I don't have a problem with two people in a room talking. I have a problem with them being in same room when it makes no sense, talking in ways about about things that make no sense. Yes, I'm mainly talking about both Rhaenyra/Alicent scenes.
This season wasn't boring because it was two people in a room talking. It's boring because majority of those dialogues had no weight to them, no meaning, no foreshadowing, no payoff. It was just random chit chat
The idea of all the spin-off shows being tied in with the white walkers just gives me Star Wars flashbacks. A show might be pretty good; but the universe ultimately ends up in something that wasn't well thought out or even satisfying at all.
Ideally they'd just make GoT: Brotherhood Use the scrapped 5 year timeskip to explain why everyone's older, and ask George about all the ideas he had for that timeline. Then get someone who's got a better track record than D&D.
I'm not bored of two people sitting in a room talking. But I'm extremely bored by the "now is the time for war, but actually no, but actually we have to do something, but no actually we can't. Armies marching and fighting already? Oh these men can't wait for war, but we women must stick together and stop the war that we already started". Cmon man, that shot of Rhaenyra at the end of S1 meant war and she couldn't have backpedaled any harder or more often.
I don't mind not having a battle at the end or the pacing of the show. What I don't understand is with the story changes how are they actually going to do the dance of the dragons now that Alicent is a traitor, Helena doesn't care about her child being killed, nettles doesn't exist and so on.
Some of these GOT/HOTD UA-camrs are starting to talk down to fans like they shouldn’t feel what they’re feeling about the show. Dismissing people’s valid feelings about the show as illogical or silly. No, you don’t get to tell fans what or how to feel. Season 2 of HOTD was not good and lacked coherence or substance with inconsistent storytelling and unrecognizable characters. Fans should be able to say that without some smarty pants thumbing their noses at them or scolding them.
not really, only this one - carmine has some mental health problems from being so engaged fighting "anti-woke" people he is gaslighting himself about the show
This show was doomed the moment they decided that Aegon's dream/prophecy and that stupid fucking dagger. Constantly leaning on "setting up" the horrible Game of Thrones ending is a terrible thing to do. I also would argue that Daemon's "change of heart" being based on the stupid fucking prophecy and not something more nuanced DOES "ruin" season 2 somewhat ... bad enough that the whole cause of the civil war has seemingly been reduced to "Allicent made an ooopsy" with Viserys' last words, but they just keep compounding the problem with the prophecy and that stupid fucking dagger. HotD season 2 isn't GoT season 8 bad, but it's definitely GoT season 5 bad.
Yeah we really hate that. Words cannot express how much book readers tend to hate that decision. It's a bad one. It renders the characters shallow, and lacking in agency. If they shuffle this transh into season 3...
@@samf.s.7731 About an hour after I made that comment I noticed "Preston's HotD Watch" for the finale popped up on my feed. He articulates it really well the level of disappointment and bafflement at why they'd make those obviously idiotic decisions.... (I'd like to be more eloquent myself, but "that stupid fucking dagger" phrase just expresses my feelings in a concise, yet crude, manner.)
I remember someone stating that Daemon in harrenhall was character growth for him. And then in mind I said " his character growth was to bend the knee to Rhaenyra because prophecy. But didn't he bend the knee to Rhaenyra because his brother named her heir in season one and put his crown on her head, with the need of a prophecy?" Like Daemon learned what he already knows and that is his character development? Guess Alicent had some great character development in episode 8.
Definitely had more Season 5 energy than i was comfy with. There are several major issues but they are mostly isolated to specific characters or plot threads so the damage is mostly contained. Not as good as GOT S1-4 but also not as bad as S5-8
This may be controversial, but I thought season 5 of GoT was better than this season. Jaime and Bronn sneaking into Dorne was about as stupid as Rhaenyra sneaking into King's Landing, but way more entertaining, with Jaime and Bronn having more chemistry than every single character in HotD combined. GoT had 4 amazing seasons worth of momentum before things started to turn bad. HotD on the other hand had 1 season of mostly build-up and zero followthrough.
@@kostaspassias3815Brother season 1 of house of the dragon is worse than season 5 game of thrones this season is closer to season 7 then it is to season 5. Season 5 of game of thrones is a lot more entertaining than house of the dragon season 1 it’s only when you stop and think wait this doesn’t make any fucking sense or that stupid does season 5 fall apart.
I'm not really a fan of this "fuck the suits!!!!" attitude being used to defend this season. Look, a couple more episodes would have helped, but the more fundamental problem is the writing. In season 1 the writers were accused of white washing the blacks, and season 2 dialled that up to 11. They focused way too much on Alicent and rhanera while giving them nothing to do. More important elements like Cole and Corleys got sidelined and replaced with nothing. Rheneras daughter went nowhere and it's just more wasted time. 2 more episodes would not have fixed anything major.
2 More Episodes and they said the Budget was already meh so we would have gotten 2 more mediocre episodes, The anti Corpo stance wont help when the writers are incompetent
@FJ_0609 100% Being anti-HBO is just the "correct" popular take. The problems with season 2 are the same problems with season 1. The difference is the degree, not the substance. You can make changes, that's fine. The problem is that the Changes they made are bad. King viserys is a good example of a change. Alicent and rhenyras meetings are an example of a bad change
@@archibaldmoore4514 I love the idea of fleshing out the Characters but the only one they succeed with is Visery the others have become worse versions of the books. I don't get it how People just bend down and take it, receiving mediocre content and defending it is insane to me. Removing Characters Bending them all that just to make it worse and not better is pathetic
@FJ_0609 This videos second half is so jarring where he says alot of the critics are tiktok brained zoomers who were never real fans of the show. Especially strange considering his co host is voicing the same criticisms that the vast Vast, VAST majority of the fans are saying. Like the genuine nihilistic haters are such a minority, talking about them at all is just such a waste of time.
Why do you presume that people calling it boring, their problem is there's dialogue and no action scenes? Two-people-in-a-room is not an auto win. It will be boring if not done well.
They made every Character this season take the most passive path possible apart from when Alicent and Rhaenyra were teleporting to each other, Aemond but we were told what he was doing rather than shown a lot of the time and Cristin Cole who did stuff but always while being mopey.
Really just feels like there's no substance at all behind 90% of the show, and none of the characters motivations make any sense. It feels like the dialogue and peoples actions are completely disconnected.
For the millionth time, we're not bored because there is dialogue. We're bored because the dialogue wasn't written well. Peter dinklage even went on a podcast recently to talk about how iconic the dialogue and one-liners were on GoT to the extent that many of em ended up on tshirts and mugs. Since casual viewers makeup the show fanbase, of course they were bored that HoD S2 didn't provide any of that
Game of Thrones was stupid, but I was never bored while watching that show. There was always something happening. Breaking Bad didn’t have dragons, most episodes had dialogue, but that show is the greatest of all time. These writers suck at writing. And that’s that. 🤧
I actually agree here. I don't think I ever hated watching an episode of GOT. This season- I caught myself being bored and feeling really frustrated. Often
@@1992zorro I hate creators like this, who patronize the audience and make it seem like we’re being crybabies or stupid for not liking the “slower episodes” of the season. 🙄🙄 We’ve all watched slow-paced shows that take their time to build up the plot of the narrative, but that’s not an excuse for boring the audience to death. I just feel like barely anything happened in this season. The moments that should’ve been big and impactful were literally glossed over by the show. Blood and Cheese was basically forgotten by most of the characters after two episodes; the Battle of the Burning Mill was a single scene and its impact on the story was probably explored for a single episode, then it was never mentioned again; the death of Rhaenys wasn’t as impactful as it should’ve been because Corlys moved on so quickly and accepted his girlboss queen back in the same episode, instead of being angry at her like he was in the book. This season suffered, not because of a lack of budget or HBO’s involvement (maybe to a little extent), but because of the writers in the writers room. The writing in season 2 sucks because they thought they could do better than George and now they’re realizing that they just can’t.
@@lanebatts26 That’s because the writers thought that they were better than GRRM. They’re not - but now that explains why George himself was so upset about changes to things like the nature of his dragons and how they shouldn’t be at the Vale. I think that his frustration might’ve been deeper than that. He was frustrated by this mediocre writing. 😭😭
Looking forward to season 3 don’t get me wrong but if I hear one more person say the quote “WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO?” In this show I’m going to explode
Gave me got season 5 feeling overall. Two things which went wrong were they cut 2 episodes, a strong ending and a lot of casuals would've forgotten some of the problems but that didn't happen. 2nd problem is, they want every female character on this show, literally everyone is an anti war preacher from rhaenyra and alicent to fucking sylvie, mysaria and alys rivers. Last season, apart from that rhaenys debacle, they had handled rhaenyra and alicent very well and it was reasonable to believe that they'll show them descending into darkness more and more with time, now, everyone has already forgotten death of visenya, luke and jahaerys, and Alicent wants to run away with rhaenyra after hating her for 20 years and then she talked to her nicely for a grand total of 10 mins.
Funny how you keep criticizing D&D, yet defend the mess that was HotD S2. D&D at least gave us 4 seasons of prestige television before it went downhill. Condal and Hess barely managed 1
@@NeeNee_B. If Ryan and his team are unable to adapt the material from F&B into something good, then why are they even assigned to adapt it? Why aren’t there good, talented writers assigned to adapt this story? 🤔
It’s not that ‘there are no battles’- they tease battles with zero pay off, abundance ofplot armor or the pacing is slow, the writing is not at good as GOT. The dialogue rehashes the same point over and over. Season 2 was treading water. I guess when you chose to cover less than 100 pages from the books that tends to happen. House of the Dragon is a really good show in the marvel universe maybe, or as a CW drama. But not at a sequel of Game of Thrones
@@OfficialRedTeamReview I don’t think the show has any characters that are “lovable” the way the Starks or Tyrion were in GoT, but I find most every character interesting to watch. There’s no one who makes me disappointed when they come on screen. There’s also the fact that HotD does not try to be nearly as funny as GoT
Beyond am bored??What am I missing here, coz, why do we read books, listen to music, watch cinema, watch sports if not to be ENTERTAINED!!!! Being bored is a very very valid reason (granted I haven't finished watching the video, so you may clarify later) but if not, I think it's a bit arrogant to suggest people aren't allowed to be bored when the show is in its earlier episodes, or suggesting being bored isn't a concrete valid reason.
I think HOT D is doomed from the start. If they followed what GRRM wrote, non-book readers and casuals will also get pissed on what the writers did to Rhaenyra thinking it’s no different than Dany. People saying Rhaenyra is their Queen only to realize she isn’t the Queen they thought they knew. The Dance only lasts two years. I honestly thought it could’ve been finished in 30 episodes in 3 seasons of 10 episodes each. S1 could’ve been told in 5 episodes. Then once we get to the Aegon/Rhaenyra scene which might be the only time they ever interact, the show ends. You can’t continue the show after the main characters are gone. We’re already 18 episodes into this series and it just feels like Rhaenyra and Alicent are forgetting what’s happening to their children or grandchildren and they’re playing around. It’s not war. It’s Capture the Flag. How could Rhaenyra meet Alicent an episode later after there was an assassination attempt on her life? And not once did she even mention it. One of the aspects I love about Game of Thrones was how much I enjoyed several characters. I remember ranking about 50 of my favorite characters from both GOT and HOT D combined and 80% came from GOT. And about 85% from my top 20 which means I like about 17 GOT characters out of the first 20. What made GOT shine were the side characters like Bronn, Tormund, and Davos. Bronn wasn’t even in the books and Jerome Flynn portrays him like Errol Flynn in Robin Hood if he turned into a mercenary who curses a lot. S1-S4 Tyrion is probably more likable than any character in HOT D and that includes Daemon. I honestly don’t know what the writers will do to Daemon because it almost feels like they want us to hate their version of him when he’s really the only charismatic character in the series. Watch us end up hating every single character in the show and realizing this was a big waste of time watching 4 seasons of drivel in 8 years! Pretty much every major character dies and even someone you might feel is morally good like Helaena or Simon Strong won’t have a happy ending. If they do go by the book, it’s going to upset people because many are already attached to Rhaenyra like they were to Daenerys. If they don’t go by the book, people will still get upset thinking this is some silly Wattpad fanfic by Condom/Mess. One of the writers already feels like she’s HOT D’s version of Leslye Headland who’s really an activist pretending to be a writer and GRRM fangirl trying to draw W scenes for her LGBT community. Then we got Warner Bros. in debt and a lot of these battles won’t come cheap. Imagine it takes maybe 1.5 years to complete Avengers: Doomsday. But that’s only 2.5-3 hours. HOT D has 8 hours of content if it’s 8 episodes. That’s painfully long to film a season and they’re not filming it until next year. I say real filming for a big budget movie like Doomsday would be 2-3 months. But it took HOT D S2 from April to Sept of last year. That’s 5 months but you saw what we got. About 4 hours of nothingburgers. Now imagine when we get battle after battle? I think this show will end up being another disaster where we pretty much hate every character or feel indifferent except for maybe Daemon although I won’t be surprised if we all ended up hating him too, and it was 8 years of wasting time waiting to cover 4 seasons for an overrated part of Targaryen history where we hardly saw a war or dragons fighting each other. I’m already pissed with the White Walker callback in Daemon’s weirwood vision because it’s a bad reminder of how GOT S8 ended and how a little Stark girl with only 2 years of training will save them from the big, bad Night King. That was 8 years of hyping up the White Walkers and they got killed off by a little Stark girl who kept getting beaten up by the Waif only 2 seasons prior. Daemon saying winter is coming in High Valyrian was cringey af. Let the two dueling queens focus on the war at hand. Who gives a fuck about a threat that will happen 200 years later? And even if the current characters in HOT D believe Daenerys is The Prince Who Was Promised or even Jon, they’re going to have shitty endings anyway! Dany is going to die after helping Winterfell with her dragons. Jon gets a slap on the wrist and gets his first job back but without any more White Walker threats. Going back to GOT callbacks is a waste of time because how badly it ended. Two dueling queens having civil meetings and forgetting that one of their kins just died and then have sex with a Kingsguard or make out with her husbuncle’s former lover. I hardly saw Alicent grieve. One of the queens forgot she could’ve been killed an episode earlier but never mentions it to the other. Then you take GRRM’s favorite Targ and turn him into a soy boy and giving him worthless GOT callbacks that only left a sour taste in our mouths thanks to S8. I have lost faith in HBO. They will hype up a certain aspect of the story like “winter is coming” for years only to undeliver once again by the time it’s over. Rhaenyra starts acting like a bitch. She’s killed. THE END. Viewers by 2028: WTF was that? Did I just rewatch what happened to Dany all over again? Man, fuck this show. Daemon will be the equivalent to Qimir / The Stranger / Smilo Ren in The Acolyte where he’s the only character worth it to watch and literally carries the show. Ok, maybe Aemond is cool to watch too. They’re the Final Fantasy characters, right? Guys will cosplay as them and buy merch of them. Their Battle Above the Gods Eye would be equivalent to Battle of Mustafar that I first heard about in the late 90s only to be so psyched to finally see it by Revenge of the Sith. But who knows if HBO screws up that scene? Who gives a damn what happens 200 years later? Just focus on the war at hand. I’m starting to think Alicent was written for S2 to be a *comedic* character if you don’t watch HOT D as a serious drama. Some of the shit she’s doing here is hilarious if you think about it. Getting eaten out. Taking trips to a forest to go swimming while a war is going on. Alicent in S2 can be memes for ages like Bully Maguire. Play HOT D silently and Alicent might be the most hilarious character on here. Rhaenyra will get eaten and Alicent will be like: Done that, girl. It’s awesome! Yeah, the most useless and stupidest character in the show who accidentally started a war might just be my new favorite character. Her Funko toys at a discount of $5.55 are flying off the shelves! This chick isn’t aware a war is going on around her. She’s tone deaf. Her grandson died, she forgets about him in the next episode. She insults Aegon which hurts his pride, then 4 episodes later, she’s willing to sell him out and Aemond. I love you, Alicent. Your kids don’t. Olivia Cooke is a great actress, but man, they made her character as dumb as rocks. No wonder we see photos of Matt Smith and Olivia Cooke hanging out a lot. It was paid vacation for them. Daemon and Alicent do absolutely nothing in it. Daemon got to be Mickey Mouse in Castle of Illusions. Alicent got laid and took baths. Easy payday for Matt and Olivia. We will never escape the White Walkers shit. In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the White Walkers will be mentioned again. Daemon’s weirwood vision was only the beginning of this shit. Every series set in Westeros will mention the White Walkers. HBO might as well give us a series about Old Valyria. It’s the only way to escape the Night King nonsense, the most overused plot device for these Westeros shows. These characters won’t even live long enough to see Arya kill the Night King. Why should they be concerned about White Walkers like a century or two earlier? Winter is coming. Winter is coming. Winter is coming. Please make it stop!
Interesting takes and I agree. It’s shit that they still sell the f out of the white walkers when we know what happened. That is why I kinda loved season 1 of HOD because it didn’t mentioned anything about them apart from two scenes. I also hate what season 2 did to season 1 because season 1 set up the war with the factions and motivations. But then season 2 forgot about that and instead gave us some wierd family drama when there’s a war to be had and the characters that were build were deconstructed to only be constructed again in the most shittiest possible way. Deamon, the rogue prince? How about Deamon the wimpy prince. Aegon the irresponsible? How about Aegon the miss understood? Aemond the vengeful? How about Aemond the spiteful? Alicent the queen? How about alicent the flipfloper? None of the characters remained consistent on what they left us with in season 1 and that is why I didn’t enjoyed the show. Didn’t mattered if it was 8 episodes.
I think they could have worked around 8 episodes. But one of the main issues for me the is Character Inconsistency. Alicent in the first season is one of the most wronged characters ever. She is wronged by Viserys (through his unwillingness to support her), by Otto (through patriarchal pressures), by Larys (by sexual humiliation). In the season finale, Alicent fights back. And wins. She sends her own squadron of loyalists to fight and win against Otto and they do. The ascension of Aegon is done at her pleasure and on her terms. She stands up against Rhaenys and Meleys and has a badass staredown. She fought and gained her power, fair and square. Season 2 takes that away. What happened to the active Alicent that fought and won her power? She's back to being a victim, so the men around her can have all the blame. There is no subtlety on this, almost all the men are somehow evil or mean and all the women are these wise and nice people (notice how they don't make mention of Rhaenys in the Dragonpit ☠️). Season 2 Alicent just isn't Season 1 Alicent. Season 1's finale promised fire and blood, instead we got three steps forward and an unpredictable spin. I don't want D/D back tho, they had their chance in the spotlight and their legacy is still to be determined. Another big character that is inconsistent is Rhaenyra. She was ready to kill all the Greens in the season 1 finale but is suddenly reverted to this peace loving woman that wants to stop the war. This in effect makes her scenes almost obstructive to the plot. The plot is the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenyra is just like trying to stop it. In pretty bad disguises. Her nun outfit can't hold a candle to Daemon's cloak. And speaking of Daemon- Rhaenyra complains the most about him. Like hello lady, you married a guy you knew was problematic, why are you shocked he's acting like a rogue? ☠️ She complains a lot about her situation, which is fair up to a point. This is a pretty patriarchal society but it cannot be denied Rhaenyra herself had a hand in her predicament. She went off to various places leaving the Black Council to itself. They are learning to function without their queen, which is entirely her fault for ditching them to find Luke then talk to Alicent. She's gone for presumably days and the Black Council is held together by Defeatist turned Peacekeeper Rhaenys. And she isn't that popular with the (almost rightly so) militant councilmen, who actually want to take action and secure the mainland (Daemon is taking his sweet time tripping Harrenhal Kush) while they still have holdings. Pretty much it.
There are definitely issues related to WB having financial difficulties, but there are also challenges adapting the actual story from Fire and Blood. The writers made a conscious decision to make Rhaenerya and Alicent the same age and teenage friends. That single decision has cascaded throughout switching the focus from a Blacks vs Greens to Rhaenerya vs. Alicent hence the unnecessary clandestine meet ups. Once the war starts there roles kind of are diminished, so the story should have moved away from them. Also, the story is really a tragic tale with no real heroes and it seems that the show is looking to create a hero that doesn’t exist. Just tell the “story.” Great work. I appreciate your commentary.
I think there are two genuine factors behind the "boring" critique. Firstly, it felt like a lot of characters lacked agency, so you had several scenes where people talked but nothing actually happened or changed as a result. Compare the Green and Black councils, where it felt like every Green council scene had some significant change to one or more of the characters because of what happened, then go to the Blacks where either Rhaenyra is there and complains that no one listens to her or she's not there and the other characters just stand around not being able to do anything. The second factor is that there was a lot of build up this season and it was very clearly build up. Hugh, Ulf, Addam + Alyn, Rhaena, Daemon all had a lot of scenes but I think each could have been cut down a scene. The scenes were competently written and directed, but were lacking some spark.
S1 had its issues with Rhaenyra's characterization. She was a completely different person between Ep 5 & Ep 6 with no exposition to show what had happened over the years to... basically break her spirit. Sure, she'd had three kids and been stuck in a loveless marriage, but she was a shadow of the girl she'd been. Unsure if this was the script, direction or Emma's input. Whatever it was, it was nothing compared to Rhaenyra remaining stagnant all season long in terms of development. And I don't mean to be trite when I say this, or refer to her staying put in one location for most of it, because in F&B that's what she did. But she began the season complaining about Daemon and being insecure about him, and pretty much closed the season feeling the same. Between start to near finish, the bulk of her scenes were spent referring to him in some fashion, or being frustrated with her advisors who wanted her to do everything and nothing at once. (They were frustrated that she was not a man who could and would try to do everything at once, and the forced feminism in them trying to frame this as toxic got old, too.) She could have learned to fight in the yard anytime as a child. FFS she was married to two highly accomplished warriors and the lover of another. You can't tell me that in all the time she spent between King's Landing and Dragonstone that they'd have forbid her from learning if she'd expressed the desire to. More like, they'd have been willing to teach her. Daemon and Harwin would have at least. But this came out of nowhere, and was more them -trying- to echo her frustrations from Milly's arc playing the character and it landed flat. Two very different actresses portraying two very very different versions of the same character. To the point where I nearly consider them two different characters entirely. Everything else is just white noise in comparison to how Rhaenyra mentally and emotionally is in the same place at the end of the season that she is at the beginning.
I agree. I was not a huge fan of the 4th episode tbh, but I thought the 3 prior ones were VERY solid. Episode 7 is one I enjoy from the second half, but that's about it. 50-50 is pretty bad for thrones. That previous season, I think there were a few decisions I didn't like but I enjoyed every single episode with a couple being the best episodes I'd seen of anything put on streaming. I had just finished watching season 2 of Interview with The Vampire, and that one was one of those "I like every episode" type of shows. It did have 8 episodes though, but the writing was tailored to that, and it fit like a glove. So yeah, HoTD season 1, 9.5/10 for me. HoTD season 2, a 7 (That's not good for thrones- and I am being generous, I actually want to give it a lower score but I keep in mind everyone else who worked on it aside from the writing team, and they are very dedicated people). So yeah, the Interview With The Vampire second season is, like, easily a 9/10, and I personally would rate it higher, like a 9.3. That was the thing that prevented me from cussing a lot and being bitter 😂 It's a show I hadn't even watched before. I ended up binging both seasons last weekend.
@march8482 She had her hands full looking after Aegon's children while the two parents spiralled due to their son's death. She was there for Blood and Cheese. She was allowed to give her opinions to the council completely fine. They could have done all those things, and added things that made sense. Instead, they butchered her and made her a traitor to her own cause.
Carmine. This season was lamer than finding out your dog has cancer. The characters aren’t fun or connected from episode to episode, the dragons are basically seagulls, and the source material is lacking. Also nothing matters since a crippled Stark boy planned it all.
My major problem is anchoring rhaenyra's and daemond's motivation behing a prophecy that had a shitty development in GoT. It makes no sense to say they have to protect their bloodline so that dany and jon will be born considering all dany contributed to the long night was handing a free dragon to the night king, and all that jon did was scream at a dragon. It's lazy writing and looks like stakeholders trying to make GoT hype again, or some similar dumb idea.
Rhaenyra’s character is so boring. All she wanna do is to fck around. Her power is a myth, no experience but need acceptance from others. Ppl are intimidated to see Daemon but when they saw her they were like who? Oh the queen ? ok. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
@@samf.s.7731 And good and sympathetic qualities to make them likable, some more quick witted or lite hearted characters and some more varied locations. They could really use Mushroom. But I think that they want to avoid copying aGoT, and more scenes with everyone on the more, the only reason that ai can think of as to why they aren’t doing that is because they didn’t do a whole lot that first year of the war and that would call for a lot more extras.
I think the season itself was not terrible. The thing that scares me are the 11 battles and 14 major events that have to be crammed into 2 seasons of this show. Some of which i thought we'd get in this one.
They won't be. With a budget cuts, we will probably get 15-20 mins of the most important battles, others will happen off screen. A flagship show of HBO suffers greatly.
Season 2 wasnt all that bad if you give HBO a pass for the absolute character assassination of their leading roles. How people can defend the writing choices of this season after episode 8 is beyond me.
Bro how can you defend this? The show is literally boring, everything’s an accident if it’s from the good guys, the show pisses on source material, complex characters simply don’t exist, everyone’s a damn idiot. There’s nothing interesting about it and you’re desperate to defend it why?
The season was bad; the writing was as bad as season 7, characterisation and theming was inconsistent even if it was meant to be 10 episodes. The reason the 'discourse' is so up and down is because larger UA-camrs like Alt Schwift X and Glidus know where their bread is buttered and know their fiscal success depends on the show's success, and are using the show to shill their video streaming platform. They're just one example, of course.
The ep 8 scene with Daemon and the tree, and Alicent's character arc are the reasons were it went wrong, even if there were two more eps it still doesn't change the flaws with the choices the writers made with the characters.
To me this show just suffers like many other IPs that go back and do prequels when the story itself isn’t even finished. The point of this story is the civil war and they show how everything still leads to the long night. But those stakes feel and are extremely low because the Original show didn’t stick the landing itself. Anything after game of thrones is always gonna suffer from within like budget cuts and choices the writers and directors make. But in my opinion if GRRM is gonna keep on signing off on these projects, he needs to be involved heavily because you can see how much it struggles when he isn’t around or doesn’t partake in the writing rooms. (Like seasons 5-8, season 2, and season 3 of HOD)
Unrelated to this video, if I remember correctly, time travel is localized, meaning, that when Bran goes back through time, it only happens on Planetos, and the rest of the universe is not affected. If that's the case, does that mean that this is the only timeline with the comet and whatever it caused, like the birth of dragons, or maybe that Bran has to do like thousands of useless time travels until the comet returns again.
I have got no problem with season two being at a slower pace than season one, if it gives good character development. However, Daemon is the only one that came close to having anything resembling character development. And they even sabotaged that one at the end. I like these kind of soul searching story lines, when they're done right. However, three things ruined it for me. The pacing, the mother vision and that last vision about the future. It would've had far more impact on Daemon's character if he'd decided of his own free will that he wanted to support Rheanyra. That would show growth. But no. Got to strip him of all agency, whilst reminding people that HotD and GOT are connected. Like the presence of the Iron throne doesn't do that already. I could've tolerated that vision if it had come after his bending the knee. Unless these visions result in him becoming a better husband, father and generally showing more restraint in dealing with people. I don't see the point in them. Rhaenyra, on the other hand was insufferable this season. She spent the vast majority of the time flipping back and forth between wanting and not wanting war. She's like the Chamberlain of Westeros. She keeps putting off the war, until the enemy practically forces her hand. At which point the war is harder to fight. She f**k'ed off whenever she pleased. Does anyone believe Biden would take a secret trip to Tel Aviv without telling one single person in his administration? She stupidly leaves the council without a leader in her absence. But then gets mad when people try and take advantage of the power vacuum. It's not made clear if anyone was left in charge. Certainly not the heir to throne, who would be the logical choice. Her council then quite rightly point out that an inexperienced king/queen should not be on the battlefield. See Aegon for details. But she just goes in a huff. They try and pass all of this off as the patriarchy being mean to her. But quite frankly, I'd have done the same. Don't get me started on the others.
House of The Dragon Season 2 did the unthinkable; to make me want to check out Rings Of Power Season 2. It can't be worse than having people drinking wine and tripping on visions all season long. Terrible season, no justification needed. Now, I'm not REALLY serious about checking out Rings of Power, I think it's still going to be a crappy season like season 1, but at least it COULD improve over the next seasons, while the world of HoTD is pretty much fleshed out. Season 1 was pretty good, though.
The whole argument that having 2 more episodes wouldve saved the season is hilarious to me. We wouldve just gotten more of someone sneaking into the enemies camp to talk no jutsu, hold X to skip battles, and more unnecessary prophetic vision/white walker bs. Look, I think that stuff matters, but I came to this show for the family fued, civil wars, and dragon battles. I can care less about the talking. The time for talking is over. I want to see strategy, fights, betrayal, etc etc.
So they're in a bad situation financially and they decided the thing they're gonna cut money from is currently the only successful series they have going on. Yeah, I can see how they got in this situation in the first place.
It’s a shame because season 1 was solid. I feel like this whole show could have been wrapped up with 3 seasons 10 episodes each. But they’ve decided to dilute it to 4 seasons which made this seasons plot slower than it needed to be. I wouldn’t say GOT S8 bad, but definitely S5,6&7 bad.
My problem has nothing to do with there being talking, I love the talking. My issue is that the writers have demonstrated such a strong bias towards Team Black that they are ruining the show with it. There is no more Team Green. Alicent has switched sides, Helaena sends spooky visions to the murderer of her son to help him see his destiny, Aegon has fled, Otto is in a box, Aemond has betrayed Aegon... I understand that stories can change in adaptation, but they have fundamentally made it so that there just isn't a Team Green, there's Team Black and the stray assholes opposing them because they're just big mean assholes who exist to be punished by the writers. Alicent agreeing to give up her son(s) to Rhaenyra? Disgusting, being a worse mother than Cersei is hard to manage, but she did it. Aemond betraying Aegon and ALLOWING one of their sides dragons to be maimed? That's a level of disloyalty and stupidity that feels wildly out of character both with book and show Aemond.
D&D at least adapted the first three books faithfully. Condal and Hess have all the material written and they've deviated from it as early as season 1, I'm not going to waste more of my time with this fanfiction, I've been one too many times in this train to not see where it ends, either they find new showrunners who respect and at least TRY to adapt the book or I'm out.
The community has forgotten that the House of the Dragon is about the power struggles of the dragons (Targaryens), not the powerful dragons (CGI) struggling with each other.
The first half of the season was so promising but after episode four the story abruptly stopped. The episodes individually weren't bad but they were redundant and wasted valuable time Considering the season was already short.
So right about the lack of nuance, season 2 was still better than everything after season 5 of got. Not bad at all but underwhelming. The problem is that game of thrones gotten so big now you have a bunch of marvel fans that want big action scenes I'm every epsiode. Game of thrones in general was better when it had a fan base around the books
I really enjoyed this season for the most part. I have basically no gripes with episode 1-4, each of those episodes had its own emotional payoff (b&c, erryk v arryk, rooks rest) and my gripes with the latter half are not to do with pacing. I loved GOT for its slower more character driven moments. This season had those in abundance. My gripes are mainly with the lack of payoff at the end. It does make the season seem a lot slower than it is since there’s no catharsis at the end. That being said, once season 3 is released and we can watch all of it back to back, these issues are going to disappear. In conclusion, all the setup with little payoff means people will be left thinking the season had no purpose until the next seasons release, at which point, I think this season will be able to be much more appreciated. I give it a 7.5/10 for now but I’m sure it’ll be bumped up to an 8.5 when S3 comes out.
I'll not argue that the last half was weak, but overall I liked season 2. There's hope that season's three and four (assuming it stays four seasons) can bring the war and resolution along with sticking the landing by showing the Song still going but the nature of the world has changed.
Airing D&E before HotD is finished is going to be the killing blow, they will lose all casual viewers who are already confused about the plot. Also you spend too much time on Twitter, that’s why you hear so much about the complaints.
People who criticise this season, at least me, are not saying it is boring or not entertaining. It is not boring. It is entertaining. But it is bad. I'm not bored by two people talking in the same room. First four seasons of Game of Thrones have a lot of such scenes, and they are great, and at least I did not find them boring at all. It is what they are talking about in HOTD season 2 that bothers me... Bad writing is bad writing. Good writing is good writing. It's not about perspective, not about how old you are when you watch it, not about boring or not, not about entertaining or not. At least the story got to make sense.
no, it's pretty fucking boring. carmine is an idiot, bad writing is boring because it is so stupid and unengaging. this is nothing comparable to early game of thrones
Damon's 2nd season arc was 1/100th of his brother's 1st season arc mainly because The first season had tons of characters interacting and pushing against each other while the second season had Damon just mostly alone and living in his head
This season had a lot of flaws, but it wasn't that bad overall. They must step it up next season, give the characters more depth and logic and make them have relevant and necessary conversations. Build up to action payoffs well as long as they have the budget, and be smarter with how they plot out storylines. All they can do is learn from their mistakes and improve. I hold out hope for season 3, and I pray it will blow us away.
The director/writers/show runners all tell you what went wrong in their recent interviews without realizing it. They decided that HOTD should be about the relationship and the struggle with what's right and what's wrong, the pressures of being a leader, the desire to rekindle their youthful romance between two women, Rhaenyra and Alicent. I mean, who would want to see good acting, sword fights, armies at war and dragon battles in the sky when you can see two women reciting bad dialogue in the dark?
What went wrong? I’ll answer it without making a video about it. What went wrong was not episode lengths, was not about the budget (at least my view was not affected by budgets) and lack of nuance. It was all creative decisions. They took (in my opinion) pretty good developed characters from season 1 with a set plot and just dumped them into the garbage and decided to write what ever the f they wanted. They had a story already but they made a u-turn in everything. Deamon the rogue prince, a character that was written to be a man of action was turn into a prince that was beaten down by his wife, was now having psychological breakdowns, and tamed out of nowhere as the only thing that served as justification for it was because “oh Harrenhal is said to be spoky, let’s do this to him”. Rheanyra was turned from a smart, cunning and temperate leader into a pitty, dum, annoying lady who had gender issues in feeling that she could not be trusted with anything when she was advising and taking bad decisions. Aegon, Larys and Otto were the only ones that this season really didn’t f up because the rest were just trashed with decisions THEY took. Having budget issues? Cut things. There was a lot of stupidness that this season could have cut in order to save time and money if that was the problem this time. And you know, I’ve seen the opposite. You claim that you’ve seen negative criticism about the season when in reality, I’ve seen the opposite. I’ve seen people like you praising it and defending it and when I go to the comments I see far more positive than negative. GOT season 1-4 is 85-90% two people talking but those are the best season all people praise. As I said, HOD season 1 was 85-90 talking and was WAY BETTER than this season so you can’t boil it down to “oh people want battles and dragons” when that’s not the case
My whole issue with this season is that for one it is a build up. There are too many dumb actions like saying episode is one of the best with the worst scene of the two queens meeting in kings landing. After blood and cheese happened. Daemon did nothing . I feel like you have turned into one of those UA-camrs that just is doing it for the money now so you gotta be positive.
Definitely not the worst season of TV and D&D should never return. However, the season felt like it was just running around in circles. With a story so condensed as HoTD and focused on a singular event. We kept bouncing between the same characters multiple times debating the same things over and over again. The writers were just dragging things out for far too long. Daemon spending an entire season on shrooms. Alicent and Rhaenyra meeting twice. Only to end with the same result both times. The greens being dismantled as a unit. Reducing any chances of a level playing field. All concluding with a finale that was not satisfying enough to merit its status. Greatly reduce the impact of this season.
I think that the flaws do tie to HBO not wanting to do a 10 episode season but even then it was annoying how dragged out the season felt. In the season 1 finale with the deathstare that Rhaenyra gave the obvious inclination that she was done talking and trying to make peace. But this whole season she drags her feet and tries to avoid war along with Alicent but the death of Luke was the point of no return. So we end up with an above average season with feels like a lot of meandering
That's what's bothering you? The only part that's actually from the book? Not the fact that they literally dumped season 4 spoilers into the episode, and pretty much ruined Daemon's entire season's character arc? Yikes bro! 🙄
I guess I've never seen a clearer depiction of that "butterfly effect" than S2. Half of the season was interesting, with some really nice moments, despite some plot conveniences, but I get the feeling because the show relied so much on certain characters, they needed to reboot at least one of them in order to somehow move the plot forward. It's not season 8 level, but I'd say pretty much a season 6, when Davos asked Mel to revive Jon, then remembered she was a witch and most likely burned Shireen.
Firmly believe this season was full of what GoT lacked at the end, all the dialog and character build up. Cole for example has quite the internal struggle going on and we've seen it develop over the season. By speeding the show up and removing the "boring" parts, the risk of rushing the show like Dave and Dan did increase. The season was awesome. In season 8 for example we got one 5 min conversation between Tyrion and Jon and that was enough to convince Jon to kill Dany, rather than an internal struggle spanning over multiple episodes after she's taken down kings landing.
The shorter season was a problem but two extra episodes wouldn't change the major flaws in this season. Tying in the prophecy from GOT to HOTD really, really sucks and I almost didn't watch the last episode because of it.
The show was fine. I think the issue HotD faces is the same any prequel has. The stakes feel low when I know the dragons die. That said, I thought the season was a B. Fine. Hope S3 is better.
Yeah, I largely agree with you all there. Most people I know think that whilst season 2 was pretty good, it felt like it was building up to something that isn't going to happen until 2026. That being said, I suspect the perspective will shift once all episodes are out. Also, previously it was more unusual to have to wait two years for a season, so i don't know if that adds to the impatience.
Actually there were a lot of stupid things in this season, like Rhaenyra feeding the people and getting praise for it even though it's her blockade that's starving them in the first place. Or Alicent's character assassination in the last episode, where she agrees that Rhaenyra is right to kill her kids.
It was great TV but the two year break is killing TV shows. Im just going back the books. Hey I might never get an ending but atleast I do not have to wait two years for a Westeros that people just bitch about.
Here’s my sacrifice to the algorithm Gods: I’ve been watching this show in a group since it came out on my birthday and we did a GOT themed party and watched the first episode at the end. Only one of the people in this group has read the books besides me. They loved this season. One specific friend (who must be pledged to house summerchild) even loved the finale. And they didn’t let me get too knit picky about it to the point where I really enjoyed it too. It’s like seeing kids open Santa’s presents on Christmas 😂 they’re just so oblivious to all the stuff behind it that to them it’s just (read this with Chad’s voice) “aweeeesome” I can’t wait for the next season TBH. I’m glad we’re getting AKOTSK next year
I honestly don't get the critiques of fhis season. I liked this season. I thought even the back half was good. Id be open to talk about it but i doubt you'd have a nobody like me be a guest. Also im 26 and started watching the show in 2011 when i was 12 and my mom borrowed it on Blu Ray. Ever since I've loved the series. I never got the criticism either back in the day. The talking is the best part!
I don't have a problem with two people in a room talking. I have a problem with them being in same room when it makes no sense, talking in ways about about things that make no sense. Yes, I'm mainly talking about both Rhaenyra/Alicent scenes.
or even the same location lol. corlys, deamon,, rhaenyra never really going anywhere new
and when they are in the same room, talking nonsense that normal people even in medieval times would not say
Exactly .. This dude doesn't make sense. Worthless video with no substance
It wasn't that bad. At least not for the more casual viewer like me, that doesn't pick apart every scene.
@@march8482 You don't need to "pick apart every scene". Just watch it and ask yourself "did that make sense?"
This season wasn't boring because it was two people in a room talking. It's boring because majority of those dialogues had no weight to them, no meaning, no foreshadowing, no payoff. It was just random chit chat
The idea of all the spin-off shows being tied in with the white walkers just gives me Star Wars flashbacks.
A show might be pretty good; but the universe ultimately ends up in something that wasn't well thought out or even satisfying at all.
Ideally they'd just make GoT: Brotherhood
Use the scrapped 5 year timeskip to explain why everyone's older, and ask George about all the ideas he had for that timeline. Then get someone who's got a better track record than D&D.
I agree Star Wars and Got will be better off if they just stop trying to make everything connect to the sequel trilogy and season 8 respectively.
worse part Arya a stark kills him
I'm not bored of two people sitting in a room talking. But I'm extremely bored by the "now is the time for war, but actually no, but actually we have to do something, but no actually we can't. Armies marching and fighting already? Oh these men can't wait for war, but we women must stick together and stop the war that we already started".
Cmon man, that shot of Rhaenyra at the end of S1 meant war and she couldn't have backpedaled any harder or more often.
I don't mind not having a battle at the end or the pacing of the show. What I don't understand is with the story changes how are they actually going to do the dance of the dragons now that Alicent is a traitor, Helena doesn't care about her child being killed, nettles doesn't exist and so on.
Some of these GOT/HOTD UA-camrs are starting to talk down to fans like they shouldn’t feel what they’re feeling about the show. Dismissing people’s valid feelings about the show as illogical or silly. No, you don’t get to tell fans what or how to feel. Season 2 of HOTD was not good and lacked coherence or substance with inconsistent storytelling and unrecognizable characters. Fans should be able to say that without some smarty pants thumbing their noses at them or scolding them.
not really, only this one - carmine has some mental health problems from being so engaged fighting "anti-woke" people he is gaslighting himself about the show
This show was doomed the moment they decided that Aegon's dream/prophecy and that stupid fucking dagger. Constantly leaning on "setting up" the horrible Game of Thrones ending is a terrible thing to do. I also would argue that Daemon's "change of heart" being based on the stupid fucking prophecy and not something more nuanced DOES "ruin" season 2 somewhat ... bad enough that the whole cause of the civil war has seemingly been reduced to "Allicent made an ooopsy" with Viserys' last words, but they just keep compounding the problem with the prophecy and that stupid fucking dagger. HotD season 2 isn't GoT season 8 bad, but it's definitely GoT season 5 bad.
Yeah we really hate that. Words cannot express how much book readers tend to hate that decision.
It's a bad one.
It renders the characters shallow, and lacking in agency. If they shuffle this transh into season 3...
@@samf.s.7731 About an hour after I made that comment I noticed "Preston's HotD Watch" for the finale popped up on my feed. He articulates it really well the level of disappointment and bafflement at why they'd make those obviously idiotic decisions....
(I'd like to be more eloquent myself, but "that stupid fucking dagger" phrase just expresses my feelings in a concise, yet crude, manner.)
I remember someone stating that Daemon in harrenhall was character growth for him. And then in mind I said " his character growth was to bend the knee to Rhaenyra because prophecy. But didn't he bend the knee to Rhaenyra because his brother named her heir in season one and put his crown on her head, with the need of a prophecy?"
Like Daemon learned what he already knows and that is his character development?
Guess Alicent had some great character development in episode 8.
My biggest gripe with season 2 is that Driftmark is reduced to a dock 😂
Definitely had more Season 5 energy than i was comfy with. There are several major issues but they are mostly isolated to specific characters or plot threads so the damage is mostly contained. Not as good as GOT S1-4 but also not as bad as S5-8
This may be controversial, but I thought season 5 of GoT was better than this season. Jaime and Bronn sneaking into Dorne was about as stupid as Rhaenyra sneaking into King's Landing, but way more entertaining, with Jaime and Bronn having more chemistry than every single character in HotD combined. GoT had 4 amazing seasons worth of momentum before things started to turn bad. HotD on the other hand had 1 season of mostly build-up and zero followthrough.
@@kostaspassias3815Brother season 1 of house of the dragon is worse than season 5 game of thrones this season is closer to season 7 then it is to season 5. Season 5 of game of thrones is a lot more entertaining than house of the dragon season 1 it’s only when you stop and think wait this doesn’t make any fucking sense or that stupid does season 5 fall apart.
@@SaintWombo I liked the first half of this season but I honestly prefer got season 7 to episodes 5-8 of hotd s2
@@daquaviousbingleton9763 insane take. you either don't know how good S1 of HOTD is or how awful S5 of GOT is
@@SaintWombo go back a rewatch season 5 and then season 1 of HOTD…
I'm not really a fan of this "fuck the suits!!!!" attitude being used to defend this season. Look, a couple more episodes would have helped, but the more fundamental problem is the writing.
In season 1 the writers were accused of white washing the blacks, and season 2 dialled that up to 11. They focused way too much on Alicent and rhanera while giving them nothing to do.
More important elements like Cole and Corleys got sidelined and replaced with nothing. Rheneras daughter went nowhere and it's just more wasted time.
2 more episodes would not have fixed anything major.
2 More Episodes and they said the Budget was already meh so we would have gotten 2 more mediocre episodes, The anti Corpo stance wont help when the writers are incompetent
@FJ_0609 100%
Being anti-HBO is just the "correct" popular take.
The problems with season 2 are the same problems with season 1. The difference is the degree, not the substance.
You can make changes, that's fine. The problem is that the Changes they made are bad. King viserys is a good example of a change. Alicent and rhenyras meetings are an example of a bad change
@@archibaldmoore4514 I love the idea of fleshing out the Characters but the only one they succeed with is Visery the others have become worse versions of the books. I don't get it how People just bend down and take it, receiving mediocre content and defending it is insane to me. Removing Characters Bending them all that just to make it worse and not better is pathetic
Her daughter came out stillborn in season one. Unless you’re talking the Daughter of Reanys who roasted by a dragon last season.
@FJ_0609 This videos second half is so jarring where he says alot of the critics are tiktok brained zoomers who were never real fans of the show.
Especially strange considering his co host is voicing the same criticisms that the vast Vast, VAST majority of the fans are saying. Like the genuine nihilistic haters are such a minority, talking about them at all is just such a waste of time.
They didnt need more episodes, they didnt need less harrenhall scenes; they just need new writers that arent incompetent
Why do you presume that people calling it boring, their problem is there's dialogue and no action scenes? Two-people-in-a-room is not an auto win. It will be boring if not done well.
It’s not because of the reduced episode but horrible writing that’s killing these characters. No excuses for what the did to a lot of these characters
What they did to Alicent was travesty
@@diegopinales86character assassination at its finest
@@diegopinales86 What's the big deal? I'm a casual viewer and wasn't bothered at all.
@@march8482Others like to use their brain...
@@Hear.myvoice I think you guys are just overreacting.
They made every Character this season take the most passive path possible apart from when Alicent and Rhaenyra were teleporting to each other, Aemond but we were told what he was doing rather than shown a lot of the time and Cristin Cole who did stuff but always while being mopey.
Really just feels like there's no substance at all behind 90% of the show, and none of the characters motivations make any sense. It feels like the dialogue and peoples actions are completely disconnected.
All that being said I still watch purely because Targaryan aesthetics are immaculate.
Just because you don’t agree with opinions other than yours, doesn’t make you right or wrong for that matter.
You're so brave for this comment.
For the millionth time, we're not bored because there is dialogue. We're bored because the dialogue wasn't written well. Peter dinklage even went on a podcast recently to talk about how iconic the dialogue and one-liners were on GoT to the extent that many of em ended up on tshirts and mugs. Since casual viewers makeup the show fanbase, of course they were bored that HoD S2 didn't provide any of that
true, dialogue this season managed to be worse than the last two seasons of GoT
Game of Thrones was stupid, but I was never bored while watching that show. There was always something happening. Breaking Bad didn’t have dragons, most episodes had dialogue, but that show is the greatest of all time.
These writers suck at writing. And that’s that. 🤧
Bingo, the creator of this video seems to be oblivious why GOT was so amazing
I actually agree here. I don't think I ever hated watching an episode of GOT. This season- I caught myself being bored and feeling really frustrated. Often
*The Wire is the greatest show of all time
@@1992zorro I hate creators like this, who patronize the audience and make it seem like we’re being crybabies or stupid for not liking the “slower episodes” of the season. 🙄🙄
We’ve all watched slow-paced shows that take their time to build up the plot of the narrative, but that’s not an excuse for boring the audience to death. I just feel like barely anything happened in this season.
The moments that should’ve been big and impactful were literally glossed over by the show. Blood and Cheese was basically forgotten by most of the characters after two episodes; the Battle of the Burning Mill was a single scene and its impact on the story was probably explored for a single episode, then it was never mentioned again; the death of Rhaenys wasn’t as impactful as it should’ve been because Corlys moved on so quickly and accepted his girlboss queen back in the same episode, instead of being angry at her like he was in the book.
This season suffered, not because of a lack of budget or HBO’s involvement (maybe to a little extent), but because of the writers in the writers room. The writing in season 2 sucks because they thought they could do better than George and now they’re realizing that they just can’t.
@@lanebatts26 That’s because the writers thought that they were better than GRRM. They’re not - but now that explains why George himself was so upset about changes to things like the nature of his dragons and how they shouldn’t be at the Vale. I think that his frustration might’ve been deeper than that. He was frustrated by this mediocre writing. 😭😭
This season sucked. And I’m tired of people pretending it didn’t
the dialogue is just bad, the characters are a bunch of NPCS who repeat the same thing over and over again
Looking forward to season 3 don’t get me wrong but if I hear one more person say the quote “WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE ME DO?” In this show I’m going to explode
Gave me got season 5 feeling overall.
Two things which went wrong were they cut 2 episodes, a strong ending and a lot of casuals would've forgotten some of the problems but that didn't happen.
2nd problem is, they want every female character on this show, literally everyone is an anti war preacher from rhaenyra and alicent to fucking sylvie, mysaria and alys rivers. Last season, apart from that rhaenys debacle, they had handled rhaenyra and alicent very well and it was reasonable to believe that they'll show them descending into darkness more and more with time, now, everyone has already forgotten death of visenya, luke and jahaerys, and Alicent wants to run away with rhaenyra after hating her for 20 years and then she talked to her nicely for a grand total of 10 mins.
Yes, the scripts were “done” …but the strike highlighted just how important live rewrites and refinements are.
Funny how you keep criticizing D&D, yet defend the mess that was HotD S2. D&D at least gave us 4 seasons of prestige television before it went downhill. Condal and Hess barely managed 1
@@sunerys8511 D&D had a lot more of GRRM's prime material to work with than Condal does with F&B
@@sunerys8511 Can someone please tell me who this “Hess” is and why she has such an elevated position in this production?
@@NeeNee_B. If Ryan and his team are unable to adapt the material from F&B into something good, then why are they even assigned to adapt it? Why aren’t there good, talented writers assigned to adapt this story? 🤔
It’s not that ‘there are no battles’- they tease battles with zero pay off, abundance ofplot armor or the pacing is slow, the writing is not at good as GOT. The dialogue rehashes the same point over and over. Season 2 was treading water. I guess when you chose to cover less than 100 pages from the books that tends to happen. House of the Dragon is a really good show in the marvel universe maybe, or as a CW drama. But not at a sequel of Game of Thrones
The reason people called it boring was because the s1 finale led you to believe shit was about to kick off, and then it totally didn't.
What went wrong is that the show writers wanted to write their Team Rhaenyra fanfiction instead of adapting the source material.
The real true flaw of this entire show boils down to it having NO likeable characters….
Eeeh I can't blame you for feeling that way
@@OfficialRedTeamReview I don’t think the show has any characters that are “lovable” the way the Starks or Tyrion were in GoT, but I find most every character interesting to watch. There’s no one who makes me disappointed when they come on screen.
There’s also the fact that HotD does not try to be nearly as funny as GoT
And no dislikeable characters too, everyone is lukewarm, except Luke he's dead
True. Ser Simon Strong was *loveable*
Aegon was the most likeable this season and he's a rapist....
Beyond am bored??What am I missing here, coz, why do we read books, listen to music, watch cinema, watch sports if not to be ENTERTAINED!!!! Being bored is a very very valid reason (granted I haven't finished watching the video, so you may clarify later) but if not, I think it's a bit arrogant to suggest people aren't allowed to be bored when the show is in its earlier episodes, or suggesting being bored isn't a concrete valid reason.
I think HOT D is doomed from the start. If they followed what GRRM wrote, non-book readers and casuals will also get pissed on what the writers did to Rhaenyra thinking it’s no different than Dany. People saying Rhaenyra is their Queen only to realize she isn’t the Queen they thought they knew.
The Dance only lasts two years. I honestly thought it could’ve been finished in 30 episodes in 3 seasons of 10 episodes each. S1 could’ve been told in 5 episodes. Then once we get to the Aegon/Rhaenyra scene which might be the only time they ever interact, the show ends. You can’t continue the show after the main characters are gone.
We’re already 18 episodes into this series and it just feels like Rhaenyra and Alicent are forgetting what’s happening to their children or grandchildren and they’re playing around. It’s not war. It’s Capture the Flag. How could Rhaenyra meet Alicent an episode later after there was an assassination attempt on her life? And not once did she even mention it.
One of the aspects I love about Game of Thrones was how much I enjoyed several characters. I remember ranking about 50 of my favorite characters from both GOT and HOT D combined and 80% came from GOT. And about 85% from my top 20 which means I like about 17 GOT characters out of the first 20.
What made GOT shine were the side characters like Bronn, Tormund, and Davos. Bronn wasn’t even in the books and Jerome Flynn portrays him like Errol Flynn in Robin Hood if he turned into a mercenary who curses a lot. S1-S4 Tyrion is probably more likable than any character in HOT D and that includes Daemon.
I honestly don’t know what the writers will do to Daemon because it almost feels like they want us to hate their version of him when he’s really the only charismatic character in the series. Watch us end up hating every single character in the show and realizing this was a big waste of time watching 4 seasons of drivel in 8 years!
Pretty much every major character dies and even someone you might feel is morally good like Helaena or Simon Strong won’t have a happy ending. If they do go by the book, it’s going to upset people because many are already attached to Rhaenyra like they were to Daenerys. If they don’t go by the book, people will still get upset thinking this is some silly Wattpad fanfic by Condom/Mess.
One of the writers already feels like she’s HOT D’s version of Leslye Headland who’s really an activist pretending to be a writer and GRRM fangirl trying to draw W scenes for her LGBT community. Then we got Warner Bros. in debt and a lot of these battles won’t come cheap. Imagine it takes maybe 1.5 years to complete Avengers: Doomsday. But that’s only 2.5-3 hours.
HOT D has 8 hours of content if it’s 8 episodes. That’s painfully long to film a season and they’re not filming it until next year. I say real filming for a big budget movie like Doomsday would be 2-3 months. But it took HOT D S2 from April to Sept of last year. That’s 5 months but you saw what we got. About 4 hours of nothingburgers. Now imagine when we get battle after battle?
I think this show will end up being another disaster where we pretty much hate every character or feel indifferent except for maybe Daemon although I won’t be surprised if we all ended up hating him too, and it was 8 years of wasting time waiting to cover 4 seasons for an overrated part of Targaryen history where we hardly saw a war or dragons fighting each other.
I’m already pissed with the White Walker callback in Daemon’s weirwood vision because it’s a bad reminder of how GOT S8 ended and how a little Stark girl with only 2 years of training will save them from the big, bad Night King. That was 8 years of hyping up the White Walkers and they got killed off by a little Stark girl who kept getting beaten up by the Waif only 2 seasons prior. Daemon saying winter is coming in High Valyrian was cringey af.
Let the two dueling queens focus on the war at hand. Who gives a fuck about a threat that will happen 200 years later? And even if the current characters in HOT D believe Daenerys is The Prince Who Was Promised or even Jon, they’re going to have shitty endings anyway! Dany is going to die after helping Winterfell with her dragons. Jon gets a slap on the wrist and gets his first job back but without any more White Walker threats. Going back to GOT callbacks is a waste of time because how badly it ended.
Two dueling queens having civil meetings and forgetting that one of their kins just died and then have sex with a Kingsguard or make out with her husbuncle’s former lover. I hardly saw Alicent grieve. One of the queens forgot she could’ve been killed an episode earlier but never mentions it to the other. Then you take GRRM’s favorite Targ and turn him into a soy boy and giving him worthless GOT callbacks that only left a sour taste in our mouths thanks to S8.
I have lost faith in HBO. They will hype up a certain aspect of the story like “winter is coming” for years only to undeliver once again by the time it’s over.
Rhaenyra starts acting like a bitch. She’s killed. THE END.
Viewers by 2028: WTF was that? Did I just rewatch what happened to Dany all over again? Man, fuck this show.
Daemon will be the equivalent to Qimir / The Stranger / Smilo Ren in The Acolyte where he’s the only character worth it to watch and literally carries the show. Ok, maybe Aemond is cool to watch too. They’re the Final Fantasy characters, right? Guys will cosplay as them and buy merch of them. Their Battle Above the Gods Eye would be equivalent to Battle of Mustafar that I first heard about in the late 90s only to be so psyched to finally see it by Revenge of the Sith. But who knows if HBO screws up that scene?
Who gives a damn what happens 200 years later? Just focus on the war at hand.
I’m starting to think Alicent was written for S2 to be a *comedic* character if you don’t watch HOT D as a serious drama. Some of the shit she’s doing here is hilarious if you think about it. Getting eaten out. Taking trips to a forest to go swimming while a war is going on. Alicent in S2 can be memes for ages like Bully Maguire.
Play HOT D silently and Alicent might be the most hilarious character on here. Rhaenyra will get eaten and Alicent will be like: Done that, girl. It’s awesome! Yeah, the most useless and stupidest character in the show who accidentally started a war might just be my new favorite character. Her Funko toys at a discount of $5.55 are flying off the shelves!
This chick isn’t aware a war is going on around her. She’s tone deaf. Her grandson died, she forgets about him in the next episode. She insults Aegon which hurts his pride, then 4 episodes later, she’s willing to sell him out and Aemond. I love you, Alicent. Your kids don’t.
Olivia Cooke is a great actress, but man, they made her character as dumb as rocks. No wonder we see photos of Matt Smith and Olivia Cooke hanging out a lot. It was paid vacation for them. Daemon and Alicent do absolutely nothing in it. Daemon got to be Mickey Mouse in Castle of Illusions. Alicent got laid and took baths. Easy payday for Matt and Olivia.
We will never escape the White Walkers shit. In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the White Walkers will be mentioned again. Daemon’s weirwood vision was only the beginning of this shit. Every series set in Westeros will mention the White Walkers.
HBO might as well give us a series about Old Valyria. It’s the only way to escape the Night King nonsense, the most overused plot device for these Westeros shows. These characters won’t even live long enough to see Arya kill the Night King. Why should they be concerned about White Walkers like a century or two earlier?
Winter is coming. Winter is coming. Winter is coming. Please make it stop!
Who would ever read this comment
Bro really wrote a whole ass essay 💀
Interesting takes and I agree. It’s shit that they still sell the f out of the white walkers when we know what happened. That is why I kinda loved season 1 of HOD because it didn’t mentioned anything about them apart from two scenes. I also hate what season 2 did to season 1 because season 1 set up the war with the factions and motivations. But then season 2 forgot about that and instead gave us some wierd family drama when there’s a war to be had and the characters that were build were deconstructed to only be constructed again in the most shittiest possible way. Deamon, the rogue prince? How about Deamon the wimpy prince. Aegon the irresponsible? How about Aegon the miss understood? Aemond the vengeful? How about Aemond the spiteful? Alicent the queen? How about alicent the flipfloper? None of the characters remained consistent on what they left us with in season 1 and that is why I didn’t enjoyed the show. Didn’t mattered if it was 8 episodes.
I think they could have worked around 8 episodes. But one of the main issues for me the is Character Inconsistency.
Alicent in the first season is one of the most wronged characters ever. She is wronged by Viserys (through his unwillingness to support her), by Otto (through patriarchal pressures), by Larys (by sexual humiliation). In the season finale, Alicent fights back. And wins. She sends her own squadron of loyalists to fight and win against Otto and they do. The ascension of Aegon is done at her pleasure and on her terms. She stands up against Rhaenys and Meleys and has a badass staredown. She fought and gained her power, fair and square.
Season 2 takes that away. What happened to the active Alicent that fought and won her power? She's back to being a victim, so the men around her can have all the blame. There is no subtlety on this, almost all the men are somehow evil or mean and all the women are these wise and nice people (notice how they don't make mention of Rhaenys in the Dragonpit ☠️).
Season 2 Alicent just isn't Season 1 Alicent. Season 1's finale promised fire and blood, instead we got three steps forward and an unpredictable spin. I don't want D/D back tho, they had their chance in the spotlight and their legacy is still to be determined.
Another big character that is inconsistent is Rhaenyra. She was ready to kill all the Greens in the season 1 finale but is suddenly reverted to this peace loving woman that wants to stop the war. This in effect makes her scenes almost obstructive to the plot. The plot is the Dance of the Dragons, Rhaenyra is just like trying to stop it. In pretty bad disguises. Her nun outfit can't hold a candle to Daemon's cloak. And speaking of Daemon- Rhaenyra complains the most about him. Like hello lady, you married a guy you knew was problematic, why are you shocked he's acting like a rogue? ☠️ She complains a lot about her situation, which is fair up to a point. This is a pretty patriarchal society but it cannot be denied Rhaenyra herself had a hand in her predicament. She went off to various places leaving the Black Council to itself. They are learning to function without their queen, which is entirely her fault for ditching them to find Luke then talk to Alicent. She's gone for presumably days and the Black Council is held together by Defeatist turned Peacekeeper Rhaenys. And she isn't that popular with the (almost rightly so) militant councilmen, who actually want to take action and secure the mainland (Daemon is taking his sweet time tripping Harrenhal Kush) while they still have holdings.
Pretty much it.
There are definitely issues related to WB having financial difficulties, but there are also challenges adapting the actual story from Fire and Blood. The writers made a conscious decision to make Rhaenerya and Alicent the same age and teenage friends. That single decision has cascaded throughout switching the focus from a Blacks vs Greens to Rhaenerya vs. Alicent hence the unnecessary clandestine meet ups. Once the war starts there roles kind of are diminished, so the story should have moved away from them.
Also, the story is really a tragic tale with no real heroes and it seems that the show is looking to create a hero that doesn’t exist. Just tell the “story.”
Great work. I appreciate your commentary.
I liked it, but some changes from the book really rustled my jimmies 😢
I think there are two genuine factors behind the "boring" critique. Firstly, it felt like a lot of characters lacked agency, so you had several scenes where people talked but nothing actually happened or changed as a result. Compare the Green and Black councils, where it felt like every Green council scene had some significant change to one or more of the characters because of what happened, then go to the Blacks where either Rhaenyra is there and complains that no one listens to her or she's not there and the other characters just stand around not being able to do anything.
The second factor is that there was a lot of build up this season and it was very clearly build up. Hugh, Ulf, Addam + Alyn, Rhaena, Daemon all had a lot of scenes but I think each could have been cut down a scene. The scenes were competently written and directed, but were lacking some spark.
S1 had its issues with Rhaenyra's characterization. She was a completely different person between Ep 5 & Ep 6 with no exposition to show what had happened over the years to... basically break her spirit. Sure, she'd had three kids and been stuck in a loveless marriage, but she was a shadow of the girl she'd been. Unsure if this was the script, direction or Emma's input. Whatever it was, it was nothing compared to Rhaenyra remaining stagnant all season long in terms of development. And I don't mean to be trite when I say this, or refer to her staying put in one location for most of it, because in F&B that's what she did.
But she began the season complaining about Daemon and being insecure about him, and pretty much closed the season feeling the same. Between start to near finish, the bulk of her scenes were spent referring to him in some fashion, or being frustrated with her advisors who wanted her to do everything and nothing at once. (They were frustrated that she was not a man who could and would try to do everything at once, and the forced feminism in them trying to frame this as toxic got old, too.)
She could have learned to fight in the yard anytime as a child. FFS she was married to two highly accomplished warriors and the lover of another. You can't tell me that in all the time she spent between King's Landing and Dragonstone that they'd have forbid her from learning if she'd expressed the desire to. More like, they'd have been willing to teach her. Daemon and Harwin would have at least. But this came out of nowhere, and was more them -trying- to echo her frustrations from Milly's arc playing the character and it landed flat. Two very different actresses portraying two very very different versions of the same character. To the point where I nearly consider them two different characters entirely.
Everything else is just white noise in comparison to how Rhaenyra mentally and emotionally is in the same place at the end of the season that she is at the beginning.
It really wasn't that bad. I'd even argue the first half of the season was pretty good. But that back half? Woof. Just spinning their wheels.
It was pretty bad because they destroyed alicent and rhaenyra.
@@czwitek1995they destroyed Alicent and Rhaenyra, minimized Jace, and took away Daemon’s agency at the last minute
@@czwitek1995 How do you mean? According to the books, Alicent didn't had much to do this season anyway.
I agree. I was not a huge fan of the 4th episode tbh, but I thought the 3 prior ones were VERY solid.
Episode 7 is one I enjoy from the second half, but that's about it.
50-50 is pretty bad for thrones.
That previous season, I think there were a few decisions I didn't like but I enjoyed every single episode with a couple being the best episodes I'd seen of anything put on streaming.
I had just finished watching season 2 of Interview with The Vampire, and that one was one of those "I like every episode" type of shows. It did have 8 episodes though, but the writing was tailored to that, and it fit like a glove.
So yeah, HoTD season 1, 9.5/10 for me.
HoTD season 2, a 7 (That's not good for thrones- and I am being generous, I actually want to give it a lower score but I keep in mind everyone else who worked on it aside from the writing team, and they are very dedicated people).
So yeah, the Interview With The Vampire second season is, like, easily a 9/10, and I personally would rate it higher, like a 9.3.
That was the thing that prevented me from cussing a lot and being bitter 😂
It's a show I hadn't even watched before. I ended up binging both seasons last weekend.
@march8482 She had her hands full looking after Aegon's children while the two parents spiralled due to their son's death. She was there for Blood and Cheese. She was allowed to give her opinions to the council completely fine. They could have done all those things, and added things that made sense. Instead, they butchered her and made her a traitor to her own cause.
Carmine. This season was lamer than finding out your dog has cancer.
The characters aren’t fun or connected from episode to episode, the dragons are basically seagulls, and the source material is lacking. Also nothing matters since a crippled Stark boy planned it all.
My major problem is anchoring rhaenyra's and daemond's motivation behing a prophecy that had a shitty development in GoT. It makes no sense to say they have to protect their bloodline so that dany and jon will be born considering all dany contributed to the long night was handing a free dragon to the night king, and all that jon did was scream at a dragon. It's lazy writing and looks like stakeholders trying to make GoT hype again, or some similar dumb idea.
Rhaenyra’s character is so boring. All she wanna do is to fck around. Her power is a myth, no experience but need acceptance from others. Ppl are intimidated to see Daemon but when they saw her they were like who? Oh the queen ? ok. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
yes i can confirm indeed the worst thing since 9/11
It was nowhere as bad as s8
People online were praising D&D....like wtf
This has nothing to do with budget cuts, its just bad writing!
“They kinda forgot about episodes 9 & 10.”
lil bit
They kinda forgot that characters need motivation and agency to be interesting.... 😅
@@samf.s.7731 And good and sympathetic qualities to make them likable, some more quick witted or lite hearted characters and some more varied locations. They could really use Mushroom. But I think that they want to avoid copying aGoT, and more scenes with everyone on the more, the only reason that ai can think of as to why they aren’t doing that is because they didn’t do a whole lot that first year of the war and that would call for a lot more extras.
I think the season itself was not terrible. The thing that scares me are the 11 battles and 14 major events that have to be crammed into 2 seasons of this show. Some of which i thought we'd get in this one.
They won't be. With a budget cuts, we will probably get 15-20 mins of the most important battles, others will happen off screen. A flagship show of HBO suffers greatly.
@@LobsterOfDeath It sucks how much they're gonna have to half ass tell this story now. HBO needs to extend the budget leash.
Guess I'm the only one who hasn't seen 1 single comment about wanting Dave and Dan to come back?🤷♀️
This is more about the fan backlash than the actual problems the show had
All of season 2 was worth it just so we could hear people say Dave and Dan should return. I have not stopped laughing at that
I won't be back for season 3.
Honestly even Dragonball Z never has this much filler...
Season 2 wasnt all that bad if you give HBO a pass for the absolute character assassination of their leading roles. How people can defend the writing choices of this season after episode 8 is beyond me.
Bro how can you defend this? The show is literally boring, everything’s an accident if it’s from the good guys, the show pisses on source material, complex characters simply don’t exist, everyone’s a damn idiot. There’s nothing interesting about it and you’re desperate to defend it why?
The season was bad; the writing was as bad as season 7, characterisation and theming was inconsistent even if it was meant to be 10 episodes. The reason the 'discourse' is so up and down is because larger UA-camrs like Alt Schwift X and Glidus know where their bread is buttered and know their fiscal success depends on the show's success, and are using the show to shill their video streaming platform. They're just one example, of course.
Carmine finally stopped simping and admitted this season isnt good???? Say it aint so
People do not need your permission to dislike a product that they paid for.
The ep 8 scene with Daemon and the tree, and Alicent's character arc are the reasons were it went wrong, even if there were two more eps it still doesn't change the flaws with the choices the writers made with the characters.
To me this show just suffers like many other IPs that go back and do prequels when the story itself isn’t even finished. The point of this story is the civil war and they show how everything still leads to the long night. But those stakes feel and are extremely low because the Original show didn’t stick the landing itself. Anything after game of thrones is always gonna suffer from within like budget cuts and choices the writers and directors make. But in my opinion if GRRM is gonna keep on signing off on these projects, he needs to be involved heavily because you can see how much it struggles when he isn’t around or doesn’t partake in the writing rooms. (Like seasons 5-8, season 2, and season 3 of HOD)
Unrelated to this video, if I remember correctly, time travel is localized, meaning, that when Bran goes back through time, it only happens on Planetos, and the rest of the universe is not affected. If that's the case, does that mean that this is the only timeline with the comet and whatever it caused, like the birth of dragons, or maybe that Bran has to do like thousands of useless time travels until the comet returns again.
I have got no problem with season two being at a slower pace than season one, if it gives good character development. However, Daemon is the only one that came close to having anything resembling character development. And they even sabotaged that one at the end. I like these kind of soul searching story lines, when they're done right. However, three things ruined it for me. The pacing, the mother vision and that last vision about the future. It would've had far more impact on Daemon's character if he'd decided of his own free will that he wanted to support Rheanyra. That would show growth. But no. Got to strip him of all agency, whilst reminding people that HotD and GOT are connected. Like the presence of the Iron throne doesn't do that already. I could've tolerated that vision if it had come after his bending the knee. Unless these visions result in him becoming a better husband, father and generally showing more restraint in dealing with people. I don't see the point in them.
Rhaenyra, on the other hand was insufferable this season. She spent the vast majority of the time flipping back and forth between wanting and not wanting war. She's like the Chamberlain of Westeros. She keeps putting off the war, until the enemy practically forces her hand. At which point the war is harder to fight. She f**k'ed off whenever she pleased. Does anyone believe Biden would take a secret trip to Tel Aviv without telling one single person in his administration? She stupidly leaves the council without a leader in her absence. But then gets mad when people try and take advantage of the power vacuum. It's not made clear if anyone was left in charge. Certainly not the heir to throne, who would be the logical choice. Her council then quite rightly point out that an inexperienced king/queen should not be on the battlefield. See Aegon for details. But she just goes in a huff. They try and pass all of this off as the patriarchy being mean to her. But quite frankly, I'd have done the same.
Don't get me started on the others.
House of The Dragon Season 2 did the unthinkable; to make me want to check out Rings Of Power Season 2. It can't be worse than having people drinking wine and tripping on visions all season long. Terrible season, no justification needed. Now, I'm not REALLY serious about checking out Rings of Power, I think it's still going to be a crappy season like season 1, but at least it COULD improve over the next seasons, while the world of HoTD is pretty much fleshed out. Season 1 was pretty good, though.
The whole argument that having 2 more episodes wouldve saved the season is hilarious to me. We wouldve just gotten more of someone sneaking into the enemies camp to talk no jutsu, hold X to skip battles, and more unnecessary prophetic vision/white walker bs. Look, I think that stuff matters, but I came to this show for the family fued, civil wars, and dragon battles. I can care less about the talking. The time for talking is over. I want to see strategy, fights, betrayal, etc etc.
Horrible season, this show is think is dead with all the changes they made.
mad about them crushing free will tbh man muh prophecy bran 9000
So they're in a bad situation financially and they decided the thing they're gonna cut money from is currently the only successful series they have going on.
Yeah, I can see how they got in this situation in the first place.
It’s a shame because season 1 was solid. I feel like this whole show could have been wrapped up with 3 seasons 10 episodes each. But they’ve decided to dilute it to 4 seasons which made this seasons plot slower than it needed to be. I wouldn’t say GOT S8 bad, but definitely S5,6&7 bad.
My problem has nothing to do with there being talking, I love the talking. My issue is that the writers have demonstrated such a strong bias towards Team Black that they are ruining the show with it. There is no more Team Green. Alicent has switched sides, Helaena sends spooky visions to the murderer of her son to help him see his destiny, Aegon has fled, Otto is in a box, Aemond has betrayed Aegon...
I understand that stories can change in adaptation, but they have fundamentally made it so that there just isn't a Team Green, there's Team Black and the stray assholes opposing them because they're just big mean assholes who exist to be punished by the writers.
Alicent agreeing to give up her son(s) to Rhaenyra? Disgusting, being a worse mother than Cersei is hard to manage, but she did it.
Aemond betraying Aegon and ALLOWING one of their sides dragons to be maimed? That's a level of disloyalty and stupidity that feels wildly out of character both with book and show Aemond.
D&D at least adapted the first three books faithfully.
Condal and Hess have all the material written and they've deviated from it as early as season 1, I'm not going to waste more of my time with this fanfiction, I've been one too many times in this train to not see where it ends, either they find new showrunners who respect and at least TRY to adapt the book or I'm out.
The community has forgotten that the House of the Dragon is about the power struggles of the dragons (Targaryens), not the powerful dragons (CGI) struggling with each other.
I am dissapointed by them droping the Cheese's dog subplot. He is The Pinch That Was Promised.
The first half of the season was so promising but after episode four the story abruptly stopped. The episodes individually weren't bad but they were redundant and wasted valuable time Considering the season was already short.
So right about the lack of nuance, season 2 was still better than everything after season 5 of got. Not bad at all but underwhelming. The problem is that game of thrones gotten so big now you have a bunch of marvel fans that want big action scenes I'm every epsiode. Game of thrones in general was better when it had a fan base around the books
I really enjoyed this season for the most part. I have basically no gripes with episode 1-4, each of those episodes had its own emotional payoff (b&c, erryk v arryk, rooks rest) and my gripes with the latter half are not to do with pacing. I loved GOT for its slower more character driven moments. This season had those in abundance. My gripes are mainly with the lack of payoff at the end. It does make the season seem a lot slower than it is since there’s no catharsis at the end. That being said, once season 3 is released and we can watch all of it back to back, these issues are going to disappear. In conclusion, all the setup with little payoff means people will be left thinking the season had no purpose until the next seasons release, at which point, I think this season will be able to be much more appreciated. I give it a 7.5/10 for now but I’m sure it’ll be bumped up to an 8.5 when S3 comes out.
I'll not argue that the last half was weak, but overall I liked season 2. There's hope that season's three and four (assuming it stays four seasons) can bring the war and resolution along with sticking the landing by showing the Song still going but the nature of the world has changed.
Airing D&E before HotD is finished is going to be the killing blow, they will lose all casual viewers who are already confused about the plot.
Also you spend too much time on Twitter, that’s why you hear so much about the complaints.
People who criticise this season, at least me, are not saying it is boring or not entertaining. It is not boring. It is entertaining. But it is bad. I'm not bored by two people talking in the same room. First four seasons of Game of Thrones have a lot of such scenes, and they are great, and at least I did not find them boring at all. It is what they are talking about in HOTD season 2 that bothers me... Bad writing is bad writing. Good writing is good writing. It's not about perspective, not about how old you are when you watch it, not about boring or not, not about entertaining or not. At least the story got to make sense.
no, it's pretty fucking boring.
carmine is an idiot, bad writing is boring because it is so stupid and unengaging. this is nothing comparable to early game of thrones
It didn't feel like the season had structure.
Agreed. Or, structure was abandoned after episode 4.
Damon's 2nd season arc was 1/100th of his brother's 1st season arc mainly because The first season had tons of characters interacting and pushing against each other while the second season had Damon just mostly alone and living in his head
The people asking for D&D to return must be crazy or have no memory.
This season had a lot of flaws, but it wasn't that bad overall. They must step it up next season, give the characters more depth and logic and make them have relevant and necessary conversations. Build up to action payoffs well as long as they have the budget, and be smarter with how they plot out storylines. All they can do is learn from their mistakes and improve. I hold out hope for season 3, and I pray it will blow us away.
It's bad by thrones standards, and the standards it set for itself in season 1.
The director/writers/show runners all tell you what went wrong in their recent interviews without realizing it. They decided that HOTD should be about the relationship and the struggle with what's right and what's wrong, the pressures of being a leader, the desire to rekindle their youthful romance between two women, Rhaenyra and Alicent. I mean, who would want to see good acting, sword fights, armies at war and dragon battles in the sky when you can see two women reciting bad dialogue in the dark?
i agree that Game of Thrones was always about dialogues, but let's be honest - HotD dialogues are not in any way close to GoT.
What went wrong? I’ll answer it without making a video about it. What went wrong was not episode lengths, was not about the budget (at least my view was not affected by budgets) and lack of nuance. It was all creative decisions. They took (in my opinion) pretty good developed characters from season 1 with a set plot and just dumped them into the garbage and decided to write what ever the f they wanted. They had a story already but they made a u-turn in everything. Deamon the rogue prince, a character that was written to be a man of action was turn into a prince that was beaten down by his wife, was now having psychological breakdowns, and tamed out of nowhere as the only thing that served as justification for it was because “oh Harrenhal is said to be spoky, let’s do this to him”. Rheanyra was turned from a smart, cunning and temperate leader into a pitty, dum, annoying lady who had gender issues in feeling that she could not be trusted with anything when she was advising and taking bad decisions. Aegon, Larys and Otto were the only ones that this season really didn’t f up because the rest were just trashed with decisions THEY took. Having budget issues? Cut things. There was a lot of stupidness that this season could have cut in order to save time and money if that was the problem this time. And you know, I’ve seen the opposite. You claim that you’ve seen negative criticism about the season when in reality, I’ve seen the opposite. I’ve seen people like you praising it and defending it and when I go to the comments I see far more positive than negative. GOT season 1-4 is 85-90% two people talking but those are the best season all people praise. As I said, HOD season 1 was 85-90 talking and was WAY BETTER than this season so you can’t boil it down to “oh people want battles and dragons” when that’s not the case
What went wrong with this comment? I'll delete it without reading all of it
My whole issue with this season is that for one it is a build up. There are too many dumb actions like saying episode is one of the best with the worst scene of the two queens meeting in kings landing. After blood and cheese happened. Daemon did nothing . I feel like you have turned into one of those UA-camrs that just is doing it for the money now so you gotta be positive.
I hate Rhaenyra-Alicent like wtf is this shit. Are they gonna do Assasins Creed Dance of Dragons where main characters are hers?
Definitely not the worst season of TV and D&D should never return. However, the season felt like it was just running around in circles. With a story so condensed as HoTD and focused on a singular event. We kept bouncing between the same characters multiple times debating the same things over and over again. The writers were just dragging things out for far too long. Daemon spending an entire season on shrooms. Alicent and Rhaenyra meeting twice. Only to end with the same result both times. The greens being dismantled as a unit. Reducing any chances of a level playing field. All concluding with a finale that was not satisfying enough to merit its status. Greatly reduce the impact of this season.
I think that the flaws do tie to HBO not wanting to do a 10 episode season but even then it was annoying how dragged out the season felt. In the season 1 finale with the deathstare that Rhaenyra gave the obvious inclination that she was done talking and trying to make peace. But this whole season she drags her feet and tries to avoid war along with Alicent but the death of Luke was the point of no return. So we end up with an above average season with feels like a lot of meandering
Even if they added 2 more ep this season would still suck becouse the problem is BAD writing
D&D should be banned from working on any successful franchises….that is all.
It was as bad as season 8
There is no feminine in this show
The essos storyline was embarrassingly bad.
That's what's bothering you? The only part that's actually from the book?
Not the fact that they literally dumped season 4 spoilers into the episode, and pretty much ruined Daemon's entire season's character arc?
Yikes bro! 🙄
I guess I've never seen a clearer depiction of that "butterfly effect" than S2. Half of the season was interesting, with some really nice moments, despite some plot conveniences, but I get the feeling because the show relied so much on certain characters, they needed to reboot at least one of them in order to somehow move the plot forward. It's not season 8 level, but I'd say pretty much a season 6, when Davos asked Mel to revive Jon, then remembered she was a witch and most likely burned Shireen.
Firmly believe this season was full of what GoT lacked at the end, all the dialog and character build up. Cole for example has quite the internal struggle going on and we've seen it develop over the season. By speeding the show up and removing the "boring" parts, the risk of rushing the show like Dave and Dan did increase. The season was awesome.
In season 8 for example we got one 5 min conversation between Tyrion and Jon and that was enough to convince Jon to kill Dany, rather than an internal struggle spanning over multiple episodes after she's taken down kings landing.
The shorter season was a problem but two extra episodes wouldn't change the major flaws in this season. Tying in the prophecy from GOT to HOTD really, really sucks and I almost didn't watch the last episode because of it.
The show was fine. I think the issue HotD faces is the same any prequel has. The stakes feel low when I know the dragons die. That said, I thought the season was a B. Fine. Hope S3 is better.
Them only having 8 episodes would've been fine if the writing for certain characters wasn't terrible.
Yeah, I largely agree with you all there. Most people I know think that whilst season 2 was pretty good, it felt like it was building up to something that isn't going to happen until 2026. That being said, I suspect the perspective will shift once all episodes are out. Also, previously it was more unusual to have to wait two years for a season, so i don't know if that adds to the impatience.
They didn't need more episodes, there were more than enough walking scenes and scenes where characters are just silent to each other..
HOTD has been just fine. Yes, there are issues, but it is still much better than the latter half of thrones and people need to be patient.
Actually there were a lot of stupid things in this season, like Rhaenyra feeding the people and getting praise for it even though it's her blockade that's starving them in the first place. Or Alicent's character assassination in the last episode, where she agrees that Rhaenyra is right to kill her kids.
It was great TV but the two year break is killing TV shows. Im just going back the books. Hey I might never get an ending but atleast I do not have to wait two years for a Westeros that people just bitch about.
Here’s my sacrifice to the algorithm Gods: I’ve been watching this show in a group since it came out on my birthday and we did a GOT themed party and watched the first episode at the end. Only one of the people in this group has read the books besides me. They loved this season. One specific friend (who must be pledged to house summerchild) even loved the finale. And they didn’t let me get too knit picky about it to the point where I really enjoyed it too. It’s like seeing kids open Santa’s presents on Christmas 😂 they’re just so oblivious to all the stuff behind it that to them it’s just (read this with Chad’s voice) “aweeeesome”
I can’t wait for the next season TBH. I’m glad we’re getting AKOTSK next year
I honestly don't get the critiques of fhis season. I liked this season. I thought even the back half was good. Id be open to talk about it but i doubt you'd have a nobody like me be a guest. Also im 26 and started watching the show in 2011 when i was 12 and my mom borrowed it on Blu Ray. Ever since I've loved the series. I never got the criticism either back in the day. The talking is the best part!