In a way, true Vince. But recognize there is going to be some simpling of characters from book to show (you can't go into the mind and thoughts of a character in a show like a book without a cumsly thought "voice over" or something), so I expect we'll see some but lighter character growth, and a bit of simplification and smoothing of character traits.

Things I don't understand:

1) Why is the thread called "A Song of Ice and Fire" but you're talking about a TV show called "Game of Thrones"?
2) Why didn't anyone send me a PM telling me that there would be a show full of nudity on TV?
3) Why didn't my wife call me into the room while all this nudity was going on?
4) Why doesn't this TV show have dongs in it (I asked my wife, and she said there were no dongs)?

I hate HBO.

1. The series is called "A Song of Ice and Fire". The first book of that series is called "A Game Of Thrones." They decided to go with the name of the first book instead of the name of the series for the show. Good move. The series name is a mouthful, like my dong. We don't yet know whether the second season will be re-titled "A Clash of Kings", which is the name of the second book of the series, or will still be called "A Game Of Thrones" in order to avoid confusing the masses.

2. It was HBO. Pretty much all HBO shows have nudity. You should know that. But, now that you know, watch it On Demand! You can pause and rewind all the boobs.

3. Pass.

4. It's only the first episode. There are yet nine more episodes. Tell your wife to keep watching. You just never know when a dong might show up!

I haven't watched an HBO show regularly since "Mr. Show with Bob and David" went off the air, and as I recall, there was one sketch in the entire series that had boobs, and all the rest of the nudity was Bob's or David's bare ass... which I'm not necessarily complaining about.

And I just called my wife to find out why she didn't summon me into the room, and she said that I would've just killed her enjoyment of all the boobs. :(

None of the HBO shows show dongs - the most you'll get is a bare-assed man. Even on something like "Hung" you don't get dong.

From what I recall, "Oz" showed plently of dongs.

loved oz

Oh...I missed Oz.

Rome did.

Fair enough. I forgot about some dongs.

Oh yeah, and FYI (bolding is of course mine)

For some reason, when I saw that the series was called "Game of Thrones", I thought it was going to be about basketball. I don't know why. My wife sort of explained to me what it was, so I didn't watch. Then I find out that there were no dongs, so I'm glad I didn't watch.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to get dongs mentioned in a handful of posts here, though.

Pumpy: Six Feet Under had a lot of dongs, but they were all on dead people so I don't know if that counts for you.

You know, if I had moved to Akron, I would totally come over and watch the show with your wife. I'd even bring lemon cakes and we'd sit there, eating lemon cakes, enjoying the show and all of the boobs.

I promise we'd call you in if there was ever a dong on screen.

*which includes repeat viewers

Which is fine. Repeat viewers, time-shifted viewers, whatever. There was a lot of talk on blogs (although I didn't see any actual numbers quoted so i don't know about the validity of it) about how the NBA playoff games affected ratings - that after the games were over the 10PM and 11PM showings did very good numbers as well as people switched over.

That's the number HBO cited in THEIR press release, so that's obviously the number they want to highlight.

We could sit here and discuss if they are just trying to put a super positive spin on it, or if that's actually the number that they truly care about, but bottom line is that none of us know that.

How much does that matter on a show that doesn't sell ads? I really don't know how success is measured as much on premium channels. It can't be just the first run of the episode. It has to based on re-watchability and marketing because they make their money on suscriptions and marketing, not ad dollars.

DAMMIT H_B

Does that also include those who watched it On Demand later that night or the next day? (which is how I watched the first episode, On Demand later that night).

I'd think the opposite actually. They hype the cumulative because it makes them sound more significant than the reality of single ep numbers that put them closer to second tier cable reality show numbers than to significant programming (it got a 0.9 A18-49, Khole & Lamar did a 1.3 the week on Sunday night 10p, Housewives of Orange County did a 0.9 in the same time slot).

Outside of secondary sources (like overseas rights, dvd's, etc) they make their money by retaining customers and attracting new ones. The latter presumably is helped by things like water-cooler buzz, i.e. making it seem like must-see-tv, and this really didn't pull the kind of numbers I believe would be needed for that.

As for how it accomplishes the retention goal, I can't say that I've got a firm opinion, simply isn't something I've read about/pondered a ton, since as you pointed out, the lack of ads really means it's not a big deal to me one way or the other.

From last fall though, I'll offer this bit about how HBO's subscriber count has been stagnant since 2006 and actually took a dip last year, pointing out how original programming isn't really what drives the pay networks up or down.

edit to add: I ran across that story as part of something much simpler, I was looking for a subscriber estimate to figure what they're internal rating was (viewers/subscribers). Figuring 28.6m subscribers at 1.5 persons per household (wild ass guess), the gross eyeballs are about 10% of subscribers give or take a little.

The True Blood premiere in '08 only had 1.4 million viewers on Sunday night and 2.4 cumulative. GOT had 2.4 and 4.2 cumulative. True Blood has steadily built its ratings and hit 5.38 million (and a 3.0 for 18-49) for the season 3 finale (can't find what the cumulative was on that). It wouldn't surprise me if GOT builds similarly once word of mouth gets going and the S1 DVDs are out there, but we'll see.

Been skimming this thread while at work on my iPhone, I agree with a lot of what I've seen said here. All in all, I enjoyed it, though I had some nitpicks.

The actress who played Dany played her much more scared and stiff than I was expecting. I hope she loosens up.

Viserys was spot-on.

I think if I didn't know that Jamie and Cersi were twins, this adaption would not have indicated to me that they were even related....

I saw somewhere someone said that Joffrey didn't even have any lines in this episode, and still he looked like he deserved a kick in the keester. :D

I thought the wedding night scene with Drogo and Dany ended up coming off much more like rape than it did the de-flowering of a timid virgin. When I read the book, I interpreted that scene to be much more of Drogo caring and being careful, not being so forceful...

Also, Tyrion is too pretty. Where's his hump?

Finally, I know they had to do this, but that castle looked way too contrived to be easy to climb. The way they added the foot/hand holds wasn't like I imagine a castle really looks.

/tk

That's the part that would surprise me considerably.

Yes, to just about all of the above. I'm going to give the Jaime/Cersei thing a complete pass if the actors pull off their roles well. I also think they should be more blonde, but I can see the difference there being to offset Dany and Viserys in a way. For what it's worth, I thought Jaime's hair looked WAY better outside than it did inside, color-wise.


Totally agree. I just want everything in the books to be in the show too :)

What hump? (Start it at 1:15)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaPZZJVDx6Y

By the by, if anybody hasn't read the books or wants a refresher on characters and such, the Game of Thrones Companion iOS app is actually very well done. Game of Thrones Companion for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad on the iTunes App Store

/tk

Dola, I shared this on FB, but in case you aren't friends with me....

Secrets Behind 'Game of Thrones' Opening Credits (Video) - Hollywood Reporter is an article that talks about the opening credits to the show. I thought they were pretty slick, cool to read a little of the inspiration.

/tk

just bought the app for the hell of it, looks awesome so far.

Does breaking the ratings down demographically really matter for HBO? I know its important for advertisers, but outside of a "the younger they are, the longer they could be a customer" does it really matter who is subscribing?

any word on if season 2 will have the addition of dongs

I think you'll be able to customize the blueray version to add dongs. Even on the women.

love that

I want the opening credits theme as a ringtone. Still love the opening credits artwork.

/tk

I liked the understated music throughout.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1980852/Game...1_Sound%21.mp3

you might want to trim it down some though

You, sir, are AWESOME.

/tk

It's not perfect or anything - I just found a youtube video and DLed it and encoded it as an MP3...but it's a start.

And it works pretty well as a ringtone. I cut out the first 8 or so seconds, sounds good.

Sweetttttttttt

Might do that myself!

-8.5 seconds (close as I could get without being TOO anal), saved as MP3

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1980852/GoT%20ringtone.mp3

I just watched it last night and I agree with you, the sex was not the focus during the episode.

Just an FYI, I've never read the books, but I'm going to invest my time in the series. For those that are trying to figure out who is who and the relation of each of them to each other, HBO has done a nice job with the Viewers Guide.

HBO: Game of Thrones: Viewer's Guide

I was confused at the end because I thought the Queen was having sex with a guy I thought was her brother and now after going through the guide I was assured that my initial understanding was correct.

Sucks being the last post on a page :(

Front Office Football Central - View Single Post - A Song of Ice and Fire (The Television Series)

Hah, and that was before I watched the 1st episode, I didn't read or post in here till I watched it, and I purposely avoided any comments posted before the show aired to make sure I didn't get anything that could be sort of spoilerish.

Maybe it was anticipation of things to come, but I thought the pilot drug a bit. In fact, most of the people I talk to shared the opinion that it was slow in a few places. There's a lot of exposition in a novel I just don't care about when it gets adapted to the screen (see the drawn-out "is it finally over" ending to Return of the King with all the fading to black). I fully admit that it could have been my wanting to "get to the good part", though.

I couldn't disagree more about Cat. I always felt her sense of duty was one of the pillars of her character in the beginning and that's why she urges Ned to go with Robert in the novels. Her sense of duty is constantly at war with love and fear for her family throughout her storyline. I think by taking that strong early position away, they crippled her character arc. Ah well, such is life. Not enough screen time for all of it.

Don't think I need spoilers since I didn't reveal any plot points (except the fact that Cat does in fact have a story)...

I thought it dragged a bit too, but there was a lot of exposition in introducing the vast cast of characters and trying to move things along to the point where they could end it with "The things I do for love." There's also not a ton of action-action that early in the book - you could have spent some time on the kids training in the yard or something to get some swordplay in there, but it wouldn't have been real action, and it also would have necessitated either making the episode longer (thus not really reducing the drag), or taking out something else and moving it to episode 2 (Dany/Drogo wedding? But then that pushes more of the Dany/Drogo story to next week and sets off a ripple-effect).

I agree with what you said about Cat and her whole sense of duty being at war with love and fear for the family, and we didn't see that with her just jumping to telling Ned to go. But maybe we'll get that in this next episode before they leave for Kings Landing - we haven't seen it yet so we don't know whether they just simplified her internal struggle a bit (lack of an internal monologue making it more time-consuming to show her internal struggle and they felt they didn't have the time?), or just rearranged it a bit.

Same thing with the Dany/Drogo bit - I wouldn't put it past them having some sort of more tender "you have given me the wind" type moment early in this coming episode (before the girl-on-girl action) that would sort of make more clear that the whole wedding-night thing wasn't "rape."

I read the books and like everyone immensely enjoyed them but the 1st episode didn't suck me in enough to spend $16 bucks for the next three months for another 9 hours. I will probably hold off on signing up for HBO and just wait for it on DVD or another avenue. Fortunately with the NBA playoffs I still have other things to watch.

I really enjoyed tonight's episode. Even knowing what was going to happen, the last scene was very powerful.

Yeah. I know some reviewers who have seen ahead said that this was the weakest of the first 6 or so episodes...if so, I'm very happy.

I agree, though this was guaranteed to be one of my "least favorite" episodes. The scene at the end, and the one where Arya sends Nymeria away, are two of my least favorite scenes in the books. I love the wolves.

/tk