Game of Thrones

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I forgot how much I enjoyed Preston's takes on these episodes. By his own admission he exaggerates his criticisms somewhat in the watch videos since it's supposed to be a bit more humorous, but he still points out some pretty stark (no pun intended) flaws and inconsistencies.

I also have to admit that I let the jousting tournament slide on initial viewing but it really is a case of catering to the casual fan rather than making any logical sense. There was one death in Robert's tourney from the show of a minor knight, and even that was treated as an unusual and unfortunate occurrence (even though it was planned). Having numerous people associated with numerous great houses just get slaughtered like it's nothing is just absurd, especially since these aren't supposed to be fights to the death in the first place, and they have clear-cut rules to them as well, which are completely ignored.

Also, I never noticed the line about the tourney being a way for men to metaphorically get off after multiple generations of relative peace in the realm. Surely enough it was there when I went back and watched, and yes it's laughably stupid. Can't blame that one on D&D for a change, at least.

[Dr. Insomniac]

The part at the end where Viserys tells Rhaenyra about the battle with the White Walkers 200 years from now was also dumb, both from what Preston said about how the line of succession works and the secret doesn't even really matter in the long run since I remember Jon and Dany, the only Targaryens involved in the battle, found out about it on their own.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know, for as much shit as D&D get (a fair bit of it is deserved), one thing I have to give them credit for is knowing how to balance the tone of the show and make the politics more appealing to a casual audience. For lack of a better description, they made it entertaining, at least in the first few seasons. I mean, book fans will get what's going on but this episode felt like one of those set-up episodes from GOT without an ounce of personality, and I can't help but see most casual viewers getting bored by it. My cousin actually called me today to have me explain the first episode going into this one because he legit had trouble following what was going on (and he followed GOT just fine).

Also, while it is kind of unavoidable, the long gaps of in-universe time between these initial episodes makes the narrative feel disjointed. To be at least a little fair to the staff for this show in comparison to GOT, though, they have far less source material to work with than that show did for it's first five seasons.

On the positive side I will say that I'm buying Matt Smith as Daemon the more that I see him. The cast has actually been all around good, with performances ranging from solid to excellent. That said, the writing hasn't allowed for much depth or nuance to these characters yet. They didn't have any depth or nuance in the source material since those were a collection of in-universe recountings of historical events written by maesters and meant to read like scholarly texts rather than actual fictional stories. So this show bares the burden of filling in the blanks. That could work in it's favor if done well, but so far not much has been added, IMO.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, I found myself nodding along until Daemon showed up. The show has an uphill battle to climb, not only figuring out how to win back the critical portion of the audience, but how to make the Targaryen dynasty something I'd actually like to watch. Watching the political scenes honestly felt staler than the ones in GOT, even late-season GOT. Those were also dumb, but at least they had Lena Headey to help carry the scenes. While here, the only thing worth notice is that the Small Council are all egg connoisseurs.

Also, how's that Jon Snow show going to fare? Unlike HOTD, that doesn't even have a book to rely on, and it's hard to see anything worth telling about Jon Snow's post-GOT life. I hope they don't do what I expect like making the Night King actually a slightly stronger White Walker and the true Night King was still farther up North.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

People seem to point out GRRM's supposed "involvement" with these shows being an indication that they can be good without source material, but also seem to forget that he's had his name attached to several projects with minimal to no real input from him. Also, let's not forget that he's been involved with a decent amount of less than stellar television (seriously, try watching some of that Beauty and the Beast series, and you can see he can produce crap just like anyone else).

I imagine it will be like how Elden Ring had his name attached to it but nobody even brings that up anymore because it just came off like any other FromSoftware game's story with nothing feeling put of place from the kind of cryptic stories that Souls games usually have. It feels like they would have made the same exact game without GRRM's involvement.

Like many others, I strongly suspect that he stopped giving a shit years ago once he realized he could make millions off of licensing his IPs and using his name value from GOT's massive popularity to promote sub-par projects to big studios and production companies. On the one hand, I can't really blame him for taking it easy and milking his past work to make out a nice living for himself in his old age. Just, you know, it'd be kind of nice to at least finish what he started, which I've given up hope on ever happening at this point.

[Dr. Insomniac]

God, I tried watching a little of his Beauty and the Beast show when I found it once on TV. It's so hokey, one of those urban fantasy TV series that came out before Buffy showed people how to do it well. You can tell why even after GOT became a global phenomenon, nobody's tried to seriously reappraise GRRM's older TV work like that or the 80s Twilight Zone show. Or that Nightflyers show that stumbled its way to Syfy instead of a channel that's actually worth anything. Kinda surprised Wild Cards hasn't become a show yet even though "superhero show with the Game of Thrones guy's name on it" should be pure, concentrated gold to studio execs.

GRRM reminds me of how Neil Gaiman's now spending most of his life showrunning adaptations of his older work and putting "Neil Gaiman Presents" on things he has next to no involvement with. And I get it, that's where the money is, and if I were in his shoes, I would remind everybody I wrote Sandman and Good Omens on a constant basis too, but I wish he'd find the time to write a new novel. Meanwhile, while I haven't liked his recent work, I can at least admire Stephen King for still doing new books long after he found mainstream success.

Though I also suspect GRRM's more embarrassed by Season 8's poor reception than he lets on and hastily scrapped and rewrote giant chunks of his Winds/Dream manuscripts in response.

Oh yeah, on a more shallow note, I'm really disappointed HOTD's opening theme is just GOT's again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Now that I've had some time to look at other opinions, I have to admit that I have been wrong so far about how some of the more casual fans have taken to this show. A lot of people seem to be unanimously liking what they have seen so far. I have a feeling that this will probably go over well as long as they don't do anything monumentally stupid since the abysmal final two seasons of GOT managed to lower expectations so much that it is relatively easier to surpass them for most audiences.

That said, I also do notice that a lot of reviewers, while enjoying the main story so far, do seem to be confused on a lot of background details as I suspected they might be. I suppose it probably doesn't matter too much to most as long as the core story and characters land home. We'll see how this goes.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, even the Freefolk subreddit's cautiously optimistic. Most I've seen is people making Crab People jokes about last episode's ending.

I suppose in the age of fanwikis and YouTube videos explaining all the lore, excessive continuity doesn't matter all that much as long as there's something cool on screen.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Just watched Preston's breakdown of episode 2 of HOT n' Spicy D, and while I managed to successfully predict most of the things that he would nitpick or completely tear down (based on it's level of absurdity when held up to any sense of logic), I must admit I myself now feel stupid for not realizing just how stupid Otto's plan actually was in this episode. I mean, I knew that he would make fun of how dumb it was for him to bring only 20 men with him to Dragon Stone to face down Daemon (how they were even allowed on the island with their weapons is itself ludicrous when you consider that Dragon Stone is fortified to withstand an entire fleet with ease), and on that end I'm just more surprised that he didn't find a way to make an obvious "Give me 20 good men" joke/reference out of the whole situation. That said, when he pointed out how there was no way that this situation could have gone down without Rhaenyra's interference (which Otto was most certainly not counting on) that would be of any benefit to Otto or King Viserys, I had to sort of do a double-take once I realized just how dumb this really was. In a realistic scenario Daemon would just laughably slaughter Otto and his men or at the very least hold them hostage. Again, this is just 20 men against literally all of the forces of Dragon Stone that Daemon has rallied to his side. However, also consider that even if Otto did somehow manage to get the egg back from Daemon, he would just piss him off enough to get him to retaliate and considering that Daemon is a dragon rider, that's like openly asking for the enemy to launch their nuke on you. Since he clearly doesn't want to support Viserys marrying into house Valeryon in order to maneuver his own daughter into a position of power as the King's bride for the sake of his family, it's not exactly in his best interest to quite literally instigate the other dragon. And if someone were to argue that he was trying to negotiate peacefully with Daemon, putting aside that Daemon is notoriously impulsive and hard to reason with (he's called "The Rogue Prince" for a reason), he clearly is the worst person to involve himself in a negotiation of any sort with Daemon considering how much they both bitterly dislike each other as demonstrated in the tourney in the first episode. It's like Preston said: "What was Otto's plan, exactly?" It's like, it was obviously going to go bad, and even if he got what he wanted in that exact instance against all odds and reason, it still would have ended up going badly for him anyways.

The only way this would make any real sense is if the show were trying to demonstrate that Otto is actually not a very competent Hand of the King, but it's so obvious that the writers are trying to position him into being this show's Tywin, but without the actual understanding of what made Tywin such a legitimately intelligent and ruthless leader and political power.

Anyways, to the episode's credit, most of the other logic wasn't that bad so most of Preston's criticisms were on the nitpick level in this case. On his criticism of why Rhaenyra was allowed in the small counsel meeting, I actually feel that, while it's a justifiable nitpick given her presence as a cupbearer, he could have mentioned that this was an easy fix for the writers: just have her present as a member of the small counsel. There was already a precedent for female royalty being allowed into the small counsel, however rare it may have been, and considering that Viserys had already named Rhaenyra his heir at this point in the show, this would have made complete sense within the context of the show's own logic.

Also, I will actually point out the one time I disagreed with one of his criticisms. When Rhaenyra chose Sir Criston Cole because of his combat experience, Preston pointed out that combat situations weren't ever the cause of any of the previous kings' deaths up to this point. But, like, that doesn't still mean that it isn't an important factor. While out of the four previous rulers since Aegon, only Maegor was the one to be ruled as anything other than natural causes (officially deemed a suicide, but almost certainly was a murder since nobody slits their own wrists AND also makes the extra effort to stab themselves through the throat for good measure), it doesn't exactly rule out the need for a well seasoned fighter to be in service to the king. It was the one time where I felt he was stretching a bit too much to criticise something, even if it wasn't meant to be taken entirely too seriously.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Maybe each of Otto's 20 good men had tiny, portable scorpions to shoot dragons with? And they were all Clegane ancestors or something...?

But seriously, that scene was dumb and is just there because the episode needed at least one tense standoff scene to show how much Daemon means business, but didn't know how to set it up right. There's a consistently weird lack of reaction from the characters when shit like murders at jousting tournaments or hostile dragons occur.

In other news, the shows' playing musical chairs with showrunners.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Anyone remember Blackwater? It was built up over the course of an entire season (really since season one even), and it took up a whole episode and had multiple stages to the battle and it all also made complete sense (mostly) with occasional lapses in logic that could be forgiven due to production restrictions and also liberties that needed to be taken for creative fluorishes to make for a more entertaining episode (perfectly reasonable stuff, at that). It was glorious television and still holds up today, ten years after it originally aired (it still feels brand new). I recently just re-watched it.

Watching the whole battle ordeal from today's episode really shows me that they took the wrong lessons from that with how they proceeded with doing big battles in this franchise. Now, granted, I know that this wasn't being presented as an equivalent to something like Blackwater or Watchers on the Wall, or even Battle of the Bastards (which was bad from a writing standpoint, for the record, but still a different sort of affair altogether), but the point still stands that this is going to be somewhat compared to stuff like that, and I guarentee that you are going to see a bunch of reviewers praising it as some sort of return to the glory days of Game of Thrones. Except it's infuratingly stupid if you really stop to think about it. We know from the context of it being Aegon's second birthday that over two years have passed since the last episode, which means that Daemon and House Valeryon have been at this for almost that long. Except when you actually realize that they had such a measley group of men and one leader to take out to win this whole ordeal, it makes them look stupid rather than impressive that they took this long to do it, and even then only managed to on a desperate last-minute whim of a plan. Daemon being forced into despiration to achieve something to get full credit for it before his brother intervenes is actually a good plot beat, giving credit where it's due, but when you establish just how limited the enemies' forces and tactics are, and how easily they can take them out once they draw them into the open, it just gets marred by huge leaps in the logic of how these kinds of battles would actually work.

Here's the thing, I can see where they are taking their main influences from in terms of the source material. The Targaryens' failed invavsion attempts of Dorne are what this really draws back to, which is actually a really cool concept to go by. See, Aegon's Conquest saw all of the other major Kings of Westeros bow down to him and his sisters with relative ease (not that it was all as easy as it seems, but I'm using the term "relative" appropriately here), but they actually couldn't get Dorne. Like, they didn't ever conqer Dorne (they eventually joined the Seven Kingdoms through a political marriage, in case anyone is wondering). However, even with all of their forces (including the added forces of the rest of the Westerosi lords they had conquered) and the use of their Dragons, they couldn't even come close to forcing Dorne into submission. The terrain was rocky, and sandy, and hilly, and had lots of caves and crevices for the native Dornish to hide in that would easily shield them from Dragonfire. It also let them set up tons of traps and ambushes for foot-soldiers, many of whom had much difficulty navigating the Dornish terrain (horses didn't fare much better). They admittedly couldn't do too much to openly fight back but they managed to force Aegon to expend much of his forces and resources since many men got stranded and starved while getting lost wandering that unfamiliar area for months to years on end, and they could never actually find any of the Dornish leaders to take their heads. At one point they just tried to place their own lords in positions at Dorne when the other territories were seemingly abandoned with much of their leaders and forces in hiding, but then as soon as the Targaryen's left back home with their Dragons and the bulk of their forces, the Dornish quickly came out of hiding and reconquered those areas with ease and had those newly placed lords executed.

It got to the point where the new King of Dorne who ascended to the position after his mother died wrote a letter appealing to Aegon to just give it up and call a truce, and while the details are fuzzy, Aegon essentially said "fuck it" and just gave up on it because it wasn't worth the effort (and it also cost him the life of one of his sisters). Now....imagine if he had just one small area to conquer and one leader to kill and then Dorne would be conquered. All of a sudden it'd seem pretty stupid if it took him years to achieve that feat and then he does it in a matter of minutes in a last-ditch effort that just as easily could have gotten him killed.

The whole reason I went on this spiel was to spell out how interesting a concept like that is and why it works for this kind of source material. However with this show it's like they take influence from certain aspects of it but fail to understand what makes these kinds of concepts interesting and sensical, and instead just try to throw out what they think will look cool in an action scene. Admittedly it's all very nice to look at but Game of Thrones always sold itself to me as a fantasy series that really gave a shit about the consistency of it's narrative and lore making logical sense within the context of it's Universe. Other series could get away with the fell good moments and pure entertainment value because they were built to be that way. However, Game of Thrones used to feel like it held itself to a higher standard, and when it nailed the writing needed to sustain that standard, it really was a cut above everything else, IMO. But watching stuff like this just makes me feel frustrated.

I get that it's just me, and if people enjoy this, good for them. I have nothing against anyone having a good time with any work of fiction. This is just a personal issue of mine where I have a very specific idea for what I want and I have just come to terms with the fact that this series just isn't for me anymore. Granted, of course I will still probably keep watching and bitching about it for some time to come, but it'll probably just be in good fun for the most part going forward. I just can't bring myself to really take it seriously anymore.

Oh, and in case your wondering, in the original story Daemon and Corlys do try to subdue the Steptones and it takes even longer than in the show, but as you might guess the circumstances are completely different. He has a Triarchy to deal with in addition to several other leaders and political figures from the free cities. And oh yeah, their good old friends the Dornish ally themselves with said Free Cities, for various reasons, but also partly to stick it to the Targaryens again. So, yes, it makes sense why it takes so long.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Yeah, Blackwater's like the Wrath of Khan of GOT where the creators keep trying to replicate it to lesser results. The shows' chief conundrum is it actively teaches the audience to expect more complexities within their battle scenes, or to focus on the consequences which an action scene from a regular series would overlook, but then to fall back on typical action/fantasy film cliches later on. Like how the lack of safety amongst the leads critics celebrated GOT for got traded off for heavy-duty plot armor in later seasons. It's the series making a mission statement, and then failing to follow its own words after 4 or 5 years. At least with your Marvels or your Fast and the Furiouses, they know what they are and don't pretend to be above that. While HOTD insists it's still the dark, subversive political drama in GOT's early days, but with no evidence to back that up.

Though I watched the series premiere of LOTR: Rings of Power, and compared to that, at least HOTD has something resembling a sense of direction. That first episode just kept raining main characters at me without giving any of them an establishing moment, or any reason to think "Yes, I should pay attention to these characters instead of wondering when Isildur will inevitably kill Sauron, take his ring, keep the ring, die, and so on". With HOTD, at the minimum there's a theme going on regarding the eventual collapse of the Targaryen dynasty and the pit that awaits most of the main cast, while Rings of Power was all meandering.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

True, with HOTD you can at least see where the plot is going even if the narrative feels disjointed. The Rings of Power feels like such a fucking slof that I had to take two breaks in-between watching the premiere episodes.

The funny thing is that I had a strong feeling that this would happen. Both of these are spin-offs of series that were already strongly compared to each other (despite being very different at their core), and both are based on supplemental lore material rather than any actual novels. That said, at least HOTD has access to all of that lore, whereas TROP is cut off from a lot of actual interesting material and can't even use certain character names to reference them due to rights issues. They can't do any of the stuff that would actually be interesting from The Silmarillion or other Middle-Earth lore books, so you have a plot that feels aimless like it's trying to find some kind of purpose. The Lord of the Rings has a slow start as well, but it can get away with it because the big exposition dump at the beginning at least establishes agency for where the plot is going. After 2 hours of TV, TROP still has yet to do this so I'm struggling to find a reason to care about anything thus far.

[Dr. Insomniac]

And everyone's already said it, but Rings of Power is such a bland title. Just saying it evokes Power Rangers more than Tolkien.

Speaking of, the Crabfeeder gave me PR monster vibes (maybe that's why it took 2 years to kill him, both his forces and Daemon's just fought small 1v5 skirmishes once a week). Mostly there to give the episode an action scene that doesn't involve Viserys killing a CGI deer, while reminding viewers who didn't watch the first two episodes that Daemon is emotionally unstable and likes to fight dirty. A blatant attempt to keep the audience's attention now that everybody mocked all the "sexposition" scenes in GOT to death. And that's not even a bad thing, most HBO shows do it. I remember a David Chase interview where he admits he put in a lot more murders in The Sopranos than Tony could realistically get away with in order to keep viewers glued for everything else. But the problem here is the lack of rhythm that lets the dumb action scenes complement the politicking.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I mean, if the actual politics were taken seriously and made sense than I as well could excuse the other lapses in logic with the show, but as we've already seen even the actual politics are strongly bent to having the writers achieve what they want to with the characters rather than making them feel like a real government system in a world that feels real in it's presentation. However, it's clearly possible to both have good writing for the politicking and still have compelling character dynamics and development to go along with it.