{original post had no questions}

Thanks...I agree with pretty much everything in your note. The
thing about this show, one of many, is that I do tend to look at each
season as a separate volume in the story, and I try to give each season
a unique and distinct flavor...from the main titles (the book's "cover)
to the stories, and the *way* those stories are told. The first few
episodes are always the transition point, the plateau, where the
changes are worked out.

The other thing is that in the past, I've generally said "this
is part of the arc" by doing a lot of finger-pointing, flag-waving and
jumping up and down. I figured that after 4 years of seeing that the
first third of the season is generally setup for the consequences that
will follow, that I wouldn't have to do so much "fireworks-pay-
attention" to this stuff...but I may have been wrong in that respect.
No, I haven't *said* "this is meaningful" even though it is, and will
be more obviously so in hindsight, because I figured by this time in
the game everybody knew the routine and I wouldn't have to red-flag it
in advance.

I was talking about this to some of the folks on the show, and
they had the same reaction, offering: this is a history, and sometimes
when a major event takes place, nobody knows it's happened yet. On the
day the stocks began to fall, could someone have stood up and said,
"And from this came the great depression?" When Archduke Ferdinand was
killed, could someone have said, that day, "And from this comes World
War One and World War Two and the Cold War." You only see the pattern
in hindsight.

What's being laid out in the first part of this season are the
threads that will become increasingly important, and fundamentally
change the lives of everybody in the show...but because it's not being
flagged as such, some people tend to dismiss it as filler.

As one person noted to me today in email, it's as if someone
wrote to Tolkein and said, "Listen, the book is okay, but on page 248
why the hell did you spend so much time on hobbits when the story is
about Aragorn? What the hell is it with you and hobbits? I'm not
saying that I'm going to stop reading the book, but unless you get back
to Strider fast the story is going to suck and wander."

Bottom line...I'm doing now exactly what I have done with the
show from day one: I'm writing this to please myself, to tell the story
that *I* want to see. If others want to see that, great; if others
don't, that's fine too, because the exercise is getting the story told
the way I want it told. And that I have done. And in the long run,
that's what's pulled people to this show: it's a singular vision, a one-
man story, told the way one person wants it to be told, as in any novel
off the shelf.

I just hope, when all the shouting and hand-wringing is done,
and the season is over, and all the threads of the story lead right
back through to the beginning of this season, showing the filler to be
nothing of the sort, that these same folks will come out and say they
were wrong, as those who said at the time that there was no arc in
season 1 have done since the show has gone into reruns and the arc has
become totally evident.

I can hope that because I specialize in writing fantasy, you
know....

jms