The Watch - What's Taking 'House of the Dragon' So Long? And the General State of HBO.

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Chris and Andy talk about the trailer for what's coming to HBO and Max in 2024 and 2025 that aired during 'House of the Dragon' last night and some of the coming shows they are most excited for (1:00). Then they talk about the Season 2 finale of 'House of the Dragon.' They discuss how, yet again, this season felt like a setup for something else that is about to happen (21:05) and how, at times, this show feels too contained within the 'Game of Thrones' world (42:30). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent and host of Somebody's Got to Win. Brought to you by The Ringer and Spotify. The 2024 election has been upended with Joe Biden off the ticket and Donald Trump facing a new challenger, Kamala Harris. If you want to hear what the insiders are really saying about the race, join me Tuesdays and Thursdays as I break it all down with lawmakers, journalists, and political strategists. We'll go deeper than the headlines to the anxieties at the highest levels of power. And of course, we'll chew over all the hot political gossip as we head into this historic election. Be sure to follow, somebody's got to win at Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Ask your doctor about Trim Faya. to learn more about Tramphaya, 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 room. 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 in the studio,

deeply inhaling a handkerchief once used by Zach Wheeler. It's Andy Greenwald. I like it when you make it about sports. It's always about sports. This podcast is a sport. And we're in peak condition. Andy, today we're going to talk about the much-gabbed-about finale

of the second season of House of the Dragon. Have you gabbed about it yet? I did. I talked about it last night and Talk the Thrones. I had a lovely experience with Mallory and Joanna and Jack and the whole gang who made that show. So thanks to everybody, Steve, Jomey, everyone, Gahal, Corey. That was an awesome experience. You can watch those videos on the Ringervverse YouTube channel

or listen to them on House of R on Spotify, or you can watch them on House of R on Spotify. So you got a lot of different platforms to check out there. You look tan, rested. Do I look tan? Fit? Amazing. It was really hot this weekend.

I was definitely, definitely got a lot of sun. It sucked. I went to the beach on Saturday and I was really like, should I or should I not do this? Because the last time I went to the beach, I was full of P&V and I was just like, man, life is awesome. And I got there and there was just a dense layer of fog. So you know what I did? Yeah. I phoned a friend.

I texted Kaya McMullen and I said, how's the weather out there, kid? And she was like, I can see the sun. And that was it. Kaya's our West Side correspondent. She really is. And remember when you and I saw Lawrence of Arabia on the West Side? And my response was, wow, it's really nice out here when it's sunny. And I said to Kaya, this is my trademark journalistic chops.

Hey, Kaya, it's really nice over here sometimes, isn't it? And I believe you said, yeah. Yeah. The West Side is great. I'll never end my crusade, too. Well, here's one thing the East Side has going for it. And I wish I could have paid your service forward by inviting you to this. But I didn't know it was happening.

This is a real Robert Frost moment for the kid. Okay. Saturday night, chilling, just actually, honestly, doing the work. Did you go to Charlie X-EX's birthday party? God damn it. Yeah, I didn't. But it was right around the corner from my house. It really was.

Yeah. That was... Honestly, though, I got to say... I wasn't... No fomo for me. Not your scene. It was like... I was like, there's a couple people there.

I would have been like, what's Glenn Powell like in person? Don't you think you would have wanted to be on the receiving end of Rosalia's cigarette bouquet? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What do you mean? Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know what's up at that bar. Well, nobody needs to hear about Silver Lake bars. But, like, I just...

My favorite thing about the pictures was that in every paparazzi photo of celebrities arriving, like Nellie Furtado, you could see the Trader Joe sign behind them. Yeah. Which I felt was like a real deep sense of place. Do you think Nelly Furtado showing up at your birthday party is kind of like when they invite all, like, the Eagles great spouse? to the training camp and then it's like, and then this guy who also played offensive line.

Was it because they too were like birds? Yeah. That's a really good job. I'll let that. I know. That was a pretty good joke. Anyway, I'm sorry, because I was going to say,

if I got a little spot at Tennis of the Trees, that would have been pretty fun to be like, Hey, Kaya, I'm here at Charlie X, X's birthday. I do think the bar was close to the public, but thank you. I appreciate that. Do you think, Kaya, as our youth correspondent, do you think it was fun inside that party,

Or was it just more about like being seen and going there? Like what made that more special other than the frisson of celebrity? Yeah, I got to say it was probably looked more fun on social media than it was in person. I mean, I'm telling myself that because neither was I invited to Charlie XX. I mean, Lord seemed like she was working it out a little bit. Yeah, Lord seemed like she was having fun. And she was also going analog. She wasn't filming everybody and taking, you know, she was like in the moment.

But everybody else was filming her. So Lord's like us. Yeah, exactly. more old school. How was your weekend? It was hot, but it was a good weekend for two reasons. One reason was, I want to hype this up. I watched, I took my younger daughter to see a movie called Robot Dreams. It is absolutely awesome. It was Oscar nominated this year as a best animated film. And then I think it's going to be streaming soon, but it's in limited release. Saw it at the at the Vidyat's microcinema. Do you know about this? Is it a microcinema because

it's child-sized? It is, well, this is very, very. We're already talking about the Trader Joe's on Hyperion, so this is now becoming just a like a next door ring cam kind of podcast. But the great movie foundation vidiates, here they have a main theater and then they have like a room off the hallway that they also show other movies. And so it's like 20 seats. Robot Dreams, if you can see it, I really, really, really recommend it. Even to you, Chris, it is totally beautiful. It's a Spanish film, but it has no dialogue. and it is based on a graphic novel by Sarah Varen,

and it is set so deeply accurately and beautifully set in like 1984 Manhattan. Oh. About a populated, okay, no, I'm going to lose you here, populated by animals. Oh, okay. And a dog is lonely and gets a robot friend and some stuff happens. But also on the soundtrack, the Phillies are on the soundtrack. It is a beautiful, beautiful movie for people of all ages. an interesting experience because at the end of it

my daughter was like, that's the saddest movie I've ever seen and I was like, it was a beautiful movie about hope. And it was really... So you disagreed with her? We disagreed. We disagreed. It was just like the Deadpool pot all over again. It really was.

You should check this movie out if you are Daddington's, Mommingtons, or just Kid Curious. Yeah, sure. Really, really good. The other really great thing that happened this weekend that we don't need to get too into is that I did, as you know, find some of our texts from over a decade ago.

And I just want people who listen to this podcast to know that we've been at this shit for a long time. But I also feel like it was an incredible time capsule. I learned that we have really 80% only talked about sports. Yeah, they do wonder whether or not there's anything actually there. The other 20% of our friendship, the other 20% was just, are we going to meet at this bar or that bar? Yeah. And I was always like, I'm already at the bar. But we also got to capture these incredible moments that one of them ones I wanted to share was from July 17th, 2010 at 6.10 p.m. I think this is good podcasting, by the way. I said, how are you? And you said, good, about to get Incepted, which meant you were going to see Inception. I saw it with Zach Barron

in the Prospect Heights Theater. And I said, no spoilers. Fast forward to our next text, July 18th, 2010, 526 p.m. 24 hours passed before we checked in with each other. And you wrote, that was really, really awesome. It's like, look at this riveting stuff. I said, I'm jealous. I hope to see it this weekend. And your response was, the Phillies, man, these fucking guys.

Did you see Inception that following weekend? I did see in the theater. I didn't know if that was one of the ones that like nine years later you saw on a plane, you were like, no, incredibly. I feel like Nolan could have expanded his canvas with that one. Aaron Nola could have expanded the strike zone. No, I said, I sent you a text.

This is how we used to communicate. Do you remember long-time fans of the podcast might remember when I did finally watch Ozark and told you on mic and you got excited? It was a similar thing where like six days past of text of being like, the Phillies, the Phillies question mark. And then I wrote, but is the top still spinning? And you fucking lost it. You wrote me all caps. You were like, oh shit, did you? Like you've always been very enthusiastic.

You saw one Chris Nolan movie on a plane for the first. It was interstellar. Oh, interstellar. on planes. I saw Interstellar for the first time on a plane like eight months ago. Yeah. Tennant I watched intentionally on a plane just to piss everyone off. Going backwards across time zones.

Greenwald, let's talk a little bit about the Home Box Office Network. No nostalgia for you. About us? No, it's fine. We can talk about it. No, I mean, like the great work continues. It does. Like, that's essentially what we do now.

All of our texts are like, how severely is James Bradbury injured? Also, are you at the bar and we say no? We say no, because we were going to go to Tendor the Trees, and it was booked. So let's talk a little bit about it's August. There's a Game of Thrones-related show on HBO. We got ourselves a montage of coming soon on HBO from HBO last night when the show aired, when the finale aired. And let's just pause to say one of the great, really one of the great genres of our last decade plus has been the, what's coming on soon on HBO? The HBO.

we run this shit montage that they tend to run around the finale of major shows or the premieres of major shows truly goose bump inducing at times in the past.

Well, this time I think it was more reassuring than goose bump. This is correct. Yeah. I think I was more just like, okay, like the pipeline,

it's open, the oil is flowing. There's some stuff here that I'm really excited about. There's some stuff here that I just, frankly, like,

did not believe was ever coming like Duster. I mean, like, I was just so suspicious about, like, it seemed like that was in development for such a long time. Or the chimp crazy, Doc? You can watch this video on HBO's YouTube page. I mean, it's pretty easy, just, like, coming soon, HBO 25 or whatever. What was the show maybe that jumped out the most at you about this? Well, the thing that jumped out the most to me was now I understand why they absorbed all of the IP Max content.

We talked about this a few weeks ago that shows, like, Penguin Dune Prophecy. Dune Prophecy. Used to be sisterhood, but now it's... Welcome to Derry. All of these have been called up to the big leagues and are now HBO originals. And watching this trailer made me deeply understand why they had done that,

because they couldn't make this trailer without the IP Max content. There would not have been a trailer. There would have been maybe a teaser for Night of the Seven Kingdoms and Last of Us or White Lotus, but there wouldn't have been... Because the thing about the, one of the reasons why these trailers used to feel so exciting was the sense of, like, the floodgates being like, we have so much shit.

We're going to run your Sunday nights for the next eight months until we run another one of these. And without that programming, it would have, the cupboard would have still felt a little bare. I think that even the way we're talking about this is kind of old-fashioned, because I think we think about this. And we imagine six, seven years ago when an HBO show would end, you would have two or three weeks in between, maybe a month. and then another HBO show would start airing on Sundays, and sometimes you would even get like an absolute, you know, bevy of delights with a Sunday and a Monday show. You know, like you would have a certain kind of order to your week

based on like, oh, this is the anchor, this is happening. And now everything is kind of like, well, we're going to air two episodes first and then you can watch it on Max and then you can, you know, we'll eventually start airing it on the network or whatever. I think it's very cool to see stuff that's coming in 25. You know, Survived till 25 has been a big movie industry mantra. We haven't talked about it as much in TV. Oh, it's the only thing that other TV writers say to each other.

Yeah. And I mean, I think that, I mean, so for people who don't understand, it's just basically like that the ripple effects of the strikes have made it such that there is just not a lot of stuff going on in 24, but that in 25, the hope is that there is this some kind of revival of buying. And to be clear, it's not just ripple effects. in the sense that there was a lot of stuff on the runway from pre-strike, it's that the industry is in catastrophic freefall

and no one's buying anything and no one's working. Right. There's that. Sorry, but please, go on. Well, I'm excited for White Lotus or you? I actually am. So it was really cool to see White Lotus, Gilded Age, Night of the Seven Kingdoms, and obviously Last of Us gets the hammer there.

Yeah, I would say also industry, which comes back next week. Well, yeah, I'm an industry. We're going to spend. Also the glimpse of the franchise. Franchise looked funny, that's the Inushi show, right? Inuchi's show with Ayakash and Himmish Patel. I'm glad to see a glimpse of that. I'm going to take a slightly contrarian position here.

Sure. And I think maybe this will carry over a little bit into our House of the Dragon conversation. You would say. No, I am not as negative about that as you might expect. But I will say that it's smart. It's a smart. Yeah, we said this already. it was a canny move for HBO to wrap its arms around the stuff that previously it may have

institutionally found distasteful, that we're going to do movie spinoffs based on comic books and put our HBO brand on it. That's just realistic at this point, that they have to, like, they have to engage in the industry as it is, and they have to meet the competition where it is existing and find the audience where it wants to be, totally get all that. I think the thing that was disheartening, and maybe this is an old-fashioned point of view, is that when they used to hit us with these things, they would show us something that we hadn't seen before. And whether that was Kate Winslet in a cop drama or whether it was a dragon soaring over the Red Keep for the first time in a glimpse of the future season of Game of Thrones,

there was this sense that what HBO was doing was dazzling us in a way that the other competitors weren't able to do. And to see them be like, get ready for a bunch of retread stuff and shows that you've already seen was a little disheartening. Now, it is reflective of where the industry is right now. It is absolutely unfair to criticize them for what you said. The fact that some of these shows should have been 24 shows, so they have to let us know they're coming in 25, and that is strike related. But I think I bring this up not necessarily to bury HBO itself, but just as a slight reflection of where things stand across the board. Yeah, I think that's a valid point. You

know, had there never been this bifurcation of Macs shows and HBO shows in the first place, I do think that an inevitable, not an inevitable consequence, but an inevitable result of the merger, of the Warner Brother Discovery merger, would have probably been that some of this stuff that fell under their corporate, you know, governance would become, like, whether it's Harry Potter, whether it's the D.C. stuff, whether it's Stephen King's stuff that they have, probably would have eventually found itself over there, you know? And I think that, so it's like, this is probably a long time coming, but it feels strange to see Welcome to Derry right next to. Yeah, I think to a degree. I think Harry Potter would have been HBO always,

because that would have, because you could sort of squint and be like, HBO is restarting this, building it with grandeur, you know, doing it again, as opposed to, you know, a fantastic beast's spin-off prequel would have been on Max. I think that was kind of the thinking. But I agree with you. I guess I'm just also hung up on the fact that the industry has gotten so not segregated, but sort of picked over for parts. And if let's just say we want, this is the HBO sizzle reel. Let's say theoretically there was a sizzle reel also for Apple. And the Apple sizzle reel would have had nothing but movie stars, nothing but big, big, famous people fronting projects that maybe we hadn't even heard of

and maybe we won't hear of because they don't promote them and we won't even watch them. But it would be dazzling in the sense of like, oh, my God, they've got that guy and that guy and this person is coming. The FX sizzle reel, I think, would be more along the lines of what I was saying, the other half of what I was saying HBO used to do. Let's say the sizzle reel for 24, if they had shown us footage of Shogun, I think we would have been like, oh, shit, that's not, that looks like, that's exciting. That's a vision that I haven't seen on the screen before, even though I don't necessarily recognize these people or I have no connection to the story. So in the sense that FX has kicked out the legs from what HBO used to do, and Apple came for the cream.

And now this is, I've created a vision where someone has legs and cream. I just don't think FX can, you can say that FX kicked out the legs when they just don't, they simply don't put that many shows up. Oh, no, no, totally. But I just mean, absolutely. They had a big show in showgun earlier in the year, and it's great. I wasn't saying they were one-to-one competitors. What I mean is an FXizzle reel would lean into the, we're showing you things you haven't seen before. You might not want to watch them.

You might not be inclined to watch them, but we're going to try to compete with, I don't know if it's innovation or if it's just surprise. And Apple is going to compete by taking the other half of the HBO, the old HBO-sizzareel equation, and say, look at these people that we got. look at this cavalcade of stars. Right. You combine those two theoretical sizzle reels and you would get old HBO. And so instead, if you imagine that they picked off those pieces, we get this HBO sizzle reel, which has a mix of things, you know, and a mix of things. Was there anything in there?

I mean, you and I are so in the tank for industry and can't wait to talk about it. But were you fired up? Yeah. Oh, yeah. What fired you up? Well, I mean, I like Last of Us. So I'm very excited to see like that coming back with Jeffrey Wright. I think it'll be, it's also an example of exactly what HBO does really well,

which is have maybe some recognizable faces, but maybe not necessarily Reese Witherspoon, leading something that's a very, very, very refined and well-thought-out take on a genre show. So I was excited to see that. That's the hammer. I have to admit, because I'm so in the throne, Thrones thing right now with Talk to Thrones and talking about like executions of this material. And it's Second, Seven Kingdoms is, looks kind of cool.

You want Brendan Rivers. That's what you want. Well, I just thought it was like, I was like, it's kind of neat that there's part of me that's like I wish. I said that just so Mallory would pay attention in the bath. I just, that's all. I kind of wish that Dragon was just going to be coming back on next summer so that we could remedy some of the things that we need. But the idea of them operating two shows. to give us maybe some different looks,

different feels of that world is kind of cool. Although I guess you could also make the argument that that hasn't really worked out for Disney with some of their properties of operating multiple shows in the same franchise at once. I think that was a very smart caveat. I'm ready for you and usually to be back. So the franchise was the huge thing for me.

Yeah, I was excited. I still, you know, obviously, VEP has had something of a revival over the last couple of weeks. But as a development of, a devoted Ianucci fan. I'm really excited for that to be back or for him to be back on TV.

Yeah, I agree with that. Nothing about Welcome to Derry or Penguin offended my sensibilities, though. No, and I don't mean to be clutching my pearls about it. I know what you mean. I know you mean.

But sometimes it's like, you know, HBO put a lot of like low-hanging fruit up, man. Yeah, look, all these shows could be good. It all could be fine. I'm not, I don't want to do like concern trolling about the fate of a media corporation, but there is a... Not the next.

to put taxi cab confessions in front of our teenage eyes. Chimp crazy. Do you remember they had a show on Friday nights that was a show called Real Sex? Yes. And I'd be like, oh, I'm going to stay up late and watch a show called Real Sex. This is something that interests me. And it was just like, man on the street interviews with people where they'd be like, you ever kissed two people in the same night?

And they'd be like, oh, no. Yeah. There was also you'd be like, I guess I'm going to get to watch like basically like porn. But then you'd get to it. and it would be like a guy being like, I enjoy exploring the limits of tattooists, tattoos. You're like, oh, God, I broke my curfew for this. It's really true.

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Get savings with yellow sales signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. All right, let's get into House of the Dragon. Which I think is a very natural segue because I think this is also an ongoing conversation about the state of HBO when you talk about the way their flagship show ended

And it also ties into our conversation just briefly about the Survived 1225 element. It should be stressed, or at least mentioned that this was a strike shortened season. Which we didn't, they didn't say. No, I think Sarah has some of their people involved have been like, this was what we were able to do given the fact that their actors, I believe, were equity actors.

So, like, they were... They were able to stay in production for the most part of three. And I don't know that we would ever... Whether or not, like, there are two more episodes to this season that had to get shunted to the third. Clearly, like, the discourse around this season, or at least the season finale is, like, I was promised blood and I didn't get it.

I think there's a second kind of... conversation to be had about maybe one of the worst trends of this post-prestige era. I think a summer that gave us the Bears season three premiere and the House of the Dragon season two finale, both of which could, if you squint, could be argued, are really just trailers or set up for something else that's going to happen. I say this is someone who really admired the season three bear premiere and honestly didn't have that big of a problem with the House the Dragon finale just as an episode of a show that's doing better, but in terms of how we expect story to be delivered to us and also how the necessities of these expensive productions are causing

us to receive television, I think they're worth discussing. Yeah. But yeah, so let's start there. Last week, I was like, what do we think we have in store for us with this finale? And I think I was operating from a baseline assumption that a dragon would do something. That is not the case. That was kind of surprising. The conversation around this season has shifted and maybe in a defensive way

or maybe hopefully just in a more honest way. I think that there was some statement or quote from the showrunner saying that they moved a battle out of this season, out of this episode for story reasons that they felt since they know they're making a third season, that helped balance whatever that story boat is going to be better. And then Sarah has...

I believe Sarah has at some point said, like, we would have loved to have had longer to work on this or had more episodes this season, but this is what we wound up settling on. Which I think is probably honestly true. I don't think if you had Truth Serum or Milk of the Poppy to the team behind the show, I don't think they would have been like, we would have preferred to end this with a whimper. Yeah. I think also there's a conversation to be had where it's like how much of stuff that's happening on the screen is a creative decision versus a financial decision. We simply can't really definitively know one way or the other. But we can make a lot of, I think, safe assumptions. Yeah. So one thing that's interesting is how many times in this show, and I've seen a couple of people

like on Reddit and in articles to make this point. So it's by no means an original observation. It's just how many times in the course of this series so far we've either cut to a battle that has just ended. There was a bunch of dead guys on the ground. Or had someone say, we killed the crab feeder or whatever. You know, like,

like they basically are skipping the action. And I imagine that the action scenes would be incredibly expensive, right? Totally right. I mean, I totally understand why they didn't show certain things. And you're like, you know,

like, I think actually the battle of the burning mill, which is when the Blackwood and the bracken guys are like, this is my land. and then it cuts and it's just dead people everywhere, actually was an effective storytelling choice. I agree with that. I didn't need to see two families I've never met before beef for that long. Exactly.

But last night, I'm referring to the finale, obviously, there was a point where Amund has, in a fit of rage, decided to burn another city. One we've never, I was not familiar with. And was just looking at it. It was almost like for a second, And I was like, did somebody burn Kings Landing? Exactly, yes.

Seriously. I thought that as well. I thought he was angrily observing something that had been done to his side. By Renera. Now the Reneer's team is stacked. Yes. And then it gets discussed later in the episode that he is, because he was pissed off that like he got sent back,

that he basically had to scurry back from Dragonstone because all these dragons were there, that he went and burned Sharp's point, which apparently is the county's... seat of some other family that pissed him off earlier anyway. There was like an explanation for it. But watching Aiman watch his

terrible works and then fly off and then getting kind of an explanation for it later in the episode was indicative of that kind of like it's this like you just missed it element of the show. Yeah. That I think has been increasingly

noted by the public. Now I agree with you fully that this episode had a ton to like and that it was like a really good episode of television that just happened to feel very anticlimactic as a finale. Well, even before we talk about the good things, I think it is worth noting when you're talking about budget. If you watch these episodes with a more cynical eye or maybe watch them for a second time, like they got their money back from the Weirwood tree set at Heron Hall. You know what I mean?

Like, that's fueling the conversations about what Damon is doing this season as much as any of the. else. They shot there during the day. Like last week with my guy, what was his name? Larry Tully? What was it? Tito. Oscar. Oscar. That scene was at the Weirwood tree, day shoot. And then last night, when, when what's her name, Witchie Rivers is like, is Doc Rivers? Is Doc Rivers a pastor? Did we talk about that? Has anyone ever questioned whether Glenn is from that region? When Alice Rivers is like, come take a walk with me at night to the haunted place where you've spent most of the last five weeks just on this set. You know what I mean? It worked. They dressed it. It's fine. It's night. I get it. But that is, if you're watching TV and you want to know why certain things are

happening, a lot of it is going to be budget and look to what gets reused and what's, what's economical. That might ultimately be the reason why Damon did a very fifth season of a show thing, which is just go off the board for an entire season. Insane choice, really, that maybe they got away with because they fixed some stuff in the margins. But if you had asked me, which you did ask me, we're still talking about the show this many weeks later, what worked in season one,

I would have said Matt Smith's performance and that character. And his reward for being really the thing that kept the show afloat was to just have some bad dreams and late-night indigestion, for an entire season. Okay. So. And then his reward for that is he touches a tree,

binge watches Game of Thrones, and it does a 180. That is also insane character development. Not in a good way. Yeah. Truly, truly sicko mode. Like, oh, he watched the show. So he's a different character now?

Yes. Crazy. Many people have said that. Crazy show. People are not happy about that. I think it speaks to the particularly complicated nature of this adaptation. This is a quote-unquote historical text

from multiple unreliable narrators that does not have the psychological depth or day-to-day observational qualities that I think the... Well, it doesn't have that in its source material. Yeah, Song of Ice and Fire text. A different adaptation could potentially favor that.

Yes, but they need to... There is still like a character map for Damon and there is a character map for Renera. Now they can change their minds about how this happens. But people talk about in Game of Thrones, there are people talking about things that are happening at House of the Dragon. Like they happened. Like there are rules to this that they have to keep and adhere to. And I sympathize with the complications here because you can play around and you can be like,

what if Allison Renera had like semi-regular secret meetings where they talked about how they felt about what was going on. And they were the real people outside of the way history remembers them. Which is remarked upon in that scene. History will remember you a certain way. Yes. But because they are secret, they can do that. And even though you could make an argument that Allison being like,

you can come into King's Landing and kill my son, if that means we don't have a war, that's a hugely significant development. and I suppose divergence from the text. But that's like the kind of thing that they can do. They can't have Damon be like, I've decided that like I believe in the patriarchy. So like I'm not going to like go back to. But they can't under the rubrics and structures

that they've accepted from the beginning. Yes. So if you throw out the idea that any art is intentionally bad or made out of cynicism, then they're really there are two frameworks, especially during this. sort of cursed century. There's like the rare opportunities where you see people make the very best art that they

can based on their own aesthetic dreams and creative principles. And then there's what this often, yeah, then there's what we often have, which is we're doing the best we can considering. We're doing the best we can considering Deadpool and Wolverine have to fight. We're doing the best we can considering that we need to set up secret wars. We're doing the best we can considering that everybody knows what happened to Obi-1 and Leia. I think that's a false premise.

Well, but that seems to be the, Because I don't think those people who are making Deadpool and Wolverine are like, oh, they have to fight. Okay, fair. That was a bad example. That was just on the top of my mind. I think that there is a huge contingent of people, some of whom are probably in the writer's room for House of the Dragon. They think it's fucking sick that Damon saw Aeon's dream or some variation of it out of it. I have read some things online that were like, how cool is this?

Dineris was there. I'm like, Deneris is streaming right now on the Max platform. Who gives a shit? All you're doing is barricading pathways towards more interesting stories, by saying, these guys are hype. By the way, on that dream thing, and I did want to make that point that I think these guys are good faith

trying to do the best they can within it, and then it has its own set of limitations. Mainly being, this is a show that, as you said, is about a historical event, which is a crazy-ass civil war between people with dragons. Okay, that's the show. If that was the show, it would be done in 18 episodes.

Instead, we now have two seasons of a show that will run, what, three or four seasons in which the end of each season are people being like, there really might be a war. That might be real bad if there was a war. Do you think there's going to be a war? And we're like, no shit, the whole show is about a war. So you can't keep pulling that card.

But to go into the Damon binge watching Game of Thrones thing for a second, that will satisfy a certain subset of fandom for whom the idea of the three-eyed raven being, you know, outside the bounds of time and communicating with the world the trees and there's some deeper purpose and prophecy and legacy, which is fine. I mean, I like the Three-Ead Raven way of watching Lost. Like, I'm not immune to deep, deep, deep.

There's a bigger overstory here kind of fandom. I get that. That can be very, very appealing. The problem that I had with it in the way it was deployed in the finale was that Damon was completely changed by the understanding of his place in this fictional. history. I think he was on the way to changing

anyway. Okay, sure. But let me just say that this vision of like, well, this has to happen because the dragons will lose and ultimately we're all pawns in this larger story. And the larger story is fighting the White Walkers. And then I remember that the way that we beat the White Walkers was Arias Stark stabbed him with a knife. And all this was to set up DeNaris for the dragons

so she could die. We had this conversation about on Talk to Thrones where we talked about the idea of how much of this is written, I mean capital W, written, like written. in destiny written in the fates and how much of it if you buy too much

into the theory that everything that happens in this world happens because of these visions, these predictions, these prophecies, then where do you allow for Jamie to push brand out of a window, right?

Like when do you allow? If nothing matters, why do small things matter? Yeah, exactly. If only one things matter. If only one thing matters. Then who cares what happens in between, right? Or how does Jamie doing something like that equal brand becoming the Supreme Leader of Westeros at the end of the show? I think those are valid questions for any of this kind of storytelling.

I mean, the same thing is true with Star Wars or any of these kind of canonical historical legacy things that also has fate and magic. For me, it was more of an indictment of the fact that unless I'm misremembering things, which is very, very, very possible, Game of Thrones fumbled the bag. They fumbled the bag of one story to unite them all. Game of Thrones was exciting because it said in this world, which we know, because Jason Concepcion and Mallory told us, has thousands of years of history in many directions. And George R. Martin's imagination is as vast as a continent. The Game of Thrones fence posts were set up around the big story, the biggest one that mattered, the prince who was promised, winter is coming, the final battle between sides that when we meet the characters, they don't need. even know they're on. And it ended the way it ended, which made it seem like all this shit was kind of lame

and not ultimately that interesting. Now, the show was interesting. I'm not saying it invalidated the six and a half really good seasons, but I'm saying the prophecy itself did not seem worth the payoff. And so now you have a prequel in which slightly less interesting characters are changing their behavior in order to service a story that we already saw how it resolved and it kind of didn't work is a problem. I would say what would be truly crazy and amazing would be, and especially for their management of this brand into the next decade, which they're clearly going to be doing.

What if Damon had a vision of John Snow on the other side of the wall? This is why I was like the John Snow show idea was actually the most exciting thing that I considered, like even if it was John Snow basically being in the searchers and not really about like the future of Westeros or who was in Kings Landing or not. Drop me a hint. that there was a bigger, bigger story. You don't have to pay it off. Just give me a hint because you're going to be... This is like the what's west of Westros question, right? Like, is there anything else going on?

And this gets to a... I'm glad we're talking about like this instead of like nitpicking, like, would Laris have done this, blah, blah, blah. And I do want to talk about the beat-to-beat in the episode because there was some good scene stuff. But one of the reasons why sometimes I think we're both, but especially you maybe right now, are frustrated with where we're at culturally,

is that this has now become another show that's like, okay, let's do, I think you've made this become before, historical reenactments. You know, let's not push anything forward. We can't do anything that diminishes or takes away from the final accomplishments of the mothership show

or the mothership story that we are all feeding off of. So, you know, and in some ways, like, it's kind of funny. the few franchises that I've seen that have tried to go forward, like, say the Matrix. Like, the Matrix,

most people are like, I don't get it. You know, like, I don't understand what happens after the architect, basically. I didn't understand that.

Yeah, and I think that there's, so there isn't, I can understand why people are like, oh, man, I would have kind of, it was just awesome the way it ended in the first one,

you know, and I get it. But for this, it's like, we are here with Star Wars. We are here to some extent, you know, with Marvel as they,

toy around with this is set in between these two movies or this is now on a different reality so that we just can't quite ever mess with what happened in endgame because that would be, you know, I mean, I know that there's a lot of post snap stuff or whatever, but like for the most part, I think that there's been a reticence to lunge forward by them. I also think that as much as we criticize the multiverse, the multiverse is giving them optionality, whereas Star Wars and Game of Thrones are two shows that believe in the concept of a fictional canonical history. Yes.

Everything that happened happened. Yes. But in, I think, both of these cases, in the Star Wars case, there's a lot of like some canonized, some de-canonized, like, novelizations or video games and stuff like that, where they're like, well, I think this happens and this happens. And that was kind of what I was interested in in the Ackleit. We talked about this where I was like, well, what if Jedi are actually not always that great? And they are manipulating people.

and everybody who wants to practice the forest has to buy into their cultish religion, yada yada, like that kind of gave you a different perspective on this thing. I don't think they could have made House of the Dragon from Olf and Hughes perspective and that the first season would have been

these guys living two pretty low-born lives. That's so much better. Sorry, it is. Yeah, but you would have been like, what the fuck are we watching? Not if it was and or, you know what I mean? Like, again, there's a lot of... Yeah, yes. How many people can do that?

How many people get... I mean, all the stuff's heart. Like, they're not greenlighting that show. So we can go on a podcast and be like, ah, the small folk or the heart and soul of the Howard Zin version. I completely disagree. I find the small folk stuff to be kind of... But it doesn't have to be.

But I'm agreeing with you that that's a dead end argument. Yeah. So let's focus with what they can and will make and did make. But anyway, I mean, like, this is... It's interesting to watch this show work within the parameters of what they want to embellish people, they want to have these moments of like self-reflection. Like, I don't think anything in the book would suggest Kristen Cole became, you know, this warrior philosopher towards, you know, like once he was out there on the battlefield or whatever.

I did like Brian Grub wrote in Vulture that next season he should have emo fringe bangs because he's just gone fully. He's just listening to Thursday. Yeah, I just, I think that the, having a stopping point versus, versus like, hey, we're just playing out here in the, we're writing new chapters of this story is like a very, very sincere tension. It also just, it's the historical thing. It just robs it of any stakes if the most dynamic, chaotic character is suddenly educated on his role. It's very meta. It's almost as if Damon stepped off of the screen and got yelled at by Redditors for 10 minutes. Right. Don't you know you can't actually do these things? Because John Snow needs to be born and DeNaris needs to have this arc, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Oh, okay, I guess I'll just become a boring cog like everybody else in service of a prophecy. Right. That's a bummer. And I do think setting up something, just something else. And, okay, I should say setting up something else, I saw speculation that because of the where the night of the seven kingdom story, which in my understanding of it was a more charming,

digressive, almost whimsical at times. There's like four novellas that's based on you. But that because of where it fits into the chronology, which is basically the midpoint between where House of the Dragon happens and Game of Thrones happens, that we will get young three-eyed raven in that. The vision of him in this Damon vision... Is going to be the vision...

The version of him in the show. They might cast that actor, and he might be in that series as well. So in a way, it was previewing that show. That's, okay, sure. So they are doing some... They still haven't cast Darren who's like flying around already as the dragon, but yeah.

Right. So I just mean it would be nice if there was something, a sense of something here that built into something larger than squaring off an unfinished piece of business. So that's why I can't really get on the train of why this feels emotionally important beyond the margins of its own story.

Within the margins of its own story, I think we say, said it already. I think many people online, many people, many fine people online are saying that this was a disappointing ending. Disappointing finale, yeah. I think it's less, for me, it's less about make the dragons fight, although the show is good at that, than it is ending on the precipice of like, well, then we shall have no choice but to go to war.

Well, we know. So this is my thing, is actually, I thought that the episode itself was fine and that even if you ended either on everybody bending the need of Renira once Damon is speaking to her and old Valerian and is just like and she's like, don't you ever like leave me again and he's like, I already tried. You know?

That was really good. Good scene. I will accept the Allison and Renier's thing because those performers are so good but I also am like this and it's cool that it's an inversion of their first meeting. But then the montage

I think does a great disservice because on one hand they're trying to suggest like look at all the cool shit that's about to happen. But on the other side, all of those characters and people and armies and whatever are like 10 feet from where we want them to be. They're not just getting assembled. It's not like they're just setting out.

Like they're crossing the twins. It's on. They're on the way to the gullet. Like all this stuff is happening. So it's like now we have to wait a year and a half for them to get eight more feet. Well, that was shocking too because I guess somehow in my mind, I was like, well, that's okay to end it. if it's coming back in May.

But we haven't heard when it's coming back. I have to assume it's 26. It almost has to be. Yeah. Which is incredibly frustrating. I'll also say that that montage highlighted another one of the show's sort of central tensions, which is that it's hard, it almost can't let itself be, I don't even want to say great. It can't let itself be new.

Sorry, the composer's name, I'm blanking on, Ramin Jawadi. Yeah. His House of the Dragon score, the Dragon Score with the voices that sounds like, sort of like tweaked out Enya that comes in at the end is great. That is great scoring. I now associate it with a certain thing that this show uniquely does

with these regal characters on Dragonback flying around. And yet I will still never get over the fact that the show uses the Game of Thrones music. I know why it did. But look, look, someone came up with something new. Someone came up with a flavor, a color that speaks to this specific project.

And I wish that they could just let that be the show. Now, maybe that's another dead-end observation. Did they use the Star Wars Music in Force Awakens? Like, do they, like, when they... Yes. Yeah. I mean, I just feel like that's the deal. Like...

I get why. I get it. But I do think that you see these moments when it is flying on its own that I find a little frustrating. Should we go through... Yeah, let's talk a little bit about some of the scenes. Because as I texted you when I was watching it, I definitely didn't have this much mud wrestling in ESOS on my bingo card.

I don't think that that was, that to me, just as like a, my, my detector went off when that was happening. Like, the amount of Thailand and ESOS stuff does not seem relevant to the story that we're telling. But it does seem relevant to our conversation about the weird way the show is, is like running a three-legged race when it should just be running. Because it's Game of Thrones. Okay, let's accept that. meaning it's budget, its reach, the talent base, the world itself, if you choose to explore it. And so this Lannister, who has been sitting on the small council for two seasons, or we've seen him. Mostly in scenes where we don't have the money for that.

Just sitting there. And I'm like, okay, well, that's not a bad day's work for a theater actor in London. But again, you're taking English theater actors. You put him in this other scene. I was like, oh, look at him. I'm enjoying this performance. I'm enjoying learning about a character that I've never seen before.

He's out of his element. This is a totally different way of life. The Lindsay Lohar character, I thought was cool. Fun. A little spark. That met my criteria that I just randomly improvised for you the other week about if you're going to make a new character, make the character memorable.

So it sums up my issue with the show where I actually enjoyed all of those scenes in that sequence. But it was totally bizarre. Because there was no setup for it. I didn't know he was really, maybe he said I'll go get some more money in ESOS, but I wasn't tracking that as a major plot point. There's been zero.

He made their Navy. He wants the triarchy to come back. But there's zero, there had been zero investment in that character as someone who we should be tracking. So to the best spirit of the show, the writers involved bulked that shit up. It could have just been one scene.

They bolted up. They put their heart and soul into it. They made it kind of funny and entertaining. But what show is that? Yeah. That was a seven seasons Game of Thrones scene in a way. Yes, yeah.

The other scenes of people going to meet with people, which there have been a lot of, have not nearly been as rewarding. Or they've been bulked up to the point of almost incoherence, like Damon continually getting into mix-ups in the Riverlands. We talked about this a couple weeks ago, but this is the difference between history and fiction. And when you read history,

sometimes characters you're interested in, stop being relevant. rather suddenly, whether it's because of death or because of politics or for all sorts of things. And I admire House the Dragon for being like, we're going to stick with these characters, regardless of whether or not they are right in the epicenter of decision-making and or action. But it's interesting how there are certain decisions made, like following Raina as she runs around the Scottish Highlands looking for a new dragon or going to Esos with Thailand. And then they do this scene, which is probably my favorite scene,

even though it was somewhat overbaked, it was still awesome, which is the Kristen and Gwain scene, when Kristen is like, what we're doing does not matter. Like, we're going to die. Everyone's going to die because we've kind of unlocked this nuclear power. Yeah. Right. I was thinking about how little we've seen of him over the last couple of episodes.

Yeah. Other than just when he's back at the castle and then leaving again and each time he sort of sees Allison in the courtyard and she's like, fuck you, but I love you, but get out. And I'm disappointed. I, like, now I have a disappointment that, like, there had to have been something we could have made up between these two really entertaining actors

while they were on the road back to fucking Harrenhol to their inevitable death. And yet, every one of these episodes was, like, pushing 70 minutes. So where do you put it? They're capable of it. Again, I think that is part of the... And maybe that's like we don't have the money to have 100 guys on horses and worrying about daylight or something like that.

Sure, that all factors into it. And I think it's part of the measured criticism that I'm trying to... But I don't know why I'm talking about it, like it's a Jim Jarmish movie. It's like, I think that they would be able to figure out of it. I'm being measured with my criticism because I think that the team making season two of this show could come up with some good stuff and probably pitched it. And they were unable to do it for all the other reasons they were talking about. It would have been possible, but they couldn't do it.

I want to ask you about the sort of running around dragon hunt. About Rina? Yeah. That whole thing is just part of the show that just will forever perplex me. Like, that to me is the inverse of what we're talking about, where you take a character that clearly is important to the history, clearly is important to the people who know, capital K, and I mean, like Mallory and Joanna and people who are invested in the world

and wanted to see these characters brought to life. Performer seems winning and good, and I'm on her team when I see her on screen. Great. I don't know what the fuck she's doing. I get it now. She's chasing.

There's a wild dragon. We need more dragons. She's in the veil. So there's, we talked about this last night. Joe brought this up. There is a time problem maybe on this show where we have hours spent.

I don't know how long she's been running around. Yeah, she seems very, in desperate straits. Yes. So I think that the implication is that she has been like a week

of forging and looking for this dragon it is basically on her last legs when she finally finds it. And she just has this conviction, I assume, that this dragon will choose her or, you know, whatever. Similarly, like, I don't know how long Damon was at Haranol.

Like, obviously enough time for a major battle to happen between two families to politically, like, negotiate that. For the old Tully to die. Yeah. For the old Tully to die to bring all these guys here and to turn Harenhall into like a

arms factory. But I don't really know like has he been not sleeping for months or is it weeks or is it what? There was a indication earlier in the season. I think when I can't remember whether it was Renner or Allison because they both have lost so many people. But one of them is like I only just, oh, Allison's like my husband just died like two weeks ago.

Yeah, yeah. So we've been watching this show for two years, but early in season two, it's like only a couple of weeks of past since Vassaris died. So I think time sometimes, like it would be funny if they were like throwing up six weeks later cards on the show, but it might help. But also it's not just time, it's distance. Like I understand as a casual how far Kings Landing and Dragonstone are from each other. I'm willing to accept both because of what I, you people who know these. things have told me and shown me and for the contrivances of fiction that I support, that Allison and Reneer could just have secret meetings and go back and forth.

Yeah, I think it's supposed to be like across the channel. It is. So, okay, totally fine. But then it's extra challenging for me to understand that Damon is in hallucinogenic exile five minutes away, where Reneer can just hop on her dragon at any point during the season and go visit him and see what's going on. Now, if he was only there a week, I understand why, and it was a very eventful week, I understand why she didn't take time out of her busy schedule to do it. But if it was such a pressing thing where they're like, we don't know what's going on with Damon, is he helping me? Is he against me? Is he raising his army? I guess we'll never know.

The Whisper Network is pretty thorough about minor events, you know, between these places. But he's a total mystery until she surprises everyone by just zipping over there. But who does she bring with her? She brings backup. Like, I think that. That is the one thing that kind of held this show back a little bit. Chris, that was a great counter. I mean it. Yeah, because she can't, the whole season. If she goes there and he's against her. She's like, I'm going to go fuck shit up.

And they're like, you can't go. Because if you die, this whole thing falls apart. This House of Cards is built on the idea that you are the rightful heir and that they're the usurpers. If you die, we can't get into an argument about whether Jace or Agon should be king. I stand down. That was great. So she waits for now she's got this crew and she chooses the guy who has already been really deferential to her, Adam, and not

Ulf, who's like, not even respecting her superiority or whatever. So I think it's decorum. Yeah, I got, like, she gets the note, it's like, Damon might be, like, planning a mutiny, and she's like, I'm bringing back up, so it's a two-on-one-one dragon advantage, and it's the guy who's already been like, I'll just do whatever it deserves you. Fair point. Yeah. I support that.

If we're talking about the show at its best and also at its worst, I think we should also talk about the Corliss and Allen scene. My latest thought, is that they just shot all six of those scenes on the same day to maybe, like, you know, so they could, um, strike the set. They could wrap out the actor and strike the set. Because I think six of the eight episodes had a scene where Corliss goes down to the

boath yards and says something not very parental to Alan. This is why when I was freaking out about the David Hancock Penn's episode earlier, I believe it's the episode before Rinnis dies. And they have like, Corliss has a conversation under some scaffolding next to the boat yard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, yo, this is like, a new set. This is amazing.

What an incredible staging for this conversation. So, yeah, I completely understand. It does seem like they not only, like, did that scene five times, but in the exact same marks. Like, they were like, you stand here as people walk by. But again, the beautiful premise of this show and where they make it is that Abu Bakar Salim, who plays Alan, is just Biden is time fixing the boats. And then his dad says something crosswise to. him and he uncorks a hamlet monologue. You know, and it's like, holy shit.

Like, look what this guy's been sitting on. 100 mile per hour heater. He performs the shit out of it. Like, it's well done. That, you cannot, you know, there are other shows that I have been critical about or genre stuff that just, don't just, can't just casually do that. Whether they can't get the actor or they can't put the actor in the best position to do that, it's worth noting when that works.

But which wins out. And honestly, I think people who listen to this podcast probably already know this about me. Maybe it's just the time of day when I watched the episode, whether that hits or not. I watched that Alan Corle scene, and I was like, okay. And then we were texting about it. And I think you pointed out that it was the sixth time we've seen the scene. And I was like, God damn, it really, really is. I'm sure if I went back and looked at Thrones, like, there's plenty of examples of that happening.

I found that, like, maybe it's just like the locations of Thrones were just a little bit more diverse and interesting. I don't know. Like I'm sure Taiwan and Tyrion had 45 conversations that sounded more or less like the same, but they always seemed to find like a different way of staging it. They did. And they also, I mean, but those were also shows that were cast differently, you know, boarded differently in terms of like what a line producer is looking at over the course of the season and how much they have to play with and how much. I think, you know, it would be worth having the conversation if we have people who work these shows at a different level, like on a non-writing producer level or even a programming level. How have your conversations changed? Now, obviously, from Game of Thrones

to House the Dragon. The biggest one is we have dragons. And so that's going to change how we budget everything and what's expected of us. But the idea that Game of Thrones was an unlimited series. And this is also, but it's not in the same way. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. show is limited to a certain point, but when they greenlit House of the Dragon, you know internally in Casey's office, they were like, this is going to be three seasons or maybe four. They have like a little bit of a swing. Whereas Game of Thrones was such a wild, we have no idea if this is going to, I mean, they didn't even know if they were going to make a series after they made that first pilot. And then there were moments in it when I'm sure they were having conversations with Time Warner where they were

like this better run for 10. This is just a very, very different approach to it. And I think we're seeing Overall, though, it seems like we've arrived at a place where you are warmer on this show than you were when going into the season. It's seaworthy, you know, to keep it in Corliss's camp. I can take – I found aspects of the way the show was put together and the ask it was making of its audience so preposterous that I was mad. I was aggravated by it, both in terms of like elements of the execution that I thought were clumsy, but also just the entire. premise of like, you're moving through these things like I care and you're not making me care. They've done enough work both with the quality of the performers, the resources available to them, and I think the professionalization of this season so that I can see Valeris and Aegon's subplot

and be like, both these actors are really good, so I'm going to watch this show, which is not nothing, right? It's a triumph. Do you feel like it's a win? I mean, consider, I think you were probably like, I think that this show did some really good things this season. I think it ended in a disappointing place, but I'm also trying to be mindful of the fact

that like some Thrones seasons ended more in a like next season on Thrones place. You know, like I don't think they always ended with like the dragons are born or John is this and blah blah, blah. Like I think that there was there was some, you know,

there was some kick the can down their own stuff in Thrones. We just look back on it with a different eye. I also, just in how I'm, maybe this is also the context, or the moment, but during the best years of Game of Thrones, I was taking like the highest level of joy and pleasure from watching the show. Some of the best performances on TV full stop, some of the best scene work full stop, a feeling of glee and excitement of like what's going to happen next, what could happen,

where will we go? Oh, those guys met. And also just that very, very old-fashioned TV thing that we always point out in love, where you meet the hound in season one and then by the time he's on the road with Ary, Like, that's maybe my favorite character. Yeah. And he's been there the whole time. And that's very old TV mechanics that I always, always respond to.

This show, I just put in a different bucket now. I think of the genre stuff that is out there that we professionally engage with, both because we're interested in the industry and because we run a twice-weekly podcast. And we're emotional cripples who still hold out hope that, like, something that we were interested in as a teen is going to be actually serious and good. Then this has, in its second season, steadied the ship. is probably at the top of the pile of this sort of thing.

I find myself very immersed in this, like, this world now. So it's almost hard for me to take a step outside to be like, it was a good or a bad TV show. I think it was an improved TV show, and I really, really, really enjoyed certain episodes of this.

I was like, oh, we're getting, we're touching thrones now. Like, we're getting there. I think it took a little bit of a step back, but which was just you wait until season three. But also, it's, It's funny that, like, we could make the argument that, like, when the history is written of this made-up history, the, you know, the, when James Hibbard writes his tell-all or whatever about House of the Dragon when it's done, a lot of the conversation could be, well, the chaos of the corporate merger that was happening when the show was in development and how we had to really, you know, gas up this one because we actually thought that the Naomi Watts one was going to go and we had to completely retool it on the fly and do this instead. and then the strike and COVID and all the things,

it's amazing that we got what we did. That might be the story. And I'm very sympathetic to that story. But it also would involve, accepting that at face value, would also forget about the fact that, as I just alluded to, Game of Thrones had a Tom McCarthy pilot that was almost laughed out of the building and no one believed in it.

And then they took a chance and they redid it. And so the degree of difficulty to pull off any of this stuff is always very high. I think it's a question of how you approach it. And obviously fans are pleased with, fans want more of it. Yeah. And I think fans are broadly speaking okay, if not more than okay, with HBO's stewardship of the franchise. Yes, I think they just want more.

I think they just want more. And I think that, again, doing that split finance creative brain that we have to do all the time on the show, I think they're managing the property smartly. I am slowly, slowly relaxing into the sweet oblivion. when I'm like, it's never going to be a great show in the spirit of the great shows of the past or even in the spirit of the greatness of Game of Thrones. But that might not be what they're going for.

That may be just an old... That may be the old gods. Let's wrap up here. Just as a programming alert, Thursday, I will be off, but Andy will be here with a special guest if we don't know who that is yet. I think I'm just going to read our old texts from 2009. He needs to make sure they stop at 8 p.m.

on any given night. And then on Monday, Andy and I, maybe even Sunday night, if we're feeling frisky, we'll put up our industry episode one recap episode. Yeah, because we're back, baby. So talk to you soon. Thanks to Kai for producing. We'll see you Thursday.