Alright, now that a couple of people have agreed, here's my big fear---it's not an episodic accident. If you're a fan of the books, you probably think the series begins to tank later on. There's a whole lotta nuttin going on as the series begins to mire in one meaningless meander after another.
Not saying HBO can't do better. I hope Waylon's take is better than my own, that HBO is cleaning up Martin's messes. But I imagine there's a limit on how much it can/will diverge from the books.
Fingers crossed.
I liked ADWD a lot, and even tolerated AFFC. I enjoy the world Martin's created enough that I can tolerate it when Brienne walks around in circles for 200 pages in AFFC. I thought ADWD was the second best book of the series and has my favorite scene of the whole series. The "messes" I refer to are Martin making some plot direction choices that barely hold together in the book but won't work at all in a TV Show (such as the treatment of Sansa at the Eyrie). I knew that the Tyrion plot arc in Essos would have to be completely rewritten even as I was reading it in ADWD.
I think of this as poor editing by Martin rather than poor writing. Given that there are roughly 9-10 separate plotlines, I am not too upset that a couple of them don't work. I loved the scenes on Pyke, which were apparently cut from the show altogether.
The first episode was excellent. Jaime and Cersei set the foundation for their plotline, as do Petyr and Sansa, and Tyrion and Varys. In Season 1, Varys and the guy from Pentos are walking in the tunnels under the Red Keep and talking about bringing back the Targarean's. Here we are 4 seasons later, and Varys is finally coming clean. Brienne was a little nasty to Podrick, which didn't make sense.
I was a little surprised at them offing Mance. Stannis should be smart enough to realize that Mance was holding the Wildlings together, and writing Mance off so quickly will make it hard to bring them over to Stannis' cause.
