I recently saw somebody on Twitter mention the "third year of COVID" and that knocked me on my ass a bit. As much as it's possible to mark out the things that I've accomplished and remember events that show how long it's been, it also feels like no time has passed at all. Pierre has turned into an old dog during this pandemic, but I don't feel like I've aged at all (I have, dramatically).
One of the ways that I'm able to recognize the passage of time has been the TV shows that Rebecca and I have watched. In general, we've erred on the side of caution with COVID, which has resulted in a lot of TV watching. It goes through cycles, where sometimes I feel couped up and stircrazy and another night on the couch makes me feel like a personal failure, and sometimes watching TV is the only thing that feels normal. Behold the TV COVID calendar:
True Detective: The first week of the pandemic, when staying inside felt good
The Wire: Rebecca working support in people's homes and COVID weighing the heaviest it ever did
The Mandalorian: Rebecca working overnights and me being home alone on Saturdays
Sex Education: Vaccines being handed out and things starting to feel normal
There's many others that I'm missing, but this was all just a prelude for me to mention that Becks and I's current watch is Game of Thrones, which I'm coming to well after it was one of the biggest phenomena in TV history. We're now halfway through the show (shoutout to the Free People and Brotherhood without Banners) and I have some thoughts on the progression of the show.
Mostly, I've been thinking about the balance of adapting a series of novels while still bowing to the conventions of Peak TV. Game of Thrones moves fast and has already killed off a bunch of characters who I thought would be around for the long haul, so the natural reaction is to guess what the next major plot event will be. The show is pretty conventional and straight forward, so often conjecture is pretty easy, because a character will have said exactly what they were thinking and going to do on episode prior.
However, what I find interesting is that the events of the show have to follow the book. For example, when Tyrion was sentenced to death, I would have normally said that there was no way he could possibly die because Peter Dinklage was the breakout star of the show and was one of its most-loved character. Normally, killing off a character like that would be the absolute biggest move that a show could do (Stringer Bell), but what about if the character Tyrion died in the second book of the series? Must suck to be the writers have to say goodbye to the guy who's carrying the show, right? An added wrinkle to this is that the series started after the first bunch of books were published, but then ended before the last book came out. The production of the two entities are braided in an interesting way.
I guess that in this case, it's to my benefit that I haven't read the books, because the surprises are still fun. This will be the one time that I support TV over the book, due to fantasy books being very much not for me.
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