BryceC, on 18 April 2011 - 03:21 PM, said:
I couldn't honestly tell Jon, Robb, and Theon apart.
Yes, I think Robb's auburn hair should have been a lot more auburn, closer to Sansa's colour, in order for at least Jon and Robb to visually stand apart more. Theon's position in the household might be a tad confusing, people will know he's not a Stark kid, but he also doesn't behave with a servant's/subject's deference. But I don't think the audience will have a problem differentiating him from Jon and Robb.
There are too many characters to be able to develop them all in a single episode. I felt the show gave us enough of the characters in this episode for it to be a good start. But with such a large cast of important characters giving each sufficient screen and script time will be a challenge. Once they go their separate ways it'll be easier to keep things in order. People new to the show haven't a clue about what's in store for the characters, so they're assuming the characters who got decent screen time are the (only/main) key characters. The show would have been worse off had they tried to develop more characters than they did. They got the balance pretty much right for the time they had available IMO.
I think it's important for the relationship between Robb and Jon to be given a bit more of a showing before Jon hives off to the wall. The audience needs to know that Robb likes Jon and has brotherly affection for him, and vice versa. Otherwise their subsequent actions will seem a bit out of place.
I think people who are expecting from the series the same thing as the books deliver are being unrealistic about what a TV series can deliver (even if it was 12 episodes it wouldn't be able to deliver to book level expectations). I've always tried to have realistic expectations about the series, from the ages of the child characters to the changes in character motivations (Cat re Ned becoming the Hand being the big one people have ben fixated on...until Drogo/Dany came along). I changed my tune on screen adaptation bastardisations after LOTR. There were a lot of changes there, which pissed me off quite a bit. But after listening to the director commentary on the (extended) DVDs Peter, Fran and Philippa acknowledged many of the changes and offered explanations for them which, for the purposes of movie adaptation made sense.
The message is simple. If you don't want to witness any changes from the canonical literary work don't watch ANY movies or TV shows adapted from books you've read (especially a big book).
Episode 2 can't come soon enough!