House of the Dragon
You might be asking yourself what fool would watch House of the Dragon given the way that Game of Thrones ended. Well I am that fool! Say it in your best Raul Julia Gomez Addams voice if you please. The reason I will keep going back to the Game of Thrones universe is that I remember the magic of reading the first three books in the summer of 2002. My friend Jess introduced me to the books. We had just been to see Tobey Maguire in Spider-Man and we went out to eat and hung out at Barnes and Noble after. We were both picking up books and asking each other if we'd read it. I foisted Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials on her and she foisted I Am Legend and A Game of Thrones on me. We left the store poor in money but richer in stories. And I soon wanted a direwolf. Even sooner I went back to Barnes and Noble and picked up A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords and then started playing the real game you play if you're a fan of George R.R. Martin, the waiting game. Yep. I'm somehow still playing it. And there was a part of me that was like, do I want to watch House of the Dragon? Not only could it let me down again in epic fashion, but it's a prequel, with prequels you know where they're going. And then the cast was announced. I really had no choice after that point. Even if Matt Smith wasn't in it there's Paddy Considine,
Rhys Ifans, and Olivia Cooke. These are some actors I truly love and every day it seemed like more were joining, in fact I was so unable to keep up with the announcements I didn't even know that Nicholas Jones was in it until he showed up on Dragonstone in the last episode. And if you don't know who Nicholas Jones is, do yourself a favor and watch some seventies and eighties British miniseries, Anna Karenina, Lillie, and The Flame Trees of Thika are a good start. But with all these great casting announcements a problem was revealed, a problem that the show has been rightly criticized for, the pacing. They were recasting characters with new actors every other episode because of the whooshing sound time was making as episodes jumped decades from one week to the next. This led to great confusion, and also great apathy. While I was looking forward to Olivia Cooke I had no idea how invested I'd get in Alicent being played by Emily Carey. Likewise with Milly Alcock as Rhaenyra. They became the characters to me and when they foisted the change in actors I felt no connection to them. It wasn't even until the last two episode that I felt that Olivia Cooke and Emma D'Arcy actually connected to their characters. But thankfully during this turmoil the show was carried by Paddy Considine as Viserys. He brought such pathos, such vulnerability to a king that you couldn't help but feel for him. So while the showrunners are claiming that next season will fix the pacing problem, and hopefully they'll remember to never do day for night again, the question remains, can the show succeed without Viserys carrying it on his frail shoulders? Perhaps if they better used Matt Smith they could solve their problem.
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