I’m watching this show last night…every once in awhile some brings in a gun they own to have it checked out, cleaned up…whatever.  Some dude brought in a japanese millitary rifle that was used in WW2, an arisaka model 38.  I listed to them a little…then got to thinking, I’ve got one of those in one of the gun cabinets.  I look, sure enough…same gun.  I listen to them explaining some of the history and significance of it, detail some of the markings…it was pretty interesting.

My grandfather brought the gun back from the pacific after his time as a marine in WW2.  He brought at least 2 guns back, I’m not sure if there were more.  They were the 7.7 and 6.5mm rifles.  The guns were shot regularly for quite a few years by him and the kids until it was finally retired for no real reason other than they acquired other guns.  After he died the 7.7 was taken by my old man and the 6.5 by his brother, my uncle.  Looking at the 7.7 it still has the “emperor” mark, which according to the show and what I read online is a touch rare.  Apparently when the soldiers thought their guns might fall into enemy hands they tried to file off the mark as a respect type thing for their emperor.  I had read that Patton also had ordered these marks filed off of acquired rifles…but the validity of that is questionable.

Listening to them talk about this rifle and the history it made me think about the significance of what is now my rifle.  It was a mass produced piece of equipment, so the quality and accuracy is probably questionable…but there’s no reason to think it’s a pile of junk.  They used it hunting, it must be somewhat accurate.  Thinking that this rifle was used by someone from another nation, sent to kill Americans/allies and an American acquired it…possibly killing the guy that owned it…it’s just kind of a strange feeling holding it.  It can be argued that every gun I own was designed to “kill people” and they could all perform that function…but this one possibly did.  The other’s can kill people, but with the exception of the glock, none of them were really designed for that function.  Most are hunting rifles, built for accuracy or target guns…etc.  This one was built to use while foreign soldiers hunt down Americans/allies and kill them.  I don’t know the story behind the gun or how it was acquired, and that’s kind of a shame.  I’d like to know if Harold took it off the battle field or picked it up in some other way.  I’m not even sure what he did in the Marines.

It did pique my interest in shooting this gun though.  It’s not worth any more than any other rifle in the collection, in fact it’s worth a bit less than several of them.  Seeing this on T.V. though did give a little bit of significance to this, before last night, insignificant rifle.

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This episode also is attacking the death of drogo and the screwy events that surround that.  When I read how that whole thing went down…well, it was just really weird.  Even for a fantasy series it struck me as weird.  (there is something in book 2 that hits an equal level of strange as well)  The events that transpire are important though to the development of Dany.  I’m curious how they will play out the last scene in episode 10…I’m really hoping the CGI doesn’t suck too bad.

Touching back on eddard’s death, this series has built to that point very well.  If you go back and watch the episodes you see how the character seems to linger just a little bit longer than you would expect in some places, most notably the kiss between him and the wife when she leaves King’s Landing and when his daughter is “learning to dance”.  It’s those scenes that T.V. is able to capture a little better than text.  Also, when he was being wheeled out, him seeing his daughter clinging to the statue was key..then him looking for her a bit frantically before he is chopped.  Again, that is something that translates a bit better on T.V. than in text.

Overall I think HBO has handled this series much better than I expected after watching the first couple of episodes.  I still think they are severely missing out on the connection between the Starks and the dire wolves.  As I’m reading through the series it’s clear how important and beneficial that connection is.  So far there is no sense of how attached these kids are to the wolves, later when they (I assume) will try to establish some of the weird stuff that goes on between the wolves and kids…how are we going to know that there is a deep connection there?  At this point in the book you got the sense that the wolves were intense protectors for the children, watching the series we don’t get that feeling at all.  Maybe it’s a bit to hard to work with the animals, but I think it’s probably just something they chose to sacrifice for budget (time) reasons.

One last thing that I was really disappointed with and I hope it’s not a reoccurring theme is the lack of fight scenes.  I get that it would be very expensive to stage the fights on the massive scale that they are in the book, but we need some kind of action.  The imp getting knocked out before the first skirmish with “rob’s troops” was a nice way to get around filming it.  It did miss a couple of things that helped the development of the imp character, but over all in the grand scheme of the story the actual fighting was kinda unimportant.  Still, it would have been nice to see some blood and guts.

There is one episode left, and I think they are in a good position to wrap things up for this season.  I wonder if they will change the name of the show for next year to match the book title.  I’m not sure if Martain projected an end to this series.  Currently the wiki has 7 books listed in the series.  I do hope he “ends” the story somewhere.  There is nothing more frustrating than trying to get in to a series and the author keeps on going and going.  I like some sort of finality to a story.  It needs that closure for me to feel like reading it was worth my time.

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Season to date, GOT has an average gross audience (linear plays, DVR and HBO On Demand) of 8.3 million viewers.

Not bad at all

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I’m starting to appreciate what HBO is doing for the story verses what the book has done.  HBO moves really quick and some spots seem choppy to me, but from what I can see in various social networking areas they are holding on to fans.  On twitter I follow some people that you would not expect would be in to this kind of show and they are carving out that time slot on their Sunday to watch…my house must be the only place in the free world that uses tivo for everything.  When the new season for shows I follow is in full swing I don’t even bring up the guide…I very seldom will watch live T.V.  It’s like “power watching t.v.” I guess.  Anyway…

Episodes 7 & 8 can be summed up in pretty much the same post as they both serve the same purpose…they build up a little more story for the excitement that is going to be 9 and 10.  Both shows setup that which is yet to come.  I liked the scene in 7 with Baelish and the whores where he tells the story of him and kat.  That scene added so much to the end when he put the dagger to eddard’s throat…you get a feeling for why he’s doing what he’s doing.  You understand that in the end he has his own interests at heart.  It brings in to question all of the old advise that he gave ned along the way.  A person almost should go back and watch the season again with the “new” information to understand all the nuances about how these people move around on this chess board.

About 1/2 way through episode 8 you have to start feeling sorry for ned.  It’s almost pathetic how “stupid” he is about what’s going on around him.  He seems to operate under the assumption that everyone is interested in ‘doing the right thing’ like he is.  All the people around him are playing this long drawn out chess match to best position themselves to reach their own goals…and this poor guy comes barreling in under the banner of “good” only to get slaughtered by the vipers.  It doesn’t occur to him that someone is giving him less than the truth or that their “word” won’t mean anything when steels starts flying.  You hope that the Starks can catch up to the southerners and their games.

I wasn’t impressed with the rape and pillage scene in ep 8.  It was far more graphic in my mind than what they were able to show on even HBO.  I think that’s my whole problem with the dothraki…I picture their culture so violent and brutal that it just can’t be shown to my satisfaction on HBO.  It’s good to see the Kaleeshi step in to her role. Her failure to embrace the brutality of their culture, I think, will ultimately cost her.  Does anyone else question the motives of the witch doctor treating drogo?  In the book I didn’t give it much thought…but watching it on the screen it seemed like a really stupid thing to allow her to treat Drogo’s wound.  Not sure why that didn’t stand out more to me in print.

Another thing I’m not happy with in the show compared to the book is how old the boys look.  Rob is suppose to be about 15ish, on screen he looks more like mid 20′s.  The other lords treat him like he is a boy, but he doesn’t look the part.  I would have liked to see a much younger actor in that role.  Jon, I think, looks about right, Joffery looks about right…which should be the same age as Rob I think?  Why was Rob chosen to be played by such an old looking actor?

I don’t remember arya killing someone during her escape…but it’s possible I overlooked it.  Come to think of it, there have been several things I don’t remember in the book that is showing up on screen.  Some of it helps build the background, but some of it doesn’t seem necessary.  Trust in HBO though, they are selling this show.  The ratings seem to be right around the 2.5 million per episode mark.  They go a little over 3 million for Sunday once you figure in the repeats.

I read someone in a review posted a quick note about how they think T.V. shows like this are eclipsing movies.  I can see that as far as character development is concerned.  It seems rather obvious.  With new ways to deliver this content (box sets, paid downloads…etc) people like HBO that are willing to put in time and money are able to reap some reward for their effort.  I got all the movie channels for free for 3 months with my direct tv subscription.  I’m going to be holding on to HBO, but the rest of them can be cancelled.  No other network is coming close to holding my attention with their original series like HBO and in the end, that’s what it takes to get my dollar.

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I like how they have built up the Ned Stark character.  I think you really get a feel for his uncompromising sense of morality.  He’ll kill, go to war but he has a sense of his own morals behind why he does it and there are certain lines he won’t cross.  He calls the king on his B.S. to a point, and in essance gives him the finger when he doesn’t agree with him.  No one wanted to tell Robert he couldn’t joust, but Ned marched in there hell bent on keeping him out of the competition….even telling him he was too fat for his armor.

The mountain killing his horse was cool, but the editing was kinda poor.  It did a good job of showing him hacking off the head of the horse, but when it cut back to the horse falling and all that it didn’t look like it was cut at all.  Obviously this is a very challenging scene to pull off, but I didn’t think they did it that well.  Did the hound kneel knowing he wouldn’t be hit by the mountain’s swing? or was he showing obedience to the crown?  You know that they are brothers, but there is no way the hound could know the mountain would stop.  Either way, that was a pretty cool scene.  I think they did a good job showing how massive this guy is, and the kind of street brawler/thug he is.  The character is what I expected.  What about the hound?  There are glimpses of humanity in him that I didn’t get a sense of until later in the series.  I’m sure that’s necessary for the abbreviated time they have for character development.

Speaking of characters…I think HBO has done a really good job of casting the characters.  While I feel they have glossed over some points and rushed things along…the characters themselves “feel” about like I would expect them too, with the exception of Drogo.  I don’t think they made him out to be the savage as much as I had pictured in my head.  While HBO has done a decent job of developing the characters…Martian did so much better in print.   I don’t think I’ve read another fantasy writer do as much character development that I didn’t find excruciatingly boring.  Martian has done it in such a way that it’s very interesting and makes it difficult to put the book (my phone) down for the evening.

Lysa’s keep (I can’t remember the name of the place) was a scene I was really looking forward to…and it didn’t pay off.  The only thing said in the show about it was that it is “impregnable” (and a nice bit of dialogue followed, “gimme 10 men and climbing spikes…I’ll impregnate the bitch”).  The book goes in to great detail about the massive undertaking it is to make it up to the castle.  It’s a days travel just to get from the bottom of the mountain up in to the thing.  I have no idea if, in later books, the impenetrability of this place will be key or not…but it did help to put an exclamation point on how far off the deep end Lysa has gone.  ”I want to see him fly!”  Really meant something…like they were above the clouds in this place.  I was also disappointed that there was no delving into the relationship between the dwarf and the sell sword.  It will be worked on a bit at the castle…it has to be, but it started on the road to the castle.

The boy sucking on his mother’s breast was kind of disturbing to me.  I knew it was there…and that it was coming but that was one aspect of the book that I glossed over in print, but on the screen it made much more of an impact.  I didn’t like it.  I joked to a buddy that it was “kiddie pr0n”.  I really have no idea what the laws are governing that sort of thing.

The end scene with Ned and Jamie was pulled off -really- well IMO.  Jamie stabbing that dude through the eye was gruesome and cool all at the same time…then his dance with Ned was orchestrated nicely.  The range of feelings the viewer could got (or at least I did) while they were going back and forth really surprised me.  When it starts there is almost a panic in Ned’s eyes and a cold calm in Jamie’s…as it progresses you see that switch, it’s as if Ned finally believes he can take him and Jamie gets worried…then of course…Ned is stuck in the leg.  I would have liked to see Jamie decapitate the guard instead of just hitting him.  I don’t remember how that played out in print.  I know the fight scene was quite a bit different, but stuff like that has to change a little bit to even be shown on T.V.  You can’t really show off fighting on horse back too much.

I’m pretty stoked up for next week.  ”A golden crown” seems to indicate the playing out of a scene that I’ve been anticipating.  I’m very curious to see how they pull it off…I’ve got an image in my head of how it went down…and I’m hoping the on screen version doesn’t disappoint.

From what I’ve read online, the viewer numbers for Thrones have been going up episode to episode.  I like hearing that.  While it’s not necessarily what I had hoped for compared to the text, it is an entertaining series.  I’m hoping the numbers are strong enough to give it a five year’ish run.  It would be nice if it could run out to the end of the text series…but we don’t want to see Martian put in a position where he is rushing to push out a book to keep ahead of the show.  I don’t want to see any of that amazing writing rushed.  Maybe they have a plan and if the series is renewed for a 3rd season and beyond (HBO already picked up a 2nd) things wouldn’t be rushed.  Book #5 is slated for a July 12 2k11 release and there are 2 more planned after that.  I’m hoping he ends the series, I don’t like open ended stories…when I read through a book or even a series of books I like there to be some sort of conclusion or wrap up to everything.

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I like how they are starting to show some of the abuse of Dany and how they are showing her stand up for herself, “Next time you raise a hand to me you won’t have hands to raise” was a pretty classic line, and her whoopin up on him a little was good too.  It still lacks a bit of foundation, but by this time I’m sure the viewer is drawn in to it and gets the idea.  What I don’t get is how Drogo is going to see the bruise on her face and not go nuts.  It’s not like this is any regular woman in the tribe, this is their queen and he’s going to allow someone to hit her?  Maybe they will play off of that a little bit and the crowning will work itself out….we’ll see I guess.  I will say though I am interested in seeing how this plays out.  I’d like to see Drogo take a little more prominent role, so far he’s been just some guy and everyone talks about how tuff he is.  The end isn’t going to mean a whole lot if he doesn’t become more prominent.  I pictured their party to be bigger as well, but I guess you can’t reasonably show 40k people.

There was some good action at the wall this episode.  Jon is showing how he’s becoming a leader and we finally got some interaction with a wolf!  They have been far too absent, but maybe it was just too hard to show.  Who knows…either way, I’d like to see more of them.

Does the viewer know what Eddard has stumbled on yet…or the significance of it?  I pictured the little bull much larger.  I expected bowling balls for biceps…it’s how I picture every black smith in all the books I read, this mountain of a man bending and shaping iron…

This is probably the first episode where I wasn’t pissed the show differed from the book.  I’m trying to take them as two separate things and it’s pretty hard.  I’m trying to carve out more time to read so I can get through the rest of the books and be ready for #5…but I don’t think I’ll make it by July.

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I’m diggin on the dwarf.  I think he was cast well and is playing out the character much how I imagined him to be.

Still no wolves…it’s becoming almost a problem at this point.  Where’s ghost?  Jon’s been on the wall for an episode now and we don’t see his wolf with him at all.

I also dig on the guy they’ve got playing the “old bear”…wasn’t he in brave heart?

****spoilers****

If you’ve read the book you know what happens at about the 3/4 point (maybe it was a little later, but not much).  Tell me they are not building that tension well.  If you didn’t know he was going to die, the look between eddard and kat when she left town…the way he setup defense training for his daughter and how he watched her from the doorway…it’s all very ominous.  HBO has done quite a good job building that up.  Maybe virgins to the story don’t see that, but it really seems to me that if you didn’t know it was coming…you should feel like -something- is coming.

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The rest of this might contain some spoilers, read at your own risk.

I’ve been so terribly disappointed so far about how they have told the story of Dany.  In the book her story read (so far, I’m 1/4 into the 2nd book) as a woman who came from a position of being abused with no power, being tossed into a marriage with customs she thought barbaric and would never understand…to a woman whom claimed equal footing (in the marriage relationship) with her husband and over comes the abuse of her brother by standing up to him at certain points.  She gained that status with her husband via sex and her taking control of their encounters…embracing them and on some level seemed to find a certain level of happiness with her husband.  A huge step in the process of her embracing their culture was her first “dominate” sexual encounter with Drogo.

Did you see the scene when they helped her off the horse in episode 2?  How stiff and sore she was…how she could barley walk?  While the show doesn’t actually say anything about it, the book lets you know that her soreness is not solely caused by riding the horse.  Some might dismiss that as a little bathroom humor that didn’t need to be included, but it did show how she was being treated in the sack by Drogo, and that the experiences were not pleasant for her during or after.  At one point she asks another chic what she should do for him…that was covered in the show.  When she started in on Drogo though she took him outside, it was important to the story that she took him outside.  ”everything important in a man’s life should be done under the open sky”, is something the Dothraki believed, and it was key that she was the one to take him outside.  She understood this and was on the journey to embrace their culture as her own.

Also, there has been virtually no friction show between her and her brother.  Who she was before and how this guy treated her is going to have an affect on who she becomes in life and it’s being pretty much written out.  I assume at some point they will show some abuse, but without the ground work laid before hand it will look like an isolated incident, not the ongoing series of events that it was.  When the brother gets crowned it’s going to not be near as sweet as it was in the book because there is no foundation laid for it.

Where are the wolves?  They are pretty much side characters that you don’t really get attached to.  Why did I care that “lady” got killed?  Why would I care that bran’s wolf (can’t remember his name) came to his aid…what foundation has been laid for me to understand that the wolf would come to his aid…that it would be expected.  These wolves became very important to the children as both protectors and companions.  While we can watch on the screen that the children are upset Lady had to be killed, we don’t feel that attachment between them.  It’s not as powerful to the viewer because there is no connection formed in our eyes.  Also, at the end when the butcher’s boy was killed…I thought there was more discussion about “how” they killed him.  Maybe that’s later in the book, but I seem to remember a discussion that set a particularly brutal scene.

Also, when the prince and Sansa went on their walk and they encountered her sister and the boy…the conflict happens and Sansa says a couple of times “You’re ruining it!”…ruining what exactly?  If you read the book you know exactly what she is talking about and how it is important to her that things go a certain way…but watching you have no feeling of that.  To her character the idea of a lavish life fulfilling all her hopes of being a queen is very important and shapes how she acts.  It also heavily influences some of the decisions she makes later in an effort to reach that ideal life.  The show gives no sense of that though.

Maybe later in the show these “feelings” (for lack of a better word) will establish themselves in other ways.  Right now, all we have to go on is the point the show is, the corresponding point in the book and compare how the characters are established.  It is following standard HBO first run show themes though, throw a bit of sex in the first couple episodes, a bit of action…then follow through with character development.

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After watching the first episode, there is good and bad IMO…and I will start with the good…

It’s an HBO series…those few words should set up your expectations for production quality, acting quality…etc.  From beginning to end this show had the high quality “everything” that you have come to expect from this network.  There were no corners cut, there was no cheesy special effects to suffer through.  It looked like it was shot in the time period intended.  Time and again HBO has done a fantastic job of putting out high quality series and this is no exception.  I can’t really say much more about it tbh…the quality of these shows is so expected at this point that as viewers we might not fully appreciate the effort and money that HBO puts forth.  If you want to see how much of a difference HBO makes in the quality of time pieces, watch an episode of Camelot.  I’ve seen one, and while it wasn’t horrible it was not HBO quality.  These shows are so good they are not even downloadable.  As a person that has dabbled in the dark arts /cough…I have come to the conclusion that HBO is well worth the subscription cost so they have my few bucks a month to help create these shows.  They do an amazing job…/end slirp

Now that what I didn’t like about this show…

Before I begin my rant, I want to say that I understand how these original series try to attract viewers.  Blood and Sex…It is a proven formula that has succeeded time and again.  In fact after the show was over, a buddy messaged me and made a comment about one of the sex scenes.  He was now interested in the series and it was due in no small part to that unexpected shock and awe factor.  Had that scene not been in the first episode, it might have no retained as many viewers as it should…but it’s what was missing that would have made that scene (and a couple others) so much more powerful.  If you haven’t read the book, or seen the show you probably don’t want to read below until you do…I’m not going to go much further in the story than the first episode did, but there is some spoiler info.

*********SPOILERS FOLLOW*************

The thing that made this book so fascinating to me was the depth of character development chapter after chapter.  It’s been my experience that a fantasy novel that touches 1k pages has pretty significant chunks that are just filler.  How many pages do you need to fill up with the characters eating, how much detail do I need about what their food looks like (yeah, I’m looking at you Jordan).  Game of thrones was so rich with character development that I didn’t scan through any pages..in fact I went back at times to re-read something to make sure I absorbed it all.  Martin chose to put detail in the correct spots (character) and leave other less important areas to the readers imagination (what their food tasted like…what their walk through the desert was like…).  Maybe that didn’t work for every reader, but it really drew me in to what he was trying to do with the book.  It’s very much a character driven story, it’s not people you know something about that are going through epic events.  It’s a story about who these people are and why they make the choices they make…it’s about how their core values and essence lead them down a specific path.

I don’t think it would have been possible in a season, much less an opening show, to get to that level of detail with the characters.  I understand why the show ended where it did and why it pushed so hard to get to the incest scene.  It’s those types of scenes that are going to keep viewers coming back.  It’s so important for HBO to grab a viewer with that scene, then go back and develop the characters after they have got the viewers attention.  It’s just out of order from what the book did.  The problem with doing that though is that it is so key to why these people are doing what they do.  There were 2 key areas where this background character information was missing and it really hurt the over all product…

The first spot I thought it was missing was across the sea with Viserys and Daenerys.  The way Viserys treated his sister was huge in understanding what kind of person he is.  The way she was treated also ultimately shaped the way she acted and how she comes to understand what kind of power she has, given her marriage.  The only inclination you got that viserys might have some sort of physical control over her was when he said, “you don’t want to wake the dragon”.  In the books he would smack her around quite a bit.  It wasn’t so much a “beating” per se, but I felt like it was a backhand any time he felt it necessary.  It seems to me I also remember a point where he went completely ape shit on her (I believe it was after the wedding).  There has been no build up to that.  You haven’t gotten the feel for his character like you should at this point.  You also don’t get the feel for how much he thinks he should be on the throne.  At one point when she said, “i don’t want to marry…” he whispered that he would give her to all 40k men and their horses if necessary…but without the buildup of his character, him smacking her around and understanding his desire to win his crown back…they are just the words of an guy that feels entitled to something he’s never really had.

On Daenery’s side, you understand that she doesn’t want to marry drogo but what we don’t see is how her opinion started to turn at the wedding.  We saw him give her the horse, but we didn’t see the elation she felt once she road it a little bit.  Speaking of gifts, there was a distinct lack of explanation for the gifts or what they mean.  In the book she had a “guide” so to speak…no maybe translator is a better classification for him.  She had a guy telling her about the ways of the Dothraki, what the gifts meant…that with a couple of them it was expected that she gifts the gift to her husband (weapons).  There was also some explanation about the horse, how it was the 2nd best in the herd (the best was drogo’s).  What she felt when she got on that horse and road a little was a huge key to her beginning to accept that she was now part of the tribe.  It didn’t come all at once, but that cracked the egg..and we didn’t see that.  Another huge part of the wedding story was the “no no no” scene.  When they are going to consummate their marriage, it was a much more sensual scene than what the show depicted.  she was obviously nervous, and really didn’t want to…but there was a point where drogo “won her over” so to speak.  He kept saying no as they were undressing, and she turned the no to a yes.  In the book, it wasn’t so much that she wanted to have sex with him, it was more that he was gentle with her…it showed that maybe he understood she wasn’t totally in to this.  In the show it really looked more forceable and IMO lost some of the connection that they made that evening.  Down the line in the story there is a point where they revisit sex between these two.  I hope HBO doesn’t shy away from that because it is so key in how their relationship goes after the marriage and how she finally becomes one of the tribe.  It’s through sex that she becomes empowered and shows that she has given herself over to this life and embraces it.  Beyond that, I think it’s entertaining from an adult perspective.

The wedding scene was also a bit of a disappointment.  It’s during that scene that it gets explained to the reader how these people breed.  If memory serves, all their breeding is done via 1/2 rape 1/2 bloody fighting for the right to breed with specific females.  While reading, I imagined the wedding as much more of a blood bath orgy type situation.  The book used an intermediary to explain the culture of these nomads to the “civilized” people, I really don’t know why the show decided not to take that route.  Later on as the tribe slaughters people, the idea of rape again becomes a key point in Daenery’s reach for power.

Another key area I didn’t think was explored well was Kat’s attachment to her family and her strength of character.  In the book she was much more tore up and argumentative about Eddard taking the position of king’s hand.  She didn’t like the idea of him going so far south, but more than that she hated the idea of him taking many of the children with him.  She understood the gravity of them being gone at that time and the fact that it would be -years- till she would see them again.  In the show, you get the impression that she doesn’t want Eddard to go…but there is nothing about the children really.  I might be way off on this, maybe she didn’t react like that until after the kid fell/was pushed, but I thought it was a theme all along.  Her strength of character and dedication is very critical to the over all story.  I really hope they are able to convey those feelings and emotions during the show.

As an interpretation of the book, I was disappointed in the show.  I’m not able to evaluate it as a stand alone entity as I will always compare it to the book.

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