House of the Dragon: Time to finally open up about Game of Thrones
Greetings everyone! So if you didn’t notice yet, HBO has just released the first official teaser for their new show, House of the Dragon. Before we get started, please see below!
House of the Dragon, is, of course, the first spin-off from the critically acclaimed show, Game of Thrones. Very exciting! And, obviously, “the biggest tv show of all time” is going to have multiple spin-offs, prequels, etc. and everyone is going to love them! Be overjoyed to watch them! Can’t wait! Well, I am here to tell you that:
I DO NOT GIVE A FLYING SHIT.
That’s right! I do not care! At all! You can’t mess something up this bad and then think you can just go ahead and fix it with HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. What a stupid frigging name. It’s about the Targaryen’s right? Just name the show FIRE AND BLOOD. YOU IDIOTS.
Maybe I do care. Maybe I cared too much. Maybe that’s the problem. It has been almost two and a half years since the finale of Game of Thrones and I haven’t written anything substantial on it. I haven’t been able to. The thought of sitting here and typing a thousand words about the greatest failure in television history makes me want to vomit all over my computer screen. But after the trailer came out today and I got several texts asking if I had watched while also seeing nonsensical tweets like these:
…I am finally ready to shit all over Game of Thrones. Let’s do this.
Not even sure where to start! I think I’m just going to pick the first thing that comes to me and word vomit my way to the end of this thing. How about we start with how this was supposed to be the best show of all time. It was my favorite show, along with millions and millions of others and now I can’t even stand to think about it. That’s how much these guys messed this thing up.
The first four seasons, by themselves, might be the best four seasons of television of all time. They probably are. HBO could have ended it right there, but why would they? The last few episodes of season four are incredible! Remember when the Mountain destroyed Oberyn’s face?? The battle at the wall? Tyrion’s trial?!?! Peter Dinklage sneering at the crowd and demanding his trial by combat is some of the best acting I’ve ever seen.
It couldn’t go down hill from here, right? Right?!?! Warners Brothers has an impeccable track record recently! Well then season five came out. Boy what a snoozefest. The sparrows decide to take over King’a Landing. The most boring people on the planet took over the show, and we got just about two full seasons of it. Not that this was a huge surprise to some as anyone who has read the books knows that A Feast for Crows is the worst book in the series. It’s long and pretty much nothing happens.
And here’s some more of that crappy ass decision making by the producers of the show. They changed the Dorne storyline and made it considerably worse and terrible in the show. They totally butchered Arya’s training in Braavos. OYSTERS CLAMS AND COCKLES!!!!!! But then somehow they saved the entire fifth season with a scene that isn’t even in the damn books. Hardhome. Thank you for blowing my brain.
Now while we are on the subject of the books, let’s dive into George RailRoad Martin. Dude what are you doing? How has The Winds of Winter not even been released yet? Obviously it’s too long and you’re adding in too many things, but this is ridiculous. DO LESS GEORGE. But despite all that, I’m spiraling. This isn’t your fault, Georgie. You gave them five books and almost six seasons worth of material. You told them how it ends. They just had to execute. David and D.B., I hate you to the end of time.
So fifth season sucked. Sixth was better! The storyline was much improved, everything moved along nicely, and we got probably got the two best episodes the show has ever seen at the end of the season. The Battle of the Bastards is an all time battle in both TV and movies, while the first 25 minutes of The Winds of Winter are arguably the greatest 25 minutes of TV that I have ever watched. Literally perfect. Season couldn’t have ended on a higher note. So really, in despite of the mess that is season five, we are still on track for the greatest TV show of all time after six seasons. Then this happened and changed everything:
BENIOFF: It’s two more seasons we’re talking about. From pretty close to the beginning, we talked about doing this in 70-75 hours, and that’s what we’ll end up with. Call it 73 for now. What Dan says is really true, but it’s not just trying not to outstay your welcome. We’re trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. As Dan said, we’ve known the end for quite some time and we’re hurtling towards it. Those last images from the show that aired last night showed that. Daenerys is finally coming back to Westeros; Jon Snow is king of the North and Cersei is sitting on the Iron Throne. And we know the Night King is up there, waiting for all of them. The pieces are on the board now. Some of the pieces have been removed from the board and we are heading toward the end game. The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it’s not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it’s trying to figure out new story lines. We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it. We wanted to something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story. We’re definitely heading into the end game now. – DEADLINE
Don’t feel like reading that all? Fine. Let me break it down for you. This is where D&D first announced that the end of the series would be 13 episodes across two final seasons. After explaining how they have all of these “chess pieces” on the boar at the end of season six, they needed them all to come to a head and they didn’t want to drag it out. In retrospect, how hilarious is it that he said “end game” twice? There was a debate in the spring of 2019 about whether or not the final season of Thrones or the movie, Avengers: Endgame would be better? HAHAHA WE KNOW NOW.
Okay, so 13 episodes to go. Who knows, this might be manageable. We just have to get Dany across the narrow sea, confront Cersei and her army, meet Jon, have Jon convince both of them to fight against the zombies in the North, have the wall come down so the zombies can attack them, defeat the zombies, maybe take a breather, fight for Westeros, and crown a true king/queen. I’ll admit, I foolishly thought for a second that squeezing all that into 13 episodes might be tight, but I didn’t question it too much. Welp, what a mistake. Didn’t know teleportation was a thing yet.
The first five episodes of season seven are actually pretty great. Which is even more sad thinking about how much they royally effed up the final eight episodes. Eight episodes is all it took to turn the best series ever into potentially the worst. You really start to appreciate the earlier seasons when you see the crap they pull at the end. Remember back in the day when it took three episodes to travel from Winterfell to King’s Landing? The story actually was able to develop. People had conversations. Tyrion plotted. Sansa cried. It was amazing TV. Hell, the only good episode in the final season is one where they are literally TRAVELING. I truly believe that 20 episodes to finish instead of 13 makes this show the best of all time. Seven Goddamn episodes was all it took. So why didn’t it happen? Even RailRoad Martin didn’t understand:
Here’s what happened. Benioff and Weiss got egos. Big ones. You could say egos the size of a galaxy far, far, away. They had created something based off incredible source material and turned it into a world wide phenomenon. They got noticed. They even landed their very own Star Wars trilogy…. until they didn’t. It wasn’t long into the final season of Thrones that they suddenly weren’t apart of that anymore. My opinion? FIRED! As soon as Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm and Disney saw these guys knew nothing about creating something new, they were kicked to the curb. Nobody taught these guys how to write! Not to mention, they couldn’t even see Thrones to the finish. I mean look at what they did in the final season of GoT.
Where to start. How about the biggest blunder in history: The Long Night. The epic battle between man and the dead was supposed to be the greatest battle in the history of battles, both television and movies. Naturally it was the opposite. First off, I know it was night time, but the whole episode was so dark. You couldn’t see a thing. Sham knows what he is talking about here. Building on that, which is way worse in my opinion, was the amount of time wasted in the sky. Obviously dragons were a big part of this episode, but when there’s clouds everywhere because of the storm raging overhead, we really don’t need the shots of the dragons in the sky because, well, you can’t see them through the clouds. Upon second viewing of this I actually decided to time out how much crappy screen time there was of dragons in the clouds. It was about four and a half minutes of wasted time. That’s about how long the Red Wedding took.
The battle was boring. 82 Minute episode with about 15 minutes of decent action. You have all of these characters jammed into one place and we didn’t even get a fun face-off. Didn’t we deserve a big fight between The Hound, Jorah, Beric, Jon, etc. and a bunch of White Walkers? Wouldn’t that have been freaking amazing? Nope. Didn’t get it. All we got was BRAN AND THE NIGHT KING STARING AT EACH OTHER. And then after all that, after 70 episodes of build, Arya just stabs him in the gut and it’s over. Cool, I guess? But like what was the point of Arya being a faceless man? Just so she could kill Walder Frey? Waste of a two season arc for her if you ask me.
And how could we forget about Bran. The boy that went from an okay character, to an annoying character, back to an okay character, to missing an entire season, to becoming the worst, most hated “good guy” character of all time. No offense to the actor, as it was a near impossible job, but the guy was unbearable in his Three-Eyed Raven state. AND THEN they had the audacity to just give him the Iron Throne at the end! What a joke. WHAT A JOKE.
I can’t do this anymore. I’m so mad. Dany goes bananaland in an instant with almost no build. Jon kills her with zero resistance. Gets banished. Arya bails. Bran gets the Iron Throne. So ridiculous. At least Sansa’s storyline felt justified. But it wasn’t enough. This rushed hackjob is the worst of worst.
People who haven’t watched Thrones ask me if they should watch, and I actually hesitate to respond. It’s insane. It’s the best TV show of all time for four seasons for sure, and possibly even for six. But I can’t actually ask them to stop there. It’s impossible. They have to watch the shit. The biggest hack job of all time. The greatest failure ever. People shouldn’t have to feel this way. So don’t watch it.
Why are we here again? Oh yeah. House of the Dragon. Lol. Still can’t believe that is what it’s called. Of course I’ll watch it, but I also watch a lot of other bad TV shows, so why would this be any different? But I’ll give it a shot! I’m just happy knowing that it won’t disappoint me, and it’ll crush the souls of the thousands that actually think it’ll be worth their time.
Apparently the “readability” of this post is “☹️” but ya know what, Game of Thrones doesn’t deserve anything else.
George RailRoad Martin h/t to me