All Series Must Die (Which Is Why There Are New Ones) -- The Game of Thrones Series Spinoffs

i found the first ep reprehensibly gratuitous in its sex, violence and exposition. like if an AI was fed all the episodes and told to make a spin off.

Ha! Much less of it in e2. But the weird sad orgy in e1 did feel very unnecessary. Like they thought people would complain if there wasn’t an ott brothel scene.
The violence was just right tho, imho

Yeah I was a bit put off by the half assed tavern orgy scene and the various gory bludgeonings, like OK we get it, you're reminding us what this show was all about before it went all Iceman Cometh.

what i ultimately liked about GoT at its best was how lore was told through plot, how battles became epic iliad-esque dips into hell, where the quiet moments presented opportunities for exploring character development and not chances to be even freakier, how the shifts in locale and different storylines gave natural narrative gear shifting. The sadism and tits were to be endured more than celebrated. Now its like everybody's joffrey. WTF would i wanna watch that for.
but of course i'll probably watch the 2nd ep. I'm a tv masochist.

there's no gore or sex in episode two so don't worry

there is the possibility of an incendiary incident – but let's not spoil things.

I'm not squeamish! It's just kinda boring and predictable.
I'll watch ep 2 before I complain too much more but the telegraphing of the story direction (and eventual red herrings) are coming fast and furious in episode 1. Gosh, i wonder if those cuts the king is getting on the iron throne might be a more serious problem than they appear?

i feel like that's not supposed to be a surprise? they've made it pretty obvious, as they literally talked about the gash on his back that isn't healing.

this first season is gonna be unlike anything else that has ever aired on tv. from what i can tell, this season is gonna cover roughly 30 years of westerosi history, and they can't really compress the timeline because there are characters who factor heavily into the coming conflict who haven't even been born yet lol

xp, of course; i'm just using that as an example. The birthing murder scene was also obvious from 80 feet away. Every character's presumed arc is being played to the rafters right now to the point where bad guys are twirling mustaches "but they aren't really BAD so much as they are machiavellian do you see"
Wake me when there's an interesting conversation.

xp

yes, I was browsing The World of Ice & Fire last night while I was watching this and counted 12 Targaryen kings between this one and Robert, so this series has quite a lot of ground to cover.

Is that their intention? How many season is this supposed to be?

they're planning to cover a period of history called "the dance of the dragons." i won't elaborate or spoil, but the period they're looking to cover is about three decades, not the 20 or so decades until robert's rebellion.

yeah I assume there will be yet another proposed series after this one that fills in some of the gaps. I had thought we'd see the mad king in this series but we are way way way early for that.

yah, no mad king in this series

that's kind of disappointing

The confrontation at Dragonstone was good in this episode. Disappointed they're using p much the same theme music and titles concept from GoT though.

I'll give it time but its just feeling like more of the same so far. And I am really not liking Matt Smith. He's no Joffrey.

he's more jaime than joffrey, i think

I suppose so yeah. I just dont feel any genuine menace or malice from him, he just seems petulant.

TBH hes more like Viserys!

(er... GOT Vierys obv, not current one)

it doesn't help that everyone on both shows has the same name

Was also very disappointed with the theme xps

You'd think it wouldn't be too difficult to come up with something new that maybe used some of the familiar motifs of the original music a la the new Star Trek shows

ramin dijwadi def could've come up with something new and good. it seems to be a decision from the higher-ups, which makes it worse.

i kind of like that the song and titles are basically the same, that allows me to just think of this as another season of the same show.

Seems more like incidental music than a theme

I'm certain the opening credits to ep 1 played a different song, that only had references back to the GoT theme, but then ep 2, it was jus tthe old theme?

there wasn’t a credits sequence in episode one, i don’t think

True but it did have an opening sequence with a thematic tune that wasnt the same. I assumed that would be the theme and as it turns out, no.

how it's going:
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/house-of-the-dragon-miguel-sapochnik-leaving-1235208276

u guys are crazy the actor playing Daemon is by far the best thing in this show so far. stony and surprisingly complex (the portrayal, not the role)

yes Matt Smith is good. dunno why anyone is complaining about him.

I didn't quite get why he freaked the fuck out at that letter and the messenger; did he not want help?

All the endless pouting from both king and princess in ep3 was a bit of a drag. This show badly needs some additional plots to follow.

xp

This campaign was meant to show that Daemon was stronger than the king and could lead his own war effort. The king stepping in to save him means he's failed.

He wasn't going to let the king claim this victory after doing jack shit for months

Im not getting a sparky feel from any character so far. If anything the only person I was *intrigued* by at least was the crab King and well, he's in 2 pieces now so whatever .

I will say that last act was quite engaging - loved the scoring, and the lack of dialogue/suspense.

But wheres the sassy heroes and villains? Wheres a littlefingr or tyrion?

Some time in the middle of the episode I got a fit of the giggles because it was so dull, and so many similar-sounding names were coming out of people's mouths, it was like a parody of a terrible fantasy. And for some reason everything is just dirt coloured. The episode definitely picked up towards the end, but I think I don't care enough to keep watching it.

At least from the first couple episodes, just like with the last couple seasons after the main plot got outside the books, you can tell they don't have the depth of material. I'd figure keeping the cast down might be a cost control thing too.

This so far looks like if you just made Game of Thrones about the goofs hanging around the main castle.

This show is dumb as hell. Richly appointed (though some of the cgi is terribly uncanny valley), generally well presented (though the whole Matt Smith fight sequence was nearly incoherent), ably-acted (though everyone seem utterly trapped in character rather than performing), poorly written (if i hear "mine daughter" one more time) and basically dumb as hell. My guess is that after ten hours and hundreds of millions of dollars, they'll likely start making something interesting next year. I expect it will be the Final Fantasy of prestige TV and get interesting after the fifteenth hour. Even then, I'll never be able to unsee Princess John Mulaney.

"mine X" sets my teeth on edge for reasons I'm sure I needn't relitigate around these parts.

Whoops

Not the green screen glove on Viserys’s missing fingers 🤣🤦🏻‍♀️#hotd pic.twitter.com/4CLUw5tDhI

— Sarah Capps (@SarahBKnowsBest) September 5, 2022

as i suspected the compressed timeline is messing with the drama. i did enjoy daemon's bemused, then furious reaction to the king's letter tho

oh i also thought it was funny that the guy who played the lannisters did his own version of dinklage's terrible accent

I'm saving this show up for a binge, but I have to say I'm quite amused by complaints on the socials that having black people and pugs is not "realistic."

So far I’ve read 1,000 hot takes about the people complaining about black people in this show and zero actual people complaining about it.

was one of the Lannister bros in EP 3 *not* ser hugh of the vale who was killed by the splintered Lance to the neck whilst jousting in season 1 of got?

no they were both played by the same actor, who also played ser hugh briefly in season 1

Is this going to end up being like Law and Order where they just recycle the same actors thru various minor roles over the years.

GoT did a lot of that, the actor playing one of the Lannister lads who Lord Karstark slew for revenge came back to play Tommen Baratheon a season or two later

The flashback just didn't seem really necessary to me. Like we have a decent sense of his past now, it was like no we need one highly specific traumatic incident for some reason.

Agree the battle was kind of grotesque. Thrones gonna Throne I guess. How many Thrones fights have ended with someone punching another person in the face over and over?

Me too xp

That battle though. Fucking hell

Thanks for the warning! Definitely like the show but not really into head-punching violence any more. Might skip it.

Meantime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6w7O1kwuBk

Yay I’m excited.

looking forward to this!

Great series, enjoy the shorter episode length. Agree that the flashback was too long. Baelor’s death iirc is pretty abrupt in the novella too, you just get to really like him and then that.

that traumatized me. I'm still thinking about it.

honestly? kind of a perfect finale. This show was such a lovely, just straight-up Good TV Show … i’m so impressed! Def looking foward to more adventures to come

And “Sixteen Tons” in the credits was a great touch. Grew up w that one, my Dad played it a lot.

Season was kind of a masterpiece

Such a wholesome show, generally I mean, accepting people's heads still get stoved in.

Can't be the only one who heard a mention of Dorne and was like fuck, don't go there, after GOT.

Anyway, a fun bonus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l01hTdB5PK4

Annnnnd here we go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3NuadWeKr0

One more trailer in the meantime:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JlMjgqduVw