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I remember this one Sunday evening in 2012 when I walked into a room in my parents' house in Southern California.

My brother and his girlfriend were watching this fantasy show. There were dragons. There was incest.

There was Peter Dinklage and I was judgy. I was like, what are y'all doing with your time?

They told me, you know, it's actually pretty good. I did not believe them.

Nim, Alex, I'm sorry, it is actually pretty good. But in my defense, it didn't start out that way.

Todd of House Vanderwerf, first of his name, ruler of Vox's brand new Primetime podcast, has the tea.

So this show debuted in 2011 and when it aired, it's actually the second pilot you're seeing.

Huh. The original pilot, which I know one person who's seen and he was like, it was pretty bad.

There was a different actress playing Cat Stark. There was a different actress playing Daenerys.

And it was directed by Tom McCarthy, the guy who did Spotlight. And if you could think of a great match

for Game of Thrones, it's Tom McCarthy, the guy who did Spotlight. And HB almost didn't pick it up.

They had to reshoot 90% of it is my understanding. And that's probably slightly overestimated.

But like one of the things that sort of gives you a sense that they shot two pilots is in the pilot we have now.

All the men get a shave so that they can use footage from the original one where their clean shave

and to like explain why their beard disappears. It's really weird. Wow. That makes sense now.

Go on, Tommy. She's really good. He's never met a girl he likes better than his own hair.

When it started, like it kind of was not this big, auspicious thing. HBO had really kind of put its chips

on boardwalk empire, which had debuted in the fall of 2010, had done very well. It was directed by

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