Game of Thrones Season One! . . . Or, How I Just Got On the Bandwagon

It's finally happened.  I've finally begun watching Game of Thrones.  And, like the books, I'm left a little . . . underwhelmed.  Don't get me wrong.  I enjoyed the prologue a lot more in the show; and the sets are gorgeous. 

But where the book eases you into a lot of the machinations, the show just drops you into the middle of it.  My girlfriend has been struggling to figure out exactly what's happening, and I completely sympathize. 

Even I wonder who's who, what's going on, and why every third person has to remind me that winter is coming when it's currently snowing in the shot! 

It makes for difficult viewing and I wonder if maybe the producers could have spent a little more time and money on explication instead of paying actresses to take their tops off.  Some of the sex makes sense--Bran's tragedy could only have been explained with a sex scene.  The rest is just titillation for its own sake.  Just a thought.

Draco Mallfoy's creepier little brother?

That aside, the pacing feels rushed.  Actors rush through their lines with hardly any gravitas.  Maybe it has to do with the format in which I'm watching these episodes.  Having a whole season at my disposal (a season only being ten episodes), I'm inclined to rush through episodes and maybe that makes the whole thing feel rushed.  But within the episodes themselves everything just hops around.  Perhaps that's a remnant of the storytelling in the book with its quick cuts and sudden shifts in perspective.

Which leads me to my final thought.  Just a musing really.  I figure if you're going to make a book into a movie, or just re-create the story of someone else, you ought to bring something new to the table.  Game of Thrones revels in spectacle and the book succeeds in places where a television show necessarily cannot. 

Namely, the bits in people's heads; the backstory, the motivations, and abundant plots and schemes.  The show should fill those in, but really needs to depart from reproducing the book shot-for-shot on film. 

This applies to any production of a book into film, though, be it for TV or cinema or whatever.  Once a story's been told, it's done, move on.  Fanboy wish fulfillment isn't a good enough reason to remake something.  Moral of the story: Give us something new.

Moving on.  Had I never read the books, I don't think I'd last watching the show.  It's too deep, and the learning curve is ridiculous.  And having read the first book, I don't know.  It's a beautiful show without only minor flaws.  Just feels a little superfluous.

Am I going to keep watching?  Heck yeah.  Am I going to watch season two?  Definitely.  Maybe even season three when the time comes.  Is it great TV?  Meh. Battlestar: Galactica was better.