Welcome to HotD, the officially unofficial podcast for House of the Dragon on HBO, I'm Jim.

I'm Aaron and today we're talking season one episode three, second of his name.

Aaron, how'd you feel after the second of your watches?

I liked it. Um, the thing, the only, the only thing I, this still kind of bugs me on multiple watches is I do think the action scene at the end is a little bit goofy and some of the stuff I just didn't understand the tactics and strategy in the stepstones, a whole department, but like, you gotta understand that they were really

that they had a pretty broad and blank canvas to paint the stepstones were on, uh, in the book, it literally, it's this is a one paragraph, another one and one paragraph deals in the books, it literally yada yada, as it says, it's not our purpose here to recount the details of the private war Damon Targaryen and Coralus Valerian wades on the stepstones suffice it to stay the fighting began a 106 AC Prince Damon had little difficulty assembling an army of landless adventures and seconds

sons and one mini victories during the first two years of the conflict yet in 108 AC when that last he came face to face was craggus crap feeder, he slew him single handed and cut off his head with dark sister period in the story, um,

craggus. Does it? Yeah, call some Drehar in the episode. That's his first name for it. Okay. Okay. Got you.

Or maybe it's last time, whichever one he's got. It's crazy. It's one. Yeah. So like, they had a lot of room to kind of like play around with this and like I mentioned in, I looked us up to make sure I wasn't crazy, uh, it's in the cannon to serve Barristan, tell me, the Barristan, the bold, when he was like 23 years old, single handedly assaulted a castle, uh, there's not a cover of night and use the disguised breach it, but he went in and rescued King Harris from their dungeon.

And fought his way in and out, broken to the fucking barn stole horses and wrote out on horseback, like sometimes shit like this can happen and I think you're supposed to understand that this was Damon waging or waging at all, like he would literally explicitly in the episode rather die and ask his brother from help or and suffer the state fate of a second son.

So like, I guess I was okay with it. For me, I wish he was wearing plate armor and a helmet and maybe out of shield the two, but like he is one of the best swordsman of his time. He does have a excellent blade, glaring steel blade, dark sister, very fabled blade.

Uh, yeah. So I, and, and again, I'm a little open to Arnorfords, Nigger, Commando type of shenanigans, uh, but everything else, all the down Abby of it, uh, the feasting and the fetting and the hunting, that shit is awesome. And I thought it's great.

Um, I really appreciated some of the stuff they're doing symbols with symbolism and character and theme. What about you? How did the episode seem after another set of watches with your eyes?

Uh, yeah, I thought it was better on second watch. I, I felt like I understood more what they were going for, um, all the intricacies of, you know, this, this party, this birthday party, name day party.

Um, which, you know, combination royal hunt, I don't, I don't know exactly how that all goes, but I felt like I understood the, the tension here between duty, um, and desire and everything that they're going for. And I think it's a lot better a second time around. I will confess that I actually fast forwarded through the battle at the end, because it's getting late when I was watching it, uh, second time through. And I'm like, I, this is all this action. Like none of this actually matters. Uh, the stuff.

I'm interested to talk about is not going to be in this part. So I fast forwarded through most of it got to the metal as fuck shot at the end with Damon walking out of cave, uh, dragon a half, half a crab feeder.

And I was like, yeah, that's what I, that's all I really wanted out of this battle. Um, so yeah, I, you know, I, I, I don't feel like it's an episode killer. I think everything else around it is great. But yeah, I was less interested in watching that again.

And if you are, you know, kind of like into that stuff, like I think they did a lot in terms of choreography to share this kind of like, you know, relentless momentum that he had. Like there's a, he kind of started things off with, uh, this kind of summer salting tackle down a sand dunes. And then he hit the ground and he's just sprinting. And I, I guess that's where you don't wear armor and you don't have a shield and come for you.

I thought that there is a variety of ways that he was running and killing it reminded me a little bit of Daniel Day Lewis and some of the final moments lastamo he can's or he's just like, you cannot fucking stop this man. He is on a mission.

So I appreciated that. And I think also the, you know, the, the dragon effects again, some of the close up stuff work. I, I think I kind of think that, uh,

Lainore's a little funny looking.

There's something about that, like that scoop hair with the silver hair that kind of makes him look a little like, uh, you know, like a prematurely gray Ronald McDonald type of thing.

Okay. Sure.

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