Legend of the Seeker

I tried to watch it I really did. I love Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series and I was willing to give Legend of the seeker a fair amount of leeway. I understand that some things have to be changed for television but if you just want an excuse to have people with swords then don't use a book series that has so many good ideas.
Take the wizards first rule. In the TV series it is said that people will believe what they are afraid of. True enough, but that isn't the wizard's first rule. Wizards first rule is "People are stupid, they believe what they want to believe or what they are afraid of."
The first half of that sentence is what makes the rule work. Without that while being true it just isn't that interesting, and that sums up the problem with Legend of the seeker. They have the basic idea but they left out everything that made it more than a simple idea.
The seeker names himself. Richard didn't name himself in the tv series, while in the books that was of major important.
He is a seeker of truth in the books, in the TV series he is a seeker of evil. In the book series Richard had memorized the book of counted shadows as a boy, which was the major reason that most of the things happen, in the TV series he hardly knows it's there.
I'm not one to say that movies or tv have to follow the book exactly. I like the starship troopers movies, they have nothing to do with the book, and I couldn't have cared less that changed bits and pieces of the Lord of the Ring trilogy for the movies, though I still wish they would have done the scouring of the shire. (if you don't know what that is read the books), but at some point what you're doing has nothing to do with the book anymore and why not leave the property alone so that someone else can use it?
The saddest part is that as long as its on the air I will probably watch it because I still hope they'll get some of it right.

If you've seen Legend of the Seeker, go find Wizard's First rule, it's far better.

Elton