3. Trivial Pursuits
Episode Eight: "The Pointy End" Commentator: Episode/novel writer George R.R. Martin George R.R. Martin had worked in TV long before "Game of Thrones" ever came along ("Beauty and the Beast," "The Twilight Zone") so he knows all about the trickiness and nuance that comes along with adapting preexisting source material. In fact, when he worked on the "The Twilight Zone" revival in the 1980s, he was told by the show's executive producer that none of the writers who had preexisting stories being adapted would be allowed to work on those scripts because they'd be too close to the material. Clearly, that's not the case with "Game of Thrones," but Martin is still smart enough to know that just because the words are printed on the page doesn't mean that they'll translate to a script. Countless factors - budgets, scheduling, physical impossibility, etc. - contribute to things appearing on-screen in various degrees of differentiation from the source material, but that doesn't stop the purists from taking to Internet message boards and social media to complain about how Benioff and Weiss are destroying Martin's holy gospel. Martin addresses some of those complaints in "The Pointy End," specifically the complaints that Syrio Forel is not bald as written and that Ghost, Jon Snow's direwolf, is not mute as written. Those who have never read the books may look at those two facts and think "who the hell cares?," but there are people out there who care A LOT. Like, more than is healthy. Well, Martin has a word for such complainers and complaints: "trivial." The man knows that people are complaining about liberties being taken with the book, but he also doesn't care. You read a book you read a book, you watch a TV series to watch a TV series. If the guy who created the world of Westeros is not only not complaining, but also actively changing his own words - how many deviations were there in "Blackwater" or "The Bear and the Maiden Fair"? - then what right do purists have to complain?