House Of The Dragon

Yeah, it was fine.

Much where I'm at. Characters will take a while to settle down but I liked Matt Smith hamming it up and the small council is always entertaining.

Enjoyable nonsense, even if it's a story that doesn't really need to be told.

Jesus mate, dani isn’t 140 years old

It took them a hundred years or so to find her a husband outside the family.

Not surprised S2 has already been confirmed.

That awkward moment when you're balls deep in somone on all fours right in the middle of the brothel and someone gives a speech so you stop mid-thrust and maintain position.

I think I meant more that the first episode of GoT sets up a heap of relationships, tensions and power dynamics (and yeah, ends with an incest-inspired child-murder) and mysteries, that’s all just pregnant with intrigue. HoTD episode 1 tries to do the same thing but feels utterly derivative in comparison, like those straight to video movies that come out sounding similar to an original hit movie. Instead of scenes that suggest a subtext and vast history of complex tradition, like Ned Stark beheading that guy,  it’s got gross genital violence and lack of due process, to show us that Dr Who is a brutal guy, like they wanted to skip ahead to Ramsay Bolton straight away.

I didn’t hate it, but it’s off to a much lesser start, and hopefully finds its own reason for existing as a story, beyond squeezing more views out of an exhausted property.

I thought the second episode was better. Didn’t rely on gross shit, just tensions and chess moves.

Paddy feels very miscast as the king or maybe it's just the character being so dithery.
The whole thing feels like the BBC period drama writers and actors have got the keys the Game of Thrones set. Maybe I should rewatch GoT but this feels much weaker to me. Still, I'll keep watching in the hope it picks up. A few unexpected deaths should help.

To me it just seemed incredibly cheap to reuse the GoT theme wholesale. At least re-record it with a new arrangement or something, if it were really so hard to work with the Targaryen theme from GoT into a title sequence,

Yeah the title animation is crap, the original was an absolute classic marriage of music and visuals.

OTH I've really enjoyed it this week, it's nice to get back to dialogue, intrigue and acting and away from zombies and Michael Bay.

As a book wanker I couldn't be happier with these 2 episodes, they're doing a fantastic job setting up what's to come. Some great shots too, you could pick almost any shot from that bridge scene on Dragonstone as wallpaper.

Does the city sculpture that the King is working on have any significance? I can't help but think I've seen it somewhere before in GoT

Cool, just seen the bit in ep 2 where he talks about that bit! :-)

Was wondering if it was part of the set in GoT? just seems really familiar as if it's something we've meant to have seen before