That scene on the Bridge of Dragonstone was gripping.

Also liked how the made Caraxes just a little bit... Off. Deformed a bit. I think it's because he's a long necky boy.

Also enjoyed the chirps, clicks, and beeps. Not just constant rawrs.

We have to talk about Mysaria's accent though..

 

Ep 2 was quite good. Much better than the premiere. Dialogue was vastly improved. Dragon CGI seemed better too.

 

So, episode deux.

tldr: it's good

I liked the politicking. Viserys decides to marry the girl he likes instead of the girl who's the stronger political choice, so the Sea Snake bounces off to his island and immediately starts plotting with the king's ass-wart, errrr, I mean the king's belligerent younger brother. Rhaenyra doesn't like dad taking her childhood bestie for himself. Otto was smug as fuck when Viserys made the announcement. The opening visuals with the crabs were nasty as shit and I liked it, some gross-out gore to underline that this Crab Feeder person is a gnarly motherfucker.

The scene on the footwalk on Dragonstone is the highlight of the episode. Rhaenyra played on Daemon's sympathy for her, she knows it, he knows it, they both know the other knows it. Rhaenyra expands her Politics skill tree.

I continue to really enjoy Milly Alcock's performance. I think she nails the middle ground between "savvy" and "still a teenager". She tried to spar verbally with Rhaenys and was thoroughly trounced. She came off a little bit like a spoiled princess in the Kingsguard scene, but then with Daemon she played to her strengths and didn't try to gamble for more once she got what she came for.

The less said about Daemon's lady friend, the better. And the less screen time she has, the better. Shae, she is not.

Weird how the episode was named after a character that was barely in it. Matt Daemon (huehuehue aren't I clever) needs more screentime before I buy into the character.

Great dramatic shifts on Dragonstone when Otto tries to be a badass and then Daemon is like "you talking to me?" and his longboi dragon quickly reminds Otto that he is one dracarys away from being a well-done roast, but then Rhaenyra shows up and the drama shifts again.

 

Wow. Viewership was actually up 2% from the premiere. 10.2 million people. That seems relatively uncommon. I thought it always went down

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/house-of-the-dragon-episode-2-ratings-viewers-1235352102/

 

Watched the two episodes and ... it's nice? It's okay. Not ground-breaking by any stretch, but it looks good, it sounds good, has no glaring issues so far. I thought the costuming in trailers and stills look too fake but it actually looked fine in the episodes.

Matt Smith owns every scene he's in and I do not at all see the Doctor in his performance like some do. Perhaps more importantly, the majority of the rest of the cast are serviceable as well.

It's a good show so far. One of my criticisms is that we don't really see many vistas anymore like we used to. We've seen Dragonstone and King's Landing, but I was hoping to see Driftmark and the Stepstones rather than just be told that a scene is taking place there.

 

It's more than that, I think. Viserys has just had a heart-to-heart with Rhaenyra in which he describes how much he misses her mother, how she cannot be replaced, but that he must do his duty. She accepts this premise. She understands that he has a duty.

His duty would be to marry the Velaryon girl. That is the obvious best move, politically.

Instead he decides to marry Alicent. In doing so, he plainly acts not out of duty but out of personal desire. He effectively announces to Rhaenyra that their conversation was a lie, that he has found someone who can and will replace her mother - and on top of that, the person he has chosen is her best friend who failed to mention any of this to her.

 

Well, yes. My post had a joking tone, I didn't type all of this out because I thought it was obvious to a viewer who paid attention during those scenes. And to add another pebble to the pile, the king didn't even do his only child the curtesy of telling her in advance, leaving her to be taken by surprise with the rest of the Small Council. Perhaps because Viserys thought Rhaenyra would have tried to talk him out of his idea and persuade him to commit to the political marriage instead of the one he wants. It would have been an awkward conversartion. "Hey kiddo, I like your best friend. I mean I like like her."

The acting from Milly Alcock and Paddy Considine in those scenes was on point, their private conversation and the closeups in the Small Council chamber when they had to act with their faces only.... chef's kiss.

 

HBO has put the 1st ep on their YouTube channel.

 

Would've been smarter to include 2nd episode as well if they wanted to hook people. Episode 1 is a big meh.

 

I'll be watching that later on today, thank you very much.

 

Doesn't work in the UK; Ireland's milage may vary also given that in Ireland Now TV also has the rights.

 

Well, I'm in France atm, but I managed to get it working with a VPN.

So far I'm really enjoying it, even if a few scenes (namely Daemon's raiding party into Kings Landing) were a bit odd. I thought that the tourney, the birth, the dragons, and all of the dialogue were top notch.

 

I wish we had seen Daemon's raid on the Dragonpit, sure. But I can get why they didn't show it. It'd just take time away and he gives it away anyway.

 

I just meant that I wasn't sure what was happening during Daemon's raid. Were the Goldcloaks targeting known criminals? Did they pull random people off of the street and punish them for made up/jumped up crimes? Were they breaking up some sort of protest? Who knows. I thought that it was a really cool scene, but I didn't really know what was happening. I probably missed something.

 

OH. You mean the Episode 1.1 scene where Daemon and the newly-christen Goldcloaks were going gestapo in Flea Bottom, not when he stole Dreamfyre's egg.

It's a showing of harsh justice, IMO.

"I'm gonna start cutting off hands and heads if you lot keep doing this shit. And I don't care if the hands and heads I cut off are truly the perpetrators of this shit. I'm gonna be slicing off hands and heads until it stops."

It's definitely oppressive, but that's the point. Daemon gets the job done. No matter who he kills. No matter who he steps on. No matter who he insults.

 

I haven't seen episode 2 yet but yes, I know that it's meant to induce fear, but it's unclear if he's punishing known criminals, or just making examples of random people.

For example, one of the goldcloaks accuses some random guy of being a rapist, and then castrates him, but we're not shown how they know he's a rapist. As far as we know he was just breaking curfew.

 

That's not a question we can answer with the information we have. I think not, though.

 

The way it's shown is the Goldcloak is clearly looking around for someone, he sees something off-screen, immediately points and shouts "raper!". To me it was clear he was looking for a specific person, he didn't accuse a ranom dude on a whim. Maybe the Goldcloak had perfectly reasonable proof and the accused got away for a moment, so the Goldcloak was looking around for him. Timestamp is 19 minutes 37 seconds, watch it again.

And we're not shown proof of anyone's guilt, we're shown summary judgments by Daemon and crew and then Otto immediately goes: "It was an unprecedented roundup of criminals of every ilk." It certainly seems to me like Daemon wasn't just randomly slicing innocent people. At the very least it seems he was slicing peple he thought were criminals.

 

That may be what's happening, but the way the scene is filmed leaves it all very ambiguous, which might be intentional. The reactions of the Small Council and the king to Daemon's actions is more important than what actually happened.

 

I don't think so? Different people got singled out for different crimes, which implies, y'know, differentiation.

Yes perhaps the scene was rushed a bit in that sense for dramatic effect, but I clearly got the feeling that this was heavy handed justice, not random assaults and maimings.