House of the Dragon - S02E02 - Rhaenyra the Cruel

[00:00:00] This summer, we enter a new era of Star Wars. You mean the dawn of the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast? Yeah, yeah sure, that too. But I was obviously talking about the Acolyte. We've got to cover that on The Lorehounds.

[00:00:18] Oh, but the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast is exactly at that point in the timeline, the end of the High Republic 100 years before the prequel trilogy. We've got to cover it there. Why not both? Okay, deal. It's the first live action Star War outside the Skywalker Saga.

[00:00:37] Nobody can miss this. Listeners, kick off your Hot Lore summer weekends with scene by scene breakdowns of The Acolyte, found in both the Star Wars Canon Timeline podcast and The Lorehounds' mother feed. And The Lorehounds' Star Wars feed.

[00:00:52] Wherever you like to listen, a couple of days after each new episode is released. Hot Lore Summer! Welcome to the House of the Hounds. We're the Lorehounds, your guides to the Dance of the Dragons. I'm Jon. And I'm David.

[00:01:34] And this is our coverage for season two, episode two. And they decided to give us the title finally, Rhaenyr the Cruel. I was checking all night and this morning even. Anyway, this is the HBO Max original series, House of the Dragon.

[00:01:49] We're going to start off with our hot takes for the episode before we get into a scene by scene breakdown. Then we'll answer listener feedback. And keep that feedback coming. It has been great. We have some help this season, Jon.

[00:02:02] Loremaster, aka now Dragon Master Nancy M., is collecting and organizing all the feedback for us, which has been a huge help. Super helpful. Yes. Send emails to hotd at the lorehounds dot com. And then don't be surprised if Nancy sends you a nice little message back letting you

[00:02:20] know that you got your email into our outline. You can also send us voicemails and we can include those right in the podcast. I believe we have one from Darker than Ninjas this episode. And the voicemail tool is like super easy to use.

[00:02:33] Just go to our web page lorehounds dot com slash contact. As well, you can tag us on the Discord and Nancy can scoop those up. I've just decided Nancy gets a new title. Oh yeah? Hand of the Pod. Oh! That's pretty good.

[00:02:48] Are we going to let her like actually run our affairs, file our taxes and that kind of thing? There you go. Yeah. Hand of the Pod. I like it. I'm into this. Okay.

[00:02:59] If you hear my voice a little hoarse today, it's because I recorded an eight minute parody song for Hot Lore Summer today. Uh oh. And it will debut on Second Breakfast. Nice. Very good. Looking forward to it.

[00:03:09] Anyway, support the community on Supercast or Patreon where you can listen to Second Breakfast and other exclusive content. You can also get early and ad free access to all our episodes and the season pass will similarly get you access to the show guide for House of the Dragon.

[00:03:27] Yeah. Season pass has been very successful. And if you're curious about what that is, this is our way to if there are, you know, we've got a lot of listeners who come around for just particular shows and they say, you know, hey, I'd like to support the community.

[00:03:43] I'd like to throw some bucks your way or get access to some of these subscriber resources. But I'm just not into the Patreon thing. Like I'm here for one show and then I'll come back again when another big show comes around.

[00:03:55] So we set up season pass which is 10 bucks flat. You get access to all the subscriber material for House of the Dragon. Our season one coverage and all season two coverage, all ad free, all early access. I don't know.

[00:04:10] We've got a good number of people, like a good number of people. You're selling it enough, I think. But the point is, the point is we've got a great community. You can join it for free on Discord and just come to chat with us.

[00:04:24] And I would also encourage you to check out the show notes. You got a link tree to all that stuff, including our affiliate podcast where you can find all of our friends. Well, John. Well, David. Here we are.

[00:04:38] This is, you know, it's funny because I think the first episode had the thing that everybody said was going to be the dark moment. But this one felt heavier to me. Because I think in the first episode, the heavy thing came at the end and that was most

[00:04:50] of the heaviness. In this one, the whole episode carried the heaviness of the first episode and then ended on a new heavy thing. I mean, what did you think of it? It's like a black hole eating a black hole kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:05:04] So you're this is the first time you're experiencing this story at all. Yeah. And I'll just make a quick note too. I'm not actively avoiding news and media, but I'm not going out. I'm not reading all the actor interviews. I'm not watching the next week on.

[00:05:20] I think I'll watch them after we record the pod, but I want to be like, you know, fresh in this way. So I'm just really trying to react to what they're giving to me on screen.

[00:05:31] I am here to say that this show is a master class in visual storytelling. Yeah. The camera work in this show is exceptional. I thought Shogun was knocking my socks off. This show has taken what Shogun was doing and has plussed it, you know, x'd it by 10.

[00:05:52] It's absolutely incredible. The way that they incorporate the music, the writing, the acting, everything is just phenomenal. The way that they used close ups in this, like they're right on people. There's one shot even with Emma Darcy where they racked focus from one eye to the other

[00:06:15] eye and it was incredible. The face acting alone that's going on here is phenomenal. This whole thing is, there's a lot of different axes for the story to move on and one of them

[00:06:34] that I was really picking up on today after I literally just finished my second watch was, and it takes me like, when I do my second watch is I'm taking so many notes and pausing

[00:06:43] and looking up, so it didn't take me like two and a half hours to rewatch the episode. It doesn't take a short amount of time to do the show guide from that either. No, it's crazy. Similar amount of time. We put a lot of prep into this pod.

[00:06:58] This other theme that I was really catching on was youth versus maturity, you know, impetuousness instead of judgment. Do you never think of your father and his temperament? He has not the long view. There's all this stuff about peacocks, but the long game will win.

[00:07:20] There's a lot of that. In both families and both sides and all around there are the young and then the older folks, graybeards even we got a mention of in episode one. There's a great tension there between the olds who want to go slow and think about it

[00:07:42] and the young who want to go and do stuff. Even Miserea gets into the action where she was like, oh, you know, back when I was young, I thought I was important and now I got no Fs left to give. My field of Fs is barren.

[00:08:00] The other thing this episode had was so many truth to power conversations where people are just laying out the hard truths and really confronting stuff. And in one case, not confronting things, but that's fine.

[00:08:17] And it was just so refreshing to see some of these characters open their eyes and start to engage with feelings and thoughts and understandings that have been for a long time bottled up and not expressed. It was the family therapy episode of House of the Dragon. Really was.

[00:08:36] And then the last thing I want to point out just sort of on a hot take in terms of this whole amazing masterclass is the use of mirroring. So they used it a lot last season. And I think this season is topping last season easily.

[00:08:50] And I thought last season was amazing. This season is so much better so far, two episodes in. But they use mirroring a lot where one character will be going through something and then they'll show another character processing similar thoughts or emotions. But they're even doing it with plot.

[00:09:10] And in the last episode, we had this build up to the blood and cheese set piece. Well, in this one, we have this great run up to the – Cargo Bowl. What do you call it? The witch? I call it either Cargo Bowl or Twin Bowl. Yeah, Twin Bowl.

[00:09:29] And so we have this same sort of lead up to this really great dramatic moment. And then we have a little bit of tale that comes out the end in terms of wrapping up the plot.

[00:09:42] But the way that they use music, the way that they use – my heart was pounding. I was absolutely freaking out. The twin thing could have gone horribly wrong as a plot device. This is something that – I'm telling you, this is a 30-year in the making plot.

[00:09:57] You know why? Let me read to you this quote from A Game of Thrones from the 1990s. Well, let me just – before you do that. Oh, go ahead. From a TV standpoint, this could have been corny as shit. But this was high stakes.

[00:10:11] It was adrenaline and heart pounding. It was so good. I mean, I could see – at certain points, I could see, oh, okay, I know what's going to happen now. Okay, got it, got it. But it didn't matter that I knew.

[00:10:23] What knowing actually gave me more intensity of a feeling. And that's a very easy thing to screw up in television, and they nailed it. So what's your 30-year quote here? Okay, this is from A Game of Thrones. Again, the original Westeros novel. Okay.

[00:10:42] Bran is recounting all the stories he knows about different knights. Okay. The twins Ser Erek and Ser Erek who died on one another's swords hundreds of years ago when brother fought sister in the war the singers called the Dance of the Dragons. Brilliant.

[00:10:58] So if you read A Game of Thrones recently, you – This was there. Yeah, they didn't put this in the show, but this was there, like dropped there. You might not have noticed it, but yeah, it's pretty incredible how George sees these things. And these are huge stories.

[00:11:16] It's very Tolkien-esque, right? A throwaway line about Feanor, Lord of the Rings becomes many chapters of The Silmarillion. And so this is top tier stuff. Good job, George. We love you. Well, and good job for the adaptation because we often talk about inspiration versus adaptation.

[00:11:33] And there should be a test whether an original work when translated onto screen can hold on to the central meaning that the author had. And I think it's easier, and we talked about this before, it's easier with this because

[00:11:46] they have this kind of an encyclopedia as opposed to a close text that they have to adapt. So they're lucky in some ways. But still, but still, they are closely reading this.

[00:12:01] And this stuff is, this material is so tight and the translation to the screen is so brilliant. I mean, these two first episodes going from blood and cheese to the twin bowl, amazing. Absolutely amazing.

[00:12:14] I have no idea what, I'm kind of, you know, I said before when we did our season two preview with Anthony that I didn't want an eight episode season. I wanted a 10 episode season.

[00:12:27] But the way that my nervous system is responding to the show, I kind of am glad it's going to be eight episodes because I don't know if I could go the full 10.

[00:12:35] You know, I was shocked and I'm going to use this to dovetail into my thoughts, but I was shocked that they did Cargill Bowl, Twin Bowl. So soon. In episode two.

[00:12:46] I thought this was going to be like a mid season or end of season part of, you know, how the Hound and the Mountain have their duel at the end of Game of Thrones. I thought it was going to be like that. This was just what it was.

[00:13:00] It was crazy. It just happened in episode two. And the minute that Cole sent him, I was like, all right, are we going to see him? He's trying to sneak in for a couple episodes, but they were like, nope, boom, we're ripping the bandaid off right now.

[00:13:09] And I really love that they didn't use it so long. And this is such a moment that they had to live up to because George, George kind of toots his own horn in the book.

[00:13:19] He's like, oh, it was such a tragic tale that they were songs about it and everyone was so sad about this forever. And you watch this and you're like, I understand why that's the case. Right. Right.

[00:13:32] Just that these two brothers loved each other so much, but they ended up on opposite sides of a war and they had to kill each other. Yeah. And well, we'll get, I have things to say about the fight, but we'll save it for the

[00:13:43] oh, I'm wrong by the way. I'm wrong about, I've discovered through the official podcast. You're the monster. That's fine. It did give us feedback. Well, you know, enragement does equal engagement. So it sure does. Anyway, just my other general takes before we hop into the episode proper.

[00:14:02] I was just really thrilled with the production value of everything. I thought Emma Darcy, by the way, we accidentally used she, her pronouns with the actor. I didn't know. Like I'm not reading them. Yeah. And I didn't read, you know, I'm not reading the media.

[00:14:18] So I knew, I knew I probably just slipped up because the character identifies as a woman. Sure. So yeah. So anyway, sorry, Emma Darcy. But anyway, Emma Darcy is doing an incredible job. The costuming is great.

[00:14:33] Just the way that Emma Darcy can be so commanding in one scene and just hiding behind all of the servants in the next scene is something that speaks to the range of their acting prowess

[00:14:48] and the way that they can act in the same room with Matt Smith and in one season be kind of shriveling from him. But in the next season, be like, you are pathetic. I know you have, you made me get the sound clip.

[00:15:05] I did get it, but we could save it for when we get to the scene. I just think that the acting in this top tier, and I really like that the kids are getting into their own now.

[00:15:15] We are seeing Jason Bela have their own personalities and have their own conflicts. And Risi Fonz, his performance in this episode was the best I've ever seen him. I mean, I make my manscape jokes about him, but his, his performance is incredible.

[00:15:30] The way that he can be this, you know, Oh, don't hurt me in one second. And the next second just pivot to you idiot. Great stuff. Great stuff. So I'm, I'm ready to talk about the full episode.

[00:15:43] I know you have some callbacks you wanted to point out first, though. Yeah, just a couple of quick things. There was something today when I went in to do my second watch on the kind of animated

[00:15:58] graphic for the show, it was really apparent that there was a lot of floating dust like particular matter. And I know that there's been some conversation around about what was that about when, when Helena and, and Alison, no, Alison, well, and, and Raniera. Yeah. Separate scenes.

[00:16:21] I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. Difference. So that's even mirrored on the, this little graphic that was on the, on the max website. So what does it all mean? I don't know, but I think it's pretty cool.

[00:16:32] I hopefully it means something, you know, or we can just be chasing Markleys here. Well, we can chase Markleys all day because I'll tell you, there are characters that are side characters right now that will be important later. Right.

[00:16:44] And they will not, and I won't tell you who they are and the show will not tell you who they are until they are. Boom. And then until we're ready. And I was, you know, this just goes back to this whole construction of the episode.

[00:16:54] This was an hour and six minute long episode. It was, you know, that's from credit to credit. See, you know, seeing that was just sort of a rough like anyway, I wanted to mention a

[00:17:06] couple of things about episode one last week, I was at my in-laws and I hadn't had all the time to prep. And I did a rewatch of episode one and there was just a couple of quick thoughts I had.

[00:17:17] One, we never talk about the plight of the Ravens. And so having the opening scene of the Raven flying through the woods and then bringing us to Winterfell was just really cool.

[00:17:26] I was, I was very, I was geeking out on that when I was doing my, my episode one rewatch. And another thing that really struck me is when, who's the Stark ancestor? Sorry, I'm blanking the name. Oh, Cregan. Cregan. Yeah.

[00:17:43] When Cregan, Craig Stark, Cregan Stark says, you know, all men must, you know, all men of honor must pay its price. Do you know he's blonde in real life? Hmm? Do you know he's blonde in real life? He looks very Targaryen. Okay, perfect.

[00:17:54] But it really reminded me of the whole Valar, Morghulis Valar Dohares thing, right? So he's talking about honor and you have to pay this price and all men must serve. And, you know, it just, it was just again, nice, really good world building stuff. Yeah.

[00:18:09] I mean, it reminds me very much of Ned Stark going the man who passes a sentence once swing the sword, right? Right. This whole idea of the Northmen really live their truth. Yeah. Yeah. And they, they honor their oaths and all that, unless you're Robb Stark.

[00:18:23] And then that gets out, your people killed. And that's all. Well, there you go. You can say. Who was the kid who drew the stone in the first scene with the Starks?

[00:18:33] Cause he, you know, they said that, Oh, it's, you know, one in 10 of our family has to join. And I just wonder if that was just a random Stark. I don't, I don't recall. I think that was his brother actually.

[00:18:42] I think that, I think he said that, but he wasn't named. So I didn't add him to the show guide. Yeah. I'm just curious if that's going to come into play, you know, at some point in the future

[00:18:49] or not, that's kind of one of those things that they might do. Right. You need a name to get into the show guide. That's my rule. Okay. That's a good rule. I'm not going to bring unnamed, unnamed servant into the show guide.

[00:18:59] You know, I thought, I thought about it when one of them got cheese, but that didn't even have to do with him getting caught anyway. So I'm glad I didn't. The, another thing that I was really taken by was the power of the conversation between

[00:19:10] Renese and Damon's about the news of a dead child. And like to, to really get that, really get that, that, that Damon, you know, his wife and the, you know, the faked murder of their son, like the damage that has been done between

[00:19:30] these two households, these two particular, you know, sets of couples and for her to, you know, give him the sort of quiet what for, it just really struck me. And I just wanted to put a highlighter line on that, that little bit of that conversation

[00:19:45] and how powerful that was. So, and then the last thing I wanted to note was when Sir Crispin, Crispy Cole and Alison are walking into the small council, they give us a shot of cheese hoisting his rat traps

[00:20:02] over his shoulder and then passing behind them as they go through. And again, just really brilliant construction and just little seating dropping of the little things, the little breadcrumbs, the little pieces of cheese for us to follow, you know, to the straight into the trap of the show.

[00:20:17] Well, I will say the feral cat population is thrilled by the news of the rat catchers dying. Yeah, yeah, they're thriving. Shall we take a quick break and come back to do our scene by scene? Sounds good. We'll be right back.

[00:20:35] We're back with more House of the Dragon. So we open up with a scene that I call, you know, it's fun in, in, uh, in notion. You can follow along with this outline by the way, because we're reading from the notion now.

[00:20:56] Uh, if you are a subscriber, of course, I get to name these scenes now, my little headings. So there's chaos in the red keep. The red keep is in chaos as the high tower scramble to find the murderers of Jahaerys

[00:21:10] Targaryen King Aegon smashes his father's Lego sets in anger. Daemon inspects his quarters and realizes the assassins were sent for him. So one of the first things that I noticed on my rewatch of this scene was that whole

[00:21:28] dust moat sort of fluid, dynamic floaty thing is actually present in a, in a form, in a way it's not, it's not like explicit, but it's kind of there in the way some of the

[00:21:42] lights are floating around and the way that the camera's working in the way that the lighting is working. And this camera work in this scene, in this whole episode is incredible.

[00:21:53] We both feel at the same time, like we're a fly in the wall watching all of this chaos, but then they take us right into the action and we get mixed in with the action and the darkness and the confusion.

[00:22:05] And we feel like we're being rounded up and having the dogs barking at us and being pushed around and then to pair it with cello music, you know, which is that somber sort of, you know, sonorous. Is that the way to say that word?

[00:22:20] That tonality, that rich warmth tonality of the cello, but it has a tragic tone to it. It was absolutely an incredible piece of setup for us to come right into this episode and to pick up right from where we left off last episode.

[00:22:36] And of course we have a gone literally breaking apart the kingdom. Right? I mean, I mean, I guess, I guess he, did you, did you wake up with a toy? Well, but the symbolism to me is I'm going to, I'm going to go and just smash all that

[00:22:53] my father has created. Completely completely. And that was such great visual storytelling there. Exactly. Yep. And then later we get to see him all being carted out. Yep. I love the cleanup crew.

[00:23:07] This is man, they are busy these days, you know, usually they just had to clean up for after Viserys's bodily fluids, but now they're full demolition. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're cleaning house. They're, they're changing regimes here.

[00:23:22] They're, Oh, you know what I should ask you to do on because you're all fancy now with your image capturing thing. There's a really great scene of a Amond picking up the coin that he finds that's underneath

[00:23:34] the table and then he puts it in front of the camera so that it is over his other good eye. And so we have that sort of cat's eye blue gem thing and then this gold coin, which goes

[00:23:47] back to, I think the whole Valor, Margulis Valor, Goharis thing for me, just get it. It's just giving you those feels. You know, the coins in, I think, I think it's only the coins in Essos have the have them on opposite sides. Right, right, right.

[00:24:02] But still it's just the, the, the idea of it all is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm just thinking, I'm just thinking, you know, we got my gears turning, but I'm wondering what's on the back of that coin.

[00:24:10] I was just sort of curious is that, you know, and it's probably inconsequential, but the fact that there is some sort of design there is the kind of three dimensional world building that the show is putting together.

[00:24:22] So, yeah, I think, I think if we're just reading exactly what they're trying to tell us, it's just, Hey, Amon is impressed that people were hired to do that. Yeah, that's a good point. They had so much gold, they were dropping it and not noticing it. Right, right.

[00:24:35] They weren't scrounging it up. Yeah. Cause a small, you know, somebody else would have definitely picked that up. Right. So Allison mourns auto high tower reassures Allison that those responsible will be found. Allison says that child's pain is over, but they've hurt Helena.

[00:24:53] Otto promises the perpetrators will pay, but Allison blames herself. His pain is ended. Yours, Allison is not. You get a lot more pain coming your way. I think she knows that though.

[00:25:08] You know, she's that's exactly my girl, but my girl, you know, oh man, I feel so terrible for Helena. Helena is the only character in the show that has not done anything wrong. Right, right. The actual innocent. Yeah. I guess, I guess like Jason Bela are also innocents.

[00:25:24] I think, I think we could, we could get most of that generation on as innocence. Sure. I think that. Well, I mean they used to, they used to torment a or a, a, a mint.

[00:25:36] So I mean one, they were like 10, but it's still, it's part of the trauma that he's, you know, that he's experienced. It was a pig. It wasn't like, or are you, are you, are you defending there? I'm sorry, but that was a pretty harmless prank.

[00:25:51] Yeah, but it was part of it. It was an ongoing stuff that they were doing, but I didn't see it. I didn't see them do anything vicious and I did see Amen do vicious things to them in that same time period.

[00:26:02] I think Amen always had a viciousness to him, a cruelty to him that I didn't, I never saw in Jace Luke or we don't really see Joffrey act, but you know what I mean? So yeah. And I mean they're, they're kids, they're, they're thumping on each other, right?

[00:26:17] They're going to do that. So the blocking in this scene again, kind of a mirroring thing. We have Otto in the foreground with Alison in the background and then at some point they reverse positions and Otto goes to the background and Alison comes to the foreground when he

[00:26:37] comes in and he sort of tries to comfort her. And this idea that they're, you know, they're in it, sometimes they cannot stand each other and they have to be away from each other.

[00:26:48] And then other times they're close, but then just the visual setup of this scene in this room and the way that they use depth and changing of positions was just really beautiful. And again, again, telling the story of where these characters are at by using the camera

[00:27:06] and the block in the scenes. And this is Alison's first attempt to become close to her father. Yes. Completely fails. Right. It's not doing well in the family, you know, mother daughter sort of, you know, positioning. She's not figuring it out very well.

[00:27:25] They're doing a great job displaying generational trauma here. Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that it's only now in Alison's life that Otto is close to his daughter in some ways and it's, you know, around the, a war and a serpent of a throne, that's where

[00:27:43] his warm spot is, you know, that's where that's how you get to him is, Hey daddy, let's throw it. Let's have a cool. Can we play? Let's have a coup. Oh, of course my daughter I'll play with you now. Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible.

[00:27:55] And we see Alison passes that right down this, this idea that you can't be close with your kids. Yeah. Terrible, terrible. So let's move on to a gun, small council of rage. A gun admonishes the small council for allowing the murder to happen.

[00:28:13] He questions Kristen Cole's whereabouts on the night of the murder, but Otto Hightower urges a gone not to make blind accusations. Lara strong informs the council that they have found the gold cloak involved.

[00:28:26] Otto lays the groundwork for a funeral procession, loudly blaming Raniera to win the hearts of the realm. Alison resists, but Otto wins the council over. I mean, it's not like Otto is wrong. I mean, yes, he's gross. Oh, he's absolutely right.

[00:28:44] And in fairness, it was that faction that did it. Right. I mean, yeah, right. Raniera really wanted to distance her from that. Then I think she needs to publicly disowned Damon. Yeah, yeah. She had returned. I probably have them executed for kinslaying. Right.

[00:29:02] Send, send Damon's head back to the red keep to reset those scales. Right. But you can't do that. But I mean, the, you know, this idea of, of public spectacle and, and swing, he's really good. He's really, really good at understanding how that stuff works. Right.

[00:29:21] And yeah, he's using their pain and their tragedy for this, uh, really brutal end, but he's not wrong in terms of how it's all working, you know, and, and how to actually achieve what they want to achieve. It's pretty damn clever. Right.

[00:29:39] So I got to give it to him there. Do you think that Tom Glenn Carney was purposely messing up takes so that he could throw that glass more times? Cause I would do that. It sounds fun. Dude was eating the scenery in this.

[00:29:55] He was having so much fun, kind of like a not unlike crispy coal with his mom, eating the scenery there. He just, his, his, his portrayal of this character is awful. It is so good. It is so he's, he's impetuous and cold.

[00:30:16] He's calculating, but then he switches to being needy emotionally, you know, needing emotional support of his family to being sort of a really cold hearted bastard ready to eat everybody's lunch to straight up executing somebody. It's it's an amazing performance. Yeah, it is. It is.

[00:30:35] I'm really happy with the casting with pretty much this whole show. I'm still not that big of a fan of Miss Aria, but other than that, I'm, I'm pretty good with this whole show. So there was a scene here, a line here where Agon still deferred to Alison.

[00:30:51] So he's like, you know, Hey mom, is that, is this is actually the right course. And so Alison thinks that she's still got, you know, this control over him, but we'll talk about it later. But I think that that is at an end now.

[00:31:04] I think with, with him finally letting Otto go, I think she is not going to have the control that she thinks that she once had. I don't know. I think, I think he dismissed Otto because Otto openly challenged him.

[00:31:21] I, one, I don't think that she will do that at least now. And the other is Laris put that seed in his head to get rid of Otto. And I don't think Laris is in the business of getting Alison out right now.

[00:31:35] I think he still finds her useful. What I'm, I think I'm saying here is that I think Agon's emotional turn, I think he's turned, he's turning further and further away. He's growing into his power. He's getting used to exercising his power.

[00:31:52] And says later, you know, oh, I've, I do dare. I've tasted that and it's pretty yummy. I think as he grows in and matures into his power, he's going to be less and less open or looking to his mother for support.

[00:32:10] So I think she's going to be deluded into thinking how much influence she actually will have in the long run. All right. All right. I buy it. Yeah. And the other really interesting thing too was that I caught was this idea, again, going

[00:32:25] back to these themes of youth and family, that Agon is very much the opposite of his father where Viserys, and we get this later in the scene with Otto. Viserys was slow into study thing and Agon just wants to act.

[00:32:42] He's almost rebelling against his father after his father has passed away. He's like, you guys did all this slow talky study stuff and now is the time to spill blood. So it's a real opposite from what his lineage was.

[00:33:01] He did not take those lessons and he's rebelling against them quite strongly. Well because his dad didn't even plan to teach him to be king. He was never supposed to be king. Right. Right. So Helena becomes despondent next. That's our next very sad scene.

[00:33:18] And this is where my wife and I started holding hands. Queen Helena smells the clothes of Jaehaerys as Alicent enters the room. Alicent informs her of the upcoming funeral progress, but Helena does not want to be involved.

[00:33:35] She gives Alicent clothes for her son, interrupting Alicent's discussion of her affair with Kristen Cole. So opening this shot is the camera panning up the fabric that she's holding, which I think was his baby blanket, probably the blanket that he was in.

[00:33:55] And it just, and the camera almost follows the weave and twist of the fabric as it then comes up on her face. And I believe it's Fia Saban or I'm not sure how to pronounce her. I'm not sure either.

[00:34:10] Her name, I think her legal name is Sophia, but she shortened it for professional to Fia. I looked her just really quickly up on, and I'm assuming her pronouns because I didn't find any information otherwise, is that she's very early in her career.

[00:34:26] Like she has three credits on Wikipedia and this one included. And I have to say that this performance here, especially in this scene of her sort of feeling the tragedy of her son was spot on for this character. It's absolutely flawless.

[00:34:45] I mean, I've smelled the blanket, like the newborn blanket of my son and my daughter at various times because it just reminds you of a happy time. Yeah, because smell goes right into the memory centers, right? I just couldn't imagine not being able to hold them again.

[00:35:03] You know, that's just, I can't, I can't imagine. I'm going to cry. This is why my wife and I were holding hands starting in this scene. We were, we were like, no, no, we don't want this. But then I love her line.

[00:35:17] She's like, oh, you know, Alison's like, well, they want to be close to you. She's like, I don't want them to be close. I don't know them. I don't know these people. Why do I want to be close to them? Right. It's so good. Right. Oh, devastating.

[00:35:31] All right. So let's, let's get right into the sorrow of the crown. I stole that quote from Otto. I thought that was a good way to, yes, to really head into the next scene. The funeral progress begins with Helena and Alison wearing black veils while following

[00:35:48] the stitch together body of Jahaerys. The small folk cry out with their support for Helena and detest for Rhaenyra. When the cart carrying Jahaerys gets stuck in a rut, Helena has a panic attack as the people clamor for her.

[00:36:06] My wife made a really good point about this scene. Yeah. What's that? Is that this is the equivalent of Cersei's walk of shame for Alison. Okay. Because they keep, they're banging the spell and they're saying, you know, behold the works of Rhaenyra.

[00:36:21] But I think Alison riddled with guilt is hearing behold the works of Alison Hightower. And she just feels so ashamed. And she's next to her daughter who's in such pain. And she has to stare down at this Frankenstein version of her grandson. How awful.

[00:36:38] And so I think really the emotional impact of those scenes really are very similar for Olivia. Now, sorry, not for Olivia, for Alison, the actor is Olivia and she's doing a great job. But we're given this focus on Helena.

[00:36:53] I just think I wanted to point out here that Alison's having a much different reaction because this is a different type of scene. I was really keyed in and Helena, not Alison. Yeah. So.

[00:37:06] And she's doing her best to comfort Helena, but in the end she's muddled in her own guilt too. Because if she were, if she were not doing what she was doing, maybe the Lord commander

[00:37:20] would have been on duty and you know, could have intervened or reacted sooner or, you know, stop the whole thing. Like, yeah, it's, she is at fault. She is a, she is culpable. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Did you. Christian Cole was a bed. A bed.

[00:37:38] He was a bed indeed. Did you have visions that they were going to do something with the body when the. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I thought the body was going to fall off. Oh my Lord. I think I've heard that.

[00:37:51] I heard that on one other podcast I listened to a little bit or two. Yeah. The two. And both of them were like, oh my God. I was like, ah, you know, the, the whole jiggly thing.

[00:37:59] He was going to fall off and come apart and we were all going to be very upset about it. But in the end it didn't. And we're just sickos. Yeah. Cause we went there. The show didn't go there, but we went there. They were like, calm down guys.

[00:38:12] We're not Benny off in Weiss anymore. That's right. The the about the criers, you know, look upon the work set it up. They, I thought it was very interesting from a Tolkien thing.

[00:38:24] Because I know I just, I just listened to you and Anthony and you're one other guest on Chad Carmichael, Chad on the last Silmarillion story podcast. And so that was in my head.

[00:38:36] And then I watched the episode and when they call her a Kinslayer, I was like, oh, Kinslayer, you know, Tolkien, that's a, it was a kind of a fun little crossover. Oh, the Kinslaying is, is a whole thing in Tolkien, but it's a whole thing in Game of

[00:38:48] Thrones too. Right? Like that's, that's a whole thing in, in. I mean, um, I was going to say the Walter Frey stuff, but I don't think it actually does come into play there. That's more of a guest thing. Anyway, go on, go on. I'm down a rabbit hole.

[00:39:02] The uh, we do that a lot here on the lore house. The small folk perspective is great. They are doing a lot of that this season. And I think, um, I think I saw it on our discord.

[00:39:13] A few people were saying that they really are enjoying that as well. Yeah. You know, and it comes up later in the scene with Aegon, uh, where I don't know the name of the character actually. Uh, do we have her name? The, the mistress that he's with?

[00:39:28] No, we don't. Okay. With that Aemond's with, you said Aegon. Yeah. Oh, sorry. Yeah. With Aemond. Um, come on George. Uh, the, the fact that, you know, when, when the princes have their, you know, toing and

[00:39:43] froing, it affects the small folk and they're giving us perspective of the small, the small folk, you know, not only with say with Hugh and maybe Adam, but with just being the camera in the streets.

[00:39:56] And then there was a really interesting, this, this whole setup had a lot of Shogun DNA for me, especially in the courtyard scene when Marico's trying to leave at that one time and people are rushing from one side of the, a wall courtyard thing to another.

[00:40:11] And then the way that the doors open and then that a procession moves forward, it was just so beautifully shot. And the camera is right in there again, like the opening scene right in there with the

[00:40:22] action where we can feel like we're a fly on the wall, but also that like we're hustling and bustling with the crowds. And the other thing that this whole procession sort of reminded me of, and we talked about

[00:40:34] this a little bit before with the political theater nature of it was it kind of reminds me of the Kennedy funeral and maybe our historian Brian in 8063 can write in with some parallels.

[00:40:46] But there was a whole thing where they, we haven't had you know, when Kennedy was assassinated and then they did the funeral procession, there wasn't historical precedent for that. So they had to make up a bunch of stuff and pull a bunch of history.

[00:41:01] So putting him on the gun carriage and then having you know, his son follow sort of behind and give the little, you know, kid salute thing. All of that theater, which is necessary because you know, there's some part of society's catharsis

[00:41:17] that you know, that needs to happen and to share in this monocultural event. But then also just the idea that if it were not for, you know, Crispy Cole and if it were not for Otto, you know, all of this, there's a taint all around it.

[00:41:33] It just, yeah, it keeps adding to the heaviness of the episode, I guess you could say. Absolutely. And it is a heavy episode. So heavy that blood folds. Yes, he does. Really quick. What did you make of all the dust floating thing? Was Helena having a vision?

[00:41:53] I don't know because Raniera has the same thing later and I don't think Raniera has visions. Okay. I don't know what to make of this. I don't know if it's just a visual motif. Yeah, it could very well be just a little motif.

[00:42:06] Yeah. I'm not just being coy. This is not a book thing or anything. I don't know what this is. Okay, cool. So blood folds, as I said, Larris receives a confession from blood before he could even implement his torture methods. He's a little disappointed, right?

[00:42:22] I know. He's like, oh, I'm fine. But he's like, I'm not going to waste my time with you. Fine. You know, you give your confession. The confession implicates an anonymous rat catcher. Larris leaves, allowing Aegon to beat blood to death.

[00:42:37] You know, Larris is like, I got my shiny tool. I got my best tools out. Like, we're really going to have some fun here. Just polish them. And he's but he's also smart enough and wily enough to go, oh, yeah,

[00:42:52] I can hear the truth of this. This, you know, yeah, okay, cool. We're done here. It was a great short and sweet. And the camera bar, the way that the camera was shooting through

[00:43:03] the bars of the prison at times. And then the right after he gets struck in the head, the boom, the shot cuts. Really, really great editing and put together. Yeah, yeah. I got this good frowning face of Aegon swinging his mace down.

[00:43:25] Yeah. Good shot. Good shot. I don't know about you, but if if Larris showed up with that little bag of toys, I would probably be I'd probably be spit out everything that they wanted. Absolutely. Blood, you know? Absolutely.

[00:43:39] And I think that was a smart decision because I think the torture would have been worse than what Aegon's doing. That's true. Yeah, this was actually kind of merciful in the in the grand scheme of

[00:43:48] things. I bet you he I bet you he goes unconscious after one or two hits. Oh, easily. That first one. He hit him right in the top of the temple there. That was pretty hard hit. Yeah, yeah.

[00:43:59] So next we have the Raniera PR crisis. Raniera and her small council reel from the news that Jaharis is dead and they are being blamed. Raniese eyes Damon with suspicion. But Sir Alfred Broome. So funny. Suggests Raniera ordered it in grief. Raniese comes to the

[00:44:19] queen's defense. Yeah, I mean, yeah, great physical acting this whole scene. Emma Darcy is holding the camera so powerfully in all this, all the scenes that they're they are in and the just the working it out. And then when when Raniera looks across at Damon and there's that

[00:44:44] moment of knowing and then they do a little J cut. That's where the audio overlaps, you know, between the scenes and he's just got that smug ass look on his face. You're just, and he doesn't say anything. He doesn't say anything the whole meeting. You're like,

[00:44:59] oh, wait a minute. Something's wrong here. Yeah. His silence was exceedingly loud. Yeah. It was screaming. Huge. And when Raniese, I loved, I love it when Raniese looks across as

[00:45:13] well because she's like, oh yeah, I see you. I see you. Yeah. I think she figured it out before Raniere did probably because she was eyeing him over and you're was still arguing with Alfred

[00:45:23] broom. Exactly. I have to, oh, it looks like, do you know, do you know, I asked Aaron if he wanted to make any sigils today and he already did broom. Oh really? I'm sure. Thank you. And

[00:45:35] thank you to Brian, 80 63 for doing all the alt texts for this. This is a team effort. Everyone. Wow. That's very cool. That's that's a huge amount of work. Yeah. I'm very appreciative

[00:45:45] of both of them. Yeah. Well, I hope the subscribers are too. Um, the idea of not sending Jace out when Jay says, you know, I'll, I'll jump on dragon back and go do some patrols

[00:46:00] and Raniere is like, no, you're not. I don't wonder if that's going to not going to be a tactical error later on. You know, she's obviously he's, you know, he's the, he's the heir. So you

[00:46:11] gotta protect the lineage, but at the same time, if he's got a dragon and you need him up in the air flying around, even in a rear guard, in a, in a patrol thing, you know, or, you know, uh,

[00:46:25] in a place that's maybe not as active, but I'm just worried that that's gonna, um, her unwillingness to put another child at risk is going to hamper her strategically. Not even strategic tactically,

[00:46:38] like just a bad battlefield decision. Well, she'll put a child at risk, but it has to be Bela. She just doesn't, she doesn't care about anybody except her own kids. That's right. Uh, yeah. I, I agree with you though. I think that her unwillingness to put Jace forward

[00:46:54] may end up being a liability. Yeah, for sure. Well, we'll have to see. We know we have some dragons that are unclaimed underneath the dragon Mount too. But it was really Damon who was,

[00:47:07] who was in charge of that project. He was, he was very keen on that. Yeah, but you know, there's other people involved, you know, you don't, you never know. You never know what's going to happen. Right. I'm just saying there's people, there's dragons at play. The problem is

[00:47:19] you don't have riders for the dragons. Right. Right. And that's what you really need. Yeah. And it's not like you can learn that real quickly. It's not like jumping in a mechanical airplane and learning to fly in the, in the basics. I mean, this is a living,

[00:47:33] breathing thing that has a temperament and a pattern in history that it's yeah, very, very different. And as far as we know, you need Valerian blood to ride a dragon. Right. To have the midichlorians to be able to write. Oh, you're bringing midichlorians into

[00:47:51] this now? I am. I am. Oh boy. We mix our stew. We mix our stew in the lower hounds here. Okay. Let's move on to Raniera confronting Damon. Yes. Raniera confronts Damon about the orders he

[00:48:02] gave that led to the death of Jaehaerys. He begrudgingly calls it a mistake, but not without insult to Raniera for shying away from bloodshed like Viserys. She questions his intentions in their marriage and calls him pathetic before he storms out of the room later leaving on Caraxes.

[00:48:22] So this, there are a couple of different emotional centers of this episode, and this is absolutely, they're multiple. Like I, when we did our hot take for the episode right after the episode aired, I was completely disoriented because there are so many

[00:48:44] things to try to put hands on and mind on or around. And this conversation was absolutely incredible. The whole thing that Damon can't, I cannot be held responsible. Yeah, dude, we know

[00:49:00] that's your MO. Like you have been communicating to us that for a very long time of your life. And then for Raniera to finally call him on it, it was a huge act of courage. And I don't think

[00:49:16] that if, for her not, what's the right way to say this? Because she's the queen, that status saved her life in this situation. Because I don't think Damon, this monstrous abuser, gaslighter would have, I think,

[00:49:39] been provoked. He would have justified his violence and his anger. It would have all come out. And I don't think she would have survived had she not been the queen. Right, right. I totally

[00:49:58] agree with you. I think that one, the chemistry between Matt Smith and Emma Darcy is very, very, very good. I think they both play off each other really well. Matt Smith is so good at

[00:50:10] playing that charming get evil person. Yeah. God, he's so evil in this, isn't he? He sure is. He sure is. But he's so charming that we accept him. Right. Right. Right. And I mean, we're in Game of

[00:50:23] Thrones. We're in relative moral relativity here for sure. For sure. We're in, yeah, we're in George's world. Right, right. We're defending genocidal maniacs and we're just like, ah, but they turned around in the end. They were okay. There's some more mirroring here between

[00:50:44] Rhaenyra and Alicent. It's not a one-to-one thing, but it's very close with, you know, here we have this, a little bit of potential violence between Damon and Rhaenyra. And then later we actually have some actual violence between Crispy Cole and Alicent where she's

[00:51:05] kind of smacking him around. So again, the two women are orbiting each other in this wide elliptical relationship. And what's happening on one, happening with the other, it's really, it highlights. And again, when we're talking about these moral gray zones,

[00:51:25] it's really great to compare and contrast when you've got this two, especially when you have more empathy or interest or sympathy for one versus the other. So, you know, setting up the characters into parallels is really helpful to illuminate that stuff.

[00:51:40] Yeah. And Rhaenyra really calls out Damon's intentions here, right? Oh my God. Yeah. What do you want from me? You know, I maybe was, I think, you know, the same way Missaria says,

[00:51:53] oh, well, Damon and all this was a child's dream. I think Rhaenyra is starting to feel a lot about herself. Like I wanted Damon in a way that I would have only wanted him because I was young. A child. Yeah.

[00:52:06] And I didn't know any better, but now that I see him, now that I'm in a position of power and I'm at a position of strength, I don't think I like this guy very much. Yeah. Yeah. And she says...

[00:52:19] We don't know if they're ever going to see each other again, right? I mean, she even says later, he might be gone a week, might be gone forever. He's got to walk his own path. But I can really relate to what she was saying and what you're

[00:52:31] saying there too. And this goes back to the whole theme of youth and being an adult or becoming, that process of becoming an adult. And as I move into my mid-50s, I'm like, oh yeah,

[00:52:43] I got challenges enough. I don't need your drama. You know, just charting a path for my little family, you know, in partnership with my spouse, it's challenging enough for us, let alone somebody's manufactured BS. And then this line that she drops, which is...

[00:53:06] The writing is so good this season. To indulge the darkness you keep sheathed within you like a blade. Oh man, that is fire. That is so, so good. That's a good one. Sheathed within you. It's not like sheathed like a blade within you, but sheathed within

[00:53:23] you like a blade. It's a perfect turn of phrase. It made me think of, it did give me a little Wheel of Time vibe with the, what's that black goo that Matt has with the dagger?

[00:53:36] Oh, I can't remember right now. I'm so in Game of Thrones mode. I've had to purge some memories, you know, I've had to dump some lore in other fandoms. Not to mention all the Silmarillion and stuff that you've been prepping. I think it's Machin Shin.

[00:53:54] I think that's what it's called, but I could be wrong. Right. Remember the black goo, right? Yeah. The black spirit stuff. So anyway. Would you like your sound clip now? Oh sure. I saw you trying to load it up. I need you to get some sound clips.

[00:54:09] I need to, yeah, we need to make notations of those when I call those out too. You struck down a child. It was a mistake. This point that he comes up with, where he's like, okay, you backed me into a corner.

[00:54:36] It was a mistake. I admit to it. And she, that's that moment of truth when she finally sees him for what he is and this, this patheticness and it for him. And, and, and Renee says this later when she's talking to Corliss that, you know,

[00:54:56] wherever he goes, he's got to have this sense that he's his own master. And when he's boxed in finally by his bride, niece, queen, person who, you know, displaced him from the, the, you know, being the, the next in line, there's just so much density packed in there.

[00:55:21] And then that moment of her, the sort of, you know, scales falling from her eyes and just realizing how, how really pathetic he is because he can never, well, she's growing and maturing and actually trying to be an adult and not just a being, you know,

[00:55:38] running around with like a, you know, with youthful passion. He's never progressed beyond that. He is stuck in his maturity level. Yeah. Well, of course I've, I combined scenes a little bit here.

[00:55:51] I know that you, uh, you wrote, you wrote a, in the next scene that we see Caraxes emerging from the cave and flying off. But I put that in the previous scene just to finish

[00:56:00] off Damon's arc in this, that he is going to just fly off on Caraxes. And where's he going? Where's he going? That's what everybody's saying. Heron hall, right? Everybody in the show is saying Heron hall, but you know, he's a wildcard, right? He, we do.

[00:56:17] It's, it would not be beyond a show like this to, you know, give us an old, uh, rope a dope, you know, and, and send us, you know, have us look one way and then have him go another way.

[00:56:28] Well, and, and plus he's, it's exactly within his character to do something rebellious because he's mad at his wife. Absolutely. Absolutely. And doing something, um, you know, is he gonna,

[00:56:42] what's it, what's his path? Is it to serve his own ego? Is he going to try to do something to, to serve the realm to, you know, stay in good graces? I mean, the last time he got upset, he,

[00:56:53] um, he went off to Sulcan, uh, Esso's right. And, uh, stay there. Was it, was that where they were? They were, yeah, they were in, um, Pentos. Pentos. That's what it was. Which is in Esso's.

[00:57:04] Yeah. Uh, and, uh, you know, he was just like, ah, screw it. You know, we're, I, I got a good life here. I can just chill out and, you know, have some fun. And, um, so, you know, what is he

[00:57:14] going to do? Is he going to do something? Is he gonna take a wild swing? Is it going to be helpful? Is it going to be not helpful? Is he going to try and sort of plunge a dagger into the heart of the,

[00:57:23] of the greens? Uh, I, I haven't heard a lot of speculation, so I don't know. Spoilers. I can't say. Yeah. Sorry. I do know that one. All right. Let's go to Bela who joins the fight. Raniera summons Bela to her study. I think it's

[00:57:40] her study. On the way, Bela passes her father, Damon, who ignores her. Raniera asks Bela to keep a watch on King's Landing on Moondancer. When Bela asks about Damon, Raniera says he must follow his

[00:57:55] own path. Great follow out here with the camera follows and the camera does this bunch in this where we have a, a follow lead kind of thing. I don't know what they call it

[00:58:06] in the industry where the camera's following behind the back of a character and then it'll jump to the front of the character and then work backwards as the character is moving for them.

[00:58:16] So we follow Damon out and then he passes Bela and then the camera flips and follows Bela and then boop, we jump into the room and it's just a really great scene transition. Very clever and

[00:58:28] sets up this whole thing for Bela looking down and seeing the broken cups on the floor. And she's like, yep, my dad just left and he was not happy because he didn't say hi to me. So she's putting

[00:58:39] it together. We will discuss more of her thoughts on him later, but for now let's just say she's a little pissed. She's a little pissed. Yeah. I really don't want anything bad to happen to Bela.

[00:58:50] There's something about Bethany Antonio, the actor who's playing the character. There's a very sweet nature and I just really enjoyed seeing her in this little moment. And I was like, oh wait,

[00:59:02] we barely have had Bela as an adult on screen and I hope we get some more time with her. I know. Wouldn't that be nice? Stay high and keep it distance. Now we know she's got a dragon. Yes. Right. Moon dancer. Right.

[00:59:20] Who's, who's we see later in, uh, in, I believe that's moon dancer later when I wrote it in the outline. Right. I think people are, people are figuring that out. Yeah. Trying to figure that

[00:59:30] out when Adam's looking up. Right. So Agon, I'm moving on because we're not even halfway through this outline yet. Okay. Really quick and small. I know I've got so many notes. It's like the good

[00:59:41] old days, John. Um, the CGI dragon, uh, the camera stops, the dragon moves past us. So the camera, the motion is provided by the dragon, but then CGI dragon to real life, uh, Matt Smith,

[01:00:00] seamless CGI scene. Beautiful. Yeah. Really good stuff. And then he sort of falls off the cliff like demons kind of falling off the cliff here. But then the way that they, uh, animated cracks,

[01:00:12] he's like beating its wings, uh, to really powerful, you know, getting that lift. It was a beautiful CGI scene. Right. So Agon snubs Helena. That's pretty much the whole that's the same.

[01:00:27] Yeah. I wrote a sentence just for, just for posterity sake. But, uh, and it's kind of like these next three scenes are like, they're really short and they're all kind of connected.

[01:00:36] Yeah. I just wanted to catch a shot from each one. So I, everyone will sit on each one. So we got Agon snubbing Helena. Then we have Kristen. I call it Kristen Cole obstructs the cleaning crew.

[01:00:44] Kristen Cole shamefully watches the servants of the red keep dismantle to Harris's bed and clean up the blood from the murder. He stands in the way of someone carrying a bloody mattress. What a tool and Ranira cherishes her young children, Agon and Viserys another Agon. We'll call him

[01:01:01] Agon the younger. Yeah. I have this thing with, uh, Agon and Helena. I, you know, there's delicate matter, but I've heard, I've read a little bit and heard a little bit that a death of a child can be one of the most traumatic. It's obviously most traumatic

[01:01:21] situations, but for the relationship between parents, it can be a devastating thing to the relationship. Some people can fall in and support each other, but then oftentimes it, it, it, um, it, it's a thing that breaks people apart and they just have, there's so much hurt and guilt

[01:01:40] and recrimination and shame and just, it's just a giant ball of, of ugly emotion. And so seeing Agon just going, I can't deal with this. You're kind of weird anyway. You know, you're an enduring

[01:01:52] mystery and I'm just, I'm going to go kill some people. Right. You know, and she nods to her. So do you see, and she kind of nods to herself. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And look, they've never had a good

[01:02:04] relationship. It's not like this is a new thing for her, but it's just, it's just such a heartbreak that she can't even get support from him in this trying time. Exactly. Now what I want to do is

[01:02:13] contrast this with Ranira who cherishes her young children and really wants to actively play with them. But also I just want to point out the hypocrisy of all the greens except Alison on this

[01:02:27] issue, which is that they all have zero sympathy for her when she lost two children and a dad in the same day. One of them, maybe two of them because of their fault. I'm going to say maybe

[01:02:41] on the miscarriage because I think the stress arguably sent her into a premature labor. Okay. But wasn't that, didn't that baby have some deformities as well? Yeah, that's true too. All right. All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. But still, but still that's a, let's not diminish

[01:02:56] the trauma of that situation. I'm just saying she lost two kids and a dad and a kid by the way who she had had for into his teenage years. Like they had a bond. Right. Yeah. And yet they have,

[01:03:10] yet they have, they only feel sympathy for themselves when they lose a child. Like they just have no empathy for others. And that's it. The show makes me just hate team green.

[01:03:22] Like I, I see the flaws in team black. It's mostly Damon. Yeah. But team green, just like, it's kind of like team black. Everyone except for one person is a decent person. Decent in that they

[01:03:36] try to do the right thing. Most of the time, everyone on team green except one, which I think is Alison. I think she's well, Helena too, but they're the only two people with good intentions

[01:03:47] on team green. I just don't think any of them have any kind of good intentions. Now Alison has no integrity either. So she gets a fail on that one too. Right. Right. But man, it's just really,

[01:04:02] this show is skewing towards team black so hard. And the family just keeps, you know, the, especially the greens are, are there's a lack of emotional intelligence and they just keep harming themselves and harming each other in all of this stuff. They have no way to work through

[01:04:20] their feelings into, you know, into a healthy intellectual. Obviously we don't have the benefit of psychotherapy and CBT, you know, edibles and all kinds of things back then. But it's, it is,

[01:04:33] it's really shocking at how, how, how rough they are on each other and continuing to be so just constantly. Right. Did you notice the toys that Raniera's children have are the same style of

[01:04:50] toys that Helena's when Helena picks up some toys in an earlier scene, they are the similar kind of toy. They're both like Melissa and Doug or something like that. Of course they, they both

[01:05:02] sent away to Valerian Macy's and got the package. Exactly. But again, it's just that building that connectivity between these two families. Yeah. They are the same family. They lived together for most of the childhood and then 10 years before, you know, perhaps one of the verses of my hot

[01:05:20] Laura Simmers song starts with for 10 years, we've been on Dragonstone. And that's what when, when the whole when the twin bowl was going down and how did Eric know? And it was like, of course he's

[01:05:32] been there. He spent a lot of time there. Right. You know, that's like, obviously he knows his way so quick camera work thing. This is the scene where they have a closeup on Emma Darcy and they

[01:05:45] go from one of their eyes to the other eye. They rack focus from one to the other stunning, stunning moment. And again, that's what the dust moats were floating around here. It's yeah. Yeah. I

[01:05:56] wonder what that's going to be. I really, I really wonder if that's going to turn into anything or it's going to be like that stupid horse in the game of Thrones finale. If it's just a visual motif, I'll be fine with it. If it doesn't have deeper meaning

[01:06:09] because it's quite beautiful and it does, it feels like this whole thing, we're just sort of suspended and just sort of floating around and, and just, you know, causing all this trauma on each other.

[01:06:21] You know, David, since we didn't podcast in those days, what the hell was that white horse? I don't know. I, and I'm, I have to, I'm trying to rack, I'm racking memory cells to try to come

[01:06:32] up with it again. Oh God. Just are you just find some white horse in the middle of King's landing and they're like, this is brilliant. Give us an Emmy. Oh, that's right now. I remember it

[01:06:43] in the, in the scene in the, in the, in the town. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bizarre, bizarre. Anyway, Alison confronts Kristen. Alison asks person if he told anyone about them when he scoffs at her

[01:06:55] question, she calls him one who seeks absolution. He replies that there is none for what he has done. Alison sinks into her bath. The look on his face is priceless. The look, there are some looks on people that this auto, there's a couple of other ones

[01:07:13] are just incredible. What do you take me for? But then the line, somebody who needs absolution, like bang, that's fire. That's so good. I mean, she projects with that because I don't think Kristen feels like that. I almost think that Kristen doesn't like, I think he might have,

[01:07:31] have some serious sociopathic tendencies. He really does seem to have trouble feeling guilt for anything. Yeah. He's so deep into it now too, that he, the, to, to, um, yeah, he doesn't have

[01:07:48] the moral strength to, to, to be honorable about anything. That might be the wrong word for it. Don't at me. I'm sorry about sociopathic tendencies, but the point is, I think he has

[01:07:56] trouble feeling guilt at all. Yeah. Yeah. That it may be a, a flaw that goes a long way back. It's got to, that he can dig himself this deep in. Did you notice how, oh, go ahead.

[01:08:08] It's just, it's just odd because he seemed to lay himself bare for Raniera back on that boat. Right. And then after that, he hasn't expressed the feeling since. He, other than anger.

[01:08:19] He does his like, oh, let's run off together and live this like puppy dog fantasy. And she rejects him. And that, that, that wounds him, um, for it's break, that broke him forever.

[01:08:29] In that moment, I guess. So let me tell you kids. The only thing I do now is wash my white cloak and get up in that high tower. Did you notice how Alison was very carefully watching her servant?

[01:08:42] She was like, get out of here. Get out of here. You're one of Larry's people. You're, you're great. You're, you're gross. Yeah. She, she knows that he's watching now. Yeah. Oh, and, and this, this tension of the cutting back and forth between the two sides of the door,

[01:08:56] she's trying to get her clothes off. And then when she submerges, that was just a really incredible shot that they, that they did that shot I thought was really interesting. You know, of her underwater and feeling. She thought about staying under there.

[01:09:09] She did. You know, she did. So, uh, but just from a visual standpoint, I, again, this show is blowing me away. Uh, it's, it's easily surpassing, uh, last year and it's, it's very

[01:09:21] much, it's very high in my top 10 so far this year. We're doing a great job. We're doing a great job here guys. Kristen Cole of course then goes to project to someone else. He demands that

[01:09:33] Eric Cargill replace his stained white cloak immediately and blames him for not being able to do it. And I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point.

[01:09:43] And blames him for not being able to be, sorry, for not being in the Royal quarters during the attack. After tearing Eric down, Kristen tells Eric he should redeem himself by pretending to

[01:09:56] be his twin Eric and sneaking into Dragonstone to kill Ranira. And, and let me play your little excerpt here. The white cloak is a symbol of our purity, our fidelity, Kingsguard are a sacred

[01:10:11] trust for you so easily. Sully our ancient honor. So easily. Sully. Yeah. How easily did you sell it? Pal? Yeah. Sully is an interesting word. Now in fairness, guy takes off his cloak every time

[01:10:28] before he, before he sits down to eat, he makes sure he lays down the tablecloth. John, that was a, that was a sly one. That was a good one. The, uh, I think in this scene,

[01:10:44] he doesn't come in. I don't know. This is, this is up for debate interpretation. I don't think that he comes in knowing what he's going to do or say to Eric. And I think when

[01:10:58] Eric gives him a little shoulder check as he walks by, kind of, sorry, not sorry. I used to do that in the New York subways when I was, when somebody would literally stop at the top of the stairs to

[01:11:07] check their phone, they wouldn't even get out onto the street. Just give him a little brush. Sorry, not sorry. You're, you're, you're blocking everybody else from coming up. You know, not cool. So I didn't use them because I didn't want to get stabbed.

[01:11:20] True. It's it's I probably, you know, Hey, anyway, uh, he gives him a little check, a little brush. And I think it's not until after he gives him the brush that he decides to

[01:11:36] accuse him because then he says it very loudly and he questions it. He didn't come in hot. He comes in pretty cool and sees the thing just as, Oh, I'm going to screw with this guy.

[01:11:47] And then it escalates. And then he says, okay, fine. Where were you? And then I think in, cause there's a moment you can see where he starts thinking at throw. And I think that's when he decides that he can manipulate him into, into doing this. So I think

[01:12:02] it was a spur of the moment decision open for interpretation, but one possible theory. I read it as I like your interpretation. I personally read it as he came in there with

[01:12:12] a plan and he was acting the whole time. You know, we know he's a master of deception. True. So I don't know, I don't know, but I'm, I'm with your interpretation. Do I like that? A lot

[01:12:23] too is he's improvising. He's playing a little bit of jazz hands. I think the reason that I don't want to accept your interpretation is that I don't think the Christian is that smart. But it would be more smart for him. He, it would take more planning and thought

[01:12:37] to come in with that idea than, than to have a flash in the moment. And so, yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. I get what you're saying here. I just, yeah. I also want to point out that they got very close and I wrote in the show guide.

[01:12:50] They definitely almost kissed. And then everybody's like, bye-bye. Oh, you guys are going to the Lord commander and one of his subordinates are going to have a little, little lover spat here. We're out. They were just, they all packed up the shit and left.

[01:13:04] It was great. I loved that. I love how everyone just silently leaves. No one has to say clear the room like Raniera does. Nope. They're just gone. So the morality of a ruse to gare of, you know, a, a, a ruse of,

[01:13:20] of the battlefield. So they swear a solemn oath and he says like, we, we forswear, you know, doing these dishonest sort of things. And it kind of reminded me of Sansa's idealism of how Lords

[01:13:34] and ladies and Knights of the realm. And they swear, you know, to, to, you know, be upstanding citizens and everybody's like, girl, please. But Eric here is actually like, no dude, that's not

[01:13:46] cool. We're we're, we're not, we are the guys that are not supposed to do that. And then this whole, Oh, for triumph and glory, you know, and just a complete gaslight. But, but Kristen actually does make a valid argument. That is a very debatable point.

[01:14:02] You could, that's why I would stop thousands of men from dying. If you write one person, that's probably a problem right there. And Rene's could have done that as well. When she and, and Mali's came up, you know, she killed a lot of small folk.

[01:14:18] They didn't do nothing wrong. You could end this all right then and there. Right. And, and the role of honor in taking down dynasties, as they say in this show Mm-hmm.

[01:14:31] Is something that I think we, we have to think of. I mean, think of Ned Stark giving Cersei a warning, right? Absolutely. Giving Ned Stark a thought when you say we, when you started on

[01:14:40] that sentence. And I mean, even I'm thinking about covering ghosts of Tsushima with, uh, with Brandon and we'll, we'll definitely invite Nate on if we do that one, because that's. Is that a video game? It's a video game about a feudal Japan. Oh, very cool.

[01:14:56] Yeah. And it's, and the whole idea is this guy was trained as a samurai and he's the only one, he's one of the only few left because the Mongols have come and taken over their island. Okay. But he has to decide, do I use quote unquote dishonorable tactics,

[01:15:14] sneak attacks and poison things like that? Or do I lose with honor? Right. And that's a big tension in the game. And now Nate will tell you, Nate's going to write in now. I know it. Nate will tell you that that's not a totally accurate

[01:15:29] portrayal of what samurai culture does, but it's, it's something that definitely shows up in this show, right? Is do I act with honor or do I make a trolley problem calculation?

[01:15:39] Right. And, and I liked the fact that we don't have a single answer to the question. We've got variations of it happening with Ned leading, leading off for the first answer, you know,

[01:15:51] and getting his head chopped. And we see a lot of other people try a lot of other different options. You know, literal, little finger, Danny, obviously. Yeah. So, and now we have, and I love the way that Renise says later when she's, when her and Corliss are talking,

[01:16:09] she says, I felt the crown pass over me. And that even just coming nearby you can impact you both individually, as well as social in within your social standing and the way people relate

[01:16:26] to you as well as your own personal reaction to it. Right. Well, let's move on. Just Jacaerys. I always want to say just Sarah's, but it's not Jacaerys and Bela bond. Jacaerys and his betrothed Bela discuss their fathers. Bela admits she hates Damon sometimes. And Jacaerys fondly remembers

[01:16:46] both Lenore and Harmon. Jacaerys misses his brother, Lucerys. This was a really nice beat between two characters that we've not gotten to spend a lot of time with, but are so affected by

[01:17:03] all the bullshit that's going on with everybody else. And they're just two young people who are, coming into that next level of capability and maturity and awareness. And they're having to

[01:17:20] deal in this really turbulent world that is not of their creation. And so just to spend that moment and just for Bela to put her hand on his shoulder was just really touching, really touching.

[01:17:33] And it was really moving that he felt open enough to talk about Harwin Strong without a visceral reaction. And she approached it with kindness, not with mockery. So is this like Gen Z showing up the boomers? Like we know how to do it better than you guys.

[01:17:50] Well, I mean, Amond is already, is still mocking them as Strongs and he's the same generation as Chase. That's true. That's true. Good point. She was, minor technical issue. She was reloading

[01:18:03] that crossbow pretty quick. There was no pulling back the thing. She just like put in the bolt and shot. If she's going to be in a room with Chris and Cole and two other people, she has to be

[01:18:14] ready to shoot Chris and Cole twice. Very good point. Very good point. And then I like how he walks into her line of fire. She's shooting at that post and he walks squarely into where

[01:18:26] she's shooting, but he trusts her. It's a, I think a visual way to show us his trust in her and their, their relationship. And so again, really, really sweet moment between them. Folks, that's poor shooting etiquette. Don't do that in real life. Don't do that.

[01:18:41] Don't do that. Don't do that. I don't care how much you trust them. Don't do it. Don't walk in front of the range of fire. Anyway, let's move on to across, across the Bay, across the Blackwater Bay where Homelander, I mean, Amond drinks his milk.

[01:18:57] John, shame on you. Amond visits a brothel to be mothered by an older mistress. He feels honored that Damon sent someone to kill him in his sleep and regrets the killing of Lucerys. The mistress reminds Amon that when princes lose their temper, the small folks suffer.

[01:19:15] What I thought, there's a lot about the scene that was really interesting. I mean, the whole milk and, you know, mothering thing, but she is giving him moral education. She is linking the fact that when you fight amongst yourselves, it's people like me

[01:19:34] of who you are laying in my arms right now seeking solace from. And if you care for me anything, then remember that when you're having your little go rounds with your other princelings, it's me, the person you care about in this moment that is affected.

[01:19:53] And that's some serious moral education that she's giving him that her mother, you know, or his mother never gave him. Right? She, she's actually doing something. And again, this whole scene just screams of that whole mother-child relationship stuff, the milk,

[01:20:11] the sort of the roundness of the room, the warmth of the womb kind of thing and the way he's curled up. So, yeah. Also guy is bony. My God. My God. He's got a rib cage to be envied by a skeleton.

[01:20:27] It's it's all muscle underneath there though, man. He can swing that sword. I'm saying how does he lift it? Yeah. It's all muscle, all muscle. All right. All right. So we don't know her name yet, but I believe she was the madam

[01:20:44] she was the madam that crispy Cole and Amon's met the first place that they went to when they were looking for a gun. Oh, I'm not sure about that. I can't support that. That. I think so. This isn't all right. All right. I'm pretty sure.

[01:21:02] Where's your writing that points? Somebody, somebody go check. I think it was episode eight, maybe when they were on the hunt for nine. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Nine. I'm pretty sure that's her. So. All right.

[01:21:16] He's divulging a lot of Intel in here and he's giving up a lot of secrets. And so it makes me think, well, you know, when we've got this area, you know,

[01:21:25] one of the things that can be useful is trafficking information and he's giving up a lot of information here. Yeah. And the biggest thing I take away from the scene is Ellison has royally fucked up her kids. I mean, Royal capital R. Raves. Yeah. Craves maternal affection.

[01:21:45] Yeah. Yeah. To the point where he is damaged beyond repair. He'll never have a healthy relationship in his entire life. The that he, he regrets the situation with Luke was really interesting. That was really telling.

[01:21:58] Yeah. I'm glad we got that a little bit. You know, this whole thing of. And what does she do? She, she reinforces the behavior. She says, I'm glad you said that, right? That's. No, I, well, well, yeah. I would say you're saying she's a parental thing.

[01:22:11] You're saying she's reinforcing him feeling regret, not reinforcing killing Luke. Okay. Correct. Correct. Correct. I'm with you now. Yeah. As a parent would like, you know, my kids, oh, I did this thing and I feel bad about it. And

[01:22:23] I know it was wrong and I feel bad because I know it was, you know, that whole loop. Well, thank you for saying sorry. Exactly. Yeah. I know. I've done that. I've done that

[01:22:31] whole thing. You have to sometimes play it up and just be like, very, very like, ow, that really hurt. And that way they know not to bite you like my day.

[01:22:42] Do you ever have the situation where you're trying to be serious with your kids and you just want to laugh because it's because you know, the humor of the situation. I can't let you know that that was

[01:22:51] funny because if I do, you will do it a lot. Exactly. Yeah. You'll, you get the wrong message. Well, speaking of kids, Hughes home life is abound and he and his wife cat check on their

[01:23:03] ill child. Cat worries about the shortage of food during the blockade. Hugh says that the King has promised relief, but cannot say when it will come. What's up with you? Is this, is this a thing you cannot say? Is this what you mean? It's extremely mildly interesting.

[01:23:20] We need our own phrase. Yeah, I know. Of that, which I cannot speak. I don't know. Something like that. Something funny and overly flirty. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm just a big fan of.

[01:23:28] There's something from Princess Bride. I'm just a big fan of spoilers from Dr. Who. You know, you know the whole, you don't know this River Song and Dr. Who. There's a whole thing where

[01:23:38] River Song is the doctor's wife, but they meet in reverse. So they each have knowledge about future adventures that the other one has not experienced yet. Is this the Matt Smith era? Yeah. Is that

[01:23:49] the one where it ends on the same shoreline, like up like a Lake or something like that? I kind of remember this. Well, there's, that's part of it, but it's not the end. Is it? There's like

[01:23:58] a person in a space suit. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's, that's one of the seasons. Okay. All right. Anyway, the point is, so they keep meeting in reverse and every time the doctor asks a question

[01:24:07] that she can't answer, she goes spoilers and she just smiles. Oh, okay. This is funny. Yeah, but it's not, I don't know. It's it does. It's not clever and, and oh, it's clever. Okay.

[01:24:19] I just don't know. I just don't get the doctor who vibe. You know, you don't get it. Yeah. I walked, walked the, you know, I watched the Tom Baker arc because they,

[01:24:27] they brought back a Tom Baker villain in the finale. Oh, nice. Yeah. And they even had like all old footage of Tom Baker in it. I wish I had time to watch. There's a lot missing out. You're

[01:24:38] missing out of a good season. I know. I'm glad you guys are covering it though. I think it's a really good addition for, for loans. Uh, the reason I'm saying we should speed up this recording is

[01:24:47] because I have to record this in about 12 hours now. Oh, the season finale for, yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to rob Peter to pay Paul here, right? In the podcasting. No, no, no. We look, we're already at 90 minutes. I don't think this is a rushed podcast

[01:25:02] because we're, we're not, we're only like a little bit past halfway done. So Hugh, including the feedback you like Hugh, Hugh, I don't know what to make of Hugh. He's very handsome, gentlemen. And I like that his spouse is very practical because she's like, did he say when

[01:25:20] he's going to help us? Like the promises are not feeding our family. Yo. All right. My one critique, his wife, Kat, she has iPhone face. You ever hear this? No. It's, it's like when you see someone in

[01:25:32] a historical drama and they look like they've seen an iPhone. Okay. I think that her, the expression she's giving, I didn't pay attention. Tells me that she's seen a smartphone. Okay.

[01:25:45] Interesting. I'll have to, I don't know if that I'm going to, I'll look again if I see her come up. I, the only thing I can make of this is the misrule of Agon and this point of view from

[01:25:56] the small folk, but you know, where, where we go from here, I'm not sure there was a weird thing where he took the salt and like, I think there was a salt thing in, in one of the petitions.

[01:26:07] It's just, I don't know. Yeah, no, but it was like you don't season food in television, right? You eat the it's, it was just a weird thing. So anyway, there's, there's stuff in here that

[01:26:17] the cultured man. Okay. I eat a lot of food and television. Uh, so let you have seasoning on us. He can, I'm not saying he can't have it. Try to deprive Hugh, my guy. No, Agon is trying to

[01:26:30] deprive you. That's the problem. Speaking of other mildly interesting and mildly interesting small folk, Alan and Adam reunite Adam. I'm sorry. Alan and his brother, Adam, both of hull reunite on drift. Mark Adam congratulates his brother on winning the favor of Corliss. Alan then

[01:26:50] expresses hesitation about joining Corliss's crew. I hope we get to again along with Jace and Bela. I hope we get to spend some, a lot more time with Alan and Adam. These two actors, the warmth was like rolling off my screen. I just really felt

[01:27:10] the brotherly love. And I just really want to see more of these, these people, uh, on screen. And, and I'll say this is not a spoiler. It's just, he had one scene. Alan had one scene with

[01:27:23] Corliss and you're like, okay, that could be a one-off or a minor character now that he's had his own scene. Yes. I think that we can safely say this character will be around and develop.

[01:27:33] Good. I'm, I'm here for it. And I want to see more and Adam and we'll get a scene obviously later with Adam, but he is a sort of looking to the stars like, you know, what's, what's the,

[01:27:44] the, you know, I want to see my, see my name in lights and, you know, do big, amazing things. And they, that's a big foreshadowing. So. But when he looks up later and he sees a dragon,

[01:27:55] he has a different perspective, I think. And I'm like, what is going on here? There's something going on that they're setting up and is this season two stuff or season three? Like they're setting up,

[01:28:06] I think they're setting up season three because there's no way they're resolving all of this in season two. I don't know. Oh, I meant, I thought he was fearful of the dragon. I thought, oh,

[01:28:15] you know, cause Alan was saying, oh, I don't want to fight in a war. And Adam's like, oh, war is great. Yeah. Right. And he sees a dragon. He's like,

[01:28:22] oh, that could burn my ship. I could, I could be in a lot of trouble if that comes near me. You think so? I got a different vibe. I thought he was like, wow. I thought he was like,

[01:28:32] ooh, that's cool. Okay. All right. Well now we don't have to talk about that scene later. We can skip right over it. Perfect. Oh, I'm not trying to rush this through. I promise. I just want to keep us moving to the rainies and Corliss pillow talk hour.

[01:28:50] Corliss Valerian expresses his mistrust of Damon. Rainy's insists it is hard to accept the crown passing over you, but doubts that Damon will outwardly challenge Raniera. Corliss says, Damon is missing out on not allowing Raniera to command him. Such a great moment with these characters.

[01:29:11] And both more likable, I would say. Totally. And to have a long married couple in bed, that's it. That's really saying something because they're not young, hot, you know, you know, uber beautiful, whatever. And interracial actors. And I just remember all

[01:29:31] the bullshit before season one. Oh, you know, the actor and how can you have like, man, go kick rocks because this is life and these are people and this is a great scene and with two great actors.

[01:29:46] I'm actually glad that we had the Valerians be darker skinned because it made it more prominent the differences between, you know, the Lenore's kids and the rest of the Valerians. Yeah. Right. It made it easier to believe that people were like, oh, it's common sense that these are

[01:30:04] bastards. The thing that another thing that really took me aback in this episode or in this scene was Raniera fully backing Raniera. We will not let the queen falter. Like that's a big change

[01:30:22] given what we had talked about before the harms, the blows that have gone on between these, you know, two parts of these two households. And so for Raniera to really step up for Raniera and give

[01:30:36] that solid of a comment that I was like, whoa, wow. She's really all she's not just doing it because they have no choice. I will not let my queen falter. That is she's she's going to give

[01:30:48] it all. Well, what I read from that too was with Daman gone, they have her ear and nobody else really does. Ooh, that's very conniving. That's very good. Come on. What I took it as is we won't

[01:31:03] let her falter. We won't let her make a misstep. Yeah. But I'm thinking of it as support as a, well, but I see what you're saying. I, I thought you were saying that they were going to use it to,

[01:31:14] you know, wedge themselves in there even tighter. Yeah. In multiple ways, including the way that let's them be the top advisors and the only one really listened to and actually running the show when we're near is distracted. Right? Right. Yeah. Fair enough. I'm fine with it. Raniera

[01:31:34] meets Miss Aria. Raniera asks Miss Aria to account for her involvement in just Sarah's murder. Jerry Harris's. Oh my God, I can't keep all these names straight. Jerry Harris's murder. Uh, Miss Aria reminds Raniera of her previous engagement with Damon.

[01:31:52] Miss Aria asked for her freedom, but Raniera denies it. Raniera asks where Miss Aria got her scar and so we dismiss her. Can I say that this was the only ending of a scene where I was

[01:32:03] like, what? Like it didn't feel like the scene ended and it was unsettling, but not in a good way. Like I just thought it was really sloppy at the end. Really? Yeah. I didn't like it at all.

[01:32:13] And my wife agreed with me. So that means I'm right because my wife's always right. Well, yeah, you have to, your side is baked. Um, I didn't find it that jarring at all. I thought

[01:32:23] that was, there was a look and I do we know where the scar came from? That's a question that I have. I don't, I don't think we know. And again, not a, not a book character, so I'm not even doing a

[01:32:34] spoilery thing. And they really made that scar visible. It's very clear. Um, and so they, they put that center front and center for, for the scene. So, um, but the, the, I love

[01:32:47] the exchange and the energy between these two. And I'm sure I'm with a lot of people like make common cause be allies. We want you to team up. So yeah, I, again, I'm, I'm not sure I like

[01:33:02] the whole shtick with Miss Aria, this like absolutely no emotion in her speech and whatnot. She was fiery in this, in this one. She was like, I worked my way up. I, you know.

[01:33:13] But she's like, I worked my way up and I worked very hard to get there and no, I'm not going to do the accent. I'm not going to try. I'm just trying to do the emotion. And to me, I did not think it was a very emotional performance.

[01:33:27] Huh? That's interesting. I, I, I. This is the one casting that I don't like that much. Got it. Okay. Fair enough. Uh, I thought it was great. So, and again, another truth to power conversation where, you know, they're, they're talking there and I love Miss Aria is just

[01:33:43] plain, she's like, yo, I traded information. I made it to my advantage. I didn't care who they were. I would have been anybody I would have done it for. They burned me. I used to think I was important. Now I'm out. Cool. Right. Bye. Right.

[01:33:58] Uh, and you know, you, I was your house promised me something either keep that promise or kill me, but you know, uh, I just love the whole plain straightforward nature of it. Now I don't believe Miss Aria is done with the game. I think she's addicted to it.

[01:34:12] I think, I think she does still crave it. Okay. All right. We'll see. If she talks to big, like, Oh, I'm done with it. I don't believe you. I don't believe you. I'm I'm Will Ferrell in anchorman going. I don't believe you.

[01:34:24] Question. What was Raniera looking up in the books? Cause the one page she lingered on was, uh, looked like a regal queen type person with a sword on a back of a drag. Maybe that was Visenya. I don't know. We might need a screenshot of that. I think

[01:34:42] yeah. For analysis, computer enhance. Uh, my last comment on this scene is come on the camera work on this, the looking through the bookcase was so good. Yeah. The lighting just, Oh, the, the angle, like the diagonal angle in her face. Come on, man. These guys are

[01:35:02] killing it with this. It's driving me crazy. It's so good. Great work. And then I just have to see her on the podcast and gush and gush and gush and gush. You make me look like a fool. Well,

[01:35:12] also I just want to voice my appreciation that unlike in drift mark last season, the dark scenes are at least visible now. A lot of light scenes in this episode,

[01:35:22] in, in the last two episodes. So, well, you know, I had to, you know, I have an OLED TV and it's my pride and joy, but I had to, I have a spray called screen mom. Have you ever used it? So I have a

[01:35:34] spray called screen mom to help me clean off and polish it. And so I, I, I did that before the episode this week cause I was like, I can't, I can't fucking see anything in the dark on this

[01:35:45] show. I gotta be able to see past the smudges of my children, my children putting their little greasy fingers on my TV. Have they ever tried to swipe the screen on the TV? No. Oh, my daughter.

[01:35:56] They don't tablet really. Okay. That's that's, that's an achievement of mine. They don't really tablet. Got it. All right. Well, we talked about Adam seeing moon dancer and our debate over his thoughts on it. Just really quick, the CGI reflection. So they did CGI of the dragon

[01:36:13] as a reflection on the water going past. So good. Perfect. Very nice. I wonder if they, do you know what ray tracing is now? I'm going to get the gaming stuff.

[01:36:22] I've heard of it. I don't really understand the mechanics of it. So, you know, ray tracing is when you, my understanding of it is you are actually programming the reflection to be a real time

[01:36:33] reflection because before that CGI was done where you, you just mirrored it and you, you had it, you had them both run separately. Right. But ray tracing is saying like, this is a true reflection

[01:36:45] of what's happening. Nice. And so it's, it looks more realistic because that's what it would be. That'd be very cool. And I wonder if, I wonder if that's something that happens in movie stuff too.

[01:36:55] So maybe somebody could write it. I know, I know your friend over on the, on the every sci-fi film ever. Oh, yeah. Alicia. Yeah. She might know a little bit. But I think Alicia, I just didn't

[01:37:08] house because she's friends with, and she's done some work in the video game industry. So very nice. She knows some people with that. Very nice. The rat catchers hang, hang on, hangs all the rat catchers in the public square. We see the small, we see a small

[01:37:24] folk woman discover her son, the camera pans over cheese and cheeses, dog whimpers. The degradation of the King's reputation here. So this was a set up for the other thing, but it's really, I think just going to this whole thing that Agon is looking weak as Otto's tells

[01:37:43] him later. So I saw a meme that said someone take this dog's pain quadruple it and give it to Kristen Cole. That's funny. Fair enough. I mean, what a horrible misstep though.

[01:38:02] Yeah. Completely in a, in a blink of an eye in a, in a very moment, all that work just gone. Yeah. And, and really, I mean, Raniera, if you believe that Raniera did it, if the small folk believe that Raniera did the Jahara's killing,

[01:38:21] that was a Royal dying. That's still far away from them. And yeah, it's a child and that's what makes it worse, but that's still far away from them. And that's a target of the Royal family

[01:38:34] that makes sense a little bit, at least from a strategic standpoint, these are commoners. These are small folk and these are people, you know? And so I think, I think Agon is really, honestly worse off in their eyes than Raniera is at this point, especially because anything

[01:38:52] about Raniera's involvement was conjecture. This is, oh yeah, that's a good point. Visibly. I am hanging them from the city walls. I did this. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. The King did this period.

[01:39:05] And he's proud of it. Yeah. Right. Right. I love in the next scene, I'm not going to read it yet, but I love in the next scene when Otto asks him what he did, he goes, oh, I killed them.

[01:39:18] What'd you do with the rat catchers? Oh, like he wasn't even thinking about it. It's so bizarre. Yeah. And what's the actor's name again? Tom Glenn Carney. He is so inhabiting this role with that, like I killed him. Like what? Yeah. Yeah. Great performance. Great performance.

[01:39:38] Speaking of Otto. Yeah. Let's, let's talk about this scene. This is, I would say this scene and this scene, the Masara scene and the, uh, the scene with Damon and Raniera were the three

[01:39:52] like meatiest parts of the episode other than the fight. Exactly. So this episode had so much, man, this thing was so densely packed and it was an hour of meaty, meaty, meaty scenes. Uh, so every 15 minutes you were guaranteed a crazy scene. All right. Otto confronts Agon for

[01:40:11] hanging the rat catchers. Otto makes clear that Agon has completely wasted his reputational advantage. Otto calls Kristen's plan with Eric Cargill a prank and admonishes the pair. When Otto finishes his lecture, Otto asked him to remove his hand pen and give it to Kristen.

[01:40:28] Do you like my stupid joke in the, in the show guide? The image is underneath. Where I have to look, I was looking at the notes. I'm scrolling down here. What am I looking at?

[01:40:40] Right under the parent trap. I was like this, the, the parent trap is essentially Kristen Cole's plan. Right? Like let's just. Right. Right. Twins. Let's just make sure our

[01:40:51] parents don't know who we are. The look on Otto's face when he says, oh, he acted. Did he? And what did you two buffoons come up with? The look of horror on his face is priceless. Yep. Yep. So

[01:41:10] good that in fact that we had to screenshot it and put it in the discord. I know, I know. It's so this scene is so good. And I'm, I'm just, and look, I've already gussed enough about

[01:41:19] Reesey Fonz performance in the hot takes, but just the way that he still doesn't explicitly say like your dad didn't make you King. He may as well have right. The way he giggles

[01:41:34] after it goes like my father made me King. He's like, I was waiting for him to go. I made you King, which is would be true. Right? Like he, he and Alison made a gone King. He would not have

[01:41:46] been King, but for their actions. Right? And I love the fact that auto knows that this is all bullshit right in that. But he's, he's playing it through all the way. You know, the, this,

[01:41:58] his laugh just tells you everything that you need to know. Now they've, I want to, I want to put something on the succession train here and it's not completely related to the scene, but I think

[01:42:08] it's interesting to talk about the absence of Maylore in the show. That would be the youngest son of Helena and Agon. Okay. Not in the show they've confirmed and does not exist in this

[01:42:21] telling the absence of that child means that the only living child of a gone is Jahara a girl. Ah, and we cannot put a woman on the throne according to society at this time.

[01:42:35] Well, according to the whole premise of his claim. Exactly. Which is I'm King because you can't do the firstborn if it's a woman. So he can't name his daughter air now. Right. Cause that would be

[01:42:51] a very hypocritical of him to then deny his, uh, half sister. Wait, what are they? How are they related? That's yeah. It's his half sister. Yeah. Half sister. That's right. Okay. So

[01:43:04] now let me ask you who is the heir apparent now? Well, does it, um, does it Renise say this at one point when she's talking to Corliss like the, or no, who says it, somebody says it that like all,

[01:43:17] all claims are up in the air now. Well, there was, well, but there is an heir apparent. Who does it go to after the children? A brother or a sister. The first, now the default heir to Agon. Uh huh. Right. Okay. In a way that he's never been

[01:43:36] since Agon had kids. So do we think that Amon's going to act mischievously? You know, he had the chance to do it and he didn't, and he openly talked about it with Cole, but he didn't do it as he, the dutiful son, he feels bad for Luke

[01:43:54] that it got away from him. Uh, I don't, um, I'm not seeing, I'm not detecting it at this stage. Is it a possibility? Yeah. But I don't, I don't have those vibes in this moment.

[01:44:10] Okay. You don't, you don't think Amon's going to make a move against his brother to get, he doesn't have the, he doesn't have the council. He doesn't have any, he doesn't have anything. He hasn't put any structure into place. We haven't seen him

[01:44:25] talking to Laris. Like it would be really out of left field for that to happen. You know? Yeah. Although, although we do have discussion between Otto and Alison basically acknowledging him as the serious one compared to his brother. Yeah. They're just, I haven't, I don't have any,

[01:44:40] I don't have any clue. I'm not saying that's what happens. And, and I'm just saying it's an interesting implication that now if something were to happen to Agon, the default is now Amon.

[01:44:50] Has an exceptionally cruel streak. Right. But he's showing, well, again, we're in a gray zone here. He's, you know, uh, receiving some moral tutelage from, from the courtesan that he's with. Right. Uh, so I don't know. You know, he feels bad. He feels remorse.

[01:45:09] Agon doesn't have the ability to feel remorse. Well, I, yeah, you're probably right. Yeah. You're probably right. But he, he, he does. We see, he does feel grief. He doesn't feel nothing. And I don't think we've ever seen Amon have a genuine emotion, maybe with the mistress,

[01:45:30] but it was more like, eh, I kind of feel bad about it. Yeah. That's, that's a pretty big, loud signal from so far from what we've had in this show. So I think, I think Agon is much more

[01:45:43] of a monster than his brother. All right. All right. I don't know if I fully agree with that. I think they both have monstrous tendencies in different ways. I think we're arguing millimeters here. Yeah, I think you're right. All right. So let's move

[01:45:57] on to cargo bowl. Are we doing, are we doing cargo bowl or twin bowl? I don't know. Twin bowl, cargo bowl is kind of, doesn't have as much of a ring to it. Yeah. It doesn't roll off the tongue.

[01:46:07] No, no. It's not like cligaine bowl. Cligaine bowl was, was just fabulous. Yeah. And it was kind of a letdown when it actually happened, but the, but the name, it rang. It was too,

[01:46:18] there was so much weight on that scene. And then it was just sort of, it was very stylized where this was a, this was a straight up brutal fight and a fight between two bruisers who have been in

[01:46:27] the Kings guard since they're eight and 10 would not be a long fight. It would be a brutal and short and this is, which is what this was. Right. Yep. So I liked, I liked the realism of this fight

[01:46:41] a lot. All right. So Cargill bowl begins, Eric Cargill, Eric Cargill or apple arrives on Dragonstone and convinces the guards. He has his brother, Eric Missaria sees the arrival and realizes what is happening, allowing her to alert the guards. Raniera readies for bed and Eric

[01:47:06] Cargill tells her Lauren Marbrand guarding Raniera's chamber that he will take the shift. Eric enters and tries to kill Raniera, but is interrupted by the arrival of his brother to the air horns. This the moment that Eric was in the cell with Missaria, I knew that this was

[01:47:34] going to be the play, right? This was the plot device. Okay. Got it. No problem. She's going to see him and you know, there's going to be a whole thing. And like I said at the top of the episode,

[01:47:45] this whole sequence had me on edge. I had no idea what was going to happen. The stakes were super high. It could have been easily a cheesy, you know, parent trap situation, but they played it so well. I'm just super impressed. And again, the fight choreography was perfect.

[01:48:06] And then the whole thing with the death was spot on. Just absolute 10 out of 10. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I didn't get to the death yet now. Oh, sorry. I got ahead of myself. That's all right. That's all right. Yeah. I'm sneaking around.

[01:48:21] I did like Missaria alerting the guards. I think that was a good way to explain why they were able to get there quickly afterwards. And I want to get to it in a minute, but just the hilarity,

[01:48:34] the hilarity of I'll just read it a tragedy for the songs. Sir Lauren Marbrandt arrives in his pajamas, but cannot tell which twin is which Eric wins the duel against Eric, but is so overcome with grief and guilt that he commits suicide. I almost said seppuku

[01:48:52] because that's what Nate wrote in the night, in the live chat last night. I just see my phone being pinged with seppuku. No context. Yeah. I knew what was going to happen though. As soon

[01:49:03] as I saw that, I was like, oh yeah, one of them is going to kill themselves. Which by the way, it's not, there's no like exact description in the book. So this was very open to interpretation.

[01:49:11] It was basically like they were both found dead together and this is a whole thing. So they, they handed up for this, but I'm glad they did. Yeah. Really nicely. Yeah. And uh, uh, official. Yeah, it was official. I think somebody posted in,

[01:49:26] in the discord that, um, was it Condell who confirmed? I don't know. I heard on the official podcast that Eric won. Okay. Yeah. And, and the other clue that I think I'll give people is that

[01:49:38] Eric said your grace at the end. And I don't think he would have said that if it were Eric. No, that's definitely a term of. He would have said princess.

[01:49:46] Yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. So, but, uh, really, yeah, I dunno, I got nothing else to add to it. I think the fact that, um, that he fell on his sword was, was a really great wrap up of it. I mean,

[01:50:02] it fits the historical framework for it, but it, yeah, the way that they made this play out was very dramatic. Yeah. Well, a very sad scene. I mean, him falling on his sword was just tragic. And I don't think there's anything else we could say about it.

[01:50:21] Not much other than just the buildup, the way the music built up to the scene. Um, the way that the, and I mentioned this before it mirrored the last episode where we just have this

[01:50:32] big, uh, rise in the action or the big sort of climactic moment. So really good. Yeah. Great episode construction, both episodes for sure. And, and this is the point where we go, well,

[01:50:44] that looked cool. No, that looked cool. Uh, I did appreciate that they, they had the leg wound to sort of start to tell them apart. And I, one thing I'll say is I know they're moving fast, but if

[01:50:58] Lauren wants to decide who's who maybe go for the one that keeps swinging at the queen, like that, that, that seems like a good way to make the decision, buddy. I like that. Raniera knew, you know, she was kind of like, wait, wait, Eric, you did,

[01:51:13] you know, and they have a, there's like a look of recognition in each other's eyes so that when he falls on a sword, she was so impacted by it. So, so, so you think it was guilt or grief or was

[01:51:26] it no one will ever believe I'm me. So all of the above, I think it's all of the above. He's so wounded. He's so broken. He's, um, knowing that, you know, him and his brother had this final

[01:51:38] thing. Yeah. He just couldn't live without, he couldn't live with the, the, the tragedy of the situation. Very sad. Bren will read it about it 200 years later, right? All right. Otto prepares to leave while Alison seeks absolution. Otto explains, Otto complains to Alison about his

[01:51:58] dismissal and says he must leave to go to old town. She tells him to go to high garden instead to win the loyalty of the Tyrells. Alison tries to convince her sins to her father,

[01:52:08] but he doesn't want to cure it. I will not hear it. That's just, he's, he doesn't want to, he's, he's suffered enough. He doesn't want to know anymore. You know, the situation's already messed

[01:52:21] up. Girl needs a therapist. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So much therapy, so much therapy. It's pretty rough. It's not enough therapists in the world for her. The, I go back to, um,

[01:52:37] this idea that I don't think a gone is going to be malleable. She, I think she's diluting herself that she's going to have, she's going to have less and less control over him as he grows into

[01:52:46] his power. Yeah. So, and, and this line, you know, the younger, but peacocks, um, you know, this, this idea that, you know, these, uh, sweet summer children, right. You know, Oh, you know,

[01:52:58] you think of all the, Oh, it's going to be fun to go to attorneys and write wars. Right? Yeah. No, it's not so great. And you got to really take a long view. Well, Alison will then again, pass down the generational trauma and fail

[01:53:13] to comfort as he weeps for his child. Yeah. Brutal, just brutal. She just turns away. You know, she can't, she can't face it. And, and, uh, she's broken. She doesn't have who, whoever comforted her. Well, I'll tell you who comforts her now.

[01:53:32] Kristen Cole arrives to resume his affair with Alison. Alison begins by slapping and hitting him, but the two begin kissing. Yeah, boy. I don't know. It's a, that they, they really are making it easy to, uh, for us to all hate crispy Cole.

[01:53:52] Truly the worst. Yeah. Pretty, pretty awesome. And it's worse when it's worse. And, and Fabian's doing an amazing, the Fabian or Fabian? I don't know. I don't know. Whatever it is, he's doing an amazing job. It's really hard to make me hate a character as much

[01:54:09] as I hate Kristen Cole. And that's because he's acting well. Yep. Well, this has been the episode folks. I think we've got to move into listener feedback, but first let's head into a break.

[01:54:22] We'll be right back with more house of the dragon. And we're back with more house of the dragon. All right, David, if I want to send in feedback to this show, if I want to, if I want to chat

[01:54:43] with Nancy, how can I do that? Send your emails to the hand of the pod at H O T D at the lore hounds.com. Hand to the pod has a good ring to it. I know. Uh, basically hot D at the lorehounds.com

[01:54:56] or head over to our website and on the contact form, there is a voicemail tool as well as a contact form. If you don't want to write email, we can plug it in that way. And of course we've

[01:55:07] got the discord channel link in the show notes. And we have a whole setup for house of the dragon. We've got a live watch chat. We've got a general discussion. And then each episode has its own

[01:55:21] siloed conversation for people so they can talk sort of spoiler free for what the episode is going on. And our hand of the pod, our dragon master, Nancy M is collecting up a lot of those

[01:55:32] comments for us. So it's a great, great help. Thank you. All right. Excellent. And I'm really grateful for Nancy for putting all this feedback together. We've, we've already gotten, I'll just read this quick feedback here, uh, that John M wrote on the Patreon saying great job going through

[01:55:48] the feedback for the guys, Nancy, it seemed much more organized and kept them moving along. You're in a great, you're a great addition to their team. Oh yeah. Thanks Nancy. And we love when

[01:55:58] you get the warm fuzzies like that. Isn't that nice? Yes. But it's all about our community. Uh, would you like me to carry on with the feedback? Sure. And we already addressed the,

[01:56:08] uh, Melissa W wrote in, I think one other person wrote in as well. I don't think it's in the outline though. Um, uh, about Emma Darcy's pronoun. So thank you for that. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:56:18] And in, in, yeah. Not to belabor it like, yeah, it was just a simple oversight on our side. It's a boo-boo. Yep. Moving on. Yes. Uh, all right. Seasons pass and hot D show guide feedback.

[01:56:31] Uh, Melissa as well by email says, hi, Laura Hounds. I'm a somewhat long time listener. I first found you from the bald move guys. I wanted to list a few items of feedback. Your show guide

[01:56:43] is excellent. John Bravo little. No, thank you. But I have to shout out Brian and Aaron too for their various contributions to the, to the show guide. But you're selling yourself short, just calling it a show guide because it has more than just

[01:56:56] a recap of each episode. It also makes it very easy to look up stuff. I'm sure I'm not the only one who is confused by the similar sounding spelling names in your guide helps me to sort

[01:57:07] them all out. The one thing I really liked to, which we're lucky with the notion platform is it scales perfectly for mobile phones. So when you're looking at like the character guide and

[01:57:17] the thumbnail images, it just perfectly flows and is easy to navigate stuff. So yeah, really great second screen resource when you're watching the episodes. Uh, now before we go into season passing, what would you call it other than a show guide to more accurately say like a wiki?

[01:57:33] No, it's not a wiki. It's not a wiki. It uses a wiki technology. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, because we're tailoring it for the show as a guide. Cause where you're doing it live, right? Yeah. And I

[01:57:46] mean, I'm moving people to the deceased column as they die on screen. Exactly. And updating and writing the new episode things. And we did that with a true detective and with a show gun where

[01:57:59] we did less with show going on the episode to episode cause it was less of a mystery thing or anything like that. But it really is a show related question because if you go out onto

[01:58:09] any of these Wikipedia sites, you're going to get spoiled because all the book stuff is going to be in there. It depends. There are some that will do, there's one I saw that will do just, uh,

[01:58:19] just show stuff, but got it. But in general, yes, you're right. Uh, and, and we update it like the day after the show comes out. So you should be able to keep up pretty quickly. And yeah, even

[01:58:32] ongoing little tweaks and adding little bits and pieces of information. So I remember when we were doing our season one, one of the things I would do is I would go through and make sure I get all

[01:58:41] the actors linked to their IMDB pages and that kind of stuff. So you can click through and get all that info. Uh, Melissa continues, uh, I'm happy you did the season pass thing. I do feel

[01:58:51] subscription burnout. I would like to support you more regularly at some point, but the season pass was a good way to do something when I'm not in a position to commit to something monthly. I'm

[01:58:59] enjoying the podcast so far and looking forward to more. So this comment is exactly the season pass target. Like I feel like we hit the target burnout on, on so many subscriptions want to be

[01:59:11] contributing to the community. Um, and just, you know, or, or, or just showing your enthusiasm for a particular big show when you come around for just that show, our subscribers, we want to keep

[01:59:23] around for a long time. And, uh, and we'd love to have you. Yeah. We'd love to have as regular script, but they're the people who are watching all the shows and community, you know, all that

[01:59:31] kind of stuff. And so the show, I think the season passes are really great thing. So I'm Melissa. I'm really glad that it's a product that is working for you. So, and thank you for being a

[01:59:40] subscriber to that. Absolutely. All right. Um, onto the next topic heading the world of hot D general impressions on episode two, Abigail, uh, by email says, greeting to the house of the house. Should we do the diamond dog thing? Oh, I'm here by sending you my first impressions

[02:00:01] after watching the episode twice before I encounter any sort of discourse. And of course, Abby is a very active user and subscriber and helped us out a lot with, um, show gun.

[02:00:12] So always good to hear from Abby. Firstly, a big round of applause to all the cast. The performances were brilliant here, here agreed to summarize patriarchy sucks. Futilism sucks. Crispin Cole sucks and Damon sucks. Both are pathetic crybaby brutes and the list of their perchable punchable

[02:00:29] offenses in justice episodes is long reaffirming that this family is a hot mess. The hot mess, hot mess for hot D right. Hot takes for a hot mess. Maybe after watching this episode,

[02:00:44] it might Dawn on some folks that the whole team that this or that is meaningless, but fun for the marketing team. Oh, right. So the, you know, are you team green? Are you team black? Uh, but the

[02:00:56] fun, the marketing team, the only winning one, um, as far as the purported teams, neither has a clear vision or plan or unified front greens and disarray blacks fumbly. John, do you have a political take on this? Are the Dems in disarray?

[02:01:17] Oh, don't get me started. Okay. Uh, what do you think about the marketing angle here? Do you think that it's a big marketing thing? I mean, I mean, they're not getting us any green fan.

[02:01:29] Like there's nothing for us to root for. And there's really, I think the biggest thing would have been the Jahara, the Jahara stuff, but then they kind of botched that with the rat catcher

[02:01:40] thing. So it's really, it's really hard to support the greens right now. Yeah. But maybe as things change, things will shift more. Abby continues. My only criticism of the episode is the way they abruptly changed from one scene to a completely different one, seemingly, seemingly unrelated.

[02:01:55] And then just switch back again, the scene in Misaria and, uh, Raniera being in two parts sandwiched by the Allen and Adam scenes. It was great. That's this is exactly what I was talking

[02:02:07] about. Was that Misaria scene seemed like it ended in such a weird spot. Okay. Um, also kind of dark this one too, but that might only because my impatience of watching it on my iPad as soon

[02:02:21] as I could. Okay. So I don't know my, I watched it on two different laptops and a television and I haven't had any problems with brightness values. So, and your OLED seems to be performing well.

[02:02:34] You said, Oh yeah, mine, the lights were off too. Okay. That helped. Uh, Abby sent in a second email just before we hit the record button. So we got that in real quick. Uh, I'm sending this follow

[02:02:43] up email as I slept on it. And I thought about this while making sandwiches and listening to the official pod. It's about Laris. Good way to lose the appetite, right? Uh, Tochis anyone? So the

[02:02:55] main continues to be a mystery. Sure. We know he's a creep and awful, but we have no clear grasp on what his motivations or goals are. And Matthew Needham doesn't have a clear answer to it either.

[02:03:09] This at least is common, a common question to both show and own show only end book readers too. So Laris the mystery, um, continuing, I was told by many that he seems to be a mashup of Varys

[02:03:23] and Littlefinger, but to me, he seems more like Kyburn just stirring the pot to see what happens in an almost detached way. All these comparisons to the main series are also showing not just that

[02:03:38] history repeats itself, but also how stagnant this world is. Several hundred years have passed and there's no progress on any level of society. Does magic hamper it? Uh, Abby. So John, any thoughts about the stagnation of society here or what Laris's motivations are?

[02:03:58] It's a good question. It's a good question. Why is it so stagnant? Um, you know, this is something that, you know, I, as a big wheel of time fan, there's a whole thing of like,

[02:04:09] how does tech not, you know, wheel of time is all about it being in cycles, right? Like technology, society breaks down and then it builds back up and then it breaks down again and builds back up.

[02:04:18] Uh, I, we don't, we don't get that much of the song of ice and fire universe. We just don't have that much history of it. So I don't know how long it would take. Also, I think we're just

[02:04:30] really used to the incredible pace of technology in the last hundred years and things were slower. You know, this is only like, I think it's under 200 years between Game of Thrones and, and this,

[02:04:46] uh, and, and, and so I don't look at that crazy amount of time, but yeah, it is pretty stagnant. I think part of it is a lot of, you know, a lot of things in our modern world start as for the

[02:04:58] military, right? Like that, that is a big pusher of innovation. Uh, you don't need to do innovation in the military when you have dragons, you got it. You just won, right? Yeah. Unless you have another

[02:05:09] magical life force being, you know, a scorpion technology is only going to carry you so far. Right. And, and, and it's, it's kind of worthless. Like you, yeah, it would be a huge leap to be able

[02:05:20] to take on dragon. Yeah. And I don't think that, um, the Targaryens are going to fund scorpion research. No, I think they want them exactly as effective as they are right now, because this is, this is the first time that there's really been a dragon on dragon war

[02:05:35] at a large scale. Oh, that's a good point. That's a good point. Like they've feuded before, like make or had a whole thing where he usurped the throne. Okay. But it was never really this

[02:05:44] like big, like bunch of dragons versus bunch of dragons where you needed scorpions and all that. Interesting. Well, speaking of family dynamics, uh, Athena a on the discord, uh, posted the high towers really don't have a healthy way of communicating with each other in that family.

[02:06:01] I think we were talking about this before for sure. They treat family like a business, which is fair for the time, but you can clearly see how it comes at the emotional cost of their children. Oh

[02:06:13] my gosh. What a huge cost. Amen to Spain for motherly affection from, um, houses of ill repute. Agon is raging and sobbing, but can't talk about the trauma he experiences. And Helena is just

[02:06:26] internalizing all that pain. Uh, side note, Alison trying to talk to Helena about keeping quiet about her and Kristen is bonkers. Oh yeah. That's right. Yeah. I completely forgot about that. Helena saw

[02:06:40] them. I mean, I mean, I said it in the recap, but I guess some people listen to him as well as Agon listens to auto high tower. I was, I was looking at the show guy. What can I say? I was entranced.

[02:06:52] Uh, but yeah, it just really hit me now. Um, really Alison read the room and there's a time and a place indeed. By contrast, you can see Raniere holding their children and offering

[02:07:03] physical and emotional comfort to them. You also get a scene of Jason, his cousin talking about his grief briefly, which indicates that they at least have some level of emotional maturity. Damon is a

[02:07:14] wildcard here in this family though. Yeah. I think we, we touched on a lot of these points earlier on just this and then both families just can't stop hurting each other. Like no matter what,

[02:07:24] what happens, they just keep, you know, uh, bashing and bruising and stabbing and poking. It's pretty awful. Uh, John, would you, how would you compare this with succession, uh, from sort of family trauma, generational trauma? Um, is it weird if I say that the,

[02:07:48] the Roy's are healthier as a family than the Targaryens? Cause I think it's true. Okay. That's kind of, I don't know. That's kind of awesome. Uh, I mean, I mean, I kind of wish we'd covered it and killed somebody. I wish we had like actually covered

[02:08:04] it cause it would be such a great addition to the pan. No shows. I know. Well on the next succession, I guess. Yeah. Oh, it looks like Abby has a third. Thanks. Uh, uh, Athena. Uh, always good. Great to

[02:08:18] have you on the discord. You've been very, very active recently. So, uh, thank you. Uh, Abby actually sent in another email. Uh, Amen is being mothered elsewhere. A gun cries alone and Allison

[02:08:29] turns her back on him. Contrast this with a small convo of Jason and Bella, which makes it evident that those kids receive more love from both biological and non-biological parents. Oh, this probably was just a continuation. Um, Nancy's doing a great job of like chopping up emails into

[02:08:44] thematic blocks and so like tracking them. Uh, yeah, so agreed. And this is what we were saying before. It's just so much easier to be sympathetic to black team black rather than green. Yep. Yep. All right. Our next topical heading is sex in the city of King's landing.

[02:09:03] That's pretty funny. Yeah. Lisa, AKA red zippy three 30 on the disc or on the discord. She's read zippy three 30, but she sent it an email and um, the subject line. Yeah. Yeah. Was this section

[02:09:17] a referenced how hot D is putting more intent in its storylines involving sex than game of thrones did that the scenes teach us something about the characters. Okay, cool. First we have

[02:09:31] the fight between Raniera and Damon that rocked and I'm all, and I'm glad they is finally seeing clearly they interrogate him. What was our passion and our attraction truly about was Damon only

[02:09:43] using them to piss off Ferris. I think this is a question here that the actor versus the character and I think in this case the character is a she, right? Yeah. So, um, then we have the intimacy

[02:09:56] between Raniera's, uh, uh, Rani's and Corliss where their post coil pillow talk showed us that Corliss enjoys the power his wife can have over him while Damon will always want to control,

[02:10:10] but then control fails him right in that one, you know, in a couple of moments where he can't be in control and uh, that, that, um, he's not able to, uh, third we have Amon curling up in

[02:10:24] a fetal position with his madam and surrogate mother where he feels safe and vulnerable. And we learn he does feel regret over killing Lucerys. Lastly, Alison and Kristen who use sex as penitence, like practicing self flag, uh, flagellation, the whipping and the beating of

[02:10:42] their own bodies. So both Raniera and Agon have fired their hand. Who will screw up the most? Kristen or Damon? Uh, this is a really interesting analysis. What do you think, John of these sexual relationships and what it tells us about their characters?

[02:10:58] I totally agree. And, and, uh, the smug cunt of Dragonstone is really playing. Sorry. I just needed to, I needed to slip that in at some point because it was such a beautiful line.

[02:11:09] And he's British so they can say it right. Right, right, right. I'm, I'm British in the moment. Uh, no, I'm just quoting, I'm just quoting the show, but I, I did really enjoy

[02:11:20] that line. But anyway, I agree that the, the sex position as they used to call it is much stronger in this show than it was in game of thrones. You basically just had one scene,

[02:11:32] maybe two in game of thrones that were true sex position, which was one was Jamie and Cersei in the pilot. And the, because that shows you, you know, they're having an incestuous relationship.

[02:11:46] It shows them catching brand and kicking him off. Uh, but, and, and the other one was, I would say, uh, Daenerys and Khal Drogo, cause it shows her taking control for the first time.

[02:11:56] Right. But this show really, it doesn't just tell you that these people had sex. It tells you why they're having sex. It tells you something about them through the way that they have sex. And that's,

[02:12:10] that's what's interesting to me. I know everyone called me a prude in the wheel of time show because I was just like, this is boring sex position. This is not set or rather this is

[02:12:19] not sex position, right? This is, this is just a sex scene for the sake of a sex scene. Right. And, and that's what bothers me. And I think it's, it just feels silly to me. It's not a prude thing.

[02:12:28] It just feels silly to me. Right, right. Where this is true illumination. Uh, this is just another facet of their characters being illuminated by being in the world and being a human being and a human body in the world. Right. It's character development. And also like, as this

[02:12:43] show is showing us, you don't actually need to see the act to get the same impact. I mean, you tend to have that be involved if that's important to it. But, uh, in fact, I think that it shows

[02:12:56] it worked when they had Alison getting real busy on Kristen Cole at the end of that last scene because it showed her, you know, completely distracted and loud, uh, at the end of the

[02:13:08] last episode. But yeah, I just think that it's such a smartly done. Yep. They're using it judiciously and it's not, yeah, it's not at all gratuitous. Yep. Uh, I think, I think Kristen

[02:13:21] Cole, boy, is he going to make bigger mistakes his hand than, than, uh, Damon would have could have. Yeah, absolutely. It's possible. Damon is at least a strategic thinker. Kristen is just a moron. That's a good point. That's a good person makes a mistake at every single moment.

[02:13:41] Whereas I think Damon, he makes some mistakes, but I think he also, I think he was perfectly happy to let Juh, Juh Harris die. I don't think that that was really a mistake in his eyes.

[02:13:52] I think Kristen Cole is coming new into his, uh, pathology where Damon's been living with his whole life. So I think he's a little bit more, uh, you know, capable of, cause I think

[02:14:05] Kristen Cole is going to get real weird, real fast. Yeah. Uh, he's going to have a lot of pressure on him as hand and, uh, uh, the, uh, what's the head of the Kings guard? I blanking. Lord

[02:14:16] commander. Lord commander. Thank you. We're two hours, 13 minutes into this pod. So I know, we only have another 15 pages of feedback. Exactly. Nate on the discord, who was our resident, um, Japanese historian, historical expert, uh, make a point. Sex is only part of the service of

[02:14:36] prostitutes in a world without trained therapists. And this was in relation to, uh, amend, uh, with his, uh, madam has yet unnamed madam and they have built in baristas, right? Like you get your

[02:14:49] hot milk, your hot steam milk, and it's a little almond drop in there. Yeah. It's great. It's great stuff. Clicking bowl. Again, cargill bull guy. See, I just had it in my head. Sorry. We're

[02:15:01] getting pungy. We're getting late here. Uh, cargill bull, Abigail, uh, by email, I didn't expect targetable to happen so soon. We're moving at breakneck pace. It was really tragic and emotional. It got confusing at one point on a, which is which and who is who, but they have

[02:15:19] certain, they, they did have certain different vibes. Eric was the winner if there was one in the situation, but he chose to join his brother. Uh, we've got a voicemail from Michael, AKA darker

[02:15:31] than ninjas. John, do you have that loaded up? Hey guys, I just wanted to get my thoughts on the most recent episode of the house of the dragon. Um, we're listening to your, uh, in

[02:15:40] stock take your really quick hot take and I am with David on this one. I was very much the opposite when it came to the last of us, but I'm very much with him on this time. Um, I agree that it was

[02:15:54] the whole concept of he's like, you can't be sure I'm going to take away that certain. I'm going to give you that certainty if you don't have to worry about that. But I also think there's an element to

[02:16:05] it there as well. I think it's a combination of that. And the fact is he just killed his own brother and he can't live with himself with that knowledge anymore. He's devastating guilt,

[02:16:19] feeling guilty and just, he, you could see how much the two of them loved each other. And like he came into that scene in my opinion, like I'm trying to stop you to stop yourself. And cause

[02:16:33] you're not going to live with yourself. Even if you make it out of here after killing Manera, I, you, we both know that's not right. And it's just a beautiful scene. And just like,

[02:16:43] I think this is easily the best episode of the series so far. It was an episode that made me like auto and that says a lot, but just want to get my thoughts. Um, looking forward to your coverage of

[02:16:58] the episode though on auto, a broken clock is right twice a day. Right? I mean, sometimes the guy's just right. But, but you know what I really love about auto is that they made me see

[02:17:13] they, they really showed how auto understands how he messed up. He's like, Oh, we knew this kid was a psychopath and we put him on the iron throne anyway. Oopsies. Yeah. Big oops. And uh, he

[02:17:29] regrets it when he walks out. So, but yeah, it's, it was a really great scene between these, these two brothers and I'm glad for all the season one, like Eric and Eric, what the hell?

[02:17:40] Uh, it, it really does play out very well. So thanks Michael. Good to hear from you. It's been a minute since we've had a voicemail from you. So, uh, thanks for sending that in Shane on the

[02:17:53] discord. Um, because he says your grace, uh, it's meant to be Eric and that he's racked with guilt. I think following his skin, uh, killing his twin. Ranier also use Eric's name as he commits

[02:18:04] Sepco. Yeah. So I think we're good there. I think we've got, uh, Abby and Lisa, I think. Yeah. Uh, Abby points out born together, die together and red Zippy says she settled on grief being the

[02:18:22] primary reason the surviving brother kills himself. Um, it didn't occur to me to care about who was, who I just knew that as a book reader, they both died. So I didn't keep track during the

[02:18:30] scene. Um, and Kim M I love that Eric switches sides to black just before he fell, but I'm sad to see the characters gone from the show. I love to hate Eric. I think maybe she wrote Eric Kim

[02:18:45] wrote Eric. I'm not sure if it's flipped. Okay. Kim flipped it in the entire email. Okay. Got it. Because Kim was as confused as most of this fandom. Thanks George. All right. I think that closes out

[02:18:58] the, um, click, uh, I want to call it a game bowl again. See, it's just stuck in there. The, uh, the twin bowl cargill. It doesn't roll off the tongue. No, it does not. And not at, not after

[02:19:10] a day, uh, like we've had and, and, uh, let's just go with twin bowl team green egg on, uh, Athena on the discord, dude, Agon's actor is selling it for me. This season's moments. I keep being like,

[02:19:26] he's so relatable. And then I remember that he had bastards fighting each other last season. Totally. Uh, Kim M uh, by email, Agon destroys his father's legacy literally and figuratively in one fell swoop. What a complete tool as always. I appreciate and love you guys. Keep up the

[02:19:44] excellent work. I look forward to listening to your coverage every week. Thank you. Kim M. I believe Kim M is one of our lore masters too. Um, I believe so. Characters team green auto,

[02:19:55] uh, Lisa, AKA red Zippy, uh, Reese, uh, E Fonz is brilliant in this episode and he'll be missed. I don't think he's gone, gone. I think we, we can still see him as a public relations professional.

[02:20:08] Myself. I have to give him kudos for his plan to publicly blame Raniera for the brutal killing of Jairus to gain sympathy and support and auto getting so angry at Agon for throwing that all

[02:20:19] away by hanging all the rat catchers. I can tell you how many times I've wanted to say those words to some of my clients. You've just destroyed all the hard work we've done. I'm out of here.

[02:20:29] Yeah. Uh, and uh, a Fonz cackle chefs kiss Nate on the discourse says I hate auto, but he understands information warfare. That is absolutely true. Um, Pawson 20 on the discord. Great second episode auto high tower was fantastic and kind of reminds

[02:20:47] me of Tywin as well. He's in a post of violence, but he wants it targeted and to serve his interest, which didn't happen when Agon had those rat catchers kill. Right? Right. That was not

[02:20:58] going to help them at any point. And I'll say, yeah, auto is not gone. He's there's no way. I mean, he was literally just given a mission by his daughter, right? Go to high tower.

[02:21:07] I'm sorry. Go to, they are the high tower. Go to high garden, George, go to high garden and get the support of the Tyrells and their bannermen. Uh, so listeners, I'm just going to kind of blast

[02:21:18] through the rest of this. Uh, but we have so much feedback that I think John and I were actually talking about. We're doing a second podcast, uh, if we keep having this feedback, but I think we

[02:21:28] just want to finish this podcast off tonight. So apologies, but I'm just going to speed through a bunch of it. Um, and then I lost my place in the list. That's all right. I'm here. I'll read

[02:21:39] some of it. How about that? Thank you. That's good. My eyes are starting to go across. Not a problem. I'm here. You know, Abby is, is not sad about auto's fall, but, uh, it's, it is fun to see

[02:21:51] auto auto have, have a little bit of a taste of his own medicine. Pause. And again, comes back and says, did anyone see that during the funeral procession, when the carriage got stuck? Did anyone think that the head of Jahares would fall? Yeah. We,

[02:22:04] we talked to everybody in podcast. Bill did across all podcasts. Helena is the next topic and boy, Abby, Abby's heart goes out to Helena. Brian C just, you know, it said, uh,

[02:22:21] the dramatic impact or lack thereof of Helena is choosing one child over another. I tend to agree with John wasn't at the edge of my seat for it. And I think the reason for me at least is that

[02:22:33] you see her as a character in season one, off to the side, aloof, having visions, playing with a spider, doing embroidery, but not having one or more, sorry, one on one mothering seeds to have

[02:22:46] that strong connection between mother and her children. Uh, and I think because of that, it suffers from this particular scene. So I just wanted to throw that out there and overall, it's a good start and looking forward to more of the podcast. Thanks. Thanks, Brian. Agree. The

[02:23:00] choice is what I was missing in that, in that scene, but we're moving on. And I think they've handled the aftermath well. Kim M is back to say, I hope we see more of Helena's character.

[02:23:11] She's made me giggle and cringe and terror already when we're two seasons in she's spewing out all these prophecies and no one is listening. The greens really need to get their shit together. Oh, are you're, you're highlighting voicemail here. It looks like, I think Nancy is transcribing

[02:23:29] the voice. I think she's had Skype, the voicemails. Yes, Nancy, you're insane. You don't have to transcribe the voicemail. It's okay. You're doing too much work. She's having fun. I think, I think she's having as much fun as you are with the show guide.

[02:23:45] Yeah. Brian, I'm sorry that I read your voicemail out loud, but it's, it's a we'll get you next time. I think it's Brian 80 63. Yeah, I think so too. That's why. Oh, that's funny. All right. Rocky, you had another comment just saying the,

[02:23:59] the particles of light is foreshadowing ash from the dance of dragons. Oh, that's a good theory. Yeah. All right. We got Alison on team green from Abby. She says Alison seemed more preoccupied by

[02:24:13] her sins getting revealed and by the emotional state of her kids with all her talk of duty. She failed them all. Yes, she has her bag of reasons and circumstances and traumas,

[02:24:23] but at one point you need to grow up and stop with the victimhood stance. Her failure to be an adequate parent meet might be the bigger sin than the one she's so desperate to confess and

[02:24:32] wash away. I like that. She wants the easy way out. She's looking at short term stuff when this was something that was festering for years and years and years. Athena a says Alison gets her avoidance of her children's issues. Honesty, honestly from auto.

[02:24:49] It was really glaring when you see the I have sinned father. He's like, no, don't want to hear it. Don't don't don't talk to me, but then she goes and sees a gun crying and is like, yeah,

[02:25:00] not my problem. Apple fell straight. Good characterization. Kristen only got one comment. I'm surprised. So Cole is now the hand, but has there been precedent of Lord Commander of the Kings Guard becoming the head? Surely it isn't going to be a good decision.

[02:25:19] I don't know about that. I think there was some discussion in the discord that there might have been, I think was it Davie Mac or somebody who was saying that there historically there is,

[02:25:28] but it's never been a good situation. And Lisa brought in something that we didn't talk about, which is that we got an acknowledgement of Darren. Yes, we did. And I was like, who?

[02:25:41] The youngest child of he's got a portrait, like a drawn portrait in our show guide because we knew he was coming, but we don't know what he looks like yet. So and he's a political war,

[02:25:53] right? He's being kept by another family. No, he's he's with his mother's family, the high towers. Oh, OK. All right. Yeah. Yeah. He's just I think he's he's considered a ward of the high

[02:26:04] towers right now. He's just hanging out with his uncle. OK, yep. Team Black, we're back. Nothing that much of note. Everyone's focused on the character. So Nancy wrote in herself. I found it very interesting that in the last episode there were more than a few references

[02:26:22] to make or the cruel. I now think that that was a teaser for the title of Episode two and how team green tried to position the responsibility for baby Harris's death on Reneiro, the cruel. Agreed, agreed. I can't say certain things, but definitely

[02:26:41] Magor's name is going to be invoked more, I think. OK. Yeah. Characters on team not clear or unknown. Abby says, do we think Miss Aria will be back to offer help for Reneiro? What do you think, David?

[02:26:58] Yeah, I think I think after this, it's going to be common cause. I think she's going to help Reneiro with stuff. We'll see how it works out, but I don't think she's gone from our shores.

[02:27:10] Cool. And also, I'm a serious. Lisa asks, did Miss Aria even get on the boat after she passed on the info? If we didn't see her leave Dragonstone, did she really leave? I say no and we'll see her

[02:27:21] again. Same. Yep. That's what I'm thinking. I like this. Nancy put this in the form of a conversation. It looks like I have what can be considered a third third sentence. I can't wait to see more of Adam. He is an absolute snack. Hard eyes, hard eyes emoji.

[02:27:38] Yeah. Yeah. I'm looking forward to seeing these characters a little bit more. Adam and Alan. Right. Yeah. Mm hmm. Rocky's M is back, says I'm thinking Alan's brother, Adam, may get to be a

[02:27:51] dragon rider. He was looking at that dragon and I think it's foreshadowing. Yeah. See, I was thinking that he was looking to the stars like, God, I'd love to ride a dragon one day. That was.

[02:28:01] And so, so the question is, can someone not part of the royal family ride a dragon? Indeed. That is. Do they have the midichlorians? That's right. Do they have the, the Martin midichlorians? Mardichlorians? Mardichlorians. All right. The small folk, Athena A says,

[02:28:19] I like the touches of daily small folk life. A lot goes, a lot of shows gloss over that micro impact. Agreed. Yeah. Kyle M Hugh has a sick child and a wife who is fed up with the price of food.

[02:28:33] Hugh still has not been paid for the scorpions he's building. Despite a gun's promise in the last episode, a gun is now very distracted and crying about it and has almost certainly forgotten about

[02:28:47] Hugh and the craftsman Hugh assured would be paid soon. He was absolutely going to do something in the next few episodes. It will not work out great for him, I suspect if only because this is a

[02:28:57] prequel and the original series was not littered with people regaling each other of tales of Hugh the magnificent. I am worried about Hugh. He's doing the best for Hugh. Yeah, we were going to

[02:29:11] see something and, but I think it's still, it's just pointing to, to Agon's mismanagement. And now that Christian Cole, Ooh, he has no sense of what it takes to feed a city. Oh yeah. Oh, he's screwed. Yeah. The rat catcher's dog. Athena A says that dog deserved better.

[02:29:29] Rocky Z says that dog is going to seek revenge on Agon. That's the secret. That's a, that's like, um, Aria in the, in the closet with the crossbow. It's going to be the dog jumping out at, uh,

[02:29:42] at Christian Cole. Right. And winter fell on the Starks. Our last piece of feedback, Melissa W is back to say, I thought about the wall. Is it something about what's on the other side or

[02:29:53] something about the wall itself that keeps the dragons from crossing? I was thinking it was something magical about the wall itself, but I don't know where I got that idea from. I don't

[02:30:03] think it could be something that's magical about the wall itself because we saw dragons cross the wall in game of Thrones. But then the, I'm trying to remember the scene now, but one of the dragons

[02:30:14] actually broke the wall. Right. Wasn't it the, the, it was the zombie one. It was the zombie one who broke it. Yeah. Broke the spell. I always thought it was, I always thought that the wall

[02:30:23] had magic imbued into it. Yeah. And, and whether, you know, whether it's like a four sealed barrier or not smells funny up there, I don't want to go because there's like lots of weird creepies.

[02:30:34] So I think it does have magic imbued to it, but I think it only kept away the, the long night people. Okay. The white walkers got it. Okay. That's wrap up. That's it. All right. That's it. Very,

[02:30:50] very, very quick show notes folks. All right. I'm going to read to you our podcast schedule for the week. I need David wants me to get like light jazz music put underneath all this. All right. Don't you think? Oh, stop yourself. All right. All right. Enough George Lucas

[02:31:06] or you know that we're here on hot tea. If you want the hot tea, hot takes on Sunday night, you got to sign up for the Patriot or supercasts three bucks a month, or you can do the season

[02:31:16] pass for 10 bucks permanently forever. You get everything just on house of dragon for that one, but you get everything if you're on the Patriot or supercast doctor who has a season finale and

[02:31:27] Alicia and I are covering that this week, empire of death, the accolades season one, episode five is out this week. And Alicia and I will be covering that as well. The MC universe is back with

[02:31:38] Alicia and John. Hey, good to hear you're back on the mic doing a preview of Deadpool and Wolverine. Yep. That's going to be a big one for the summer. I actually booked a ticket for it already. You

[02:31:49] know me. Wow. And Patriot exclusive. We've got Shire side chats letter for to eat if brat. I actually finally did one second breakfast, number 20 hotel breakfast. And of course our hot tea, hot tea. Oh, and we've got the fifth element for 11 Z's.

[02:32:09] Yeah, but that's next week. Yeah, that is true. You're doing this week. Sorry. You crazy kid. I'll just be quiet. Sit over here. You should, you should rings and ritual, but a bad chapter

[02:32:17] eight alloyed the finale of season one of rings of power through the lens of ritual with Marilyn are peculiar favorite Tolkien scholar and Sarah Brown of sitting in university. Am I saying it fast enough? Uh, no. All right. I'm keeping going.

[02:32:31] All right. I'm keeping going. The accolade is also on the star Wars canon timeline podcast. Radioactive ramblings is doing the boys still they're doing season four episode four wisdom of the ages. I don't know if you're watching the boys, David, but boy, is it a good time?

[02:32:44] I got episode one in that's all I was able to fed. I'm caught up. I've been keeping up with it. Good. I don't know how and properly Howard. Oh yeah. You got to save it for the bear. That's

[02:32:56] a good point. Boy, I'm screwed this week. Uh, properly Howard just released an episode that I haven't added to the schedule. It is very Gordy's the last dragon closing out the season of felonies and fugazis and we'll shift us just released their interview with the beacon 23 show

[02:33:14] runner. And there's something else. I think it's a book club thing about shift on the wool shift dust feed. So I've got to update the show schedule with that as well. Give us our shout outs, David.

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[02:34:43] your move is going well and Adrian is moving making a big move and yeah, bon voyage. I don't know how to say it in Portuguese. You know what? It's whatever you want it to be. I think I think

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[02:35:26] Thanks for listening. This summer we enter a new era of Star Wars. You mean the dawn of the Star Wars Canon timeline podcast? Yeah, yeah, sure that too but I was obviously talking about the

[02:35:46] accolade. We've got to cover that on the lorehounds. Oh, but the Star Wars Canon timeline podcast is exactly at that point in the timeline the end of the High Republic 100 years before the prequel

[02:35:57] trilogy. We've got to cover it there. Why not both? Okay, deal. It's the first live action Star War outside the Skywalker saga. Nobody can miss this. Listeners kick off your hot lore summer

[02:36:12] weekends with scene by scene breakdowns of the acolyte found in both the Star Wars Canon timeline podcast and the lorehounds mother feed and the lorehounds Star Wars feed wherever you like to listen a couple of days after each new episode is released.