I found episode 4 to be absolutely dreadful from the jokes in the opening suitor scene thru the king's reaction. The last 15 to 20 minutes were ok.

This might have been a big mistake, but this week I rewatched Season 1 of Game of Thrones. It was the 5th time I'd seen it, but the first time in 8 years. It was ****ing amazing. The dialogue and the characters are among the best of any show in the history of TV. Then I watch episode 4 of House of the Dragon and there are multiple scenes with next to no dialogue, and sadly the non-dialogue is probably the best dialogue of the entire episode.

It seems we are supposed to hate Dameon, hate Rhaenyra, and hate the King. We're just supposed to like the Queen and her father? Meh. Bring back Littlefinger and Varys. Hell, I'll settle for Grand Maester Pycelle. Also, this kingsguard douche is really lame.

when you take into consideration vyserys parents were brother and sister (baelon and alyssa targaryen) and his grandparents were also brother and sister (jahaerys and alyssane) his rage when he found out his brother was ****ing his niece is less comprehensible. if anything it will help her claim to the throne stronger and he named her his heir so I don't see the real matter.

don't see how you think we are made to like otto. he's as littlefinger as it gets.

The writers of this show: You know what everyone loved about GoT?
Fans of show: Shock deaths. Political intrigue and machinations. Dragons. Battles. Fights for power.
The writers: Incest plotlines, got it.

Seriously wtf. Daemon could have maneouvered for power exactly the same way by influencing the princess to get rid of Hightower without all that pleasure house nonsense.

Wug new hand

writers have clearly been looking at what's trending on pornhub.

fwiw that whole plot is directly from the books so the whole blame there is on george. also, it's a show on targaryerns, of course there's gonna be incest.

was she? i missed that. yeah i was gonna say after ep3 it seemed like she stopped that entirely, seemed very comfortable in her new role, with king v, and her only anxiety scene was when otto was pressuring her to push aegon's claim, which she didn't. instead she gave him that advice about rhaenyra, and about doing what's best for the realm.

thought maybe that signified she was moving away from otto and toward king v, or just being more independent. she definitely seemed much more confident anyway. but yeah not loving life as a baby machine to the gross old king in ep4, and now could be pretty isolated if otto leaves town.


technically i think she meant that she didn't **** daemon (it was in the context of her virtue or whatever), which is true, but yeah i assume alicent won't care about the distinction


otto mentioned having 3 sources for the "heir for a day" speech, and mysaria was obv there for that, so maybe this has been going on all along

in the behind the scenes stuff after the ep they said daemon didn't ditch on rhaenyra because he had a change of mind, he ditched her because he couldn't get it up. it's kinda important because they did a poor job of showing that on screen imo.

supposedly grrm said he wanted this show to be more grey, as got was pretty black/white where most of the characters were either jesus or hitler, with very little in between. in this i think they're trying to show the good and bad of everyone, and to a larger extent leaving it up to the viewer to decide what they think, who they like.

was wondering how they were gonna give otto a face turn, and i guess they kind of did it here in ep4 where he got caught in that catch-22. tell the king and he kills the messenger thinking you're scheming, don't tell him and might get got if he finds out. should be interesting to see where he goes from here


1000% agree. i like when shows err on the side of subtle rather than smashing the viewer in the face with everything, but there's already been a few things in this that they've tried to get across that weren't really there on the screen. it totally seemed like daemon was making some kind of power play there rather than couldn't get it up again. it's not great if these behind the episode things are necessary to understand wtf is going on lol

I didn't mind the incest, but wasn't a fan of the execution. It was like Eyes Wide Shut: The Prequel, but with weird transitions back to the Queen being a wet noodle in bed.

he's the granpa of the next supposed heir so he should still be around lol

i would expect he'd be sent away, maybe go back to oldtown, but who knows


can't imagine king v or rhaenyra want him lurking around

i mean he was just dismissed for being untrustworthy...

Thanks, the way they shot the Ep 4 Raenyra-Daemon "coupling" scene it was hard to tell exactly what he did. It was so short and noise-less I assumed he didn't do much. So maybe Raenyra isn't fully lying about it. If Raenyra is pregnant, I think it could only be by Ser Criston Cole now. Not the best episode after a good ep 3.

yeah what the hell I didn't get that at all from the scene but also heard that on the post show commentary.

Episode 3 was good and I was hopeful this show was finding its footing after 2 underwhelming episodes to start... but this episode sucked. Incredibly disjointed editing, bad acting, stilted dialogue. Just bad all around. Not sure how much longer I'm gonna stick with this.

I am incredibly biased towards GoT. Love it, will make every excuse for the show in the world and I still think the episode sucked. I'm getting a little disappointed.

lol I thought the episode was great...the foray into the pleasure palaces was exciting and well done, and it was "adult." The love scene with Cole was also well done, and dare I say, sexy.

Loved it.

I will defer to Dominic’s expertise on love scenes.

Just want to be clear here. Damon didn't actually f*** Rhaenyra, right? I thought that was obvious that he didn't, but based on this thread, it seems like even that is in question (on top of the reason why he didn't).

I thought episode 4 was better than episode 3 purely on the basis of how unbelievably dumb and absurd the big crab battle sequence was.

It still really needs something material to happen though now.

In Game of Thrones we lost Viserys in episode 6 and King Robert in episode 7. This was following 4 much much stronger episodes than we have seen from HOTD so far.

I'm giving it two, maybe three more episodes and if doesn't pick up, i'll be throwing in the towel

This show has a lot of unforced errors in the way scenes were shot.

Let's start at the end of sexual scene between Daemon and Rhaenyra. Daemon slams his hand on the wall and walks away. The film makers want the viewer to understand that that was Daemon getting mad at not being able to get it up. But it isn't crystal clear that is what happened. The unforced error was that Rhaenyra's pants were down, therefore sex was possible. Daemon had turned Rhaenyra towards the wall and pulled her pants down.

The scene should have been filmed with Daemon and Rhaenyra's pants still on and up. Then Daemon puts his hand down Rhaenyra's pants and then when Rhaenyra reciprocates by putting her hand down Daemons pants we would see Daemon get frustrated and storm off making it clear he couldn't get it up, just like he couldn't keep it up in episode 1 when banging Mysaria.

I went back and watched this episode on a high definition television. The color, sound, costumes, settings, etc. are amazing on this show. But the unforced errors in almost every episode are bringing things down.

I dunno, I thought the love scene with Cole was OK but it went on forever to the point of getting boring.

My big issue with this show so far is that it has ZERO sense of humor. Characters like Tyrion, Jaime, Cersei, Joffrey etc. all had a sense of humor about them and were often hilarious. This show is ponderous. No laughs, no humor. Straight-up soap opera.

The fact that it is in question tells you the editors/director did a lousy job of showing what happened. I thought Daemon just had a bout of conscience and stopped having sex with Rhaenyra because it was wrong. And even there, I wasn't 100% sure whether they had intercourse before he stopped or not. In fact when Alicent confronted Rhaenyra about it, I had no clue if she was lying or not when she said they didn't have sex. Then I hear on the aftershow that in fact he stopped because he couldn't get it up. All way too confusing and poorly done.

While I think this show has been pretty good, I agree with you. I thought he was either scheming or had 2nd thoughts. Impotence wasn't in my thought process when watching that scene.