Just Finished Reading Lev Grossman's The Magicians Series (for 3rd Time)

Earlier this century Gainesville was fortunate to have a great bookstore: Borders, on Newberry Road just west of the Oaks Mall...sadly it closed although DSW, a large shoe store which replaced it, is pretty good in its own right...but I digress.  One day I was browsing the store and came across a slick-looking paperback novel, The Magicians by Lev Grossman.  At the time J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series was nearing the end of its fantastic run and I was into this genre of fantasy literature.  I read that first book of three in the series and became an instant fan. The protagonist, Quentin Coldwater, is a young man just graduated from high school and applying to different colleges.  Socially inept and awkward, he is an academic genius and is looking forward to the more competitive world of college.  Quentin is also prone to fantasy and daydreaming, and has never gotten over his childhood fantasy series Fillory, still going back to the old books to reread.  Julia, whom Quentin has futilely adored for years, accompanies him with her boyfriend Steve for a college interview. When they discover the interviewer is dead the journey for Quentin through the rabbit hole of magic begins...as it also does for Julia in her own way. The novel...and ultimately the series...deals with the lives and struggles of Quentin and Julia, the former within the "official" academic setting of Brakebills Academy for training as a magician and the latter on the craft's outskirts, going from one secret place to another where skills are developed and contacts made.  Along with this are the other people in their lives as well as the magical land of Fillory, which turns out to be very real, no fantasy at all.  I've looked back on the series...now having just finished reading it for a third time...and have concluded that not only were the story line and characters well developed and compelling, but I dug Grossman's general writing style as well.  There is a lot of humor in this trilogy, and much of what happens to the characters is reflected in their personal growth over time.  I contrast this with what I've seen in the first two episodes of the SyFy Channel's television adaptation of The Magicians: wildly divergent story lines and characters' personalities, and with virtually no humor at all to be seen anywhere...very disappointing!  On TV, the bigshots all seem to think of Quentin as "The One" like Harry Potter or Neo in The Matrix, around whom the success or failure of everything rides...the books were nothing like this.  Also, I got tired in a hurry of Quentin being portrayed as mentally ill instead of simply being very unhappy with his life and the world. Apparently, though, a lot of viewers have taken to the television series, but I suspect few of them have ever bothered to pick up the books.  If they had, I believe their conclusions about it all might be vastly different...