The Watch - 'House of the Dragon' S1E2

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Chris and Andy break down the second episode of 'House of Dragon,' talking about some of the reservations that they had about this episode (1:00), the intricate politics the show is introducing (21:12), and more moments from the episode (33:53). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, my name is Dave Gonzalez, and I haven't read any of the books in George R. Martin's The Song of Bison Fire. I'm Joanna Robinson. I've read every book in George R. Martens, A Song of Ice and Fire. And I'm Neil Miller, and I have also read all of those books. We are headed back to Westeros to cover the Game of Thrones spin-off series, House of the Dragon. We'll be answering your question, so send us a raven at trial by content at gmail.com. Take some bread and salt and join us Thursdays on the trial by content feed, and don't worry, you're safe. The reins of Castamere hasn't even been written yet. You know about one and three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling?

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Imagine being a million miles away. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimfaya. Tap this ad to learn more about Trimfaya, including important safety information. This episode is brought to you by Brooks. Running connects us to a rush of energy that flows through our world. The cheers of friends that unlock a new gear within us, the intersection of interest that inspires a run crew,

the support that gets you over the finish line. Connection is why we move forward and what inspires us to keep going. Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need supports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello, and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan.

I am an editor at the ringer.com and joining me on the other line. He was all for naming this episode, How I Met Your Father. It's Andy Greenwald. Ooh, finally we get the spinoff we've been wanting. Oh, wait, they made that show. I'm sorry. I'm a little behind. Man, you need to put some respect on Hillary Duff's name.

We're talking about House of the Dragon here today, though, Andy. Episode two, we see the screener, so we don't know what it's called. We know that our boy Greg Yutanis directed it, which is pretty sick. Banshee. Shout out Corey. Did a very nice job on that. And we're going to break it down. We can start with some general thoughts, Andrew. Second episode, we get over the spectacle.

We get over the massive character introductions that we had in the first episode. What did you think of the second one? Well, I think it's relevant to begin with something that happens near the end of the episode when our boy, Damon Targaryen and Lord Coralus have a little chat, little fireside, Ted-a-Tet, just blonde on blonde as the song goes. Two guys talking about crab feeders by the fire. Two guys talking about their favorite Nirvana album, Bleach. And the conversation is about second sons, right?

And second sons don't get respected. Second sons get overlooked. Second sons are challenging. And the same can be said about second episodes. We've talked about it before in this podcast. And it's kind of a truism on both sides of the industry, whether you're in the audience. I think people are up on this or whether you're working on things.

Second episodes are the hardest. And it's not dissimilar to an analogy you've made before about bands having their whole life to make their first record and then having eight months to make their second. That's not my idea. It's my analogy. I mean, like I've said an analogy. You've used it a bunch recently. Yeah, I've used it. But you didn't invent that.

But similarly, like the pilot, particularly for this show, had to do so much. And we're recording this after the HBO has released, released the ratings. And it succeeded. They're reporting 10 million viewers for the first airing, which is just outrageous. especially in this bifurcated and fractured age. So the pilot did its job. The second episode has to convince you to stick around, and it has to give you a sense of what the series is going to be.

And I think that while I'm still broadly positive about the show, because I enjoy watching it, and it's pretty nice to have it in our lives week to week, this episode did leave me with some questions about the decision-making behind the scenes that make me not as bullish about the show going forward as I may have been last week. All of this is to say, though, the giant caveat that this is two episodes now of a show

that is absolutely as a foregone conclusion will be renewed through at least two, probably three, maybe more season. So it is not relevant to be worried now, but I thought it was interesting when we begin our conversation of the decision making to kind of get into it and wonder about where we are and how we got where we are already. Yeah, I mean, two episodes isn't enough to adjust a credit rating, you know? No, absolutely not. The bank of the watch works.

I thought that this was a very dense and chatty episode. And it took me a little while to get my sea legs. I'm like I'm watching it while traveling. So it's like a little bit like jet lag infused viewing. I hope. The tolls on these shipping lanes are just out of control. Yeah, I thought that like, I think that one of the things that jumped out at me first. And I thought we could maybe start here was through no fault of any one performer.

skills or talent or anything, it just really leapt out at me how Matt Smith and Eve Best are the ones who know what show they're in and that they were having, maybe not the most fun isn't the right word because I don't know if you'd be like, I'm marrying off my teenage daughter to a king.

Like, that's super fun. It's more just like Eve Best seems to have, and she plays Rainies, but she seems to have internalized the language of the show the best. And her and Matt Smith seem to be able to be scary, tragic, fun, dark, whatever you want. Like, they can do all these different things,

and they seem to have the most sense of play, the biggest sense of play with the words. Could I throw a third iron onto the fire? A shout out Jack Donegie, a third heat. Yeah. Reesie funds as Otto High Tower. Especially in that bridge scene, when he's just like, sheaths your fucking swords.

Like, that was like, okay, this is good. He's, I mean, he also has, he has it in the sense that he is a British, actor of great renown who also has a bizarre and unique fire inside of him. We've seen in very, very different roles. I mean, he was the lizard in the Spider-Man movies recently, you know? And so him doing restraint, him doing Shakespearean board-trotting kind of glower, is out of character for him in a way that makes me excited to see what else is going to emerge. So I really enjoy his presence as well.

And I agree with you. They are solid planks to, I don't want to do another boat metaphor, especially before we get to the crab stuff. So they give me a sense of solidity and I agree with you. Yeah. And you know what it is? It's kind of been funny watching this so far is sometimes I can't tell if I look back on early Game of Thrones through the lens of the totality of the series.

So when you watch those first few episodes, that first season even, yeah, there's stuff there's stuff that ventures outside of King's Landing, obviously. But I think I see the world that the show inhabits as being bigger because of what I wound up seeing over the course of all those seasons

rather than the first season. And I'm having a little bit of a hard time seeing that so far with House of the Dragon. And that's why like when they went to the bridge in this episode, I felt like my spirits rise not only because it was just such a stunning sequence, but also because I was like,

great, you guys got out of that fucking room. You know, listen, you are exactly, you're nailing it, and I think you're being overly generous. The first season of Game of Thrones was notable because immediately we were following at least four or five different plot lines and our old TV brains were like, well, this DeNaris Targaryen character, well, clearly she's going to meet John Snow by season's end. Right. We couldn't even imagine the idea that they wouldn't meet until season six or whatever it ended up being. We were immediately thrown to the wind, scattered, in a bunch of different plot lines,

and which gave the show a sense of grandeur and drive and momentum. And when I was speaking about decision-making, I mean, I think that's what I mean. This show is laser-focused on the machinations of this court. We have spent more time in the small council of this particular Targaryen rain than we did in like five seasons of the first show. I was going to say, I really want to see these guys Google Calendar and does it just say small council like every two hours?

And then sometimes they're going off book and they're like, we have to have this ad hoc meeting of the small council. Don't you think the grand maister at one point is going to be like, guys, this meeting could have been a raven. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like they, they meet way too much.

Vassaris is a real big, like, you don't need to CC me on this. He would not be into work from home. You know what I mean? Like he would not, he would just, he'd be like, I'd, if he could build a model of the home that he was working from. And then he was really sick. This is like a Charlie Coffin movie. His sense of viral responsibility, considering his body is decaying from the flesh in, and he doesn't seem to be quarantining.

So I don't think he's that concerned about. We're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about the medicine. But what I mean is it's a very interesting choice. And I can't help but think about this show in terms of the financial calculus that went into it. And what I mean is this is Warner's prize. This is everything. They are not skimping on this show, and that's very clear from the VFX to the cast,

et cetera, et cetera. That said, Game of Thrones was, you know, it was a balloon mortgage of a show in that it was very expensive at the beginning, but it became obscenely expensive at the end, and that was the bet that they made, that they wouldn't have to show the dragons until later. This show comes in with the expectations of the last three seasons of Game of Thrones, and it begins with dragons. It's in the title, so they have to show the dragons. But we still live in David Zazlav's world, baby.

They can't just spend dragon money start to finish. And so what we get is a very interesting hybrid of a show that is essentially on standing sets for 90% of the episode. Yeah. And then one dragon sequence per ep. They are amortizing everything in a very interesting way. And the effect is one of whiplash. I was feeling, and maybe you could hear it in my intro a little bit, like I was feeling more negative than I thought I was going to feel in the first 20, 30 minutes of this episode coming off of the high of the pilot.

And then you get the bridge sequence. And once the bridge sequence is over, I'm like, oh, well, this is the rhythm of this show. And we're going to have to adjust to it. But that said, it is robbing us of something. They keep talking about the realm and the crown and the land and the people, but we never see them. And we have no representative characters of them, which not only limits the scope of the storytelling and our emotional stakes in it. It's also falling prey so far, and I'm not sure this is going to happen long term because I think that people involved are very smart. But it's the Han Solo problem. We don't have one. We don't have a Han or a Tyrion being like, what the fuck's up with these guys in their hair? Isn't this all sort of silly? Yeah, right, exactly.

So it is absolutely humorless and thus the portentiousness of it is dependent on the dramatic chops of the actors delivering it. Which are good. Yeah. Which are uniformly good, but can waver. You know what I mean? Like when Matt Smith is now exiled to Dragonstone, again, this is also very classic Game of Thrones storytelling where the characters that Spark

are kept apart. Like for me, Millie Alcock and Matt Smith and that relationship, the bad uncle with the niece whom he can't help but love and respect because they see something in each other, that's the dynamic. Super wholesome, super sexy. I want to

say. Nothing questionable going on. But that is, to me, the spark that's fueling the fire here. And we only get a small amount of it because, again, of the nature of the show. So, when I talk about decision making, these decisions might make sense financially.

They also might make sense in terms of scope because this is a show that was not designed like many shows are to be like, we're going to leave it all on the floor. We're lucky to get eight episodes. They know they're getting at least 30, if not many more. So they can take their time. But, like what was that guy's name or what reference did they make to something? And so, you know,

there's all this stepstones and everything and, and, uh, just in prepping. And if you Google it and you, and you look up some of these people, you're like, oh, that's going to happen. Like, you know, I, I, I feel like I can't quite live in a, in a world where I don't, I have total blinders on from week to week. But it's also interesting to kind of contrast what's on screen with what is this sort of dense history of these people and like what we're going to at what we may or may not see you know you mentioned the word oh go for it can i ask a question about that this is this is the other and this i don't want to know how it ends could you tell me that would really save me some time over the next three to seven years um this is a hundred percent concern trolling but it is it but is legitimately a question we always get

into uh shout to the stepstones choppy waters when we talk about georgia r martin or the texts or the inspiration or whatever. But I am curious. And, you know, maybe we can talk. I know you can talk to Mallory and Joanna about this. Like, George R. Martin is back baby. He is co-creator of the show. He's back doing press. He's back in the fold. He's in the hive. And he's getting a little bit of a, not a revenge tour, but he's getting a tour to be like, you know, and he's popping off Lucy's. It's the EBW zone for him. It's everything but writing. Yes. But there's also, there's some strays. right? Like I told them the first show should have been like 10 or 11 seasons. It's just like, you want to move to Belfast for 12 years?

Like that there were other things that play, but he was probably right about the length. Anyway, I find it interesting, again, from a very casual perspective, that his focus over the last few years seems to be primarily myth-making, world-building, and legacy-shaping, rather than narrative advantage. I'm saying. Now, writing is hard. Writing sucks. I am not here to be like, finish the book, because I don't ever want to write a book again. It's a nightmare. I get it. And I didn't write books like he wrote books. But I think that it's interesting to consider when we look at this show's particular, at least through two episodes, interests and obsessions. And they are laser-focused on

history, court protocol, succession, the kinds of things that fill out a like a, like a, glossary in a companion text, as opposed to here are bleeding heart human people amidst a messy universe. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I didn't anticipate having this long of a kind of general conversation about the episode, but what you're bringing up is really interesting, where in the same way that the end of Game of Thrones probably had a George-shaped hole in it because they took it past the books and possibly made some decisions that he didn't sanction. There is a little bit of a

Benny Off and Weiss-shaped hole on this show. And the thing that I, that leapt out at me was, you know, at one of the final, when they have the small council meeting where Vassaris announces that he's going to marry Millison, right? Allison, my bad. This is going to be, these names are going to be hard. I'm sorry.

This is going to be a tough one for us. When he announces that he's marrying Allison, he starts the meeting, I think, by saying Good Morrow. He does. I flagged that too. And I was like, huh.

I was like, I wonder, has anyone ever said that in a Game of Thrones show before? Like, I'm not going to control F and find it. But that's just one of those like high fantasy things that you never really, that they kind of shed in Game of Thrones.

Because you kind of felt like Benny Off and Weiss were writing more of a political thriller, family drama that use this language, but with dialects drawn from maybe their own experiences or from a more contemporary or relatable environment? I don't know. I'm just playing around with this. It's an important point to make. And I think it's also important to, once again, just caveat this. Like, we're two episodes in. And also, we from the complete outside, are always going to overrate and underrate, you know, depending on the context or the nature of our feelings about something, meaning I'm sure we underrated George Martin's

contributions to the Game of Thrones series. And now, you know, as the pendulum shifts, we were probably overrating things that Benioff and Weiss brought to the table. Similarly, you know, we don't yet have a grasp on the ruling triumvirate, the triad kingdom of this show. But it's worth considering the shifting sands and shifting power structure, because this is a show that is being run by not run by that is being led by, whether actively boots on the ground in the UK and Europe or just spiritually by George Martin, you know, text, text keeper, high maister, Miguel Sopachnik, who is visually crucial to this now, whose visual style in the first series kind of defined it and helped sell that pilot as Game of Thrones. Yeah. And Ryan Condal, who's like, I want to honor

George's work and work in collaboration. And then Ryan Conno, who came in, yes, who came in a different way to this than David Beniof did, who then brought along his buddy, Dan Weiss, who was a writer in his own right. But like, Beniof was and is an acclaimed novelist and screenwriter who HBO wanted to work with. And they were like, we love these books. And it all kind of came together, right? And the defined power at the beginning was different. Condal, who I hope we'll get to speak to, has a very difficult and different juggling act to advance the type of writing that interests him while also serving the visual palette and the fans and then also directly working with George. So it's just a, it's a different balance. And I guess what I'm trying to say is not my hesitation about this episode are not

existential fundamental criticisms about this project. It's just, it's interesting to note the kind of shifting what's prioritized and what isn't and bring it all the way back to your point. Yeah, there's a lot more talking in rooms than I anticipated from a show with Dragon in the title. And thus far, that talking kind of lacks the spark of a Tyrion and delivering. I would, I I would just say feel free to talk as much as you want in rooms. Like, that's why we watch Succession. That's why we watch Industry. That's why we watch Better Call Solid.

It's like, for the most part, the shows that we respond to are interior dialogue-heavy shows. Like, it's not like we're, we have to like retrain our brains to watch something other than Falcon the Winter Soldier or something. But it is kind of, if you're going to kind of trap yourself in there and do all this work where there's all these exposition dumps and and Corliss is to talk. about like the minutia of shipping lines and maritime law and maritime law and all this stuff that we only really see in quick cuts you know we get like a few cuts to the Kingsguard I think named Sir Ryan which is a tough beat getting getting wiped out in the beginning and then in the end where we get our crab feeder reveal like he's kind of he's kind of just like he might as well be describing you know the menu of like a Nando's or something like that like I it's it's it's just

my imagination for the most part. So you have to pepper that stuff or give these guys stuff to play with and stuff to have fun with so that you remember the conversation, not just the information being processed in it. And because the focus is on the larger show building and world building or at least stakes building elsewhere, I think some of the more subtle things that I feel like the show is rightly interested in, if not proud of, get a little bit lost and stepped on. So that I guess I'm curious what you think. Like him saying at the end, I'm in a Mary Allison, was that meant to be surprising to anyone watching the show?

And I don't mean that with like Venom or snark in my voice. That just felt like we were going where we were headed since the first meeting in the first episode. You know, when she went to his chambers. I think it was mostly supposed to be surprising for Renew. The characters. Yeah. And it was supposed to be surprising for Corliss.

But obviously they had had this connection. And Otto had sent up, he'd set this. hoping that something like this would happen and taking advantage of trying to unite their two families. So, I mean, I didn't know whether or not that was supposed to... The thing that was interesting was...

And I think this will be kind of like teased out in the third episode, presumably when we see the fallout from this announcement, is of all the things that, like, Reneira seems to have preternatural kind of gifts for, like, noticing her best friend hanging out with her dad is not one of them. And I know

that he was like, try to keep this secret if you can. And she was like, yeah. But people walk in all the time. Yeah, people are always walking in. Well, you know, his, again, his corporate structure is interesting. It's not really like office-based. It's kind of shared floor plan. Like, you can just walk in.

It's very horizontal leadership. It's a horizontal leadership. That is absolutely right. By the way, sidebar, I love Risi funds. And like, during the moment when he was like, look, when my own lady wife left this mortal plane, I was so sad. Like, was he auditioning for Dirty John 2 or something?

Like, that did. I didn't really buy that as an emotional reveal. Well, it's kind of cool. Like, Vesera sucks. You know what I mean? Like, he's not like, it's like he's basically being challenged constantly by everybody. Every decision he's made so far has been more or less the wrong one. Yeah.

And we get this time jump in the first, in this, between the first two episodes, six months ahead in the future. And it looks like he's got. got bad health care because that back thing has now spread to his hand. First of all, I just want to say in terms of the political ebb and flow of this show, yeah, the Saras looks dead in the water now, all right? But when Lord Mansion signs on to this new plan, everything can change like that. You know what I mean?

That's right. He can build back better, is what I'm saying. Corliss can always come back to the table. It's true. I also want to say, your point of. about him not being a great king. Like, everything we said about Patty Constantine last week rings true. Like, I still really am interested in his performance. Oh, no. I just, I just find this character to be fascinating because he's to do it. Yeah. But I feel like it neat because he's, I guess,

a kind of a gentler, semi-decent person who is in the wrong job at the wrong time. And I'm interested and he's not even, like, doing a lot of hoaring. You know what I mean? Like, he's just, he just wants to, like, like, have balls. Yeah. I mean, for guys like that, like, in the world of Game of Thrones, like, he's just a Lego maister. You know what I mean? He just likes to just build blocks better. I think that he, what that lacks, though, again, is the larger context that I don't have because I haven't read these books.

And what I mean is there are a couple lines there where they're like, we need to align with the Valerian houses so that we Targaryens can really, really run this shit forever. And I was like, oh, I thought they have. They have dragons. They haven't. So it's weird to me that through two episodes, we haven't done one, the office style Jim Halpert cut to a Lannister,

or Stark being like, these fucking guys? Like, right now we are in the world where having that hair, talking that language, and petting dragons and putting them next to your babies, is normie behavior. Right? It's super normie. So I was like, I guess that's just what we do here in Westeros now. And so I think a tiny cutaway

would help me understand Viseras' role. Like, is he popular? Is he feared? Is he anything? And it's undercutting the performance that we don't have. that first scene in the first episode is supposed to suggest that there was obviously this was an ascension that was in dispute, right? That he got this gig over his cousin. This economy.

Rainis, Reini's because of reasons, you know, and that the Targaryen succession line is like very jumbled up. And, you know, obviously we like shows about succession. We're not complaining. I wanted to talk a little bit. Do you want to talk about medical history? because that's what I cut you off of and I have some questions too.

So, you know, he's just kind of like, I can't remember what's the king that Edward Norton plays in Kingdom of Heaven where he, I think it was like,

Baldwin is the king of Jerusalem who's got leprosy. And I feel like Vassarius has a little bit of that vibe where he's just going to be like slowly falling to pieces over the course of this series. But yeah,

were you, excited to get some Westerosian medical data? Here's my thing. I need to do my own research, okay? Because I feel like the CDC is giving really mixed messages here in Westeros because the king putting his hand into a box full of ravaging insects. Go ahead. A sailor lying on a beach covered in crunchy crabs, bad.

Are we sure? Are we sure? Oh, you think that sailor was getting just like a spa treatment? all of a sudden, look, all I know is on Facebook where I spend a lot of time, beastings are good now.

You know what I mean? So I'm just saying maybe what everything we thought is wrong. I really respected the king just doing that. Like it was just telling us about how sunscreen is out. Right.

But you remember those pin things that are from sharper image that you push your hand in? That's like, you make the impression. Now they invented acupuncture with that. That's kind of like what the MAGA treatment looked like.

It was fine. I can't help between those two scenes because a lot of the urgency of this episode, right, comes from the fact that this, the Long John Silver guy's coming, right? The anti-cosher king. Yeah. He's coming. The trafe lord. He is approaching the red keep. I have to say that his preferred method of dispatching people seems real-time inefficient. And that's probably what's most offensive to a business guy like Viseris. Oh, his kind of non-denominium. crucifixion that he's going with. So what I'm saying is he's like, I'm going to dispatch

these guys. Like I'm going to make my mark. And the way I'm going to do it is I'm going to have a naval battle. Then I'm going to round up all the people. I'm going to crucify them to driftwood. First of all, who's gathering all that driftwood? And then I'm going to let crabs eat them. Yeah. Do you know how long it would take for crabs to eat somebody? Like crabs are small. Like they would get full. I'm not saying it would be pleasant. It's weird because it's a hot labor market, but Driftwood Crucifier is still like, I'm sticking with this guy. Does he bring his own crabs? You know what I mean?

Or does he only go to the beach? I think that they are naturally occurring there at the beach, yeah. Oh, so in the same way, oh, that makes sense. Because if you ever read books about how Manhattan used to be just awash with oysters, they called it the big oyster and then overfished? So it's actually kind of an environmental parable that like they're just seafood is abundant at this. era of Westerosie history. It's cool, but I just feel like I need a little bit more context here. Those guys seem really unhappy that they're getting pinched by the crabs, but I don't see

the like, I don't see the fatality. Well, we don't get to see the battle. We don't get to see the terror. We don't get to see the fear. We don't get to see like, what is this guy? What's his political platform? What's he won out of life? You know, he's just crab feeding and he's got these guys getting chewed up.

Look, I thought that this episode had basically. a really good tease and delivery because they basically got my attention by hiding Matt Smith for 30 minutes. I was like, Damon is worth the price of admission here alone. Why are we pretending like he is not the most interesting character here? Let's get some time with him and his second bride and find out what's going on on Dragonstone, the Moralago of Kings Landing. You're right. So he left, so this was all...

He took the documents. He took the baby egg. He was very cavalier with it. You know, if that was the nuclear football, he did like a little play action. Yeah, Damon Targaryen looked like he, like, we had been playing at the rucker a little bit. You know, he had the ball on a string.

I cannot, I need a minute to process this Dragonstone as Mar-a-Lago. It is incredibly right, because it is the family keep. Yeah. Okay. Ocean views. some some find that thrown room tacky others find it lovely somewhat disturbing uh you know his city guard who's just like city watch who's rolling with him it's just kind of like okay you guys need to chill out

a little bit it's but they're also just loyal only to him right so that's an incredible analogy and i love it i think that we are also though treading into and it's the han solo thing again where i really am going to need these brothers to have some more time together and some more context because I don't want this to start to break into a more traditional swords and dragons binary where Viseris is kind of like, you know, foolish but noble and Damon is just kind of craven and evil, but probably right and has a point. Do you know what I mean? Like I need a little more nuance, which is what comes out when his niece comes to visit. That is a more interesting version of Damon instantly. And then I guess, you know, I think we should just probably withhold judgment

about his future marriage, his expansion of his family. I'm curious about his first wife, honestly, because we don't see her. Yeah, she's like, she's somewhere else, right? I think she's like in a heron hall or somewhere. He's not, he's not a fan. She's an heron hall.

I don't know where she's at. Yeah. Well, you need to keep, Chris, you need to keep track. No, I get to ask Mallory and Joe, and then she's just like the Secret Service. We have Sonoya Mizuno showing up this time as, Misaria, who is really not respected, I would say, by the high towers. No, she gets big mad on that bridge.

She's right there, and he's saying wild things about her. I will just say that she is a controversial performer, I would say, in my particular house of a dragon. We've watched her be awesome and physically interesting and odd and compelling in Alex Garland movies, especially like Ex Machina. we've seen her be absolutely unique in Alex Garland projects like devs. I think I don't even know where we netted out on that performance. It was absolutely one of a kind, but it was definitely non-traditional.

And all this is to say, I have questions about the accent work. And I'll leave it at that. It took me out. It took me out. Okay. So I did think, though, that that bridge sequence is where this show really, like, quite literally took flight. not just because of the dragons, but because of the specific dramatic stakes of what was happening

there. I really enjoyed this idea that these men of war who were all drawn down on one another with their swords out, all are kind of like looking up in the sky and being like, this is the fucking thing that terrifies me is that one of these crazy blondes is just going to let it rip with this thing. Yeah, I, God, I keep, I don't, this isn't the drum I really wanted to be beating, but I agree with you. Like, I wanted, I've appreciated the direction this episode. And again, you mentioned it at the beginning, Greg Yatanis, who's just a really, really cool director. And it's great to see him on this stage. He's doing really good work with reaction shots. Like, even in the, I think in the maggot scene, we cut to the maister, taking some information.

I mean, we are getting some sense of the non-targarians reactions to some of the Targaryen decision-making, which I think is crucial. But what you're speaking to matters more than anything else, which is we've gone from a show where there is a nuclear threat suddenly reborn. And people are like, how could that possibly be real? I thought mushroom clouds were fake. Right. To now, we are only with the Oppenheimer family, right? But we are only with the people who have the nuclear codes. And their casual usage of them ought to be horrifying and terrifying. And I want a little bit more of that feeling. But even within that, I like what you're saying here. But even within that, I'm lovingly.

or whatever mock the idea of like most of this show being like an episode of The Bachelor for Vissaris and various teenage women. But I did think that his conversation with Corlis' daughter was interesting because it's

even though these dragons are around and even though the Targaryens are in power, there is a degree of hearsay about their like where's the big one? You know, like the one that's like supposedly roaming it's right like there's like a little bit of myth and like history and information is not necessarily

something that everybody has at their fingertips. There's a lot of like, hey, you know, like, I heard there's this other one dragon out there somewhere roaming. You know, like, what's up with that? Do you think it went back to its nest or whatever? And I think that's also something the show is,

that speaks to something the show is doing very well in terms of world building that it's worth pointing out. Like, Viseris's ailments and the certainty of the maesters of treatments that this is going to work, that we're going to do this, but their total fallibility is really, really compelling. It adds to, it gives us something very important, I think, for a show about Aryan kings with dragons, which is that actually no one knows anything in this world.

Everyone tries to posture as if they do, and they always try to claim precedent or history or prophecy, but they're all scrambling, and everything is always tenuous. And I think that that was one of the things that made Game of Thrones so compelling, even to the non-fantasy-minded among us. And I like the attention to that detail in this as well. The fact that the fate of this world could hinge on a sad king deciding to marry his 12-year-old cousin, you know, when you phrase it that way, you know, it's tough. But it does add to, it gives the show a jolt of stakes that I think it needs.

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What are some other moments from the episode that you wanted to go over? I mean, I think... What did you think of that? Let's talk about the second son's bit a little bit more and that moment between Steve Toussainton and Matt Smith, because cool scene, I didn't really think... By deduction, I figured out who he was talking to before the camera, panned around to it being Damon.

Yeah. And I liked the moment where Damon is kind of like, I can talk about my brother that way. You can't. That was like a good sort of bit of like familial, protective, but also I'm betraying my brother again.

Do you find yourself like so, like, charmed by Damon that it's hard to visualize him as the antagonist for the show? Well, it's operating on two levels. Like the show doesn't exist without him. You know,

right now he is the combustion. engine in the show, both from his performance, from his unpredictability, and the role that he's going to play, I guess, an antagonistic role. Otherwise, it really is just which 12-year-old should I marry, which is not much of a show. So I'm glad that the gears are turning forward. You know, again, this is the nature of a show like this where there's so much to be done in the pilot that the sense that Coralus is big mad and that this has been brewing kind of came out of left field for me. or at least came from the very first scene of this episode. But fine, okay, let's get a sense of the sides here

because that was the other thing that the show had to struggle to do in the beginning, which was be like, what's the lay of the land? You know, I don't even know who's allied with whom because we're walking into a world where our last experience with it was everybody hates each other. Like there really weren't that many natural alliances. So I was glad to see things starting to take shape in terms of what this season is going to be.

Again, lurking at the bottom of it is, that's not the same as feeling secure in it because this is a show about the Targaryens. Do we want the Targaryens to be in charge? Do we mean to? Maybe there won't be a John Snow on this show. I think Renira is supposed to be kind of that role, or she's sort of a hybrid of the...

Of John and Danny. Yeah, it's basically that. And, you know, beware of Targaryens who talk about wanting to change the way things work, you know? Like, reformer Targaryens are historically not that successful, I guess, and at least in the TV shows. But I'm curious to find this, watch this show sort of find it's sort of true north and then what's west and what's east and what's south from that. Because I think right now I'm kind of like, okay, I'm just processing a lot of information and I'm finding, I'm figuring out like, what's at stake. And, you know, the crab feeder is a good, is a good sort of foil for that. I thought it was interesting, too, the way the show is sort of judiciously doling out references to the larger world. So in this episode, we get a reference to the wall, right, which we hadn't gotten before. It's like, oh, yeah, that's cool. They're still up there. It's going to be cold.

People, the tourism minister in Iceland just rubbing his hands together, not because he's cold, but being like, bring it back, baby. Yeah. We need you. come home, all this forgiven. But also stuff about the free cities and all, you know, that was stuff that I really loved in the first series. And I'm eager to see what that's about. You know, I want to go back to Dorn.

And there's a reference to Dorn here. Yeah. The other piece that I thought was interesting and helped me with some historical grounding was in the review of the knights that a lot of them were just kind of fancy dance. You know, like wearing like bright yellow plumage. Only doing like exhibition games.

games. Yeah, right. They haven't actually played in the league. Right. Right. They're just, what's the equivalent? What's the equivalent? They're just like weekend warriors. Just guys you play like the Drew and proams and stuff like that over the summer. He's just like, you just never got battle tested on a cold wet night in Utah, you know? So what do you, what do you want out of this crab guy, Chris? Finally, you know, you were, as we said, you were just in Maine. So you have a complicated relationship with shellfish. With shellfish. Yeah. Um, I, I don't really care if there's any nuance to him. When you have him, like, fiddling with his belt,

and I don't know even, pulling out the nails that he's going to crucify somebody with, and he's wearing probably human skin as a mask. Haven't quite broken that down yet. I'll have to freeze frame it, but it looked like a pretty rustic face covering. I kind of just want him to be like an absolute beast. And not, I don't really care, like, about, like, about his origin story.

You don't want his trauma? Not super much. Yeah. I'm curious what, not what motivates him, but who's paying his bills? Because that's always a really interesting question in Game of Thrones is like, where does the money come from? And who's moving money onto what? And that was one of the most interesting parts about the series was that like, you know, the bank betting on certain, you know, people who had claims to the throne.

Yeah, I think that's another great point of something I'd like to see going forward. We used to joke about this, the Iron Bank and like only this show could afford to get into the minutia of it. I guess better call Saul could also. Right. But that said, it's worth remembering that one of the things that made Game of Thrones so surprising repeatedly was that every time we entered into a situation that we thought was familiar having grown up with stories or having read anything or, you know, fantasy stuff, it wouldn't go the way we thought because of a quote unquote real world reason that we hadn't

anticipated. Like in Lord of the Rings, for all the epic fantasy, there isn't that much talk about the plumbing or sewage system, you know, and the role that that's going to play in the life or death of a great city, an army isn't going to falter on the battlefield because suddenly they're not being bankrolled anymore by a foreign power. Like that was what Game of Thrones brought to it. And again, it's something that is worth noting, beginning in the seat of power with all the money and with all the dragons, where do the limitations start to come in? So these are just, I guess broadly speaking, I'm kind of, we've now been talking for 40 minutes.

but I'm kind of surprised at the nature of this conversation because this is a good episode of TV and it was enjoyable. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that the reason why we're looking at it through this lens is because sometimes the TV that's the most fun to talk about is a show that has like a baseline of excellence. And then you can kind of nitpick or talk about

some of the things that they're choosing to do rather than some of the things that they were forced to do or some of the things that they couldn't pull off? Also, a narrative that we enjoy a lot and we respond to is the narrative of the young and hungry show that's like a cell sword, that every episode is leading to a vote of confidence on its long-term survival. This show is beginning from a more comfortable place, which does not mean to say that it's easy. I mean, this must be one of the most stressful things ever undertaken because of the expectations

and the weight of it and the cost of it. But as we keep saying, we are considering this show in a different way than we would most second episodes because it is not second of eight. It is probably second of 30 to 60.

And so I think it's worth kind of keeping track of the larger currents that are beating back against our crab-riddled. I really want to do boat stuff. Is that cool? No, I don't know anything about boats, but I really do want to use a lot of... I don't think that they leased that beach

just to do a couple of quick cutaways. I think that there's some naval combat coming. Do you think they lease that beach? Do you think they bought the beach? Or do you think that's the volume? I don't think they bought the beach? I just... Oh, oh, you mean...

Oh, interesting. Oh, I have a question for you and we can punt it to the next time we talk about the show. But... Or maybe this is a non-recap episode conversation. Maybe we put it and folded into the Lord of the Rings conversation. but I want to talk to you about what's up with Viz effects, broadly speaking.

Oh my God, we have to have a conversation about this. Maybe we should even actually have somebody who has the answers or like has some experience in the matter. But I was reading an interview with Millie Alcock who plays Reneira, a young Reneer. And she was talking about the dragon riding sequences. And I obviously know that they were not real dragons or any kind of real animal. They leased the dragon. They leased them, of course. No, she was just talking about doing it on like basically like a bar bronco that was hoisted in the air.

And then she was like, but it was cool because we did it in the volume. So I was able to see like the sky that we were supposedly flying through. And there's a couple of shots in here that look like the volume. The volume is a Mandalorian wall. Yeah, right. It's the wall that basically projects what the visual effects that people are looking at. So that if you want to say, hey, I'm on Hough now, you can just punch it in and bring up Hoth on the screen

and you can be walking across the snow. And they're filming Hoth, basically. But there was a shot, I think right before he says, Good Morrow, where he's looking out his window in Kings Land and where Vesaris is looking at the window. I'm like, that does not look like Debrunich. It looks like maybe a picture of Debrunich slotted into the volume. And I could be wrong.

But, yeah, the VFX thing is interesting. It's like, how much dragon is too much dragon? Well, also just across the board, like we are reaching a point, and I don't know whether it's just the economy is taxed. Like literally, we're running out of, I mean, this has been the narrative around the Marvel stuff. Like, they're just these houses, VFX houses around the world working around the clock to service all of these projects. You know, there used to be industrial light magic used to have like two big things a year. And now it's all over the world, everything, movies and TV. I don't know whether things are overstressed, overtaxed or if there's just not enough time for any of it. But, there's just not enough time for any of it. But, The dragons, they're still doing a good job with. You know, I'm still buying it, and I'm enjoying it. And I think they're actually getting a little bit more sinister. There were some sound effects that were working in a different way this week. They were kind of like, now they like announce their presence.

Like, they're like, ah! Please. It was exactly like that. Kaya, snip that and just let me have it. So I can deploy it as well. I got to go back and watch this episode so I could see how off I was with my dragon imitation. And then do a dragon that's on the zoo TV tour and calling President Bush in the White House.

Let's bring all of your best work together. But anyway, just to say, like, there's a lot of it, and it's kind of similar at the moment, and we're about to get the Lord of the Ring stuff, and I'm just asking the questions. I'm very curious how it's working and how it's not working for people watching along. But that's not for today. We will do that at some point. Hollywood's ombudsman never sleep, and we're always just checking up on all departments, you know, and making sure of excellence.

I'm going to go have a low country boil. I'm just going to throw some crabs, some corn in the cob. We were produced, as always, by Kaii McMullen. We're going to wrap it up there. We will be back on Thursday, I believe, right? I feel good about that. Yeah, I think that we actually might even be in the same time zone for this one. Thanks for listening to us.

Make sure you check out Talk the Thrones with me, Mallory, and Joanna, and make sure you check out House of R doing their deep dives on Tuesdays on House of the Dragon. If you're curious, and we'll talk to you guys on Thursday.