['Game of Thrones' - 'The Kingsroad']

In its second episode, 'Game of Thrones' is still introducing us to its world and the people in it, and it's still setting up the conflicts to come.

That may account for the rather stilted nature of 'The Kingsroad,' which had a couple of effective moments but, in some ways, lacked an emotional spark.

'The Kingsroad' was a competent retelling the relevant set of events from the book, but it was somehow less exciting and less impressive than the previous episode (which, to be fair, got to introduce a whole new world, so it was bound to have a bit more intrinsic appeal).

In this episode, the ways in which novels can be superior to television became apparent here, to me, anyway.

Part of the reason people love the 'GoT' book series so fiercely is because readers get to know the characters in them incredibly well.

Hundreds of pages are spent on their thoughts, dreams, desires and actions, and it's impossible to not come to care about many of them, even the ones that aren't that nice. Martin uses a narrative conceit in the novels that allows him to drill deeply into various characters' psyches -- each chapter is told from the perspective of one character (in 'A Game of Thrones,' the narrative perspective revolves among eight characters).

This television show has 10 hours to get through a lot of story (my paperback version of 'A Game of Thrones' runs to 807 pages), and realistically, it can't stop and spend an hour -- or even 30 minutes -- on one character. Despite the welcome news that HBO has ordered a second season of the show, the long-term success of 'Thrones' will depend on whether how deeply it makes us care about these characters' hopes, goals and fears. It's going to have to be very creative if it's going to build the emotional bonds between the audience and the characters as deeply as the books did.

One way to do that is to invent scenes like the one between Cersei and Catelyn, which I thought was one of the best moments in the episode. Cersei isn't a very nice person, and she certainly doesn't hope that Bran lives. So she's a hypocrite and a liar, at the very least.

But she's also capable of sincerity, and the only people she loves in an uncomplicated way are her kids. So to have her talk, in a truthful and heart-rending way, about the death of her little black-haired baby was quite moving.

More importantly, it made me not hate her. It made me realize a few things about Cersei: She and Robert once may have loved each other, or at least had affection for each other; she loved that baby and it broke her heart to have his body taken out of her arms; and even if she's playing games most of the time, she's certainly capable of feeling honest emotions.

"Such a little thing, a bird without wings." The writing there was especially excellent; it took flight, to extend Cersei's metaphor, whereas in some other instances, the dialogue has a functional, sort of plodding quality to it.

Now, we didn't get to see her spend any time interacting with her kids here, and we learned early on in the hour that Joffrey is unredeemably spoiled and awful, so she clearly did a terrible job of raising him to be a man (though she may have done a fine job to raise him to be a Lannister -- Joffrey's got the family gift for cruelty and self-serving manipulation). It would have been nice to see that devotion to her kids demonstrated for us before she called for Sansa's direwolf to be executed, but at least we got the scene in Bran's room, the one that told us that Cersei's not nice but she's not necessarily a total monster.

I hope the show does more of this. It'll need to. As I said in my review of the show, I'm not saying the writers necessarily need to shy away from Martin's text and invent a ton of scenes that weren't in it. I'm saying that, whether we've read the books or not, the show needs to come up with effective methods of conveying the kind of information we need in order to establish connections with these people and their dilemmas.

Whether it was due to pacing, editing or just not knowing the characters that well, the river scene didn't have as much impact as I would have liked, but Sean Bean did exemplary work in the confrontation with King Robert and Queen Cersei (his delivery of the line, "The wolf is of the North. She deserves better than a butcher" was excellent). There was also nice ferocity from Maisie Williams as Arya. Whatever objections I have to this show, they usually drop away whenever Arya or Ned are on the screen.

The other moment that really connected for me was Ned's execution of Lady, Sansa's direwolf. Great acting can do a lot to convey a large amount of information, and Sean Bean did that here. In a wordless scene, you saw gut-churning unhappiness on Ned's face -- unhappiness that had many causes.

It wasn't just that he had to kill the dog, but that he'd given his life to a man who couldn't even dispense true justice to Ned's own children. That man was Ned's former best friend, and he was now under the thumb of an unpleasant and cunning wife. What on earth did Ned Stark get himself into? All of those thoughts and emotions flashed across Ned's face, but not in an overly emotional way. Still, Bean made us feel the dread, the fear, the disappointment in Ned's unenviable situation. On top of all that, he simply hated having to kill Sansa's dog, a noble, obedient animal who'd done nothing wrong. (The fact that the direwolf is the sigil of House Stark was surely not lost on him.)

Speaking of performances, I'm having real trouble connecting with Peter Dinklage's Tyrion. It's early days yet, so I may yet come to appreciate what he's doing in the role, but given how excited when Dinklage was cast as Tyrion, well, so far my expectations have not been met. I have to be honest: His scenes are falling mostly flat for me. I find his elaborate accent off-putting; as I wrote last week, there's something not quite right about it.

This could be the actor's choice to give Tyrion and his voice a performative, declamatory quality, or it could be that he's simply trying too hard to emulate a "proper" English accent. Either way, his locution draws attention to itself in a way that distances me from the character.

So while the scenes with Joffrey and Jon Snow were informative about each of those characters -- Kit Harington's facial expression as the truth about Jon's future sank in were perfectly calibrated -- I'm not really invested in Tyrion yet. I want to be, truly I do, so I hope that'll change.

As is the case with any critique I make at this point, I'm willing to be proven wrong. What I'm really hoping is that, as the show moves forward, it establishes not just a rhythm and momentum but its own animating spark. As I said, much of this episode, despite the mostly strong performances and good visuals, felt like a competent but unexceptional depiction of a sequence of events that occurred in the book. It was dutiful, but, aside from a couple of scenes, not inspired.

A few more notes and random observations:

• Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has a great facility with Jaime's smarmy charm -- you can tell Jon Snow isn't sure if Jaime's insulting him or complimenting him (and that's exactly the reaction that Jaime wants -- his central skill is keeping people off balance about his motivations and agenda). Jaime gives us many reasons to dislike him, but there's something about the man that is inescapable, some kind of dark charisma. Coster-Waldau captures that well.

• Because I want to like Catelyn, it's difficult to see her being cold to Jon Snow. I understand the intellectual reasons why she'd be hesitant to embrace her husband's bastard, but Michelle Fairley brings such earthy kindness and strength to the role that you'd tend to assume that Catelyn would be more fair about the awkward situation and blame her husband for his transgression, not blame the child. Still, it's understandable that she'd be furious that her own offspring lingered near death while Ned's bastard lived.

• Speaking of the scene in Bran's room, I understand that some fans were upset that they cut a line that Catelyn says to Jon in the book, something along the lines of "It should have been you." I agree with the producers' decision to cut that line. It's one thing to read it on the page, when we have much more context for Jon and Catelyn's difficult relationship. To see it on the screen, when we've just met both of them -- it was too soon for that. Just my two cents.

• Oy vey, lots of shots of the dragon eggs. OK, we get it, the dragon eggs are important.

• I enjoyed the Ned-Robert scene, which demonstrated Mark Addy's nimble ability to shift between bawdy mode and serious mode.

• Does this mean I'm likely to take the black? Once again, a shot of the Wall may have been my favorite moment of the episode. Terrific image. All hail the FX team.

• Any fans of 'The Wire' out there? If so, you need to check out this very, very awesome image.

• In this interview, Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys, said that her first day of shooting 'GoT' involved being on horseback with hundreds of extras. So I'm guessing her first day of shooting was the first Dothraki scene we saw in this episode. That may account for the fact that her eyebrows look terrible in that scene; I can only assume that the hair and makeup people hadn't quite figured out how to depict Dany's brows yet. They're too thick; they're simply distracting in that scene and not great in others. I expect HBO productions to have the highest possible standards in every arena, and in most arenas, 'GoT' looks good, great or fabulous. But I can't lie about the fact that Cersei's hair and Dany's brows look distractingly wrong in these early episodes.

• Speaking of that second-season renewal, I'm glad that 'Game of Thrones' will get more than one season to develop these characters and limn this world, but a recent EW story indicates that season 2 will have only 10 hours. If I've got one major issue with the series as it stands now, it's that, at times, it has to sacrifice character depth and moral complexity in order to simply set up and march through through plot and story. I'm frankly worried that season 2 won't have enough time to depict not just the events of 'A Clash of Kings' (the second novel in George R.R. Martin's 'Song of Ice and Fire' series) but to give us the kind of emotional and thematic richness that the novels contain. Any other fans have any worries on that season 2 front? Or was it just me that was hoping for 12 or 13 hours?

Finally, here are a few housekeeping notes. Please keep in mind that every commenter will be held to the standards set forth below.

• From last week's review, in case you missed it, here's how I'm writing these weekly reviews of the show. I'm writing this review without having seen the other four that HBO sent to the media. I didn't want to be ahead of you, the viewer, and I didn't want to have to try to forget what I've seen in subsequent episodes when I sat down to write weekly reviews.

So, over the last few weeks, my procedure was this: After I watched an episode twice, I wrote my review of that episode, then I went on to the next one. So at this point, you and I have both seen two episodes of 'Game of Thrones.' (I wrote my non-spoilery overall review of the show after watching all six episodes that HBO sent, and if the tone of that review strikes you as somewhat different from what you read here, remember that review contains my assessment of the show based on half a dozen episodes, not just two. I did write the final bullet point above more recently, after the show's season 2 renewal was announced.)

• On this site, we observe the Lurkers Rule: The environment here should be so accepting, so calm and so non-screechy that the most timid lurker should feel it's safe to express his or her opinion. If you have a problem with any comment on this site, hit the "report this comment" button or email me at maureen.ryan@teamaol.com.

• If you express yourself in a hostile, repetitive or unpleasant fashion, or if your starting point is that 'Game of Thrones' is not something that should be subjected to thoughtful, rational discussions of its positive and negative aspects, this is not the site for you. If you can't be civil and respect other commenters, your comments will be deleted.

• Please read Alan Sepinwall's Six Simple Rules for Commenting if you want to know the rules that apply here. This excerpt should help: "Be nice. This is an opinion blog, and a place where people can and should argue passionately for their point of view. But there's a difference between arguing with passion and arguing with hostility. If you can't find a way to express your viewpoint without insulting other commenters, or getting strident and self-righteous -- say, equating your opinion with fact, and deriding other people for not seeing the truth of your words -- then either tone down your words until they're more respectful to other people, or don't comment."

• Please, please don't mention any spoilers about what happens in subsequent episodes. No talking about what happens in the books beyond the story lines we saw here.

• If you're new to the world of 'Game of Thrones,' do check out the fan sites Westeros, Winter is Coming and Tower of the Hand. They've got active message boards and a ton of interviews and intel, and if you want to get deeper into this world, you can't go wrong with those sites. HBO's got an extensive Viewer's Guide here. And of course, if you want to check out our features and interviews with the 'GoT' brain trust, including Martin and executive proucers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, go here.

'Game of Thrones' airs 9PM ET Sundays on HBO.

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