Game of Thrones rewatch

I didn't have access to HBO when GoT was first broadcast in 2011, so I watched the first few seasons on murky pirated uploads. It was still gripping but it was like watching it underwater.  I had read the books when they first came out, and reread them as I watched the early seasons, but stopped watching about the time that the religious subplot started. So there's the whole second half of the series that I never saw, and I barely remember the first. Time to rewatch! I wonder what it will be like now that there won't be the same suspense of the story unfolding. And I will no longer be nagged by that voice insisting "But the boooooooks!" and being frustrated by the Terrible Changes the show made to the source material even before it ran out of books in the series. I may peek at some recaps as I go along --remember when recaps were a new thing?--to get a little bit of the water cooler experience back. Here's episode 1's recap.

Meanwhile I will register my dislike for HBO's site. It lags, it's hard to navigate, it will boot you back to an episode you've already watched and then make it impossible to navigate back without restarting the whole thing. Boo hiss! But love that HD!

Remember when we all used to be so excited when the theme music came on? Even if we were watching a blurry upload and could barely see the cool three-dimensional maps?