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Friday, April 6, 2012

Game of Thrones: The Tediocracy of Westeros

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?