Ian Thomas Malone

Game of Thrones Archive

Monday

5

August 2024

2

COMMENTS

House of the Dragon’s second season tethers itself too closely to its meager source material

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Game of Thrones faced a gargantuan challenge in adapting an unfinished book series with thousands of pages of material, an unwieldly balancing act it handled spectacularly, at least until the last two seasons. House of the Dragon essentially faces the opposite problem, with its meager source material that needs to be stretched out into four seasons. The book Fire & Blood is essentially cobbled together from two novellas originally published in anthologies, The Princess and the Queen and The Rogue Prince, as well as the coffee table book The World of Ice and Fire.

You can read the entire tale of the Dance of the Dragons in a single sitting. There are certain challenges in adapting such scant offerings, but also plenty of advantages. The characters that make up the opposing sides of House Targaryen, the Blacks and the Greens, are essentially blank slates for the show to define on its own terms in ways that couldn’t be true for beloved book characters such as Jaime Lannister or Jon Snow. The only trouble with making House of the Dragon its own thing is the presence of George R.R. Martin amidst HBO’s broader landscape to milk the A Song of Ice and Fire franchise for all it is worth.

George R.R. Martin wrote The Princess and the Queen as part of the Dangerous Women anthology he co-edited in 2013 with his beloved friend Gardner Dozois, who passed away in 2018. The cover of the book includes a promo noting that the collection contains an all-new Game of Thrones novella. The 2018 release of Fire & Bloods expands the peripherals a bit, but there is a fundamental reason for the fast pacing of the novella. Though the Dance itself has been referenced numerous times within the mainline series, the novella exists largely to help sell an anthology that George R.R. Martin enjoyed working on with his buddy.

There is no real inherent reason that House of the Dragon must maintain such a rigid devotion to its source material, other than perhaps the idea that deviation might anger its creator, who is prominently featured in the credits. There are plenty of reasons why one might think it’s actually a good idea to change things up. A single novella is not exactly meant to carry multiple seasons of a television show. The show burned through its other source material, The Rogue Prince, published in 2014 as part of the Rogues collection put out by Martin and Dozois, halfway through the first season, hence the awkward timeline.

A show might consider it a bad idea to sideline Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) to his hallucinations in Harrenhal for an entire season. A show might consider it a bad idea to kill off a sympathetic character like Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best) in episode four of its second season. A show might consider a bad idea to spend an entire second season on build-up after it spent its first season building up two mostly separate casts. The early demise of Kingsguard twins Erryk and Arryk Cargyll (Elliott and Luke Tittensor) wasted valuable screentime with a meager payoff. At least Rhaenys died in the season’s best sequence.

House of the Dragon is needlessly chained to its flimsy source material, a poorly paced slog that would do well to break free from the timeline of the novellas it remains haplessly devoted to. Prestige television takes years to make. You can’t expect viewers to wait years for a full season of exposition when most of them could read the entire novella within the runtime of a single episode.

The few substantive deviations from the source material have turned out pretty well for the show. Reuniting Rhaenyra (Emma D’arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) produced two of the season’s best sequences. The show’s bizarre devotion to the novella’s timeline hindered the season from spreading its wings after an uneven but compelling freshman effort.

As its title suggests, dragons are a large part of the show’s appeal. The CGI for the dragons has been spectacular, particularly during the battle sequences. Season two spent a large chunk of its time building up The Sowing, where four of the six riderless dragons living on Dragonstone, occupied by the Blacks, received riders. The show did a very good job spreading out the action, first building up Addam of Hull (Clinton Liberty) and Seasmoke in episode six before giving Vermithor and Silverwing new riders with Hugh the Hammer (Kieran Bew) and Ulf the White (Tom Bennett), with Sheepstealer teased for next season, presumably bonding with Rhaena Targaryen (Phoebe Campbell), replacing Nettles from the novella.

These four characters will all play important roles in the rest of the series. It’s hard to really make the claim that season two introduced them all that well. Hugh and Ulf received scant attention for the first half of the season, not making much of an effort to define their personalities until the final episode of the season, where their lowborn crassness was seemingly ratcheted up to put them in conflict with Jacaerys Velaryon (Harry Collett). Though the show has a huge cast, it spent the whole season keeping its leads in a bizarre holding pattern, leaving piecemeal for the newer, also important characters.

None of this is particularly excusable. House of the Dragon knew precisely which characters would be important. Vermithor made his debut in last season’s finale, serenaded by Daemon, only to be treated as an afterthought for much of season two. Season one had twelve episodes. Season two only has eight, an arbitrary number ill-suited for the show’s unwieldy cast and complex narrative.

One might expect a showrunner to look at the many pieces of the Dance of the Dragons and arrange them in a way that fits a four-season narrative. Not House of the Dragon. This show is so hellbent on following George R.R. Martin’s timeline that it forgets to be engaging television. The space between last season’s Dance over Shipbreaker Bay and the Sowing amounts to a handful of pages of the novella, hardly the best outline for a full season of television. Game of Thrones made plenty of changes from its source material. It’s not as if House of the Dragon hasn’t made a few of its own, but its sluggish pacing is an unfortunate, preventable lapse in judgement. One of the most exciting chapters in A Song of Ice and Fire lore has no business being this boring.

Monday

24

October 2022

2

COMMENTS

House of the Dragon delivers a gripping finale that brings its first season full circle.

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Courtesy of HBO

House of the Dragon headed into its first finale with one simple mandate. All the chaotic time-jumps and recastings that threw ample hurdles at an audience just trying to learn its characters’ names served the singular purpose of getting all the pieces in place for the main event, the last dance, to borrow a phrase from Michael Jordan’s documentary that saved America from boredom in the early days of Covid. Episode ten, appropriately titled “The Black Queen,” had to deliver a suitable rationale for letting a family squabble devolve into a realm-shattering war.

The absence of the Dragonstone crew from the previous episode embodied a broader problem for the show’s back half. Rhaenyra functioned early on as the closest thing to a definitive lead for House of the Dragon, lacking a clear counterpart like the dynamic between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen in Game of Thrones, the ice and fire. House of the Dragon had to clear over a decade of backstory before it could introduce characters like Aegon and Aemond, vital figures for the rest of the events of the series. “The Black Queen” gave the show a chance to come full circle, resolidifying Rhaenyra as the emotional core of the series.

Emma D’Arcy showed off their range repeatedly throughout the episode, Rhaenyra contending with the deaths of her father, stillborn daughter, and second son all while preparing for war in the infancy of her reign. Rhaenyra’s coronation was easily the most moving scene of the season. The acting, score, and cinematography demonstrated the Westerosi sense of awe and wonder at its best, a high point for the entire franchise. Matt Smith beautifully captured the reverence that Daemon holds for his wife, even as he bristles with restraints on his appetite for control.

The episode did highlight the show’s broader disconnect toward how its own characters might be received over the course of its sprawling, chaotic season. The defection of Kingsguard member Ser Erryk Cargyll delivered an emotional moment when he revealed the crown he spent much of the previous episode acquiring, putting himself in opposition to his brother Arryk. There’s easy sympathy to be had in the idea of twin brothers going to war against each other, but Erryk and Arryk have received such little screen time that it’s hard to care much about them as characters.

A similar predicament befalls the scene between Corys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen, the former lamenting the current state of his family. House Velaryon has had a mess of a season, with plotlines such as Corys’ effort to marry his prepubescent daughter to an old man, the marriage of his closeted homosexual son to Rhaenyra, and the execution of his younger brother for stating the blatantly obvious reality that his grandchildren from that marriage did not possess an ounce of Velaryon blood. It’s hard to take House Velaryon seriously when the show remains so hellbent on making them the patsy for every storied Westerosi pastime such as incest and adultery.

Anyone who’s read the novellas that make up Fire and Blood would be excited for Lucerys’ ill-advised trip to Storm’s End, a plan so stupid that House of the Dragon wisely chose not to spend much time explaining it. After an extended sequence where Daemon hurled excessive amounts of exposition into Westerosi geography, the show wisely didn’t try to explain Rhaenyra’s senseless decision to send her young children as envoys to anyone other than reliable allies. Lucerys did not really travel to earn the support of House Baratheon, but to get killed by his uncle, giving his mother a worthy excuse to go to war against the Green’s.

Lucerys didn’t make much of an impression in his limited screen time, but Ewan Mitchell seized every opportunity to endear Aemond to the audience. The beautiful sequence of the behemoth Vhagar chasing down the much smaller Arrax represented some of the best special effects we’ve seen from either House of the Dragon or its predecessor. The audience doesn’t need to care that a young boy was senselessly murdered, not when his uncle is the far more compelling character.

House of the Dragon concludes its first season on an extremely high note. It is more than fair to acknowledge the reality that this season would have worked better with two or three additional episodes given the amount of ground it covered. Ten episodes is an arbitrary number, and the cost is hardly a concern for a flagship HBO offering.

The highs of “The Black Queen” ultimately demonstrate House of the Dragon’s ability to stick the landing. Things may have been rushed, but the show delivered in its efforts to set the stage for the dance. Time will provide a better rubric to evaluate the pacing issues throughout the season, but the show did a fantastic job establishing the stakes of its premise.

Tuesday

18

October 2022

0

COMMENTS

House of the Dragon soars above its vacuous source material

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House of the Dragon may very well be the most expensive television show ever born out of a procrastination project. Largely based on the novella The Princess and the Queen and its prequel The Rogue Prince, published originally in the anthologies Dangerous Women and Rogues respectively, both edited by George R.R. Martin and his late friend Gardner Dozois, the depiction of the Dance of the Dragons was less a fully realized world than a side project by an author hellbent on doing anything other than finishing The Winds of Winter. The repackaging of said novellas along with some other material as Fire and Blood gives the whole project a sense of grandeur that covers up what’s largely a shameless cash grab by Martin’s publisher, understandably thirsty for some new Westeros content.

The main books in A Song of Ice and Fire presented their chapters through varying point-of-view characters, giving the readers an intimate first-hand perspective into the people we’d grown to love and hate, sometimes both. The novellas that make up House of the Dragon were presented through the lens of Archmaester Gyldayn, an elusive unreliable narrator. The execution of the text put a fair bit of distance between such legendary figures in Westerosi lore as Daemon and Aemond Targaryen, and the audience gobbling up these morsels of story. House of the Dragon has far less concrete substance to work with than its predecessor Game of Thrones.

 Part of the beauty of Thrones was the show’s need to juggle seemingly countless strands of plot within its ten-episode seasons. Fans scoured the opening credits to see which characters would appear in the episodes, screen time serving as the ultimate limited commodity. House of the Dragon couldn’t be more different, with a limited cast of characters predominantly set in King’s Landing. Without the benefits of Thrones’ frequent changes in scenery, HotD has had to double down on the gritty mechanics of television storytelling to fuel its narrative, wisely sparsely deploying its greatest asset in the realm of spectacle, the titular dragons that prompted HBO to favor this narrative over competing spin-off concepts.

House of the Dragon is less a Game of Thrones spinoff than a Westerosi adaptation of Succession, another HBO crown jewel. Like Succession, HotD features a large family wielding capitalism’s most nepotistic instincts in service to selfish goals no reasonable human being should care about. Television doesn’t need to care about right or wrong. It’s fun to watch attractive bad people doing naughty things. HotD isn’t an existential fight for survival against unthinkable evil like Game of Thrones, but a petty family squabble between people with the fantasy equivalent of nuclear weapons.

Showrunners Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik pulled off an immensely impressive feat with season one. House of the Dragon lacks practically every defining attribute that made its predecessor great, but the steady narrative pacing and first-rate acting allowed the show to succeed on its own merits independent of the broader spectacle. The show managed to get its audience invested in characters even amid a clunky time jump that saw two of its leads, both its princess and its queen, recast midway through the season.

The early first-rate performances by Milly Alcock and Emily Care as Rhaenyra Targaryen and Alicent Hightower might have presented a lot of problems for Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke, tagging in midway through in a confusing narrative with a cast of characters with oddly similar names. House of the Dragon is the rare kind of show where you actually feel for the characters without necessarily needing to identify them all. The legend of Daemon Targaryen manifests itself through Matt Smith’s uncannily minimalistic performance, commanding all the attention in a room with a single smirk.

One doesn’t need to pick a side between the “Greens” and the “Blacks” to feel for the patriarch ushering in his own family’s demise. King Viserys Targaryen slowly withers away over the course of the season, but Paddy Considine delivers every line with the grief of a dying man faced with a horde of relatives who hate each other. It’s surprisingly easy to relate to this collection of selfish incestuous royals and the oligarchs who feed off their scraps.

Unlike its predecessor, the audience can tune into House of the Dragon knowing how all of this is going to end, who’s going to kill who, and who’s going to lose an eye for implying their cousins are bastards. There is a surprising level of dramatic tension for a show without the benefit of natural suspense. HotD is a lot slower than its predecessor, but there’s ample beauty to be found in the ways that the cast manages to bring its meager source material to life. Game of Thrones was a great show based on a great series of books. HotD is a great show based off Martin’s various procrastination musings thoroughly content with their own mediocrity. The latter is unlikely to leave a lasting impression on popular culture, but it might end up being the more impressive piece of work when all of this is said and done.

Thursday

18

March 2021

0

COMMENTS

Lord Varys: A Transgender Perspective

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Grab your lavender and your little birds, we’re going to Westeros. Join Ian for a solo episode all about Lord Varys. As someone who knows what it’s like to lose their balls, Ian feels a kindred connection to the Spider. For his talent, George R.R. Martin often portrays Varys in an exceedingly cartoonish fashion that plays into homophobic stereotypes. Join for a close reading of many of Varys’ key passages.

 

This episode will cover the following chapters:

 

A Game of Thrones

  • Catelyn IV
  • Eddard IV
  • Eddard V
  • Eddard VII
  • Eddard VIII
  • Eddard XI
  • Eddard XII
  • Eddard XIV
  • Sansa IV
  • Eddard XV
  • Tyrion IX

 

A Clash of Kings

  • Tyrion I
  • Tyrion II
  • Tyrion III
  • Tyrion IV
  • Tyrion VI
  • Tyrion VIII
  • Tyrion IX
  • Tyrion X
  • Tyrion XII
  • Sansa VIII

 

A Storm of Swords

  • Sansa I
  • Tyrion II
  • Tyrion III
  • Davos IV
  • Tyrion IX
  • Tyrion X
  • Tyrion XI

 

A Feast for Crows

  • Cersei I
  • Jaime I
  • Cersei IV
  • Jaime III

A Dance with Dragons

  • Tyrion I
  • Tyrion II
  • Tyrion IV
  • The Lost Lord
  • Epilogue

For a complete list of our ASOIAF episodes, check out our neatly organized episode page. https://ianthomasmalone.podbean.com/p/episode-categories/

Image courtesy of HBO

 

Monday

27

May 2019

3

COMMENTS

Game of Thrones’ Final Season Was a Frantic Mess

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The image of Daenerys Targaryen’s massive armada sailing to Westeros at the end of season six ended up being the high point of her time on the series. After spending years building her up as the apex player destined to “break the wheel,” seasons seven and eight largely focused on tearing her back down, slowly eating away at her army until her opposition established a believable sense of equal footing. Dany may have taken King’s Landing with brute force, but her cause was lost with waiting, heeding Tyrion’s advice not to sack the capital at the expense of most of her original Westerosi allies.

Season eight sought out to complete Dany’s downward spiral, along with defeating the White Walkers and providing satisfactory conclusions for many of the show’s large ensemble. All in six episodes, a choice made by creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. To call this season rushed would be an understatement.

The first two episodes largely concerned themselves with table-setting for “The Long Night.” Episode two, “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms,” stands out as one of the best of the series for its focus on the complex relationships between the many characters, an immensely satisfying episode that functioned as a bit of a finale in its own right. The calm pace of the first two episodes contrasts with the frantic nature of the final two, which barely took a moment to breathe, more than understandable given how much needed to be done before the end.

A six-episode season was never going to be enough to wrap up such a complex series, but a bigger issue was the fact that the show dedicated half its final run to an underwhelming villain who didn’t even factor into the endgame. The White Walkers may have been a presence in the show since the first episode, but the underwhelming battle of Winterfell failed to reflect the Night King’s billing as an arch villain. Considering how rushed the final three episodes felt, it’s clear that the Night King should have been disposed of last season, giving the show a bit more wiggle room to focus on its endgame.

The first four episodes all built up a feud between Daenerys and Sansa that ended up pretty much going nowhere. You could argue that Sansa’s feelings toward Dany helped turn Jon, Tyrion, and Varys against her, but the Northern territorial disputes were hardly needed in that regard. Dany’s burning of King’s Landing superseded any of the peripheral politics.

The show struggled to portray Jon and Dany’s relationship, complicated by a few reasons. Putting aside the incest, Kit Harrington and Emilia Clarke didn’t have much natural chemistry, exacerbated by the show’s reluctance to give them scenes alone together. Jon’s stabbing of Dany made for beautiful cinematography, but the gravity of the moment failed to accurately reflect the underdeveloped nature of their relationship.

For a show ostensibly about the mechanics of power, the idea of having Bran end up on the show is complicated to say the least. His abilities helped turn the tide of the Battle of Winterfell, but the three-eyed raven stayed out of the conflict in King’s Landing. We don’t know if he made the decision based on the knowledge that he’d become king, but we don’t necessarily need to in order to recognize that a monarch shouldn’t possess that kind of absolute power.

The finale acknowledged Tyrion’s mistakes, suggesting he’d spend the rest of his life fixing them, but such a “punishment” perhaps fails to truly acknowledge his role in Dany’s decline. It’s hard to find a single moment in his time as Dany’s Hand where he offered good advice. Why would he be rewarded for such incompetence?

Cersei felt weirdly irrelevant for too much of the season. For all the excellent villains we’ve seen on the show over the years, Cersei has always been the best. The show made the right move placing her as the final big bad over the Night King, but it didn’t give her many opportunities to shine. Instead, she mostly stood around giving orders and not doing much else with her time. The show’s finest manipulator of politics sat on the sidelines for its final stretch, perhaps the strongest encapsulation of the issues with season eight.

The show did offer satisfactory conclusions for many of its key characters, including Arya, Sansa, Brienne, and Jaime. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” worked so well for its focus on characters and not on moving the plot forward a mile a minute. We spent almost a decade with these people. The final season had its share of payoff for that investment, but it was constantly undercut by the rapid nature of the plot.

Finales are difficult to pull off under any circumstance. TV is generally much better at maintaining the status quo than concluding it. With so many loose strands heading into season eight, it seems unlikely that four more episodes would have been able to wrap things up much better than six did. That doesn’t really change the fact that this season spent much of its time poorly, a product of needing to do too many things at once.

Season eight made the regrettable mistake of giving half its time to an underwhelming villain at the expense of the characters who made the show special in the first place. For all the ways this series has felt larger than life over the years, becoming a worldwide phenomenon, its conclusion constantly felt unnecessarily rushed. These characters deserved better.

Monday

20

May 2019

2

COMMENTS

Game of Thrones Season 8 Recap: Episode 6

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The difficulty in pulling off a successful television finale largely boils down to the struggle to present a conclusion that fits in line with the show’s original ethos as well as its natural evolution along the way. Game of Thrones is in the extremely rare position of having been based off source material that itself hasn’t concluded yet, plotting its own course for the past few years. Somehow, a conclusion needed to honor George R.R. Martin’s original vision while still providing a sense of narrative closure for all the ways its deviated from the books. On both fronts, it sort of succeeds.

Bran is king. Does that make sense? Sort of, if you try not to think about it. Philosophers have long grappled with the idea of a philosopher king, a ruler who draws his/her effectiveness through a lack of desire to actually possess power. Trouble is, it’s exceedingly difficult to find one of those people. Bran himself hardly fits the bill.

I’ve tried long and hard throughout these recaps not to excessively pontificate on Bran’s powers. We know he knows a lot of things, but he’s been quite selective in what he chooses to reveal to the others. He helped planned the strategy against the Night King, but did absolutely nothing to warn anyone that Daenerys was planning to burn King’s Landing. Only one of those events posed a true existential threat to his power.

Now, maybe he didn’t bother to look at King’s Landing. We don’t know, but that’s because the show decided not to tell us. It’s fair to wonder what Bran’s motives are. For the entire season, it didn’t seem all that clear. Maybe he’s just as corrupt as the worst of them.

Daenerys’ death makes sense from the perspective of needing to wrap up the series. Trouble is, the show spent parts of the first four episodes building up a fight between Dany and Sansa that never really mattered. Jon killed her. Maybe Sansa’s feud with her played a part in that, but it definitely didn’t need to, what with the whole burning innocents situation and Jon’s chat with Tyrion.

The show treated Dany as a protagonist for all these years, only to pivot toward the idea that she was a narrative nuisance that needed to be dealt with before things could be wrapped up two episodes before the show ended. Two episodes are hardly enough time to present a compelling case that such a major part of the story was now suddenly a horrible monster that should be stabbed before she even got a chance to sit in that chair she’d coveted for most of her life.

Kudos to Drogon for understanding all the symbolism in the Iron Throne enough to see the importance in burning it down.

Why did the other kingdoms accept Bran as ruler while the North kept its independence? Why did we need a king? Obviously wheels can’t be broken overnight, but the show never really sold its audience on the idea that the realm needed to stay together. Dorne, which treasured its independence perhaps more so than any other region, doesn’t have any reason to accept Bran.

Seeing Edmure Tully and Robin Arryn again was fun. I liked how the show attempted to portray the Seven Kingdoms again after years of only focusing on a few of the Great Houses, but their meeting felt a bit too condensed for the scope it was aiming for.

Sansa has probably never met Edmure. The scene where she told him to sit down was fun, but they definitely don’t have any sense of familial relationship. Oddly enough, she never even spoke to cousin Robin, who she spent a bit of time with back in season five.

Jon gets sent back to the Wall, a throwback to what almost happened to Jaime when he killed a Targaryen monarch in the throne room. A fitting end for a boring character, even if we have no idea who controls the Wall, or why they even need one in a post-White Walkers world. Glad he got to finally pet Ghost.

Brienne becoming Lord Commander was a pretty great moment, though I don’t envy a life spent listening to Bran’s nonsense. The scene where she writes Jaime’s name in the White Book, which records all members of the Kingsguard, was sort of touching, except for the fact that Jaime hasn’t been Lord Commander for a while. The show never really invested in him caring about the Kingsguard in the way that the books did, especially in A Feast for Crows.

Eye roll for Bronn as Master of Coin. Why would the Reach accept him as ruler of Highgarden?

Sam is a maester now I guess. Why does he get to leave the Night’s Watch? Does anyone care?

Sansa gets to be the ruler we all knew she was capable of becoming. I just wish she could have been ruler of Westeros, not just the North. Would have made a much better queen than her odious brother.

I hope Bran wrote a nice thank you note to Meera Reed for being by his side all those years, only to be cast aside right at the end of season seven. The way that all played out has me wondering if D&D knew what would happen to Bran. Between that and taking over Hodor’s body all those times, he really doesn’t look all sympathetic.

Arya’s journey would make for a great spinoff. I found her ending to be the most satisfying of all the characters, a great callback to the season four finale where she set sail for Essos. She didn’t get a ton to do this season, but the final moment between the Stark children and their Targaryen cousin Aegon was very touching.

Finales are tough. Few are great, many are terrible, plenty are polarizing, and more than a few fall flat. In terms of being divisive, the Game of Thrones finale seems to occupy the space between Lost and The Sopranos, not quite in the realm of outlandish but certainly not fully satisfying either. Definitely one of those finales that will take some time to sink in. I didn’t love it, but I’m open to the idea of that changing down the road.

That’s it for this week, but there’s still some Thrones content to come. I’ll have my full season review next week, along with the recap podcast tomorrow. To all of you who have read these recaps over the years, thank you. It’s been a pleasure.

Monday

13

May 2019

2

COMMENTS

Game of Thrones Season 8 Recap: Episode 5

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There’s a scene in A Storm of Swords where Stannis remarks that “Ser Barristan once told me the rot in King Aerys court began with Varys. The eunuch should never have been pardoned.” Varys has served five kings, Aerys, Robert, Joffrey, Tommen, and Daenerys. Six if you count those letters he was sending around gossiping about Jon Snow. Has he served any of them well?

Varys has always been a character who claims to care about the greater good, but that kind of manipulative altruism relies heavily on his own desires. As an advisor to Daenerys, he had the ability to use his influence to guide his Queen toward the path he best saw fit, putting aside the problematic nature of that notion. He didn’t do that. Instead, he schemed.

Dany burned a lot of innocent people, looking a lot like her deranged father in the process. Dany has always had that anger inside of her, contrasted with the caring ruler she became in Meereen. In Westeros, she felt unloved, a product of the show’s narrow scope this season.

Assuming Gendry possessed some sort of loyalty to the person who named him Lord of Storm’s End, Dany would have, at least in theory, three major houses supporting her claim. The show doesn’t feature anyone from Houses Tyrell or Martell anymore, but we shouldn’t forget that Dorne and the Reach backed her, along with Yara who now controls the Iron Islands. That’s a big chunk of Westeros, full of people disinclined to back either Cersei or whoever ends up ruling in the North.

No one ever pointed this out to Dany. Not Tyrion, not Varys, not Jon. She feels unloved by Westeros because the show has framed it that way, spotlighting an understandably reluctant North as her primary contrast. From that perspective, a Dany/Jon feud seems inevitable, but from a larger geopolitical point of view, she had a lot more going for her. Until she burned a bunch of civilians.

Are we supposed to care? The character development isn’t great, but this is also a shorter season. The cinematography was spectacular. I loved every minute of the King’s Landing scenes. Sometimes, logic should be damned, especially when it comes to television. TV should be fun. This episode was a blast.

Tyrion looked kind of weird wandering around the battle by himself. He’s been pretty useless for a while now, offering bad advice and scheming to undermine Dany. Sure it was nice that he cared about the innocent people, but Dany just wanted to hear some bells before she went on a killing spree.

Grey Worm killed Harry Strickland. We didn’t need Harry or the Golden Company, but some elephants would have been nice. Not much of a battle.

Euron died happy. Favorite character in season eight. Glad to see he went out with a bang, even if it didn’t make a ton of narrative sense.

Jaime’s scenes totally undercut his relationship with Brienne, but he’s not exactly the kind of character destined for a happy ending. I would have liked to have seen his arc drawn out a little more, but this season did a good job of tying up a few loose strands, particularly with Bran.

I never personally bought into the idea that Arya or Jaime would kill Cersei. She’s pregnant. Sure, the show has killed pregnant people before, namely Talisa Stark (Jeyne Westerling), but heroes tend not to do that kind of stuff. Nobody is going to be mad at a pile of rocks for killing a pregnant villain.

My favorite scenes in the episode involved the random soldiers that first tried to stop Arya and The Hound, as well as Tyrion a bit later on. As much as the show feels larger than life in so many ways, it also tends to only focus on a handful of people in this big world. It is quite easy to forget that there’s all these other people in the realm, just trying to get by.

Jon felt weirdly irrelevant this episode. No one cared to listen to him. That’s usually how I feel. Guessing he’ll be caught in the middle of next episode’s inevitable showdown between Dany and Sansa. I’m not really into his whole reluctant ruler act. Sansa should just be queen instead.

I’ve never been a fan of the idea of Cleganebowl. The Hound is more than just his lust for revenge. As his brother, Gregor Clegane died a long time ago. Definitely wish Sandor didn’t sacrifice himself to take down a walking corpse. Arya and he could have had a great spinoff.

Stay weird Qyburn.

Arya chooses life. Hopefully she goes to Storm’s End and lives happily ever after. I imagine she’ll factor into next episode, but it’s kind of unclear how unless she goes and assassinates Dany, which wouldn’t make a ton of sense considering how this episode played out at the end with Arya choosing life over death.

Plenty of people will dislike this episode, particularly Dany’s heel turn, for perfectly legitimate reasons. I really enjoyed it, mostly because it was good television. Tyrion and Jaime’s goodbye was compelling regardless of the circumstances. Davos is great as always.

I had fun watching it. Sometimes that’s enough. Having done these recaps for years, I know I’ve taken great pleasure in pointing out all the plot holes, shoddy characterizations, and ways the books have done things better. I do greatly enjoy the show though. This season has been far from perfect, but it’s been entertaining. I will certainly miss it when it’s over.

 

Monday

6

May 2019

0

COMMENTS

Game of Thrones Season 8 Recap: Episode 4

Written by , Posted in Blog, Game of Thrones, Pop Culture

Last season presented a simple reason for why Daenerys’ first act in Westeros didn’t involve taking King’s Landing and killing Cersei. If Dany invaded King’s Landing, burning tons of people in the process, everyone would hate her forever and she’d be a bad queen. Except, this isn’t really the reason. Dany didn’t invade the capital because the show needed to keep Cersei around for the final season.

As a result, Cersei got stronger and made allies who could shoot dragons out of the sky with giant sea scorpions. Who knew that the show’s most ruthless villain was also very smart? Tyrion knew all of that and yet he gave Dany a lot of bad advice anyway. Despite this, we don’t get a scene where they hash that out, because apparently, we needed a few focusing on mutiny. So here we are, in a position where Cersei has the upper hand largely because no one else bothered to stop her.

Winterfell was mostly fun, minus the virgin jokes and the Sansa/Hound conversation. Brienne’s sexual past was a weird thing for Tyrion to joke about, having been forcibly married to the woman she’s sworn to defend, while also sitting at a table with his brother who’s only ever had sex with their sister. Strange.

Sansa’s comments about her trauma were easily the low point of the episode. Yes, she’s survived a lot to get where she is. No, she probably wouldn’t still be a “little bird” if that hadn’t all happened. It’s great that she’s become a key player, but it would’ve been nice if the show hadn’t tried to sugar coat rape and abuse like that.

Huzzah for Lord Gendry Baratheon, who apparently isn’t interested in claiming the throne now that he’s a legitimate heir of Robert Baratheon. I liked how Arya turned him down. They had their moment, but she’s not destined for that kind of life. Arya and The Hound should get a spinoff.

Dany and Jon’s bedroom scene was very bad. Mentioning Ser Jorah in a sexual context was gross, but then Dany looked all desperate begging Jon to stay in the bastard closet. Weird that the person who came to save the North now looks weaker than basically everyone else.

We finally got an R + L = J moment that wasn’t right at the end of an episode. Of course, Sansa told Jon’s secret. Why shouldn’t she?

As much as I’ve criticized the Dany/Sansa feud for feeling forced this season, it was at least in service to sensible moments of conflict. The North is tired. Yes, they agreed to help Dany, but that doesn’t mean it has to be done immediately. It’s okay to have conflict about logistics, demonstrating Sansa’s leadership abilities in looking out for her people first.

Bronn is back. Does anyone care? Me neither. Should’ve been killed off last season.

The second half of the episode felt weirdly rushed for a show that took its sweet time taking in the post-apocalypse high. Putting aside how bizarre it was that no scout ship sailed ahead to take a look at Dragonstone, this episode really didn’t need to have a Dany/Tyrion/Cersei confrontation at the end, especially before Jon arrived with the rest of the troops. Why wouldn’t Cersei just order her archers to shoot them all and be done with it?

How did anyone know that Missandei was captured? She could’ve have drowned just as easily. Equally weird that this specific news made it to Winterfell. It’s a shame that she had to die for seemingly no reason. Poor Grey Worm.

Euron is smart enough to shoot a dragon out of the sky, but apparently doesn’t question how Tyrion knows that Cersei is pregnant despite being in the North all season, a clear indicator that the baby isn’t his. Maybe he doesn’t care? Or the show doesn’t care about either situation? I don’t really care either.

R.I.P. Rhaegal. Guess the show’s budget got tired of two dragons. Only one to go.

Could Bran have warned Dany about Euron’s trap? Probably. The fact that he didn’t isn’t necessarily surprising, but it’s weird how no one in the show has tried to fully tap into his superhero powers.

Oh Varys. I’m glad he’s still alive, but these mutinies are a little tiresome. He’s supposed to be a spymaster, not the monarchy’s ombudsman. He should either serve Dany or step aside. No more scheming to switch sides.

Brienne and Jaime happened. Wish they’d left it at that without the whole Jaime leaving bit. I get that it makes sense to send him to King’s Landing, but the Jaime/Cersei plotline is one long-running element of the show I didn’t need to see resolved in these last few episodes.

Tormund’s constant lusting over Brienne was beyond tiresome, but at least he gets to give Ghost a good home. Shame on Jon for not even giving him a pet on the way out. And they think this man should be king? Bah. A man who can’t even say goodbye to his direwolf is not fit to rule.

I hate how the show has portrayed Daenerys since she arrived in Westeros. Sure, something needed to happen to bring her massive army down a few pegs, but the writing for her character has been awful. She could be sitting on the Iron Throne right now if it wasn’t for bad tactical advice. Rather than explore that notion, instead the show’s been painting Jon as the reasonable alternative.

Between R + L = J and the lack of chemistry between Kit Harrington and Emilia Clarke, their romance has suffered a lot over the past few episodes. I just wish the show could figure out what to do with them rather than drag this monarchy quibble out for the whole season. It’s totally unnecessary and quite frankly, boring.

That’s it for this week. I actually mostly enjoyed the episode despite the numerous issues. There’s a lot of pacing questions that will certainly be answered in two weeks, but it’s hard to really get behind the way this episode decided to spend its time. See you next week!

Monday

29

April 2019

0

COMMENTS

Game of Thrones Season 8 Recap: Episode 3

Written by , Posted in Blog, Game of Thrones

The Battle of Winterfell happened, in case you couldn’t tell because of how dark it was. Funny how this was the third big battle the show has done, but for some reason “Blackwater” and “The Watchers on the Wall” both managed to put some extra torches around. You know, for people to actually be able to see what’s going on.

Why is a battle that takes place at the Wall far less blurry than one at Winterfell? The dead might not need to see, but the living sure do. Doesn’t seem like the front line had any sort of a plan until Melisandre showed up to work some R’hllor magic on their hardware.

Why did the Dothraki charge into the abyss? How did Ser Jorah make it back alive after the first wave? How did all those main characters survive the big attack, R.I.P. Dolorous Edd of course. Does Daenerys have more than a dozen troops left?

That battle was bad. It was boring, hard to see, and lacked a sense of narrative drive behind its various sequences. A viewer could, of course, follow along, but too often the characters seemed to be going through the motions, until the time came for them to do something out of left field.

Last episode really could have used a scene where the characters explain how the battle is supposed to unfold. That doesn’t mean this episode needs to actually follow the plan, but it would’ve made Jon & Dany’s dragon ride seem a little less spontaneous. I’d say maybe they were looking for the Night King, but the part of the plan that we do know involved luring him to to the Godswood. Why were they flying around instead of covering their own troops? Who knows.

The Arya library scene, in particular, reeked of something the writers thought would be cool, so they threw in a whole suspense sequence right in the middle of a battle for the entire north. Where was everyone else? It’s not even a bad scene, but one that felt weirdly out of place as the entire castle was being overrun.

Did we need that scene in the crypts where Sansa complains to Tyrion about Dany? The show’s been trying to sell the Starkgaryen feud for three episodes now, but it’s simply not that compelling. Obviously there needs to be some kind of drama for the remaining episodes, but it’s been a hard sell with the whole potential end of the world looming.

The crypts turned out to not be a very safe place to hide. I get that no one really wanted to bring up the idea of burning all the old Stark corpses, but the carnage was utterly predictable. Very surprised that Varys survived.

Poor Beric. He died a noble, predictable death. Book Beric has been dead since just after the Red Wedding, so it’s been good to have some extra time with the character. He can be with Thoros now.

Ser Jorah is dead!!!! Finally. Longtime readers of these recaps know how much I hate that creepy disease-riddled pervert. It’s too bad we never got to see ice zombie Jorah so someone could have killed him again. Seeing Dany’s tears of joy over not having to deal with his nonsense anymore was my favorite part of the episode.

Lyanna Mormont had the saddest death. The breakout star of season six went out with a bang, taking a zombie giant down with her. Too bad she won’t be around to become Hand of the Queen when Sansa takes the crown from her odious brother/cousin.

Theon has never been one of my favorite characters, but Reek got an ending that was fitting for his character. His last hurrah fell kind of flat, but so did that whole sequence. At least his storyline got a sensible conclusion.

Arya snuck pasts hundreds of white walkers to catch the Night King by surprise! Great moment, sure. Great writing, absolutely not. The whole Godswood scene fell pretty flat, perhaps suffering under the weight of all the hype. I’m glad Arya got to be the one to stick him with the pointy end, but I’m also oddly glad that it’s over.

Sam looked pretty dead, but maybe he was just hiding in the dead bodies. Jon battling zombie Viserion while all the major characters fought to their last breaths made for some great cinematography, but it is a bit weird to think that all the major players from that sequence ended up surviving. The death count did kind of look a little low by the end of things.

Melisandre finally got her time to shine, even if it involved dying in the snow after removing her jewelry. For a character the show hasn’t known what to do with since she brought Jon back, Mel’s sendoff was pretty well-executed. It was a weird choice to try and tie in all the Arya/Mel stuff from season three, but it was pretty enjoyable to watch.

Episode three was preceded by two full episodes dedicated to building up the battle. Half of the entire final season was given to making sure this battle made TV history. That’s a lot of stock to put into one battle where no one seemed to have a clue what was going on. The setup ended up being far better than the execution.

The final battle with the ice zombies was always going to have to deal with a lot of hype. It’s something we’ve pretty much known about since the prologue of A Game of Thrones more than twenty years ago. That’s a long time to wait for something that ended up being basically a riff on The Phantom Menace’s ending, blowing up the Night King control ship to destroy the battle droid ice zombies.

While this probably isn’t going to be the last battle of the whole show, it was hyped up as the big one. It might have been the most expensive TV battle ever shot, but it wasn’t a particularly good one. It’s a good thing the writers realized Cersei made for a much better villain than the Night King, because it’s up to her to get the season back on course. Hopefully she gets some elephants. Something needs to live up to the hype.

That’s it for this week. If you’re looking for more Game of Thrones coverage, you can check out my new podcast’s recap tomorrow. See you next week!

Monday

22

April 2019

0

COMMENTS

Game of Thrones Season 8 Recap: Episode 2

Written by , Posted in Blog, Game of Thrones, Pop Culture, Reviews

Ideally, final seasons of long-running series seek to achieve two objectives, to remind fans why they fell in love with the show in the first place and to provide a satisfactory conclusion for the narrative arcs of their characters. Game of Thrones has had its eye on fan service for a few seasons now, perhaps best illustrated through Gendry’s reintroduction last year, when Ser Davos acknowledged the long-running “still rowing” meme. Episode two, appropriately titled “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” was an episode chock full of fan service.

Death is coming to Winterfell. Characters we’ve spent the last eight years with are going to die. As much as the show has emphasized the role of death with its high body count, Game of Thrones has usually done a good job emphasizing the larger narrative arcs of its key players. Season six serves as perhaps the one exception, where numerous characters were unceremoniously killed off in what looked like an effort to clear pieces off the board.

Episode two featured a lot of hanging out, waiting for the world to end. Like the premiere, reunions were in abundance. Moments that fans have wished for over the past decades finally came to fruition.

Ser Brienne has a nice ring to it. After all she’s been through, it was great to see Brienne finally get the recognition she’s long deserved. Women catch a lot of crap in Westeros, but it was great to see her receive the title that best suits her abilities. Gwendoline Christie handled the scene masterfully, letting the typically stoic Brienne take in her moment with plenty of emotion.

Ever since the first episode, fans have wondered what would happen to Jaime if he ever saw that boy he pushed out the window again. Turns out, not much, as was to be expected. I don’t love the idea that he still didn’t tell anyone about what happened, but such a revelation would’ve called for actions that the episode clearly didn’t care about. Bran’s not angry, might as well let that be that.

Bran also isn’t a very helpful battle strategist. I get that the show doesn’t want to fully deploy Bran ex machina, but this whole “use Bran as bait to lure the Night King” seems kind of ridiculous. We’re still not 100% sure what Bran knows about everything, but the idea of having Theon protect you seems fairly half baked.

Arya and Gendry. What a pair. No more “will they, won’t they.” They did it. Is there anything more to say? Probably not. For a girl who’s been as consumed with death as Arya has, it was great to see her have a moment like that with someone she cared about. Hopefully Bran wasn’t watching.

Davos cooked soup! Is there anything this man can’t do? Expert battle survivalist, master chef, all-around great guy. Hoping for the best for new Shireen.

Daenerys and Sansa are seemingly destined for conflict. Why? Because there’s time to fill, of course! Not the greatest conflict, two people fighting over a monarchy when the army of the dead is right at their doorstep, but the show does need a few conflicts to carry it to the end once that’s all finished.

The Dany/Tyrion conflict also seems quite born out of an interest to have something to argue about after next episode. Yes, Cersei lied to them. No, that’s not surprising to anyone. Does that make Tyrion a bad Hand? Sort of, but there isn’t really anyone else up for the job, a job that hasn’t really seemed all that important at all. His judgment isn’t really at fault here, other than the fact that he didn’t stop that idiotic quest beyond the Wall last season.

Ser Jorah got a few great moments. He got told off by Lyanna, received a fancy new toy from Sam, and had Dany tell him that Tyrion took his job. Hopefully this means he’ll die next episode! What else is there for him to do?

Beric Dondarrion sure looks like a goner. Great voice. What a man. He’ll be with Thoros soon.

We got to see Ghost again too! Direwolves haven’t been a big part of the show in recent years, likely a casualty of the CGI budget, but it’s great to see him around for the big battle. Somebody should give him a dragon glass retainer to bite white walkers with.

One of either Grey Worm or Missandei appears quite destined for death next episode. My money’s on Missandei, since I think Theon and Varys are also unlikely to survive the battle. Can’t kill all the eunuchs is one fell swoop!

R + L = J has been the definitive fan theory to rule all fan theories for the past twenty years. In the two episodes since its reveal in the season seven finale, we’ve seen it treated as essentially a footnote. Jon wasn’t in this episode much, but when he was, he sure wasn’t talking about his new parents. At least, not until he took Dany into the crypts of Winterfell.

Was the eve of a massive battle the right time to tell her? No. Obviously not.

The show has had close to a decade to figure out how to handle its biggest secret. The method it’s decided on appears to be to walk things as slowly as possible, something it’s done in tandem with all of Bran’s Three-eyed Raven powers. The result created this weird situation where Dany questions how Bran knows this stuff, putting aside the fact that no one appears to have told her what’s going on with the middle Stark child. The show just needs to pull the R + L = J band-aid off once and for all.

No scenes in King’s Landing this week, which I guess is fitting given that the next episode is going to be taken up mostly by the battle. Overall, this was a very enjoyable episode. We got to see many of our favorite characters interact for what could be the last time. Some of it was a little forced, but that’s okay. After all these years, a little fan service is not a bad way to spend an episode, especially since next week looks to be pretty brutal.

That’s it for this week. Tune in tomorrow to the Estradiol Illusions podcast to hear our roundtable analysis. See you next week!

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