the actual outcome. My barber Gary — a fantasy-genre aficionado who’s seen the new “Avengers” movie three times — said when I asked him for his expert take on “The Long Night”: “For me, that should have been the end of the show.”

Beyond the branding, the series’ behind-the-scenes footage after each episode has actually taken some of the magic out of it — as yet another reminder that this is “content.”

When the coffee cup surfaced, it signaled to me more literally that the show has taken its eye off the ball. For all the pomp and circumstance — and smug bragging of showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss in those behind-the-scenes victory laps — no one noticed the takeout coffee cup in plain sight (including Benioff and Weiss, who made cameos in the same scene).

HBO admitted the gaffe in a jokey statement this week.

But I say live by the sword, die by the sword. After pretentiously taking this thing so seriously, and patting itself on the back every five seconds as fans lap up the final episodes, an actual apology to fans would have been more appropriate — as well as a heads-up that the channel would digitally remove the cup from future broadcasts, which it did.

It’s all fun and games ’til someone loses an eye, which happens a lot on this show. But this coffee cup was the final stain.

I say, “Summer is coming.” Click.