SERIES REVIEW: House of the Dragon (2022)
You may remember how, some months ago, I wrote up my thoughts on the first episode of The Rings of Power because I was so appalled by how horrible it was. Well, the show was continuously compared to the House of the Dragon, with the latter considered to be the superior story. Of course, in many ways, it is, I don’t deny it. The storytelling and characterization is far better, the acting is superior, they follow the actual writings of George R.R. Martin properly, and thus things do make more logical sense on the grand spectrum of things.
However, unpopular opinion, but I found House of the Dragon to be pretty unfinishable, because we found ourselves endlessly asking, “So what? Why do we care?” So let’s get into this, and why I thought House of the Dragon was a disappointment. Spoilers abound from here on out (though keep in mind, we quit watching after about 6 episodes).
As a music journalist, there’s nothing I hate reviewing more than an album that I have nothing to say about. I’ll gladly write about an album I dislike and explain (with kindness) why I think it’s a poor product, and I’ll always sing the praises of something great. But when an album simply leaves no mark whatsoever? That’s just the worst, and unfortunately, that’s sort of how I feel about House of the Dragon.
Some time ago, my partner and I were watching Andor on Disney+ and for the first few episodes, we had been thinking, “this is fine and all, but why do I care?” The current Star Wars lore is getting pretty out of hand with oversaturation (also an issue in the MCU, thanks Disney…), if they’re making a full series about the backstory of one dude from a one-off movie, it seems like they’re reaching pretty far for material to spam… and yet, in the end, the show was good enough that we’ll likely continue whenever the second season comes out. The characters were interesting enough, the plot was considerably less predictable than I was expecting it to be, and it didn’t drag too much. In the end, we didn’t have a great answer for “why do I care?” but we found ourselves caring nevertheless. Likely, because the characters and overall political plot were interesting enough to drive the story forward.
When asking the same question of “why do I care?” in House of the Dragon, after six episodes of the show, I still don’t have an answer to the question, nor do I have a desire to keep watching. Perhaps that’s because Bear the Person is pretty fucking sick of politics and the bullshit therein in the real world, so why do I want my escapism to just be full of more of the same real-world bullshit that’s exhausting and depressing me? There are maybe half-a-handful of actually decent people in Westeros during this era and it’s all people hungry for power for the sake of power. Currently, I think all of the characters I kind of like, save Rhaenyra, are dead. Power is a classic villain motive, for sure, but one that’s done to death and I don’t feel like this show is offering me anything new with it. In fact, I think it’s basically using the same schtick from Game of Thrones, but doing a worse job of it (namely, the Baratheon bastards all having strong Baratheon features (which required a lot of spymastery to uncover), while Cersei’s children were all blonde and blue-eyed). In HotD, it feels like they’re not even trying to hide the bastard children’s heritage, so this is one of the same plots from the show’s precursor, just done worse. I mean, really… don’t get me wrong, I love that the Velaryons were black, but the fact that all of her children are white with brown hair is a dead giveaway about their parentage and the fact that anyone denies it is ludicrous.
My other major issue with House of the Dragon is that the continuous time jumps make it really hard to get to know any of the characters, and therefore care about them, because we only see their personalities for a short while before a ton of time passes that clearly changes who they are. Of course, yes, I know this is how the original material was portrayed, in the sense of it being a history book, but if we're using The Rings of Power was a comparison, at least those guys got creative expanding on the lore. Both of these shows, in fact, were written from fictional history books, so they’re more or less just working with lore, and sure, The Rings of Power did an awful job of it, but at least they did something. This show, I feel, has thrown a bunch of characters at me (who, thanks to Martin’s naming style, all have almost the same names and facial features) and has given me zero opportunity to get to know them or care about them, because almost every episode jumps ahead several years, or even up to a decade. We see from the beginning, Rhaenyra and Alicent are friends. Then, there’s even a nice scene where the two of them sit together and talk about their problems, which makes them feel sympathetic towards one another. One is the princess who doesn’t care about all the politics, and the other is a beautiful young woman who’s pawned off to the king, whom she doesn’t love, because her father wants power. I suppose this is meant to make it even more heartbreaking when you see their friendship fade away, but that’s just it… it feels like their friendship just ends all of a sudden and the viewer doesn’t really understand why. Why does Alicent suddenly care so much about power the way her father does? Why does she stop feeling sympathy towards Rhaenyra? Why does she suddenly see Rhaenyra as her enemy?
Another example of this inconsistency in characters and not having enough time to understand their motives is easily my least favorite character: Ser Criston Cole. This fellow shows up, seems like a devout Christian sort of guy, yet lets Rhaenyra seduce him, then immediately turns on her, and then—seemingly completely randomly—goes batshit insane when Rhaenyra’s husband’s boyfriend suggests they be allies (thinking he’s being blackmailed, yes, I know) and then just FULL MURDERS HIM IN PUBLIC, and then goes on to be the head of the watch. After public murder, the queen thinks he’s a swell fellow and no one ever seems to question the queen’s actions, even though she’s shady AF all the time. What the actual fuck? Then there’s a time jump 10 years later and this Criston is still calling Rhaenyra some sort of string of insults followed by “cunt” and I’m just sitting here wondering… what the fuck did she do to this guy? Refuse to run away with him? And 10 years later he’s still calling her a cunt? I just don’t understand the degree of the escalation or where it came from a lot of the time, because the show doesn’t allow the viewer to get to know anyone before their story escalates.
Of course, there’s some Hollywood bullshit in there too that I found bothersome, like a woman who just gave birth getting up and walking, or a woman who is failing to successfully give birth fully leaving a room unattended to go all the way outdoors to her dragon by herself (and I guess no one asked where she was going or followed her or anything during the birthing process?). But the worst Hollywoodization? The fact that the characters age so much in such a rapid time, that they had to replace the actors halfway through the season. When episode 6 rolled around, starting with Rhaenyra giving birth, I was legitimately so confused for so long because I thought I was seeing her mother. Don’t get me wrong, I think Emma D’Arcy was great in her role, I really enjoyed her as an actor, but she just looked nothing like Milly Alcock. There are photos of the actors side-by-side online and their entire facial structure is completely different. Isn’t aging technology a big deal these days, and they had a big-deal budget, so… why not use that? Or at least… I don’t know, find actors that look alike? I couldn’t tell that Alicent had a different actor, nor Laenor, so those were done well. With Rhaenyra, I felt like one of the actors had died or something, it really broke emersion.
Sometimes we’ve watched an episode and just thought, “what was the pitch for this show?" You know, what were the showrunners thinking was the point of the story they were telling?
“What did people like about Game of Thrones?”
“Hmm, well, overt sexuality, gratuitous violence, and incest.”
We see Daemon butchering people in the street, Alicent’s eldest son wanking off naked in a window over the city (and apparently he’s fully a rapist later on), Daemon trying to fuck his niece, Daemon actually fucking his niece… like, GoT already wore out our shock value for Martin’s cold and cruel incestual world, so what is all of this actually offering now?
So after six episodes, I felt like I was at the end of my interest in continuing to spend my time on the series. I’ve dedicated 5+ hours to watching unlikeable power-hungry assholes being unlikeable power-hungry assholes and I want to know what I’ve learned from it all, or what the point was. If I want to see power-hungry assholes, all I need to do is look at the local politics where I live. If I want to see corruption and betrayal, I need look no further than real life. If I want television for escapism, I certainly don’t want to be reminded about how all of the world is run by people who only care about keeping their power and not about actually being decent people.
Ultimately, while I do think this is a better overall product than The Rings of Power… at least TRoP was stupidly entertaining enough to be B-movie quality funny. I’ll enjoy something I can laugh at as much as something that makes me cry. People love a good trainwreck afterall… whereas House of the Dragon mostly just felt like an uninteresting rehash of something that was already done better (at least for a few seasons).
Sadly, we’re still thirsting for fantasy done right. Why is this genre so difficult?
