Oh this damn show! Episode 7 made me want to throw in the towel with its gratuitous, ludicrous girl-on-girl Littlefinger sexposition scene and then two weeks later and episode 9 is just so fucking brilliant it makes you want to stand on a rooftop and cheer. It's so bloody frustrating!
On the whole I have enjoyed it, there's been more good stuff than bad but I think it's struggled with the multiple locations and binding them together coherently and making the episodes flow logically. Some scenes have been clunky with exposition, some eps have felt flatter than others and some of the cast seem to struggle with the dialogue and end up making it too stagey. And then along comes episode 9 and it's just so stunningly good it gives me hope for Season 2.
I love Maisie Williams as Arya, she's been brilliant and it's such an important role so getting that casting right is a real coup. I think most of the main cast are spot-on. Still not keen on Fairley as Catelyn but that might be linked to my dislike of the character in general and I don't like Aiden Gillen as Littlefinger either, he's regularly knocked off the screen by Varys who has been really excellent. I also love hearing lots of Northern accents that always makes me smile. Tyrion and Arya are probably my faves which gels with the novels, theirs were always the chapters I looked forward to. I'm still a little undecided about the Lannister twins. Jaime had more of a journey in the books, I think he's been made more sympathetic (as has Cersei) for TV and that will potentially make his story less interesting. Cersei has had some nice scenes but she's not been in it all that much so it's hard to get a handle on her.
I think overall, I like it but I wouldn't consider myself a fan of it. Emotionally, I'm not completely hooked, I don't find myself thinking about the eps after they've finished (and yet I was absolutely drawn into the novels). Having said that, that last ep was a real, palms sweating, stomach churning game-changer and I knew exactly what was going to happen. Which suggests that they got something very very right with that one!
Now that the story is well under way I'm hoping that things will smooth out in the writing for S2. With the world and the central characters established it might make it easier for the writers to keep things flowing.
PS - the fallen knight is Ser Jorah Mormont ;-) You cannot imagine how many times I had to check the bloody cast list when I was reading the novels!
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On the whole I have enjoyed it, there's been more good stuff than bad but I think it's struggled with the multiple locations and binding them together coherently and making the episodes flow logically. Some scenes have been clunky with exposition, some eps have felt flatter than others and some of the cast seem to struggle with the dialogue and end up making it too stagey. And then along comes episode 9 and it's just so stunningly good it gives me hope for Season 2.
I love Maisie Williams as Arya, she's been brilliant and it's such an important role so getting that casting right is a real coup. I think most of the main cast are spot-on. Still not keen on Fairley as Catelyn but that might be linked to my dislike of the character in general and I don't like Aiden Gillen as Littlefinger either, he's regularly knocked off the screen by Varys who has been really excellent. I also love hearing lots of Northern accents that always makes me smile. Tyrion and Arya are probably my faves which gels with the novels, theirs were always the chapters I looked forward to. I'm still a little undecided about the Lannister twins. Jaime had more of a journey in the books, I think he's been made more sympathetic (as has Cersei) for TV and that will potentially make his story less interesting. Cersei has had some nice scenes but she's not been in it all that much so it's hard to get a handle on her.
I think overall, I like it but I wouldn't consider myself a fan of it. Emotionally, I'm not completely hooked, I don't find myself thinking about the eps after they've finished (and yet I was absolutely drawn into the novels). Having said that, that last ep was a real, palms sweating, stomach churning game-changer and I knew exactly what was going to happen. Which suggests that they got something very very right with that one!
Now that the story is well under way I'm hoping that things will smooth out in the writing for S2. With the world and the central characters established it might make it easier for the writers to keep things flowing.
PS - the fallen knight is Ser Jorah Mormont ;-) You cannot imagine how many times I had to check the bloody cast list when I was reading the novels!