The Official Good Television Thread

[Serjeant Grumbles]

i've only seen clips. i should probably finish GoT first lol

If you've gotten to season 4 or later, you're good.

 

[CiG]

The patient setup, the nuanced character writing, the performances. To name a few things.

I have some second-hand knowledge of the source material and so far most of the changes they've made in adapting it have been to make characters more multifaceted. I'm not saying this is directly relevant to the quality of the show as a standalone work but it speaks volumes about the philosophy of the people adapting it, especially in contrast to Game of Thrones where most of the changes to the source material were in service of streamlining it or amping up the shock value. I love that HotD seems disinterested in writing more Joffreys or Ramsays, instead giving these humanizing moments of grace to the most vile characters, with basically the sole exception of Mr. I-killed-my-family-to-sate-my-foot-fetish. I think they go to great lengths to depict the "villains" of the series as more or less broken, afraid and/or in impossible situations.

To name a few spoilery examples...

Spoiler

Daemon appears to be a true psychopath in the clinical sense of the word, and without ever undercutting that they reveal that he cared for his brother and wanted to protect him from the vipers in his council like Otto Hightower. Otto in turn is a power-hungry schemer who callously sets up his daughter with the king, but I think they also establish that he has genuine concerns for the security of his family if they end up on the wrong side of the ensuing succession crisis. Criston Cole faces a crisis of personality after failing to live up to his own ideals of knighthood and beats a man to death for reminding him of the flaws in himself. Aegon is a sadistic piece of shit who doesn't want to be king, but during his crowning ceremony he's genuinely touched to receive the adoration from his subjects that he's never gotten from his family. Aemond is a total psycho who just wants to subjugate everyone around him, but when he kills his cousin nephew by accident (a change from the book, where it was intentional) he seems truly horrified at the consequences of his actions.

I know a lot of people have complained about the preponderance of time skips and that it makes it hard to get attached to the characters and I get that, it wasn't until around halfway into the season that I started to feel like these characters were more than just their function in the plot. But I honestly love this feeling that the show is patiently moving pieces into place for a multi-season conflict instead of just rushing to get to the next water-cooler moment. And this time around, it's based on completed material, so they know exactly where they're going!

tl:dr; I love this show, and I think this was largely a "setup" season and s02 has a good chance of being even better.

I'm on episode 8 so I can't click your spoilers, but so far my biggest issue is that I found none of the characters to be interesting. It feels like I'm watching a show that looks nice and flirts with being exciting yet I have zero investment in anything going on. Although in the last couple episodes I've felt some interest in Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen's children.

Not sure I agree that HotD is doing a better job than GoT did depicting the "villains" of the series as more or less broken, afraid and/or in impossible situations. Especially if your examples of the opposite are Joffrey and Ramsay who had their own moments of vulnerability or insight into why they're so evil.

The time skipping hasn't bothered me whatsoever though. Speaking of changes the writers have made to source material, does making Rhaenyra Targaryen's husband black speak positively to this supposed philosophy they have that is better than the frat boy GoT writers?

As much as I try to ignore it, I just can't help but feel like it's retarded to have Rhaenyra Targaryen marry a black gay prince while "secretly" having children with a white knight. Maybe that's how it was in the source material and I just don't know what I'm talking about, but the whole set up feels like the cheapest trash imaginable. She has white kids with dark hair running around.

I get the vibe that, like you say, this is all a patient set-up for a more interesting second season.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

The time skipping hasn't bothered me whatsoever though. Speaking of changes the writers have made to source material, does making Rhaenyra Targaryen's husband black speak positively to this supposed philosophy they have that is better than the frat boy GoT writers?

As much as I try to ignore it, I just can't help but feel like it's retarded to have Rhaenyra Targaryen marry a black gay prince while "secretly" having children with a white knight. Maybe that's how it was in the source material and I just don't know what I'm talking about, but the whole set up feels like the cheapest trash imaginable. She has white kids with dark hair running around.

I'm not sure what your issue with this is? It seems to me that it's an "emperor's new clothes" situation where everyone knows the children are bastards but no one wants to explicitly make the accusation against the presumptive next queen.

 

[CiG]

I get that, but the very obvious nature of the deceit makes it seem really fucking dumb. Maybe it's just me. I think it would've made for something better if her husband weren't black, so the only evidence of a deceit were a lack of white hair, instead of the kids just literally having the wrong skin colour.

 

[Einherjar86]

For what it's worth, I don't think the show is all that intellectual about royal legitimacy but it does provide some context for the absurdity, which in part stems from aristocratic royalty simply viewing themselves as untouchable, so to speak. Rhaenyra surely knows that everyone knows her children are illegitimate; but she also knows people would be taking a big risk to voice such things aloud. It's almost like watching a play within a play, if we imagine the entire royal succession tragedy to be a kind of farce within the frame of the story. In other words, the show transposes dramatic irony from viewers onto characters. Surely all the members of the court and citizens of the seven kingdoms know they're watching a farce but they act as if they don't. The obviousness of the farce makes legitimacy the plot's central concern, including whether it's legitimate to name a woman as heir to the throne, and hence whether legitimacy can pass through the queen.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does the show ever mention skin color explicitly? I can't recall it ever doing so. If that's the case, then race (at least as defined by the historical conditions that produce modern racism in our lived reality) doesn't actually exist in the show. That is, characters within the show don't perceive skin color as a marker bound up with politics, social identity, and science in a way that establishes genealogical provenance. Obviously the show writers still abide by this logic, since white characters have white children and black characters have black children (and if I recall, there is a suggested acknowledgement of skin color when one of Rhaenyra's children is born, is white, and someone tells her husband, the gay prince, "better luck next time," or something like that); but the significance of skin color seems to be subtracted from the sociopolitical calculus. We can debate whether that's an effective strategy or not (clearly there's a social justice politics attached to it), but I'd venture the show asks us to downplay the role of race as defined by skin color.

 

[CiG]

There's also the part where the king exclaims "he has his father's nose" upon holding Rhaenyra's newborn. It's a scene ripe with almost comic awkwardness that makes it all feel a bit too much like Soap of the Dragon. Is Ronn Moss going to make an appearance at some point?

I can see the logic in yours and Vegard's defense of this element, and to a degree I agree it functions fine enough, but knowing that the writers (via an interview I read) learned that George R.R. Martin had originally considered making House Velaryon black, and took that opportunity to insert more diversity into the cast cheapens the whole thing for me. It's a shoehorn being retroactively given more artistic credibility than it deserves.

At least with GoT the question of whether Robert Baratheon's children with Cersei Lannister were actually his or Jaime's bastards, and what that would imply about their rights to rule, felt well-written. It wasn't obvious enough for anybody to voice but definitely enough to think it. Also the threat of voicing it was tangible; Cersei, Joffrey, Tywin, all individuals we believe would silence such claims violently.

Nothing so far has been established in Soap of the Dragons that pointing out the very fucking obvious deceit will see you violently oppressed. The king isn't a tyrant, and on top of that by the time he makes threats he's a sick old wimp. Furthermore the queen would probably side with you. The show has done fuck all to establish that a "emperor's new clothes" scenario should even be taking place.

Also to the race thing; isn't Valyrian a race? Natives to the Valyrian peninsula? Yet another discrepency with the source material there.

 

[Vegard Pompey]

I think the in-universe explanation for the Velaryons' skin color is supposed to be that, being a seafaring house, they've traveled much more and therefore their bloodline also incorporates ethnicities from distant parts of the world. Which tbf is probably just a thin justification for politically motivated diversity casting but it doesn't bother me. I like all the actors they cast to play Velaryons, and I find their presence in the setting less distracting than the mixed-race everythings in Rings of Power.

Nothing so far has been established in Soap of the Dragons that pointing out the very fucking obvious deceit will see you violently oppressed.

It goes there before the season is over.

 

[CiG]

House Velaryon easily has some of the coolest characters so far, my issue isn't with the characters or the actors. Corlys rules. But this might be the worst example of casting at the expense of the story that I have ever seen.

I just saw the scene where Corlys Velaryon's brother is making his case that he should take the Driftmark throne, and Rhaenyra Targaryen cuts him off to argue that if he actually cared about making sure Velaryon blood continues to rule in Driftmark, he wouldn't be undermining his very clearly not related to him white nephew's claim. I fucking lol'd.

This is just as bad as the black beardless dwarven woman in Rings of Power.

Edit: Scratch that, at least she doesn't impact the story in any way. All the mixed race stuff in Rings of Power is purely aesthetic. This House Velaryon shit actually hurts the plot.

 

[CiG]

Spoiler

R.I.P. based black man.

 

[Einherjar86]

Also to the race thing; isn't Valyrian a race? Natives to the Valyrian peninsula? Yet another discrepency with the source material there.

Yes, to clarify--I didn't mean to suggest that race doesn't exist in the show but that race as defined by our parameters (i.e. skin tone) seems to have less bearing (if any) in the world of HoD.

I think all your reservations about the show are fair. I've become increasingly disillusioned with GRRM over the years and so, as I mentioned earlier, set my expectations pretty low. That probably also speaks to my willingness to ignore certain decisions that might irk me in a show I'm more invested in. Defending HoD isn't a hill I'm prepared to die on, lol. It was just an entertaining bit a television for a couple months.

Right now, I'm more invested in Andor. I also just started The Boys, which based on recs from friends and what I've read here, I'm psyched about.

 

[Krow]

HotD has turned fairly soapy to me in a bad way. I could watch the final episodes any time but sadly I don’t want to.

And yeah I agree the whole thing about the bastard children is soo ridiculous it comes to the point of absurdity.

Rings of Power’s worst sin is that it’s boring

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

HotD has turned fairly soapy to me in a bad way.

Yeah same here. One of my buddies just started watching with HotD and i was telling him this is pretty much a bad GoT soap opera.

 

[CiG]

I actually totally forgot Andor came out, so cheers for that.

I watched the season finale of The Rings of Power last night. Is the tall stranger supposed to be fucking

Spoiler

Gandalf!?

 

[no country for old wainds]

I actually totally forgot Andor came out, so cheers for that.

I watched the season finale of The Rings of Power last night. Is the tall stranger supposed to be fucking

Spoiler

Gandalf!?

Spoiler

they're definitely trying to make people wonder about it, but i don't think so. he shouldn't even be here yet, right? i believe the lore is that before saruman/gandalf/radagast there were two other istari wizards called the 'blue wizards' and they arrived earlier and played more of a role in the current happenings, so i'd assume he's one of those. in which case maybe there'll be a second one we'll encounter as well.

 

[CiG]

Spoiler

they're definitely trying to make people wonder about it, but i don't think so. he shouldn't even be here yet, right? i believe the lore is that before saruman/gandalf/radagast there were two other istari wizards called the 'blue wizards' and they arrived earlier and played more of a role in the current happenings, so i'd assume he's one of those. in which case maybe there'll be a second one we'll encounter as well.

Spoiler

Yeah Gandalf doesn't arrive until the third age, but that "follow your nose" line and the fact they're pairing him up with the Harfoots is pretty god damn on the nose (lol). He's also dressed in grey.

If he's actually one of the blue wizards that's just as strange, especially because they specifically don't own the rights to anything that features those two characters. It's why Peter Jackson had Gandalf conveniently forget their names in the trilogy lmao.

My theory the whole time was that Sauron separated out his powers into a manform so that he could mingle with men and elves without being detected, and that's why the tall stranger had to re-learn so much and had no control over his powers, and that this would all culminate in a scene where Sauron reclaims his powers and this would be a sad moment because the audience had grown to like the stranger etc etc. Guess fucking not.

Also in the lore, Gandalf has never visited Rhûn.

 

[CiG]

Okay, damn, the final 3 (or more specifically 2) episodes of HotD totally sold me on the show. Shit went from 0 to 100.

 

[Serjeant Grumbles]

 

[Vegard Pompey]

The new Treehouse of Horror was pretty good. I liked every segment. Wish the Death Note segment had been a full episode just to see more of the cast in the anime artstyle. Fuckin' Bart as L lol

 

[CiG]

Season 2 of Jessica Jones was surprisingly a lot better than season 1 imo. So much shifting of the morality of the characters throughout the episodes, and that ending was fucked.

Edit: I just checked and I started JJ s1 all the way back in August of 2019, holy fuck it has taken me forever to make this much progress.

 

[TechnicalBarbarity]

Okay, damn, the final 3 (or more specifically 2) episodes of HotD totally sold me on the show. Shit went from 0 to 100.

Definitely the two best episodes. Especially ep. 9 (minus the feet jerking scene) ... also thought the ending with Rhaenys was pretty dumb. The last scene in the finale was perfect though ....