I just sat through a season of one of the worst TV adaptations of a beloved novel (a series of novels, actually) that I’ve ever seen. The directors’ only direction to every hero was, “Look out of breath,” and every antagonistic character was, “Act smug.” The adapting writing was pretty bad, as opposed to the book, which was really well put together. The main villain was supposed to be on a quest for a series of sacred objects, but all he had to do was sit back, kill a few of his minions to prove how evil he was, and let the good guys retrieve all the sacred objects for him and hand them over to him under minimal duress. I wanted to scream, “Stop helping him! He’s smarmy! He didn’t know where this shit was before you dug it up, you idiot!”

The acting was terrible across the board, but the worst was one of the romantic leads, whose character was a flat-out asshole, but his only expression was the same one you make when you’re holding back a giggle because you unleashed a silent-but-violent and everybody is going to smell it any second now. That was seriously it. Fights hoard of demons, guilty snort. eaffirms his bond with his best friend, guilty giggle. Gets married, guilty giggle. Betrays his best friend, guilty giggle. His best friend gives him an impassioned (well, impassioned for these actors) speech reaffirming their friendship, guilty giggle.

Thirteen episodes, at forty-five minutes each. That’s nine hours and forty-five minutes of precious, precious time I spent on this show. There are two more seasons. Hard. Pass.