Who do you support in the War of Five Kings? (Game of Thrones on HBO)

[John Dibble]

Screw all of those options, put Tyrion on the throne.

[John Dibble]

Who else calls this programme 'Musical Chairs'? Just curious, like.

Not me - I call it Game of No Clothes personally.

I think one of those options is permanently off the table though.

What, you don't think that Renly's ghost will return to claim the Iron Throne and declare the decapitated zombie head of Ned Stark to be his Hand?

[John Dibble]

Just watched the 1st episode of this Game of Thrones thing.

Pretty good so far, but that blonde guy (who's sister is hot) is somewhat crazy.

Not as crazy as everybody else around him.  Jamie has actually grown on me a bit.  Sure that thing he did at the end of the first episode is despicable (suffering succotash), he's just playing his role in the game and doing it quite well.  I won't say he is a likeable character, but more likeable than his sister and much more so than his....ahem...."nephew".

No, I mean the blonde guy who forced his sister to marry that warrior guy, not that other blonde guy who f[inks]ed that woman in the tower while being watched by the 10 year old boy.

Easy for us to get that confused - the two going at it in the tower are siblings as well.

[John Dibble]

Just finished watching the first season.

I know this is a cliche, but...

THE BOOKS ARE SO MUCH BETTER.

The show has lost so so so much detail.

It's the inevitability of adaptation from book to visual media. You can't include everything. I do think the series is about as good an adaptation as you could get, though.

[John Dibble]

[Minor spoiler, nothing specific. Highlight to read]

With so many votes for Robb and Dany, there must be a lot of non-readers here. All else aside, both prove themselves horribly incompetent and at least somewhat unlikable over the next several books.

Guess I'll spoilerify my response, though won't post any blatant spoilers.

I think in both cases "horribly incompetent" isn't justified. Inexperienced might be a better term. Rob is quite competent at war strategy, but not dealing with political crises and his youthful passion made him make that one really big blunder. You know the one. Dany is quite competent, but she lacks experience and is fully aware of that fact, which is why she opted to get some before heading to Westeros.

[John Dibble]

Hmm, after watching the episodes thru Season 2, Episode 7 it seems that Theon is quite crazy as well ... I thought he'd be more of the good ones.

Theon isn't crazy, he's human. You don't have to be crazy to do terrible things to other human beings. Theon is isolated and desperate for acceptance - he's been a hostage for most of his life and so wasn't fully accepted by the Starks, his own father let him be taken and then treated him like garbage when he returned, and his own people don't respect him. Since he can't really go back to the Starks, he has to try to get the acceptance of his own people. Unfortunately his people happen to respect leaders with a brutal streak.

Yeah, that wasn't what I was expecting from him either.  I don't know what happens to him, but I've heard the audience will end up feeling sorry for the guy.  I'm not sure how that's possible after what he does in season 2.

I won't spoil anything for you, but since Theon isn't a sociopath it's actually possible to empathize with him even when he's done terrible things. He's leagues away from being the worst monster in the series.