I, sadly, have to agree. The show has been declining for several seasons but this one has been particularly bad, in my opinion. I think the issue arose because the writers had no idea what to do once they ran out of book material so they went off the rails into lazy, "tropey" T.V. writing.

"where the hell is George RR Martin, and do these creators not have any way of communicating with him?"

I kind of suspect (and sincerely hope) that he is feeding them bad information about where he wants the story to go because he is (rightly) afraid that his work will be destroyed by the poor execution of the later seasons of the show.