HERE THERE BE DRAGONS (and spoilers)!!!
House of the Dragon SPOILER discussion
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Is there any buzz online for this whatsoever? When the trailer landed a few weeks ago I saw no reaction to it at all (my only reaction was that Matt Smith looked weird in that wig).
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I saw the premiere last night and … we will see how it all plays out.
The YT video above gives a nice, brief rundown of the major players.
The good thing I would say is that the source material (book) is finished, as opposed to GoT where they were
at a loss when the show went past the books.——————–
The thing is… When GoT was way up there as this TV phenomenon, Bezos said to get “the next big thing” on Amazon. So Amazon secured the rights to develop their LoTR prequel show. Now… look at what the LoTR prequel is up against?
And fwiw.,, The next big viral phenomenon show is not a medieval fantasy show, but actually is this high school drama about these
cool kids…”Euphoria”. You can’t really predict what show will catch on and go viral. -
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Umm it’s half a fake history book they are working off, there is a whole lot the showrunners are making up and will have to if this is a multiple season series.
Sassy with word whiskers…
I understand. That part is covered in the YT video at 17:10 mark showing all the source materials.
The video gives the main players and the characters that they mostly correspond to in GoT.On a side note: The video gives some characters who correspond closely to GoT, and the viewers might be asking “Who is this show’s Jon Snow? Who is this show’s Cersei or Arya? ” That could be trouble. In the Star Wars prequel movies, some fans wanted a character to be like Han Solo, etc. and not understanding it was supposed to be different of characters, different dynamics.
I gather this first season is all a set up and the show will start to take off hopefully before the short attention span viewers give up on it for something else.
Tbh… Are you really into investing yourself again in Westeros?
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Well it looks like the show was a big hit. HBO got the ratings they wanted and have already renewed it.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/house-of-the-dragon-season-2-1235199922/
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This week came with an intro. I liked it, it was familiar and different at the same time.
I usually skip intros but never for GoT. Won’t be skipping this either. It gets me in the mood.
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This prequel has them being so common. (16?) I just miss it when in the GoT era, dragons haven’t existed for centuries, and when Danarys came in the air with them, everyone was so scared like “Oh sh*t!”
Yeah, I do agree with this to an extent. It reminds me of the problem they created with the Jedi in the Star Wars prequels. Going from something being commonplace and real to being mythical and legendary (to the extent that many people don’t believe it was ever real), in just a few generations, feels like a bit of a stretch.
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With this prequel set 1K years before GoT, by the time GoT started, the dragons were extinct centuries ago,
I thought the title card in episode one suggested it was just under a couple of hundred years?
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With this prequel set 1K years before GoT, by the time GoT started, the dragons were extinct centuries ago,
I thought the title card in episode one suggested it was just under a couple of hundred years?
Correct, it’s about 200 years prior to Danerys’ birth.
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Complaining about the prevalence of Dragons and how overpowered they are in comparison to lowly humans in a show like this, literally titled House Of The Dragon, is like complaining that there are too many spaceships in Star Trek.
I don’t think it’s that specifically, so much as the slight disconnect between an era like this where dragons are relatively plentiful, and an era less than 200 years later where they have more of a legendary status and some people seem somewhat doubtful they ever really existed at all.
Part of that can maybe be chalked up to short generations in this era and part of it due to a lack of any incontestable records – just written records and drawings.
I don’t think it’s a big problem, just a slight feeling of a mismatch.
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In the original GoT series dragons were talked about as though they’d been gone for ages, so it always bothered me that the eggs Dany got as a wedding gift actually yielded three healthy dragonbabies; how long do these things gestate!?
Learning now that dragons were still living and breathing fire 200 years ago, it makes a bit more sense that a dragon couple may have survived (in some remote corner of Essos or one of the smaller islands) and left behind three eggs a few decades before the events of GoT.
As for remembering, most of the population of Westeros were akin to Middle Ages peasants — illiterate, ignorant/superstitious, and with relatively short life spans, so that eyewitnesses to living dragons would likely have died off within half a decade, and real stories about the creatures could have rapidly turned into folk lore and old wives’ tales.
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Don’t exactly know where I got 1,000 from
Maybe this is what you are thinking of: Bloodmoon
On June 8, 2018, HBO commissioned a pilot to a Game of Thrones prequel series from Goldman as showrunner and Martin as co-creator.[442] The prequel was to take place in the Age of Heroes, a period that begins roughly 10,000 years before the events of Game of Thrones. Notable events of that period include the foundation of powerful Houses, the Long Night when the White Walkers first descended upon Westeros, and the Andal Invasion when the Andals invaded from Essos and conquered most of Westeros.[443] Martin suggested The Long Night as a title for the series.[444] S. J. Clarkson was announced to direct and executive produce the pilot,[445] while Naomi Watts was cast as the female lead playing “a charismatic socialite hiding a dark secret”.[446] Other series regulars were to include: Josh Whitehouse, Toby Regbo, Ivanno Jeremiah, Georgie Henley, Naomi Ackie, Denise Gough, Jamie Campbell Bower, Sheila Atim, Alex Sharp, Miranda Richardson, Marquis Rodriguez, John Simm, Richard McCabe, John Heffernan, and Dixie Egerickx.[447] In September 2019, Martin claimed the pilot was in post-production[448] but in October 2019, it was announced that HBO had decided not to move forward with the series.[449]
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someone claimed to have a living dodo
You and I both know that dodo should only be served at weddings.
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This whole story is about a civil war literally called Dance Of The Dragons in the universe in which it happened. Dance of THE DRAGONS
There had better be some outrageous dragon dancing before this season is over.
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Episode nine spoilers:
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ou see, the war ends by Daemon fighting Aegon, the son of Viserys and Alicent, in the sky ON DRAGONBACK over a lake. Daemon leaps from his dragon onto Aegons and plunges his sword darksister into the eye of Aegon. They both die.
If that’s too much dragon spectacle for you, watch another damn show instead of complaining about hypothetical dragon overload with made up nonsense of dragons not being an instrumental part of the story in the first show or the history of imaginary continent.
Oh shit, I forgot you’re media and otherwise illiterate. Never mind.
I get that the dragons are a part of the show. A part..
To each their own. Not exactly a hill to die on…
Picking fights with me and @njerry?
That last sentences was so unnecessary. This is not a schoolyard.
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For me, it feels like the dragons are underutilized. It does add to the impact when they are involved in the scene, though.
However, the scene where the king’s daughter suggests they just use some dragons to solve their piracy problem, I was thinking yeah, that’s not just a good solution, but an obvious one. However, it was like the king and small council were all surprised by it. To me, the question isn’t whether or not it would be wise to use dragons, but why do this crabfeeder creep and the free cities leaders purportedly behind him believe that Westeros would not use dragons. I mean, if you want to demonstrate the strength of your reign, a dragon is a lot better than a wedding.
The major difference between this and Game of Thrones is that it doesn’t yet have the vast scope of multiple protagonists contending against many antagonists in several storylines across the entire map. In GOT, it took a while before the two primary protagonists even stepped forward and they didn’t meet for several seasons. Even then, the other characters continued on their separate and equally dramatic storylines often entirely separate from the two main story arcs.
However, it is nice to have a focus on one clear hero for the story. Rhaenyra is head and shoulders above all the other characters as far as bravery and intelligence. Not a great sense of humor though, but her uncle is more gifted in that department. However, he’s also stupid and childish while her father is pretty weak. The other characters are fairly one note so far – especially those around the king. As far as actors go though, these one note characters all have pretty strong performers behind them. In that regard, D’Arcy is probably the least skilled, but still very good.
Olivia Cooke is really the most interesting. I think she is probably the most intelligent character of all of them because she is always in a vulnerable position. She’s a subordinate in every situation she’s in, and though I think she does love the king to some extent, she sees the match as an escape route from always being under someone else. Especially her father – so I expect to soon see her defying him as queen.
It is a good follow up to the original series, and an easier story to follow, though often it does seem like the characters’ actions are being determined by the plot rather than a story emerging from their reasonable but flawed choices.
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Part of that can maybe be chalked up to short generations in this era and part of it due to a lack of any incontestable records – just written records and drawings.
It’s a fair point. This is a quasi-medieval society and I think 200 years would seem a lot longer and fuzzier than we’d see it now.
As an example, albeit some of the timelines are longer you look at things like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘Historia Regum Britanniae’ which records the history of the rulers of Britain. Under scrutiny it’s a real mix of fact and fiction, it pretty accurately recounts the Roman invasion of Britain but alongside what we now view as Arthurian myth – interestingly meaning the more recent history is the least accurate. Geoffrey was using a variety of reliable and unreliable sources, from church records and genealogies to poems and tales. He confuses the history of Cadwalladr of Gwynedd with a similarly named king of Wessex, it’s all very muddled.
The average age of marriage was 16 so you would also get a much faster churn of generations. If we removed all our reliable history books and documentaries and replaced them with oral storytelling, then doubled the rate of generational turnover, what would we really know about 1822?
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While I’m on the subject of “lack of any incontestable records”, there’s a whole class of people strewn about the whole continent whose sole job is to keep records and teach people about history and science. They’re called The Maesters and they have a shit-ton of knowledge about what happened not generations ago, not hundreds of years ago but thousands of years ago. They have the names of the people who built things that are eight thousand years old written down ffs.
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With the Stark’s, GoT had an outside perspective on all the royal intrigues and shit, so that was rather more viewer-friendly.
There were also some young children getting schooled (Bran, Arya and to some extent Sansa) by the maesters early on that invited a somewhat organic exposition of the noble houses and workings of the universe to the audience.
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While I’m on the subject of “lack of any incontestable records”, there’s a whole class of people strewn about the whole continent whose sole job is to keep records and teach people about history and science.
Sure there are. I am not claiming at any point nobody in the show believes there were ever dragons, they show the main players early on talking about them next to their skulls.
My point is that if some outside the ruling families express disbelief that’s not necessarily just extending our bias that they are myths in our world onto them. Whether they do or not I can’t remember but with no school, high illiteracy, being unable to see any physical evidence and also that outside of King’s Landing it is highly unlikely most of the world would have seen one in even more centuries it’s plausible to buy that.
By the way maesters have extensive records about the white walkers and for most of the first half of the show is full of people expressing they don’t exist.
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By the way maesters have extensive records about the white walkers and for most of the first half of the show is full of people expressing they don’t exist.
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interesting move since they didn’t do that in Game of Thrones.
I think they didn’t do it simply because they didn’t have to. This show is going to go at a faster pace, there is going to be at least one major time skip, but I think they’ve said that the show will do some back and forth time jumping to tell the story effectively.
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I wonder if we’ll see more magic users this time around… there should also be a lot more magic in general, no? maybe not children of the light or whatever they were called, but, I dunno… others…
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I wonder if we’ll see more magic users this time around… there should also be a lot more magic in general, no? maybe not children of the light or whatever they were called, but, I dunno… others…
It’s a good point, but still tough to say. This isn’t that far in the past before the characters of Game of Thrones are born. Still, the Three-Eyed Raven should be around, right? And certainly, the magic community of Essos would have to be even more powerful.
However, this isn’t a D&D campaign. Though I would be interested if they introduced more commoners to the story. The focus on aristocrats does limit it a bit – more Shakespearean, but less interesting. If the king had more interest in the safety and prosperity of the people, it would explain his reticence to go to war. Really, my one problem with the king is that he seems to have too much time on his hands — and in fact depends on his “hand” for too much information. A real king would have much more investment in his social circle, a lively court and appearances to the people. He wouldn’t be spending his time playing a version of warhammer alone in his chambers. Real kings were always busy.
Though all that plays into the perception that Daemon gives voice to – he’s not very good at being a king. People see him as keeping the throne warm for the next real ruler.
I think a lot of the reason he won the succession debate is that he was a dragonrider and people are starting to see that he really isn’t much of a dragonrider. Right now, Daemon would be a tyrant, but he would at least be a king while his brother is more of a manager.
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I think we have to be careful reading too much in from the source material. As we know from GoT, things can change or be rejigged between page and screen, so we can’t necessarily rely on the books to explain elements that are unclear, unexplained or unrevealed in the show.
Yes, I agree. But some elements are fairly sure to be the same, although I would probably have said things like that and then been outright wrong about GoT if I had read the books before I watched the show. It’s mindboggling to me that they outright dropped lady Stoneheart from the show, for example. I would never have guessed they would do that.
Interestingly, and I may be repeating things that have been said upthread, GRRM has said that this show is to offer us an objective account of what was later written down by narrators of questionable reliability in the book that the show is based on. That puts an interesting spin on the narrative of the show, but seeing as the show has also quite explicitly linked itself with the GoT show (via the dagger) I’m not taking GRRM all too seriously on that point.
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Oh, I don’t mean elevated in terms of artistic worth, just in terms of “historical accuracy” within the context of this fictional universe.
Ah, sorry for misunderstanding!
Based on those comments from GRRM, it seems as though any differences between the book and TV version will be explained as misinterpretations/mistellings of the history in the book version, with the TV version the “true” history.
Yes. I’ll add that what I am retelling that GRRM has said about this is things I’ve heard from the hardcore A Song Of Ice And Fire youtubers talking about the show. Mainly Alt-Shift-X, which Al-X posted a video from above.
I haven’t read or heard it straight from GRRM, so maybe take it with a grain of salt. I trust Alt-Shift-Xs “reporting” a lot though. He’s thorough, somewhat restrained, willing to admit fault and would totally be called out by other tubers if he misrepresented what had been said.
That said… Grains of salt, as always.
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With the book and various family tree charts let’s just be a little careful. I am avoiding that stuff (one reason prequels can be annoying). I’d assume one glance at GoT Wiki family graphs will tell you where all this succession stuff ends up which potentially ends most of the interest in the show as that’s what it’s all about so far.
So as with the original show let’s keep to what’s appeared on-screen so far. Anything outside that kindly pop behind the spoiler text.
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For the first time with this show, I found episode three a bit of a drag in places.
Strong opening and closing, but during the dialogue scenes in the middle, for the first time I felt like the show was relating a set of appendices/backstory notes rather than actually telling a story.
The time-jumps might be part of that too. It compounds the feel that we’re just getting the bullet points.
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Strong opening and closing, but during the dialogue scenes in the middle, for the first time I felt like the show was relating a set of appendices/backstory notes rather than actually telling a story.
Yeah, I see it too.
It’s got some really good characterisations in there though. I was unsure of Considine as Viserys at first but not, he can really play two sides of the same issue here.
With all the fantasy shows, LOTR and HOTD, competing for my attention over the subdued bodies of some really good animated shows like Archer and Rick & Morty, I feel somehow trapped inside a flipper machine that excrudes heroin with every point scored.
It’s amazing. Caesar was right!
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It’s got some really good characterisations in there though. I was unsure of Considine as Viserys at first but not, he can really play two sides of the same issue here.
Yeah I do think he is good. However it does feel as though the time jumps are undermining some of his plot strands.
For all that we are being shown he’s a bit of a weak king and has lots of pressing matters to deal with that threaten his position (family drama, political conflicts, personal health issues), we keep jumping forward several years with a realisation that, oh, those matters weren’t that pressing after all then, because he’s still in more or less the same position.
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Not the green screen glove on Viserys’s missing fingers 🤣🤦🏻♀️#hotd pic.twitter.com/4CLUw5tDhI
— Sarah Capps (@SarahC_821) September 5, 2022
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Yeah, the battle scenes were amazing and everything else in the episode was extremely well done, but… I’m kinda bored at this point with the whole will-she-become-queen-or-not father-daughter-conflict. I don’t know, man, can we maybe wrap this up and go to the next stage?
Matt Smith’s big fight scene was a lot of fun but really, he should’ve been dead inside thirty seconds. Bit silly that that plan actually worked – I want to say that this kind of thing would never have happened in GoT but honestly I’m not sure anymore, it’s been a while after all. But as far as I remember, even the best fighters in GoT (Brienne, Jamie, Jon Snow) were shown just hacking their way through the chaos of battle and surviving more or less by luck a lot of the time.
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Matt Smith’s big fight scene was a lot of fun but really, he should’ve been dead inside thirty seconds. Bit silly that that plan actually worked – I want to say that this kind of thing would never have happened in GoT but honestly I’m not sure anymore, it’s been a while after all. But as far as I remember, even the best fighters in GoT (Brienne, Jamie, Jon Snow) were shown just hacking their way through the chaos of battle and surviving more or less by luck a lot of the time.
Yeah, and they did the thing where the big kill was off-screen. I hate it when they do that. He goes into a cave to kill the bad guy – there are all sorts of dangers there, but did they do anything with it? No.
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Yeah, I was disappointed by that, too. I mean, come on, give the fucking crab guy some dialogue, will you? That confrontation could/should’ve been great, instead it’s just… okay, another step of the plot done with. Crab guy never got to be an actual character.
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For all that we are being shown he’s a bit of a weak king and has lots of pressing matters to deal with that threaten his position (family drama, political conflicts, personal health issues), we keep jumping forward several years with a realisation that, oh, those matters weren’t that pressing after all then, because he’s still in more or less the same position.
Yeah, this is kinda my problem right now as well. We’re basically being given vignettes, separated by indeterminate amounts of time, with no indication of what’s important from one to the next. They’re enjoyable enough, but it feels like we’re getting every second or third episode of a bigger show.
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For all that we are being shown he’s a bit of a weak king and has lots of pressing matters to deal with that threaten his position (family drama, political conflicts, personal health issues), we keep jumping forward several years with a realisation that, oh, those matters weren’t that pressing after all then, because he’s still in more or less the same position.
Yeah, this is kinda my problem right now as well. We’re basically being given vignettes, separated by indeterminate amounts of time, with no indication of what’s important from one to the next. They’re enjoyable enough, but it feels like we’re getting every second or third episode of a bigger show.
These first few episodes are the prologue. I think once adult Rhaenyra apprears, that is when the real story begins.
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I think once adult Rhaenyra apprears, that is when the real story begins.
I hope so although it’s tricky that young Rhaenyra is the most compelling actor in the show.
It’s still very well made but I think it is showing that the source is a fictional history and not a novel. All the time jumps and more machinations than character. Considine and Ifans are excellent actors but their characters rather dull. It’s very reliant on Rhaenyra and Daemon to keep you interested.
Rings of Power for me is doing a better job of working off similar fictional history material.
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For all that we are being shown he’s a bit of a weak king and has lots of pressing matters to deal with that threaten his position (family drama, political conflicts, personal health issues), we keep jumping forward several years with a realisation that, oh, those matters weren’t that pressing after all then, because he’s still in more or less the same position.
Yeah, this is kinda my problem right now as well. We’re basically being given vignettes, separated by indeterminate amounts of time, with no indication of what’s important from one to the next. They’re enjoyable enough, but it feels like we’re getting every second or third episode of a bigger show.
These first few episodes are the prologue. I think once adult Rhaenyra apprears, that is when the real story begins.
I get that, I just feel like the show should be more of a slow burn like series 1 of Game of Thrones, or maybe have just started with adult Rhaenrya and did this stuff in flashbacks or an extended prologue or something. And it’s way too early in an ongoing narrative to make a proper judgement call on what the narrative flow of the full series is going to be, like most people were questioning the pacing on Game of Thrones series 1 up until what, episode 7 out of 10?
At the same time though I’ve been watching series 1 of For All Mankind which also has large timeskips between episodes but does a better job of knitting the story together along those lines – in part because the skips aren’t always between episodes.
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These first few episodes are the prologue. I think once adult Rhaenyra apprears, that is when the real story begins.
Huh. That’s a bit of a weird structure though, isn’t it? Expecting us to sit through several episodes of prologue before the actual story starts.
Well, seems like there’s enough of an audience willing to go along with that, but I don’t think it was a clever decision. The story that’s now been told in three episodes could easily have made for a whole season really, and the show would probably have been better for it.
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I quite enjoyed the latest episode. It felt like quite a lot of stuff happened and there was a fair amount of drama and paying off of earlier setups.
Considine has been really good in his role I think. He’ll be missed if this is his end.
While I agree with those who have said that it doesn’t have quite as much as GoT in terms of sharp dialogue and wit, I also think it suffers from only having one real scheming character in Daemon. More characters actively plotting to change things dramatically to serve their own ends would be interesting.
But I still find it pretty watchable and it feels like there’s some forward momentum building now.
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So this episode is 10 years later. And it really didn’t work for me.
The first five episodes were a bit prologue. I kind of think you could have started the series here and moved forward. They could have thrown in bits of dialogue here and there to explain so things but on the whole, this episode feels like the start of the series.
One of the strengths of GoT was that is explored the world. It was a large cast spread out all over the place. Each person or group had their own motivations. Paths would intersect and groupings would change. Here, it all feels a little claustrophobic in comparison. In both series, it’s about vying for the Iron Thrown. But here, it’s all about a small group of players. In GoT, you had people from all over the place looking to plop their ass down it. HotD is already giving me a “been there, done that” vibe.
I do hope the show is going to evolve into something more than just political intrigue. Right now, it feels like it lacks scale.
For me, HotD and Lord of the Rings each feel like half of a good show a piece.
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if it’s only 10 years, then it’s weird because the oldest son is like at least 15… so I don’t see how that works… =/
It’s complicated and involves complex scientific issues around ageing and the passage of time, but to put it simply:
He was born longer ago than 10 years.
(Aegon has been present in the show since before the time-jump.)
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Anyway, I’m still enjoying the show. I know some people are frustrated by the slow pacing, but I think the slow-burn of the early episodes is feeling increasingly justified in the sense of laying out all these complex relationships that are now getting even more complicated and nuanced as the characters get older.
If you had condensed the first five episodes into fewer hours of TV, or even started here, I think there would have been a risk of it feeling like an infodump – even more of a sense of being told this story rather than seeing people live it. The pacing is slow but works for me.
Even the time-jump recast was only slightly distracting for me this episode. Although it did feel like I spent quite a while at the start working out who was who – which characters had been recast and which hadn’t. And while I don’t think it was seamless (it’s not just the actors that are different, but the performances feel like slightly different characters too) I think the long time gap excuses that.
Looking forward to more, anyway. Can’t wait to see which body parts the king has lost next episode! By the finale I imagine he’ll just be a Futurama-style head in a jar.
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My problem is less the slow pace and still with the lack of connective tissue between the timeskips. The main plot that I feel flows well between them is the disintegration of Rhaenyra and Allicent’s relationship because it’s the one that’s been given the most time, but for many arcs we’re given a little bit of setup in one episode, then a timeskip and a major upheaval. Like, take Daemon over the last few episodes – he goes to fight the Crabfeeder, comes back with his Character Development haircut and is playing all these games – flirting with Rhaneyra, killing Rhea Royce and antagonising her cousin. But after the 10 year jump he’s very happily married with children and we’re expected to fully buy into the tragedy of Laena’s death even though we’ve spent almost no time with her, and none with her and Daemon as a family before this week. The sequences showing these events are all very well done – the script, the performances, the setting are all fantastic, but they’re still just vignettes. I’m hoping that from here on out we’re going to see a more gradual progression of events.
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That’s true. There is a lack of connective tissue in places (and the recasting sometimes compounds that). Daemon in particular is suffering from having only glimpses of his life offered, rather than a full picture.
Having said that, I think Smith does a lot with what he’s given, and maybe turns in the best performance on the show. He certainly still feels like the most charismatic and interesting character to me.
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Yeah, the cast is firing on all cylinders, Olivia Cooke took over almost seamlessly as Alicent this week, and while Emma D’Arcy isn’t as impressive thus far they’ve got a lot of potential and I think they’ll grow into the role very well. I’ll definitely miss Paddy Considine when Viserys inevitably kicks the bucket, especially if he doesn’t get to go “It’s bolognese!” at least once beforehand.
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I think that while the pacing may have been a bit slower in GoT, it was offset by the sheer number of stories that were being told. Even then, it didn’t feel slow. It was distributed across the multiple arcs and when the show went to a particular story, you felt immersed in it. The big criticism of the last few seasons was everything felt compressed.
Here, the stories and cast so far are comparatively smaller. At this point, it doesn’t have the sheer scale the original did. (I don’t know if it will in the future or not.) I do wonder if the show does have a planned end.
I have been impressed by the performances. Everyone has brought their A-game.
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I don’t know…the diehards will stick with the show, but the lighthearted ones want more action like GoT
Lack of patience, short attention span, and other alternatives.That’s not really what’s bothering me about the show. I mean, I would like to see some more action, sure, but the actual thing of it is that I don’t really give a crap what happens to any of the characters, and I’m just not interested in the plot. I mean, it’s still all about who Rhaenyra is fucking, which would be fine as a sideplot in a bigger, story, but as it is, it feels more like a nineties soap opera or something. Plotting and intrigue in the vein of fucking Dynasty. And it doesn’t help that all of the characters are so unlikeable – and often simply so under-characterised – that I don’t give a shit about them either.
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That’s not really what’s bothering me about the show. I mean, I would like to see some more action, sure, but the actual thing of it is that I don’t really give a crap what happens to any of the characters, and I’m just not interested in the plot. I mean, it’s still all about who Rhaenyra is fucking, which would be fine as a sideplot in a bigger, story, but as it is, it feels more like a nineties soap opera or something. Plotting and intrigue in the vein of fucking Dynasty. And it doesn’t help that all of the characters are so unlikeable – and often simply so under-characterised – that I don’t give a shit about them either.
I have to agree that the most detrimental aspects of the show are the soap opera dynamics and the sense that this is less of a plot than a series of events that are just happening. The most irritating portion of the whole Rhaenyra love scandal is not just that there is no question who is the father – it’s not a mystery or real conflict over that – but also the basic “who the heck is this guy?” feeling you get when they throw in some dude who has not played any big part in the story previously and now is a main player and then basically discarded all in one episode.
You can kind of gin up a feeling for the character and the romantic relationship, but the show doesn’t really do any work to encourage that. In a sense, this was a pivotal episode since it introduced new actors in leading roles as well as their children and a few other completely new faces acting like we were supposed to know who they were from the start. It’s a significant jump – almost like cutting to an episode three seasons later – but that leads to payoffs with very little set up and as a result very little impact.
“Oh my god, this fucking guy whose name I already forgot has just been murdered by his brother whose name I can’t remember because I’ve seen him for maybe 10 minutes of screen time. Oh, and Daemon’s wife also committed suicide by dragon during another failed childbirth. What was her name again? Lenora or something?”
At least, he didn’t go the same route as his brother the King when his wife couldn’t deliver the baby. Instead, he tried doing nothing and ended up with pretty much the same result. Too bad we didn’t get to know her better. She seemed pretty cool…. just like Daemon’s first wife who also died pretty quickly.
It does feel a bit like the “and then” problem of storytelling though it really is a professionally plotted script. It just doesn’t do the set up very well to nail the pay-off. The soap opera would work fine if there was more focus on investing in personal dynamics and that means taking more time to make those decisions more important and sympathetic to the audience. In this episode more than the others, the performers had to carry most of the real investment as the writing doesn’t give them much support for that.
It is interesting to compare this to another show I just started to watch “Better Call Saul” where everyone in that show has to struggle to do anything. It slows down the pace into increasingly difficult increments and that delivers the deeper struggle of the characters as well as builds the interest in what they are eventually trying to achieve.
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HoTD Carries on the GoT Tradition of Being Too Dark to See – IGN
https://www.ign.com/articles/house-of-the-dragon-game-of-thrones-too-dark-to-see
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Hilarious – I spent about 20 minutes trying to adjust my display settings. I thought it must be something wrong with the television.
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Yeah, that was really annoying.
Not the only annoying thing about the episode, either. I don’t know, man, I mean, Dragon kid lost an eye and the mean kid was mean and the bastard kids were, like, there, and bitch queen cut the other one and then gay husband guy was very nice and then he got killed for it and now apparently the princess is married to her uncle and all that. I don’t really gave a shit about anything that happened there. I’m pretty much out. Will watch the remaining episodes because at this point we’re pretty much done anyway, but I definitely won’t come back to this.
I just rewatched the first GoT episode with the Kid, and man what a difference that was. I forgot how much happened in that first ep – we saw the White Walkers, the Stark family was introduced (and got their direwolves), there are just so MANY characters who are all very clearly defined and easy to tell apart even after having just a few lines… And then Robert Baratheon comes to Winterfell and all that happens and we get their backstory, and bloody hell even the Targaryans and fucking Khal Drogo are already there! It’s amazing world-building, introducing all these different elements of the story and characters pretty orginacally and getting the plot moving very quickly at the same time. Pretty insane, and you’re completely hooked after just this one episode.
Also, it uses every opportunity to show tits or people’s throats being cut, Bloody hell. Contrast this to HoD chickening out when it comes to showing Daemon killing his wife.
These shows have nothing in common. And like House Targaryan, HoD has got nothing going for it except for having dragons.
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