It was frustrating that all Quentin had to do to recreate that battle spell was remember the one time he'd seen it done, from across the room, while in mortal peril. That's not exactly studying.

It was a strange, underwhelming choice for a series-opening, before-the-credits scene. I mean, probably better than a kid doing a magic trick in his pocket, but not by a whole lot. Surely they could have come up with something better.

Just rewatched the scene where Penny and [newcharacter] join Q & A for the summoning spell. Penny says, “Look, I gather you guys need some extra hands or something.”

Yes. If I recall — and it's been a while, so I might not — Julia's memory of Brakebills has more of a 'if you see a black cat we're in The Matrix" feel to it; haunting, like something just out of reach that you want to be able to pin your current troubles on but can't grab hold of. I would have preferred to have Julia…

That's a really astute guess. So what made the Eliza-Jane connection for you? The conversation with the dean at the end of Ep 2?

Agree. It was also unclear how much magic-based information the professors had. The suggestion that they could read minds, then a blip on a map, then traces of magic all over the book, then super shaky confession scenes… but still Penny has to rat out Quentin for the conviction to stick, I guess?

Yes, but that came after the uber-villian walked right up to Quentin and highlighted him as a threat. Something like "nip this in the bud" really underlines the fact that he will be important later, even if he's supposed to be learning that he's not terrifically special now.

I think the show version was well done — especially the moths and that waist-high close up of his freak hand — but I almost couldn't process or enjoy it because it caught me so off guard to have it dropped in that soon. It went from "is this really happening?" in reading the book to "is this really happening NOW?" in…

Which is why it's too bad there aren't Newbies and Experts threads for this show, like GoT. Then we book readers could blather on at each other about nit-picking differences out of sight of the Unsullied.

Yeah, I like this interpretation.

I loved the books, so would recommend them, but of course that totally depends on your tastes. I actually stayed away from them for a while because none of the reviews were convincing; they actually seemed like a bit of a stay away. I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, which is why the show rushing through the early Brakebills stuff in the book is even crazier. Seems like they threw away an obvious chance to do fun worldbuilding from the small scale to the large.

The cameo by Grossman in the Fillory video was a nice touch.

Wow, that's a great point! I forgot about the maze. How in the world did they decide to leave that out? No wonder Brakebills felt like a bit of a letdown.

Maybe they'll just Obi Wan her? "Quentin… use the Force…"

I was kind of hoping The Sorcerer's Stone would be one of the books in that stack that Quentin was returning.

Apparently, Alice was initially going to be played by Kevin Bacon's daughter?
http://variety.com/2014/tv/…

Oh yeah, I can go with it, too. I can imagine how adapting the Julia timeline from the books plus the Fillory stuff would just be too many layers to handle well.

Yeah, Margo seems very un-Janetlike so far. And with Julia so prominently featured from the start, I wonder if Margo/Janet will ever feel like a main character? And if not, it seems like her interaction with (and influence on) Quentin will be too watered down.

Steampunk would have been cool. To me, maybe it was more a scale thing — I imagined both the trees and clock faces larger. More like Big Ben and a mighty oak, than a grandfather clock in a small elm or whatever.