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

Also I like very much the whole “we used to be friends” vibe with Alicent and Rhaenyra. Obvs that’s canon but it’s good!

Also also - the sex scenes in episode 4 are so different from GoT. The characters are obviously different and Rhaenyra has a lot more power than most of the female characters ever did, but the focus on Alicent’s blank face as Viserys’s scabby old body is pumping her is contrasted so well to Rhaenyra and Cole and the playful way she starts taking off his armour. It never feels leering or gross the way GoT often did.

ok ep 5 is a banger, best one yet

Yeah pretty decent

gyac otm about seeing more of the Hightowers, they always seemed part of the lore in the books/previous series rather than active participants in the story

Ya. Fuck the haters, That episode was great!

I hope every episode has a wedding.

the rat creeping up to the blood at the end was 👌🏻

it isn't a westeros wedding without at least one gruesome death.

I also liked ep 4, and agree with gyac that the sex scenes felt different and less gross compared to GoT's. also sets up the events of ep 5 nicely - the pact between Rhaenyra and Laenor, Criston's jealousy and betrayal, Alicent's discontent, it all stems from that one night on the town

i think i've complained enough about this already but the long and the short of it is that it's missing the patience, the resolve, the nuance, the intelligence (brutal though it was) that GoT had and has replaced that with algorithm and pageantry. that stuff works to the degree that it makes this watchable but it's not something to get excited about.

GoT didn’t have any of that a lot of the time. It was shit like Littlefinger intoning “chaos is a ladder”, horrific rape scenes, terrible writing and btw did we mention we clearly despise female characters?

This also is a smaller more contained story than GoT - everyone is in the same location, you have access to a limited number of characters. It’s basically a bottle episode.

I was a bit confused t'wards the end.

Why did Criston wail on Laenor's loverboy? He had just told him they could protect each others secret. Is it all just because he cant talk Rhaenyra into doing a Wallis Simpson with him?

I was not ready for the pulpface.

Gah someone needs to fix that linebreak bug in the hide code.

i don’t really understand the algorithm comment. it’s based on a different book by george rr martin, and has been pretty faithful to it so far.

perhaps martin is an algorithm friendly storyteller?

trayce, i think that sir cristin was just really going through it, questioning his honor and own sense of character and lashed out in a very “i am not like you!!!” kind of moment

Was it not him flipping the lid at the idea he’d ruined his honour to be nothing more than a paramour and also being invented at the idea of being subject to wink wink nudge nudge insinuations from the court after his (completely unrealistic btw) proposal was rejected?

Incensed not invented

yeah, he's an honor-above-all kind of guy and the insinuation that it's common knowledge that he's not keeping his oath drove him into a fury.

xps to gyac, i agree with basically all of that, i come not to praise caesar but to bury him.
more accurately should have said "that GoT had at its best"

to vc: the adaptation is leaning heavily on what HBO thinks will work and this show's wonky speed of execution, shallowness of character, often incomprehensible filmic style and general lack of complexity, while partially GRRM's fault, are more readily blamed on "give the people what they want" instead of trying to offer more assured and patient storytelling.

forks fwiw i thought the first episode veered closely, at times, to what you're describing, but i've been really impressed by where it's gone since. have you watched the last couple episodes?

my favorite GoT season was 1, my second favorite was 2, third favorite was 3, etc. every time a new season came out, i would go back and do a grand rewatch, starting at S1E1, and every single time i thought "they nailed this show right at the beginning"

the last few episodes of hotd remind me a lot of that warm fuzzy season 1 feeling. the last episode, in particular, was absolutely gripping, and it was mostly a series of long, intense dialogue between pairs of characters.

i've watched every episode and just haven't been into it. i found the dialogue in this episode tedious. i'll quit complaining now, don't think it's for me. will pipe up if it shifts from background watch to something i'm actually enjoying but i really think that's gonna be second season when they can calm the fuck down.

yeah idk how they could've adopted a patient approach to this story, given the scale of the narrative they've chosen to adapt. chapter 1 of the story takes 30 years, while the next 4-5 chapters will cover a period of 3.

i don't know the material well enough to speak to that, i just know that we're being asked to give a shit about political machinations, personalities, relationships and frailties that I don't have any engagement with but they're supposed to carry weight. the king in waiting's consort was just bludgeoned to death and i don't care about him or the king in waiting or the queen or the current king who has been withering away at mach speed over his train set since we started the dang thing. it's not taking the time i need to connect with anyone before we have to rush forward to the next plot point imo.

it's not taking the time i need to connect with anyone before we have to rush forward to the next plot point imo.

yeah, i think that's a very valid criticism. ser criston's character, for one, goes through _a lot_ of stuff in episodes 4 and 5, leading to narrative payoffs that arrive before the viewer has gotten a full sense of the character.

xp the show is five episodes old

xps to gyac, i agree with basically all of that, i come not to praise caesar but to bury him.
more accurately should have said "that GoT had at its best"

xp the show is five episodes old

Its best was almost all from the source material, the drop in quality was huge and the show has zero rewatch value for me as a result.

apparently we get whole new actors for Rhaenyra and Alicent in the next episode

Timeskip Alicent is played by Olivia Cooke, who I’ve liked in the recent remake of Vanity Fair. It’s some great casting.

https://wwd.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/olivia-cooke-as-alicent-hightower.jpg?w=640

I'm going to miss Milly Alcock, tbh. I wasn't sold on her at first, but she's really helped sell the role for me.

there was a scene posted as a preview on the hot d official twitter that featured the adult actors for laenor and rhaenyra and they both seemed pretty good, with the laenor actor seeming like a seismic improvement lol

finally, the extended john mulaney armor fetish softcore we've all been hoping for

"It was about the struggle in every way: the struggle to get the armour off, the struggle of him to betray his vows... That's how I wanted to pitch it," he said. For Frankel it was all about the integrity of the scene, and he was dedicated to making every aspect as realistic as possible, even if it took months of forethought to accomplish.

"For even a world-quality squire, you've got 10 minutes to get the armor off. Let's say five, maybe at best. There's no way Rhaneyra and Cole are gonna take that armour off in 10 seconds. So I was like, 'Well, you have to have that in,'" he said. "These are all the things I really cared about, 'cause they take away this sort of, to my mind, archaic sexual sex scenes that have existed for so long in television and film, and make it feel real."

"a world-quality squire"!

it would have been more realistic if they were both complaining about the awful smell of his sweaty high fantasy body as the pieces of armor came off one by one

(Alicent walks to the window and throws it open in desperation. Criston proceeds to remove the cod piece)

Ok, this show rocks.

Fantastic "one-take" opening act this week and *so* much politicking

Also lol at "Well he's a twat"

yeah this week's episode was excellent. they handled the time jump pretty gracefully imo, and the characters are coming into sharper definition each week.

kinda darkly funny to see daemon become a widower anew in consecutive episodes

lol no, this episode was terrible - dumb characters, barely-there motivation, actors without charisma. what a step backward.

It wasn’t great but I love Olivia Cooke cos I always love Olivia Cooke.

They really need to dial it back with the nighttime filter on everything

Ok, this is getting fucking crazy

Strong shades of Joffrey's humiliation by Arya in GoT s1.

i've been kinda bummed this season/show, like plenty of soap opera and palace intrigue or whatever but not enough big momentous battles, but have to say things have ramped up quite nicely.

were there any momentous battles in season 1 of Game of Thrones?

I don't remember. But maybe with the expanse of things it felt more clearly heading there? Anyway getting that feeling now at least.

I was a little confused to see Otto Hightower back as the Hand, but I guess he was reinstated since last ep?

Larys Strong engineered the death of his brother and father, making room for Otto to be invited back

I'm pretty sure the action in season 1 of GoT was roughly the same or less, it was mostly putting the pieces in place for the war that erupts in season 2, the truly big battle coming at the end of that season.

xp - I get the why and how of the machination, just wasn't sure it was a given he'd be back