Oh hey! It’s Eli’s wife, Denise. We haven’t seen her in… a couple of years? I almost considered her lost in the partial reboot a year ago, but let’s just assume she’s been in the Philippines studying at the finest culinary schools, learning how to prepare live baby ducks that you eat whole or soup made of blood and bile.

This is how my wife and I watch Game Of Thrones. I pause the TV every 15 seconds to ask her questions and she looks at me with this knowing glint in her eye like, “Oh shitbaskets you have NO IDEA what’s about to happen.” It’s like she’s a time traveler returned from one of many possible futures just observing and laughing as we (the past-folk) run around and play out the events of her history, seemingly devoid of free will. It’s an unsettling way to watch TV to say the least.

Couple this with the fact the Game Of Thrones doesn’t consistently rewrite, leave out or work around plot points from the book and the whole experience can be rather frustrating. What I mean is sometimes they’ll lump a few key events into an episode by having them all take place in the same area or at the same time and to one guy instead of the 8 guys on 9 different continents they happened to in the books. Other times they’ll just leave out extremely vital information, either assuming you know it already, having read the books, or you’re so confused by everything else that one more thing to be confused about isn’t going to make much difference. Still there are other times where they completely rewrite events, characters or entire plot lines from the books to make for a better TV show. This final stratagem is the one I prefer. I’d rather the show be a unique experience that neither requires or punishes having read the books.

COMMENTERS: What are your favorite/least favorite movie/TV translations from books? Do the most faithful translations make for the best adaptations or do you prefer the ones that take more liberty and consolidate the story for the new format? Have you ever been the “one who read the books?” Did you aid or ruin someone else’s movie/TV watching experience because of it?