Game of Thrones

[Dr. Insomniac]

The inherent problem with the political drama is we already know where this will all go. Robert's Rebellion. Daenerys. Jon living the rest of his life out far North. Everything the characters argue and fight for within this show will all be for nothing, and the universe's reputation as a world where people backstab each other and get themselves all killed adds a lot of apathy to it all. And once again, that's not bad in itself. The KOTOR games are fully aware that their stories won't affect the Star Wars stories thousands of years into the future, so they spend that time instead focusing on what it really means to be a Jedi or a Sith. But here, it's all sort of shallow. Most of the Rhaenyra or Viserys scenes remind me more of later-season Downton Abbey than the crumbling empire we're supposed to get later on for the Targaryens.

Not to mention the show's still suffering from the flaws of later GOT, where Cersei can just blow up a sprawling new religion and nobody in King's Landing reacts to it, or how Kinslaying just became normal. Any pretense of political drama that felt real and consequential was thrown out in those seasons, and it definitely hasn't grown back.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I somewhat disagree about the political tension not mattering. While everyone obviously knows how GOT (as a show) ends, this show is far enough removed from those events that at least non-book readers don't know how the brewing Targaryen civil war will play out. There are still potential stakes there depending on which characters people get invested in. The issue then becomes if you are actually investing in any of the characters or not, and on that end, despite some admittedly good acting for the most part (I actually think that Paddy Considine as Viserys does quite well), the writing has made it hard for me to really get behind any of these characters. Thus, I don't feel too strongly about what happens to them.

This show was never built on the foundation of White Walkers or any of the other high-fantasy elements of GOT, so I don't think that anybody is going into this expecting the series to strongly tie into any of that. However, the show to me effectively feels like an extension of GOT's later seasons in it's very similar writing quality, or lack thereof, which is why it doesn't really work for me. I think of Better Call Saul as my ideal example of how to do a character-based prequel.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Though I'd argue making a show that focuses on the era of Targaryens when they have 17 (a number the promotional material I read really liked to emphasize) dragons is meant to appeal to the viewers most engaged with seeing Daenerys burn people in GOT, so I think they are waving the high-fantasy keychain at people to keep them interested.

The other problems is, like you said with Otto Hightower being too much like a poor man's Tywin, is how much the characters are just echoes of GOT characters but with little of what made the originals work. It's extra concerning in Daemon's part, since the amount of random brutalities they give him (like killing one of his own guys in the opening scene last episode) and his increasing demands to be seen by his family is reminding me of Ramsay. And the last thing we need is a somehow shallower version of Ramsay.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Took a look at all the GOT spinoffs in development, and not feeling any of them besides maybe the Dunk and Egg show. Corlys is all right in HOTD so far, but I don't like him enough to want a whole prequel spinoff about him. I'm a little confused why there aren't more sequels in development if the Jon Snow show's a thing (though I've read the idea is more Kit Harrington's than anything). Thought pushing Arya on a boat and having her go sailing west of Westeros was spinoff bait, but haven't heard anything more about that.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

The Hedge Knight is the one show that I have some hope could be genuinely good. It's a much more singular and focused series of short stories following two main characters and has a more traditional adventure style theme to it while still feeling like it fits in that Universe. It also helps that Dunk and Egg are both pretty likeable leads. It doesn't concern itself too much with politics outside of background details so it'd give them far less opportunity to screw that up.

The animated shows could be interesting if they decided to cover some of the crazier lore, like pre-Aegon's Conquest.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Thinking about it, if I had were an HBO exec, even if he disappointed me in the second half of the show, I'd have gone for a Bronn spinoff than anything else. A whole show about him using his sellsword wit while in Bran's reign. Make it like that Discworld book Going Postal but in the GOTverse.

Also, Preston's weird rant in his latest video where he got mad at Viserys saying he never imagined remarrying stuck out to me. Like Viserys is clearly a pretty emotional guy who's still having a difficult time mourning his first wife, all while struggling to be a strong, silent leader in public, and no one who says "I never thought I'd remarry" is that literal-minded about it. I was surprised that pissed him off more than the Crabfeeder fight.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I think that's him exaggerating his nitpick since that's part of his shtick in these videos. He tends to go easier on stuff like that or completely ignore them in his serious Q&A's, but yeah, that's not really a flaw with the show. They give the characters more modern sensibilities to allow viewers to emotionally connect with them, which is actually one of the things the show does right, IMO. I think it's more of a case of how re-marrying was not at all an uncommon concept in the books since it was natural for many people to die early deaths either in childbirth or due to any number of causes.

His criticism of people referring to Aegon as second of his name being a mistake was also off, since while that implies he is the heir over Rhaenyra, that's completely the point. It is meant to show that people automatically see a male heir as the next obvious successor to the iron throne over Rhaenyra despite Viserys clearly naming her his heir.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So, I'll just get the negatives out of the way, which is the usual stuff of the show just adding in violence for the sake of it ,like the court scene with the suitors in the beginning. I mean, yeah, this is a brutal, old-timey world that can be pretty cruel, but fights between high-born nobles don't just happen like that without a formal challenge being issued. They would still have guards try to stop any conflict or pull apart people like this trying to fight to avoid any major political conflicts from brewing. Also, while it makes sense for Daemon to abandon the Stepstones since he just wants credit for securing them and doesn't care about holding that territory, it's really stupid that they didn't leave any forces there to hold it. Wasn't the whole point that they had people blocking trade routes from House Valeryon's ships which was significantly affecting their economic status? You'd think at least Corlys would leave someone in charge of that area to prevent that issue from springing up again. Of course, there are countless scenes like this in the show so I'm not going to waste my time nitpicking them all the time.

I will actually say that, overall, this was surprisingly decent and my favorite episode so far, easily. It focused more on the family drama between the core characters and kept the politics in the background, and to it's credit this show and these actors do a much better job of generating personal drama. I still have my issues here as well, but mostly minor, and this is the first episode of this season that I found myself invested in mostly the entire way through.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, it was a lot more focused than the last few episodes. No Crabfeeders or bargain bin Lannisters. Allicent actually gets something to do. Don't know what else to say though.

I do ask who's the king after Viserys who finally had the intelligence to dull the edges on each sword of the Iron Throne? Did Robert get a cut and decide to sandpaper everything?

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Even Preston couldn't go too hard on the most recent episode, some people half-jokingly attribute this to the fact that it confirmed one of his long speculated fan-theories. However, he also pointed out at least two instances of it improving things over the source material, which goes to show that he's not just criticizing the show to be a book snob.

Also, I meant to mention it earlier, but yes, the rats were a pretty excellent use of foreshadowing to a truly horrific moment that will happen quite a bit later (at this story's pace, not until late season 2 or 3, I would imagine).

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

What's so frustrating about this show is that parts of it are legitimately good, but it's so hard to appreciate it because it almost immediately throws in some horrendously stupid writing to clash with it. The beginning of the episode with how they portrayed Daemon killing his wife was actually unintentionally funny with how stupidly it was executed. But that was at least a bit easier for me to ignore.

That wedding....really brought me back to what the later seasons of Game of Thrones felt like. The behind the scenes bit at the end was basically the writers admitting that they are just deriving this shit from what was successful before. Because the Red Wedding was such a big deal, now every wedding scene has to have bloodshed and drama whether it makes sense or not.

Having Criston Cole snap and murder an innocent man (probably belonging to a noble house) without cause should have him immediately stripped of his cloak and at best be sent to the Wall, or even possibly executed if they find out about why he made that attack. How can he possibly come back from this? Minor spoilers, but he is a major player in this story, so the writers are going to have to make an excuse for why he is still allowed to not only be acquitted of any punishment, but also still get to keep his role as a member of the Kingsguard. If they wanted to have him at conflict and kill another character in his rage but still make it make sense, they could have had him do it at a tourney (which is absolutely an appropriate event for a royal wedding). Now they are going to come up with some even bigger bullshit to excuse all of this, or even worse ignore the entire event and it's implicated consequences completely.

What's most annoying is that almost everything in-between the first and last scene was actually GOOD. Much like episode 4, I was ready to praise this episode a bit and say that it was actually giving me some hope again. As it stands, I am once again reminded of what these writers' priorities are.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, next week's apparently the big time skip episode, so they might unfortunately handwave that even if he just first-degree murdered a guy in front of dozens of witnesses, including the guy who runs the nation. It's like if a police officer went psycho at a congressional ball, killed a senator's close friend/secret lover in front of every politician there, and was just let off the hook without even any attempt at a court martial. Maybe Criston or Alicent will give an extremely compelling argument that he killed Joffrey in self-defense that nobody could imagine them pulling off in the last 5 episodes, and everyone just believes it without question.

I also noticed nobody even bothered to mop up Joffrey's blood when they continued the wedding. Why were they suddenly in a hurry to wed that they couldn't delay it for at least a day or even a couple hours so any cleaners could take care of the place?

On another note, I was listening to Brian Cox's autobiography, and found out the GOT producers wanted him to play Robert but he turned it down because he was unimpressed by the pay and didn't want to play a character who died in a single season. Because that would have stopped him from asking for a bigger salary during between-season negotiations. Also found out from a panel video on YouTube that the late David Warner refused to be on GOT because while he had nothing against the show and knew a ton of the cast, he hated the idea of spending months at a time filming in freezing winter conditions, which leads me to assume he was offered the role of Mance or the Three-Eyed Raven.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Calling the most recent episode of HOTD a reverse shit sandwich was probably the most fitting terminology that I've heard in a while.

Just like with me, Preston pointed out that the middle of the episode was actually quite good but the first and last scenes essentially ruined it.

[Dr. Insomniac]

It probably says a lot of me that I'm more confused by David Tennant's son playing Aegon next episode than by Matt Smith as Daemon. Maybe it's the less convincing wig?

And I see in a lot of the comments in Preston's video attempts at explaining how and why Daemon flipped Rhea's horse, to mixed results.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I think my confusion was vindicated, because now I'm thinking "How did David and Georgia Tennant react to watching their son do that on screen?"

But better episode than last week's, even if the timeskip is too heavy and it just feels like they skipped over a whole season of the show, so all the new character dynamics are off.