So I started watching Game of Thrones last night and I have to ask... when does it start to pick up?
While I hadn't really been able to get into the books, when I heard that HBO was making them into a series I was pretty excited to see what they'd do. After the success of The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire and countless other dramas, I gave a lot of weight to the HBO endorsement and was certain that this show would be superb. And the rave reviews from geeks and non-geeks alike seemed to bear this out. But by about the halfway point of the first episode, I kept thinking "I'll give this five more minutes before I put in Goldfinger."
While I never pulled the trigger on the Bond movie, this had more to do with the inertia of my lazy ass lying on the couch late on a Thursday night than any on-screen magic. The characters are competently acted and impressively adorned, but I neither loved nor loathed any of them and felt nothing but apathy toward the various dramas that were unwinding around them. When can I expect to start to give a shit about this made-up kingdom and its made-up drama? Do I need to power through another episode or two before the gears start clicking or is it safe to say that the magic is lost on me?