I talked about this series a bit earlier, talking about how hyped up I was for it. CLICK HERE
Well after all the hype it finally aired during the night… and sadly I couldn’t watch it then. The show over here played on NBC, but after some searching I found out it played on NBC Plattsburgh, and that over here I only had NBC Detroit. So sadly I won’t be able to follow this on normal television(if i had Satellite TV I probably could, but I don’t >_>). But thankfully the internet is here and it’s possible to download the episode from *cough* various sources, and I can watch it anyways.

Now I’ve managed to watch it and here I am with my impressions of the first 2 episodes.
I’ll first go into a brief summary of each episode(not going too much in detail) and then give my impressions about it . And there’s gonna be some pictures at the end of the post of course.

Episode 1: Prophecy
This episode starts with Kahlan and her sister running away from Darken Rahl’s troops to get to the Heartlands and find the Seeker of Truth to give him a book. Kahlan’s sister gets killed, she then comes accross the Boundary and uses some magic necklace to get through it. A Quad follows her (though it’s not refered to as a Quad here >_>) and Richard, who was just done rebuilding a bridge, sees her running away from those men and tries to help her out. Kahlan shows off her confessor powers(already?) and the bad guys are killed… except one. Kahlan goes off to find… someone, and Richard gets bitten by a poisonous plant.

The survivor of the Quad goes to the “boss” off the Heartlands, who just so happens to be Richard’s brother(Michael), and explain his view of what happened(and says that he’s from the Midlands), so Michael is off to find Richard and Kahlan. In the meantime Richard talks to his dad a bit and some of Michael’s men come to Richard’s house, so his father tells him to go meet Zedd.

Now Richard goes there, all weakened from the poisonous plant’s bite, and get healed. He then gets told that he’s the Seeker, and that his parents aren’t his real parents. Kahlan gives Richard the Book of Counted Shadows(what?), which, even though it’s in a language he doesn’t know, is still able to read it. So Richard goes to find his dad but finds his house burning. He is then told that Zedd is telling the Truth, and then his dad dies. Richard goes to fight the remaining Quad member at Zedd’s house(taking the horse that has the Sword of Thruth and the Book on it), but gets pwnd and the Book of Counted Shadows is taken away.

Richard realizes his faults and is truly named the Seeker of Thruth by Zedd, who happens to be First Wizard, a high-ranked wizard in the Midlands, and Kahlan. He gets the Sword of Thruth and the episode ends there.

Episode 2: Destiny
Episode 2 finds Richard, Zedd and Kahlan planning how to catch up to the Quad member. Chase comes in, and believes Richard about everything that’s happening, but Michael, who now sides with Darken Rahl’s man out of nowhere, l wants him dead(isn’t the love between brothers magnificent?). They go get something to eat before leaving, and during that time Darken’s forces are trying to break through the boundary by shooting burning… things from their catapults.

Now Michael rallies a bunch of scared citizens and goes off to find Richard and crew(especially Kahlan, who they call a witch(they really know nothing >_>)), but they can’t stop them because Zedd can shoot fire. Nifty. So they get away and try finding a way through the Boundary. On the way there they seperate from Chase and he gets forced(by the Quad member) to tell where to find someone who know how to go through otherwise he’ll kill Chase’s daughter. He gives his instructions on how to get to the Bone Lady’s place, and then he goes to find Richard and gang.

So then Richard’s an idiot and almost goes in the Boundary, but Zedd stops him and gets poisoned. Chase comes in, tells Richard what happened and they go to the Bone Lady, while Kahlan trails behind, transporting Zedd with her. They get to the Bone Lady, save Chase’s daughter from a Gar (didn’t mention that earlier, basically flying demon dudes), and are told that the Quad guy is gone to the Boundary.

So Richard and Kahlan go there, leaving Zedd to be healed by the Bone Lady. They fight the Quad guy, get the Book back, and Darken’s troops manage to break a part of the Boundary. So there’s a big fight between Richard and Kahlan against those troops, and they pwn them. Oh, and before that Richard burned the book. So now the episode ends and Richard, Kahlan and Zedd are off to the Midlands. Yay.

Impressions
Well, I must say  enjoyed this. They did make quite a few changes from the original book, but overall the main story stays quite similar.
The actors were pretty well chosen. Kahlan looks quite similar to what I imagined, Zedd is just as I imagined, Richard… well he’s a bit young and looks different from what I thought he would, but in retrospect this look is fitting for the first book’s Richard.
The acting was satisfactory. Not much more to say here. Except that Zedd doesn’t say “Bags” enough >_>
The problem for me was core differences between the show and the book(i’ll cover those soon). But I think that despite that it should be a good show.
I’ll definitely be watching more of it.

Changes done 
There are a few changes that really change some important elements in the story.
The main one is the Book of Counted Shadows. In the books, Richard read the book since he was a young kids until he completely memorized it, being able to recite it and write it anew when asked. After he was able to do that, they burned it. In the show, he never heard about it and only read a few pages(or even just a few lines) before burning it. At least the lines he read are faithful to the book. But that will inevitably change some elements in the series… most notably the ending, which mostly involves Richard’s knowledge of the Book of Counted Shadows.
Another disturbing change is Richard’s relation with Zedd. In the book, Zedd is Richard’s mentor and taught him almost everything he knows. In the series, Richard considers Zedd “just some crazy old men who speaks to his chicken”. That’s just really weird. To add to that, Zedd doesn’t explain the Sword of Truth’s powers to Richard, which was an interesting plot point in the book.
Another weird difference is the death of Richard’s father. In the book, he was killed by Darken Rahl himself, who came to the Heartland on the back of a dragon. Here they just ignored that, and the dragon(who ends up being an important character) and decide Richard’s dad just gets killed by the remaining Quad member. 
Which brings me to another weird difference: the remaining Quad member. All of them died in the book, so the remaining one seems… out of place here.
The one change that really bothered me is the Wizard’s First Rule. It’s the title of the book the series is based on, so why is the Wizard’s First Rule itself not right? In the book it’s ”People are stupid”, but now it’s “people will believe a lie because they want it to be true, or because they’re afraid it might be true”. “People are stupid” is not only true, but is used throughout the series by Richard to get things done. Just something really random I found that really bothered me here.
The final weird change is Kahlan’s confessor powers. You hear that she’s a confessor early enough in the book, but she doesn’t really use her power until later when they’re in the Midlands, yet here even before going to the Midlands she already used them twice.

There are other differences, but those are the main ones I found. Though it’s been like 3 year since I read the first book so I must have missed some. At least they kept Gars intact, including the blood flies they use to find preys and all, so that was a nice touch (though they don’t explain it in the show). 

Overall
I think it’s going to be an interesting series, and hopefully they’ll go further than just the first book, like another series later on for the second book or something. As long as they don’t screw up too much of the books story I think it will be almost as interesting as the book.
I’ll be sure to keep watch on this. (maybe a network that plays on standard cable here would be nice enough to show it here? I’ll keep downloading the series until then).

Pictures
Here’s a few of them.

So romantic, standing together amongst a bunch of corpses

 

Chase is not as big as I thought he would be, but he is still badass

Crazy naked old man talking to his chicken.... oh wait this is Zedd. Bags old man, put some close on, this is disturbing >_>

The boundary actually looks pretty cool.

This is a Gar. Not what I thought it would look like, but pretty cool anyways.

And off they are to the Midlands. Yay!

 

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