House of the Dragon

Up a few mins early

Its crazy because George RR Martin is involved and HBO had 3 years to basically do whatever they wanted, and for all of the weight behind the project, THIS is the first episode they thought would grab the viewers, viewers who are probably watching based on whatever good will was left over from GoT.

Ill give it a couple more episodes before I check out. Im guessing the show runners (isnt one of them a director on GoT?) thought the whole OMG THE BABY IS GONNE DIE shit would capture the fans. Sadly it felt weightless and no one cares. Its crazy how a mercy killing of a dog had more of an impact than a baby and mother dying during birth.

edit: and the whole "lol you smell like dragon" shtick was cringe. Some blue haired whale dyke probably thought that would be cool, but it fell so flat in the way they forced it into the dialogue. The whole 'show dont tell' tenant of writing must have escaped the creators. The casting is also meh. When you think about GoT they really did a great job with casting, Lannisters were all amazing, Varys, Theon, I mean there are so many examples. Tyrion alone was such a shrewd cast everyone else could have been mediocre and the show would have still been interesting.

The Hightower hand of the king guy is annoying and looks cheap, as do most of the cast. At least they did a good job with capturing the inbred nature of the Targaryens.

Mist said:

Apple TV is quietly killing it from a creative standpoint. I think they stole all the prospective talent and good pitches away from HBO.

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Except they missed the memo on Foundation...

I don't feel it is THAT bad but I feel they tried to do too much too quick, especially being first episode and that made the whole episode suffer.

Jozu said:

Ill give it a couple more episodes before I check out. Im guessing the show runners (isnt one of them a director on GoT?) thought the whole OMG THE BABY IS GONNE DIE shit would capture the fans. Sadly it felt weightless and no one cares. Its crazy how a mercy killing of a dog had more of an impact than a baby and mother dying during birth.

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All goes back to the casting for the king. If it was Robert Baratheon it'd sell.

This Targ king isn't the right stuff for what they needed to do in the pilot episode.

I'm not picking up on the king having good chemistry with Matt Smith either which is a really bad sign since the show is apparently centered on their relationship. I heard about the actors off screen chemistry together in the podcast-- but didn't see any of that on screen.

Willing to give this some more episodes before judging harshly.
The reason being is that these people are well know for being crazy as fuck, inbred and well, just fucking crazy.
That changes behaviors, relationships and what people would consider norms.

Oldbased said:

Willing to give this some more episodes before judging harshly.
The reason being is that these people are well know for being crazy as fuck, inbred and well, just fucking crazy.
That changes behaviors, relationships and what people would consider norms.

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well, the entire family cant be that crazy since they have been able to rule for some time. if you look at how they showed Daenerys being crazy, she burned the whole fucking thing to its foundation with one dragon. if you compare her crazy to theirs, these guys must just be mildly "eccentric"

Chukzombi said:

well, the entire family cant be that crazy since they have been able to rule for some time. if you look at how they showed Daenerys being crazy, she burned the whole fucking thing to its foundation with one dragon. if you compare her crazy to theirs, these guys must just be mildly "eccentric"

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Early on she had her brother crowned in liquid gold.
Perfectly sane at that point.
She was always psycho, but eventually the dark took fully over.

Mist said:

A bunch of crazy people generally don't make good subjects for a show, unless this is just going to turn into The Borgias with Dragons.

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The history was written. So say we all.

Oldbased said:

Early on she had her brother crowned in liquid gold.
Perfectly sane at that point.
She was always psycho, but eventually the dark took fully over.

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that was Khal Drogo. Daeny was always vicious, but winning King's Landing, all of Westeros and then burning it all down was off the charts nuts. just saying that her crazy makes these guys look like amateurs. even the "mad king" Aegon was only willing to torch the place after he lost.

Eh, I think that the general theme isn't that they were crazy - there was a notable shift when the Mad King started cooking loyal people. It's more of a slow decline over generations that lead to both the decline of dragons and the decline of the ruling Targs. Danaerys and Viserys were literally tainted by generations of fuckery, but they were at the tail end. Rhaegar was like the last semi-sane spoke of the wheel before it broke. Both Danaerys and Viserys were crazy in their own ways. Multiple generations back? They might have quirks but they were able to keep it all together and fairly well right up until the dragons mostly/all died off and the Mad King started doing Mad King shit.

edit - Danaerys:

She was always going to be the final boss, it was just rushed super fucking quick by the fuckery in seasons 6-8. She was killing surrendering knights, having peasants punished, and all sorts of "bad guy" shit long before they decided to just go into turbo and "She kind of forgot about the iron fleet" type nonsense when DnD were looking to actively jump ship. She met lots of people/cultures that were absolutely abhorrently evil along her way, but that didn't mean she was less evil than some people doing random plotting in the throne room. Hell, she basically decided to fuck every aspect of Merreen's economy because it was cool for her to have effective slaves, but not others. She was a tyrant, and also a petulant child.

I think that part gets glossed over. Danaerys is a shitty teenage girl for the entire series - nobody in their right mind would trust a shitty teenage girl to make their decisions (besides climate activists who can't read graphs) but because she had -fucking dragons- people listened to her. It was entirely a might makes right scenario with a power drunk child at the helm. And that was in Merreen before they set sail and she OK'd burning opposing commanders alive just for defending themselves.

She was always going to be a bad guy - the show just did an absolutely retarded job of conveying that appropriately before DnD decided to rush to the climax.

Chukzombi said:

that was Khal Drogo. Daeny was always vicious, but winning King's Landing, all of Westeros and then burning it all down was off the charts nuts. just saying that her crazy makes these guys look like amateurs. even the "mad king" Aegon was only willing to torch the place after he lost.

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Did you watch a different 8 seasons than I did?
She was 100% pushing that shit to her brother.
The mad king? Burn them all?
Nonstop reference to them being crazy imbreds, seeing crazy actions, the history that was shown?
The fate of the dragons how they had turned into basically cats?
You reaching mofo. These fuckers always needed 7 Jesus's

Well Matt Smith was badass...but we already knew that.

Don't worry. I have it on good measure that all these nutty crazies die out in about 200 years, leaving the whole blood line to rest.

Oldbased said:

I don't feel it is THAT bad but I feel they tried to do too much too quick, especially being first episode and that made the whole episode suffer.

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I agree with this, the writing is substantially improved over GoT s5-8. I told my wife I wasn't going to let black Targaryen or whatever bother me and I wanted to judge the show on its other merits. Could have used more action, but Matt Smith was good, Dragon looked pretty good and I have a decent idea of where the story is headed not knowing the book or supplemental material near as well as many here.

I mean no matter how much they want to do Powerful Woman pc bullshit, the thing is she doesn't win, so theres a more badass dude thats going to win

Juvarisx said:

I agree with this, the writing is substantially improved over GoT s5-8. I told my wife I wasn't going to let black Targaryen or whatever bother me and I wanted to judge the show on its other merits. Could have used more action, but Matt Smith was good, Dragon looked pretty good and I have a decent idea of where the story is headed not knowing the book or supplemental material near as well as many here.

I mean no matter how much they want to do Powerful Woman pc bullshit, the thing is she doesn't win, so theres a more badass dude thats going to win

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Pretty much my same thoughts too. It was a first episode so I wont judge it too much so I enjoyed it for the most part. Intrigued to see where it goes.