 That is a problem now moving forward in the show for me. I have a lot of thoughts about this episode in general. Good and bad. You're just the queen. He's the king. And then there's Kristen, like a vampire, just for every young. ["The Dragon Theme Song"] Else of the Dragon, episode six. I can't believe we're more than halfway through the season. So this is the one we've kind of all been waiting for, right? This is the time skip episode. So I have a lot of thoughts about the time skip. Good and bad. I have a lot of thoughts about this episode in general. Good and bad. As usual, I've divided it into sections as best as I can. But before I get into this episode, I don't normally do this, but I want to address some of the responses I got to my previous video on episode five. Basically, I just got sick of typing the same thing over and over again as I was replying to people because I was getting kind of the same thing over and over again. I thought about just pinning a comment, but I didn't and I was too late. So I'm just going to address it here now. I don't know if I was not clear or people are just not understanding me. But I at no point was suggesting that Allison would be fine with learning that Rainiera slept with Kristen Cole. I absolutely think that she would be upset or dismayed, disgusted, would feel that Rainiera had lied to her. I never said that she wouldn't feel those kind of ways about it. I was just like I never suggested that Kristen would not be upset by being approached by Sir Joffrey, that he wouldn't be pissed about it, that he might, I think it's a little unlikely, but OK, maybe he would even get so angry that he kills him brutally in front of everyone. Again, I find that a little farfetched, but I wasn't suggesting that she wouldn't be upset and that he wouldn't be upset. What I was complaining about was what they did about being upset and the universe's response to that. More in his case, the lack of response to what he did. That is a problem now moving forward in the show for me because a lot of it is now built on that foundation, which I personally feel is very shaky foundation. I don't really want to spend this whole little video at rehashing episode five, but my problem with Allison's reaction and behavior is, again, the degree of reaction she has to this. Yes, her father just told her her kids are probably in danger. Yes, she did just learn that Rainiera has a greater capacity to be deceitful than she previously realized. But her reaction to this information is to then support the person who did the misdeed with Rainiera. That logic falls apart. And it was put forth to me multiple times that, well, she needs an ally at court. Kristen is a perfect candidate for this. But you can have it both ways. If you are also constantly telling me that Allison does this pearl clutching moral high ground person and is so affronted by the idea of what Rainiera did and that's why she's so upset about it, both the lying and the lack of virtue in what she's doing, then she should feel the same way about Sir Kristen Cole. Either that was upsetting her or it's not. And I know that there is a double standard for men and women in an era like this is like the one that's being depicted. But again, it just doesn't really, it's not consistent with her character, this reaction. So I would have preferred for her to either misunderstand and think that Rainiera had slept with Damon and that she gets this information from Kristen. And Kristen might later realize that he's the reason she thinks this because he must misunderstood what she was talking about. But by then it's too late and now they are aligned and he's not gonna go tell her that she was wrong about that because now they're in cahoots. That would make a whole heck of a lot more sense to me why she would behave the way she does and why she would then regard Kristen as her ally because he came to her and told her the truth about Rainiera and Damon even though that wasn't the case. It just, it feels very clumsy and shaky to me and very inconsistent for her character. And again, Kristen does end up killing Joffrey in the book but the way he goes about it in the show, I just moving into this next episode which is what I'm gonna be talking about given what he did in episode five, that he is able to maintain his position as the head of the king's guard, that he's able to oversee the training of Rainiera's and Allison's children after he brutally murdered Sir Joffrey in front of everyone. Like in what world is Lane or okay with this dude coaching his kids? You know, like I just, it just doesn't check out for me. I just, I just don't buy that. All of what happened in episode five creates a problem for me now going into episode six. So, episode six, the time skip. It would be jarring no matter what. No matter what they did, no matter how good they are at it, the fact that we're recasting half the cast is gonna be jarring no matter how good a job they do. And so that being the case, it was a bit jarring but I can't totally fault them for it because that's the nature of a time skip and a recast. That's just how it is. Unless you, I guess if you're doing it in between seasons it might be less jarring but doing it between episodes is a little more jarring but given what they're doing and how they need to do it I think it was as unjarring as possible for the most part. I think that the way that they had, they went about kind of quickly catching us up on what all has gone on in the interim because that's 10 years to catch us up on and how positions have changed and who's up to what and who's been born and what their dynamics are like. There's just a lot of information. And the show runners themselves kind of referred to it or spoke about kind of thinking about this episode as a second pilot, like a mid-season pilot because you are basically like getting a new introduction into everything which is why again it feels a little jarring. So overall, despite my issues, the Shaking Ground they set up for themselves in episode five and episode six, despite all that, like I think they did a good job of catching us up now showing us what's what, who's where, getting us, giving us names and faces in a way that we can start to be like, okay, I know who you are, I know who you are, I know what this is, I know what this is. Like they did a good job with that I think. Like kids are the biggest part of that because we obviously know who Allison's and Rainier are even if it's different people playing them now. We know who those characters are and we can easily recognize their counterparts in this, in this later time. The kids are brand new. No one's played the kids before other than the infants. So getting a read on who they all are and what they are all like and what their dynamic is like. I think they did a very good job showing us that pretty quickly and effectively and memorably. I don't know why we needed to see Aegon jerking off in a window that, I mean, I guess it told me something about his character. That scene was just very strange to me. I don't know why that wasn't necessary. Again, one of the parts that is the most jarring about this time skip is Allison and Kristen Cole. And not just because they're the ones that I have the most problem with coming off of episode five. That's probably part of it. But the, I feel like one, the fact that Kristen Cole was not recast is makes the other recasts more jarring because Kristen looked older than Allison and Rainier and now Kristen looks younger than Allison and Rainier. And we got new castings for Lena, Lenore, Allison, Rainier, we've got all the kids now. Viserys certainly looks older even if he wasn't recast. And then there's Kristen, just like a vampire, just forever young over there. So I feel like either don't recast all these people or do. It's very strange to me that he wasn't recast. It didn't help matters because then there was a reminder of like, it just made, it just, I don't know. It took you out of it if that makes sense. You're like, okay, everyone's different now. I can believe it. Why is he the same? Why is he the same? This doesn't work for me, especially cause he's a younger person for the much, much older characters. I mean, yeah, you just give him a few more gray hairs and it's believably 10 years later. I spoke before about my hope that they would have the actors work together so that not just the fact that their faces already look the same because by nature they just look similar and could be believably the younger and older versions of the same character but that they would work together to make sure that the way that the roles are performed is also believably the same person. In Rainier's case, I think I found that to be true. For the most part I found that older Rainier felt to me like just the more mature version, the aged up version, not just in appearance but in vibe and in demeanor of the Rainier that we saw before. It felt like the same character moved along 10 years. It felt like it had the same core kind of reactions and behavior and it was very believable to me that this was the same character later on. And part of this, I think the reason Rainier works better than Allison is part of it is how the roles are being performed. So it's partly to the actors but it's also I think how these characters are written. So the actress playing Allison, I can't totally blame her because I think it's partly how the character is being written that I have a problem with but I think also I don't think it was just how the character was written. I also think that the performance didn't work for me and if this is more how the character is gonna be then I suppose since I believe the primary casting was for the older version and then they found younger versions to match them. So obviously our experience of them is the other way around where we feel like the prime version is the young version and then the older version has to match that. So it's kind of flipped. But the younger Allison is much more reserved, is much more sincere, is much more tender, is much more, it's more believable to me. All these arguments again that I addressed before about how well she's just this very virtuous character and then she doesn't like immorality. With the younger Allison, even though again I explained why that argument doesn't really hold water for me for why she reacts the way that she does in the show, that nevertheless the way that the character was being performed did definitely give me that impression of the character. Whereas this new older Allison, I completely understand that people change over time. I have no issue with the fact that Allison would later on have hardened and gotten more world-wise and be less naive 10 years on. But Allison doesn't seem like the same person. Because again, we're missing that sincerity, that tenderness and that warmth. Yes, we get that she hates Rainiera, sure. But there's no tenderness in her towards Viserys, towards Christian, towards her children, towards anything or anyone. And again, part of it is the script, but part of it is her demeanor. And it's just not believable the same person to me. So that was very extremely jarring. I disliked it. I also just personally disliked it. But if this is what the character is going to be like, I guess there was some hinting that this is the path that younger Allison was going down. But we didn't actually see younger Allison to behaving in these ways. We saw her surprised at the Christian revelation and then wearing a green dress at a banquet. But if we're to assume that pretty directly thereafter, she began to behave the way that older Allison is behaving, we never actually got to see that. So this shift from younger Allison to older Allison is that much more jarring because it's a different person playing the role and they're behaving completely differently than the previous Allison was. So that really, really didn't work for me. Moreover, there were particular moments where similar to what my problems were before with Kristen and Allison where they don't actually like characters in this universe. The way that Allison tells the series at one point in this episode, basically like, do what you want over my dead body. Like, you're the queen, but also you're just the queen. He's the king. Like the idea that you could get away with saying that to him and that she would say that to him, it just, it doesn't work for me. She's such a in-your-face character now. It doesn't track for me that it's the same characters before. And it also, again, within this world, I had a similar problem, again, with her just marching in with the green dress as a declaration of war, because it's at this very, very bold behavior in a world where women, unless they have very, very good reason to think they can get away with it, would not behave so boldly, where they would behave with more subtlety, where they would be more inclined to manipulate and whisper than to outright make a declaration of war. So the fact that we would see her persuading and cajoling and whispering in the ear of Viserys and saying, you know, I don't know if those are Laynor's kids and I'm just saying, people are saying. And just whispering doubts. And if Viserys is saying that he wants something that she wouldn't say, no, never over my dead body, that she would say, well, we can talk about it. And then, well, we can talk about it. Well, I'm not sure. Well, let's think about it until he gives up on the idea. Like that seems more likely to me as the strategy with which to handle Viserys and the more likely way that Alison would handle things. In which case, it would be much more interesting to see that she behaves with Viserys still that way, kind of sweet and demure the way that he would expect her to. But then as soon as she's say with Lerestrom, which we'll all get to him. But when she's with him or when she's with Kristen or when she's with whoever, that suddenly she'd be harder, Alison, and she would have, she would mince words less. But around Viserys, she would still mince words, but she doesn't. She's so in your face with Viserys, which I just don't buy that that's realistic for the situation for this world and for these characters. And going a little bit back to the previous episode, again, this whole like, well, she was Rainier's friend and she was the one who was the virtuous good friend and that she was betrayed by Rainier. I guess if you're saying that that's what's going on in Alison's mind, I mean, I guess people delude themselves all the time. But if we're talking about who betrayed who first, Alison betrayed Rainier first by going behind her back and getting it on with her dad and getting herself a place as his queen. So the idea that Alison would be like, I've only ever been your honest and true friend and how could you lie to me? Like, where do you get off? Like, why would Rainier be honest with you ever again after you pulled a stunt like that? So the idea that she has the moral high ground on this is already so extremely hypocritical that it makes me immediately dislike Alison. And then it's further hypocrisy that she hates Rainier over this behavior but likes Kristen Cole, even though they, you know, takes two to tango. And then now that the kids are probably not lane oars. I mean, I frankly don't see why Alison cares one way or the other. Are we to believe then that she would be entirely pro her kids marrying Rainier as kids if it was beyond a doubt that they were lane oars kids? I don't think so. I think her only concern now, based on what her father's told her or meant to believe her motivations are, her only concern is to get her kids on the throne, who Rainier is kids, whoever their father is. So if their parentage is a pretense to get her way, I guess. And here again is where I would like to see that with Viserys, she is demure and deferential and likes to manipulate and whisper and say, well, those may not even be lane oars kids and how shocking is that? But then in private, like she doesn't really care because it doesn't matter who's the dad. The point is Rainier and whoever she's having kids with her kids are a problem for Alison and for the succession. So if it was clearer then that she is simply using this as a pretense around Viserys, maybe. But it seems like in private, she is also morally horrified by this, which again, I don't think you can get off telling me that you have the moral high ground in this. And then by the end of this episode, what she accidentally is responsible for, she whispered to the wrong person and she's very aghast at this. This is how the episode ends. So we don't really know what's gonna happen with her character after that, but if she continues to behave like she has the moral high ground in the next episode, I will be very, very irritated. So coming to Kristen again, I already said, I think it's very strange that his character was not aged up. And if they are gonna keep the same actor, which they did, they could have done more at the very least to make him look older, put some gray in his beard, I don't know, but he looks exactly like he did in the previous episode. So it's just, it's strange. It makes the time skip feel less real. I don't know if that's the word, but it's just, it's jarring. And again, I already said, I find it extremely unbelievable that he would be permitted to supervise at the very least Rainier as children. Maybe Allison would say yes, supervise my children, but no way is Rainier and Lane are gonna let Kristen train their kids. Just absolutely not. I can't believe he's allowed to train anybody's kids. I can't believe he's still awake though, but okay. Even if he is, I just completely beggars believe. Okay, so moving on from Allison and Kristen, clearly this is a sore spot with me and it's gonna continue to be. I can already see that, but Damon. So we do in this episode see a softer side to Damon. To be clear, not a soft side, he has not a soft character now, but a softer side. He's a dad. He seems pretty mellowed by being away from King's Landing, by being away from politics, by just living the good life with a hot wife and just living his life. And then we do see that he kind of has a bit of ennui about that. He's not necessarily thriving, but he's not the vicious and conniving character we've seen before. He's mellowed a bit because of the circumstances. I do wish that we had seen him and Lena together longer. Meaning, not in this episode, but I mean, well, she's dead. I have a little section about Lena, so we'll get to that in a second. But I regret that we just, we got three actresses playing Lena and we saw each of them for like a split second. We obviously saw more of Lena here than we have so far, but I just think we could have spent a little longer with Damon and Lena. And I guess I do have a separate section about Lena, but it kind of just goes hand in hand with Damon, so we're just gonna talk about it now in the book. And again, I don't wanna make a habit of saying, the book did this and it's better, or the book did this and therefore it's automatically bad that it didn't do that. Cause I don't think that's true. It's not automatically bad if it's different. But in the book, Damon and Lena have an ongoing friendship with Rainiera and Lenore and they visit each other. And Damon is on Driftmark and Rainiera is already on Dragonstone and they visit one another a great deal. And Lena and Rainiera are good friends. They're not shown to be friends of this at all and now Lena's dead, so it's not going to happen. So I guess we traded the friendship of Lena and Rainiera for the now soured friendship of Rainiera and Allison. Not that that changes the plot, I guess a whole lot, but it would be nice to have seen that, to see them getting along despite everything and to see a female friendship because there's so few of those. And I also, for actual plot reasons, would have liked to have seen this kind of like ongoing visiting and seeing of each other and being friendly with each other because then it would in the book, again, this is not a habit I wanna make, but in the book. So in my next section, Larry Strong, he's the sort of little finger type character in particular in the show, that's what they've sort of made him be. And in the book, there is some speculation that he is responsible for the fire in Harrenhal. And this, just like the previous episode where I had a problem with the fact that they explicitly show Damon killing his wife rather than leaving it ambiguous like it is in the book where there's good reason to think he probably did, but who's to say that really happened? Again, it is definitely proposed as a possibility that Larry Strong was responsible for the fire at Harrenhal and the death of his brother and father. But Larry says hardly the only one that would stand to gain or have a reason to want to see Harrenhal fall or to see Larry's father and brother dead. Other possible candidates for who would have done this include Damon Targaryen and a couple others. And we don't have to have that many candidates running around for this in the show. I do appreciate that they wanna tighten things up and make it a little more straightforward and not have it be as it's already a pretty unwieldy story. So I appreciate that they do wanna tighten it up a bit. But I think especially with a character like Laris where he is this little finger type where you wanna have this kind of uncertainty and apparently they want that kind of uncertainty with Damon as well and this is a prime opportunity to narrow down the candidates for the fire to those two and show us Damon and Laina frequently visiting with Reynira and seeing how Damon clearly still wants Reynira and the thing standing in his way of having her is the fact that she's currently sleeping with somebody else even if it's not her husband but she's got her man right now. I wouldn't put it past Damon to just off him so that he can have Reynira which is again the reason that's a possibility presented in the book that he might have done it. And then to also have a conversation with Allison between Allison and Laris where she's complaining about them and where we clearly see why Laris would stand to gain by that and have some ambiguous scenes where it's clear that it's probably one of the two of them but we don't know which one. And maybe later we could have it confirmed somehow I don't know that we would need to though because it would be left as this kind of ambiguous thing and could sow the seeds of some future doubt and Laris would not be a less scheming character for it because if it happened that either by accident or on purpose somebody set fire to Harrenhal obviously Laris would take credit for it because he stands to gain by it. So he would say, well, Allison you said you wanted this so you know it happened. And so he's not actually saying he did it because he actually probably didn't maybe didn't maybe did who knows but that he would be like well you asked and it happened who's to say who did it in hell and then we'd also have Damon who maybe possibly did it and would of course never come out and say that he did and it would just be so much richer for having that bit of uncertainty because they're both scheming characters that we distrust and are both capable of doing something like that. So it would be fun to have that uncertainty there. Now I appreciate why they didn't want Lena to die in childbirth because we've already seen that before in the show quite recently so having to do it again would be when we have a lot of people die in battle over and over and there's no problem with repeating that but the dragon fire death was a bit theatrical, a bit dramatic in particular the fact that she like skedaddled out of her birthing room like he just got past everybody and just snuck out. No one noticed like she's like about to die from childbirth but she was able to just like yeet on out of there over to her dragon like it's kind of ridiculous. It would still have been dramatic but I feel like if it would have been slightly more powerful I think if when Damon went to her and explained to her the situation and was like look Doc says you're dying and he's asking me if I want him to cut you open to take the baby I mean he doesn't have to say all that but you know basically conveyed to her the situation and if she told him I wanna die a dragon rider's death and that Damon facilitated and allowed her to go to her dragon and helped her do it. That could have been a quite beautiful moment but nope just... So my final thoughts are the time skip is jarring as we knew that it would be no matter what they did rey older rey nearer works for me a lot better than older Allicent. I'm very interested to see where the kids are going we didn't see a ton but we saw a lot of potential for how this is gonna go. I think the child actors did a quite good job. Allicent and Kristen are gonna be a thorn in my side I predict for the rest of the show at least for some time until certain things happen but for the present they are a great source of irritation to me because of how their characters just don't make sense to me anymore based on the changes that were made. They could have made changes but they would have had to have been different changes or the changes that I suggested and it would make a whole lot more sense. I in general dislike this trend of an unwillingness to have some uncertainty in the show. Again, with Damon killing his wife now with Larry Strong killing his father and brother these are two instances where the show it would not have baffled the audience it's not like we couldn't follow the show anymore if they'd done that I think it would have been a stronger show if they had allowed it to be a little more uncertain and ambiguous in both cases. Frankly, I think that the Kristen and Allicent situation would have benefited from some ambiguity. In the book again, we don't know exactly why Kristen and Rainier fall out. So the show could have done things to hint at why this happened to give us a little more concrete information than the book does but without explicitly maybe telling us what passed between them and maybe not explicitly telling us even what Allicent and Kristen talked about. If we had the scene where Allicent calls Kristen in the previous episode and it's like the queen wants to talk to you and that after that we see that they're like in cahoots then it would be left up to us to decide what did Kristen tell her? How much did Kristen tell her? Whatever it was, it seemed to get him on her side and her on his side. So just, you know, like leave it more ambiguous and I wouldn't have less problem with it but so a lot of times still needs to pass before we get into the dance of the dragons which is where we're obviously going with this. That's the whole point of this show. So I'm wondering if we're gonna get another quite substantial time skip because again, there's a lot of ground and time to cover before we get to the dance of the dragons and I don't know if they're aiming to start the dance of the dragons by the end of the first season or get us all caught up and primed to like right before when the dance of the dragons was about to begin and end season one there and then season two is the actual dance of the dragons which might be the wisest course because we only have what four or five episodes left. So I guess we'll see. I really wish they'd aged up Kristen. That would have helped a lot. But overall, still a really, really excellent show. Still highly enjoyable. Just it could be a little better here and there to better satisfy me at the very least. But let me know all your thoughts in the comments down below. Did it totally work for you? Was I clearer now about my problems with Alison and Kristen? I hope so. Again, if you completely disagree with me feel free to let me know. I think this is a show that is great to discuss because for all my complaints about its lack of ambiguity it does have quite a lot of subtlety to it. Nevertheless, definitely more so than many other television shows which is why I still think it is a great TV show. I just, when something is that good that's when you're like, oh, but I want it to be perfect and it's just missed the mark. If it was crappy, I just wouldn't even care. But it's so good that I'm like, oh, but you could be perfect if you just did this. So I do think that overall the performances and the conversations and the way the information is delivered still retains a great deal of subtlety and nuance and is fun to pick apart and is clearly being interpreted in multiple different ways. Because while people did disagree with me a great deal or at least disagreed with what their impression of what my feelings were on episode five, nevertheless, the responses that I got on that while they did disagree with me they were not all the same either. It wasn't like everyone was saying the exact same thing to me. The only thing that was the same was that they were seem to be misunderstanding my position but other people's positions on it which were in opposition to what they believed mine were still also quite varied. So I like that there is still quite a lot to interpret and pick apart regardless. So let me know your thoughts and feelings about episode six, about where you think this is going if you haven't read the books, if you like the changes, dislike the changes, if you like the new actors, if you hate the new actors, whatever you want to let me know. 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