Well, Someone Had to Say It

At long last, I’m ready to discuss the utter trainwreck that is Legend of the Seeker. I’ve remained silent so far because I really, really just wanted to give the series a chance. But now, no. This show is long past due for some abuse.

Legend of the Seeker is a television adaption of the novel Wizard’s First Rule by Terry Goodkind. If you read this book, you might agree that it was pretty much written with the destiny of someday being made into a movie or TV series.

Apparently, this series received mixed reviews, some good and some bad. Regardless, each one I’ve read so far has been by a critic who was clearly assigned to the review and had never even heard of the book before, much less read it. Thus, they can not adequately trash Legend of the Seeker as it so rightly deserves. Half the time, they bring up facts that are just plain wrong in both the book and TV series (“Kahlan, a woman special in that no man may lie to her…”), and generally they just comment on the flat script and cookie-cutter plot. That’s all well and good, but the rot goes so much deeper than that.

I was prepared to be forgiving of deviations from the book’s storyline in the adaptation for television. It is a long book, after all, and to include it all in twenty-two episodes would have been very difficult. However, in this case, the series has deviated so far from the book that, had they changed the names of the characters and titles (Confessor, Sword of Truth, etc.), I would not have recognized that it was based on Wizard’s First Rule at all. To hear that Terry Goodkind, the author, was involved in writing the script genuinely surprised me, because some of the things they changed are things I considered fundamental to the story. Having said that, some of the things I’ve heard about Terry Goodkind make me think he’s kind of a moron.

Upon seeing the trailer for this show, I had such high hopes. Yes, you could see the sheen of tackiness that pretty much all fantasy series have, but I thought they’d nailed it. They had a budget, they had the author’s blessing. My hope faltered when I saw who was cast as Richard and Zedd. Mostly, they were just not what I’d envisioned when I read the book. At all. But that’s the type of thing I can get over, because “what I envisioned” is pretty subjective, and no casting will have unanimous support. As it is, Bridget Regan playing Kahlan is the only thing that has made the series watchable. I definitely wouldn’t have stuck around so long for a lame Kahlan.

Even a good Kahlan can only do so much with a lame script, though. I don’t have anything to say about the bad script itself, because it is simply the result of the storyline massacre.

I am so disappointed in this storyline massacre that it’s difficult to put words to it to describe why. Before it started, I’d pictured this series as telling the story as it built on itself, definitely warranting a “Previously, on Legend of the Seeker…” in the beginning of each episode. Things that happened in past episodes would surely affect the episodes to come. What they’ve done instead is taken aspects woven into the book (that is, in the rare instances they follow the book at all), isolated them into their own episode, and forced them to occur randomly and without further consequence in the middle of the Midlands forest. This leaves the series with a choppy, shallow and contrived feeling. Each episode starts and ends with Richard, Kahlan and Zedd tromping in a seemingly aimless manner through the forest. This became startlingly obvious when I accidentally missed episode nine, and watched episode ten next instead. I didn’t even notice that I missed an episode until I looked at the episode guide.

I can only think of one reason for them to have eliminated complexity and cut up the story into neat little episodes like they did, and that’s so that someone coming in mid-season wouldn’t be completely lost. That’s fair. In the end, the man holding the huge bag of money makes the decisions, and I get that. Each episode had to be a story in itself in order to be easily marketed. However, they’ve made these mini-plots so trite and predictable that I really think someone coming into this mid-season would simply see just another clichéd and mediocre fantasy series and not feel very compelled to watch it. I don’t know who made the decision to do this, but to me it insults the intelligence of the intended viewers. It sends the message, ‘They’ll never be able to keep track of a complicated story.’ And so, we get the resounding theme of Legend of the Seeker: Wizards First Rule, dumbed down.

Let me add, Wizards First Rule (the book) is far from flawless. Some people would say it’s far from good, but I loved it. It was easy and mindless fun adventure. The characters are simple and require little analysis. Richard is tough, reliable, and always does the right thing. Kahlan is smart and independent, hardy yet gentle. That’s all you really need to know, which is why it was destined to be a movie or TV show: you can get straight to the action because the characters are predictable and come pretty much ready-made.

They say the more you liked the book, the less you’ll like the series. That’s sad but true. They also say that “it had to be done this way”, but I think that’s garbage. The other shows I watch are able to pull off moderately complicated continuing stories (in the case of Lost, very complicated) without much of a problem. Even lesser-known shows like The Tudors have done it very well. But I guess that wasn’t in the cards for Legend of the Seeker. I wish the series had never been made, because it makes me feel ashamed to say I liked the book. With things like this, you’ve got to do it right, or not at all. I’ll admit, I’m only watching it now to see how much worse it can possibly get, and in that regard, I haven’t been let down recently.