House of the Dragon: Season 3

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Despite watching all of Game of Thrones, and all sorts of dragon and Hobbit-related content, over the past several years, I wouldn’t call myself a fan of the fantasy drama genre. I really dislike orcs. I hate flute music. And I could generally do without castles and shit. And yet… I love the zeitgeist. The old monoculture. The time when you watched the “Red Wedding” episode and couldn’t wait to listen to podcasts and talk to people about the crazy nonsense. That seems a lifetime away, however. We lived through a pandemic since then. And GoT managed to ruined all its good will by putting up an absolute turkey of a final season and a terrible finale. By comparison, House of the Dragon is demure and drearily subdued. Or at least season two certainly was. And while season three definitely ratcheted it back up, it never reaches anywhere the high highs of GoT. And, man, I’m sure they’re doing their best, but they still can’t get the people-riding-dragons green screen thing right. It’s almost as convincing as Christopher Reeve fling around Metropolis back in 1978. These people have HBO money, dude, put the A-team on that shiz. Not, not the A-Team, Mr. T ain’t no computer nerd. The real geeks who know how to make a dude sitting on a dragon not look like a scrolling driving background from My Mother the Car.

I will admit that my lack of dedication to the genre is somewhat tied to my absolute inability to remember all the names of the similarly-named characters on House of the Dragon. So, when folks with relatively heavy British accents say these names, I often have to scramble the Rolodex in my head to narrow it down to the two possible blonde people they’re talking about. Is it Matt Smith, or the one with the eye patch? Or the dude who got his face and crotch fried by a dragon but is somehow still alive? I feel like George R. R. Martin purposely gave all these characters the same or similar names to weed out people just like me. The casuals. The bystanders. He wanted hardcore fantasy dorks, and I imagine he got them. But, in a time of absolutely no monoculture, he also got me. Because my podcasts, during the time when this show runs, is just filled to the brim with coverage of this show. So much lore to go over. So many takes on dragon magic and swords and prophetic dreaming and portents. I just don’t get how some of them can tell the dragons apart or why there are two dudes named some variant of Damon.

The thing is, after a season of the related GoT universe series, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, this one feels almost like diving back into a heavy pool of sludge. AKot7K was light and airy and fun and connective in an emotional way that CGI dragons never will be. Sure, it had lore and whatnot, but it felt freed from the bonds of the chess moves that this series has to make to set up stories in the novels. And CGI dragons. It was nimble, I guess. But then we get back into this show and you can see the creaking mechanisms underlying it at times. And in other ways the inability to keep characters involved to forward the plot without having a ton for them to do. Two examples: Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy) and Aemond (Ewan Mitchell). Two fine actors trapped in castles either dreaming and swinging swords in empty, drippy rooms or walking around in different rooms complaining and huffing and puffing about her situation. As if these two performers only had a few days to film and the production required them to just stay put on one set each and just spliced in their scenes where needed. It’s hard to describe, but there are just a ton of scenes this season of people in rooms and way less of people moving around from place to place and/or doing stuff.

There are obvious exceptions to this, of course. This is still a set piece show, after all. Though it feels like their budgets have been slashed somewhat. The battles feel a little smaller. The CGI a little less eye-popping in places. Just the overall feeling of things less grand and epic. Which is great and appropriate in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, but people come to House of the Dragon for bloodshed, lances and dragon shit. I understand there was some consternation at the end of season two — which was a bit of a bore, truth be told — that some big battle wasn’t included, but we got that as the first thing in season three. Battle of the Gullet. Battle of the Big Gulp? I don’t know. Anyway, this season started off with this big sea battle. Honestly, not my favorite kind of battle, me not being the biggest fan of pirates or pirate media. But, yeah, I assume they just couldn’t get this done in time for season two, or there was some editorial choice to end last season on a cliffhanger of sorts and start this season with a bang. It’s one of only a couple large battle sequences in the season. And it was kind of underwhelming. Again, not a fan of boat war, but even with my biases showing, it wasn’t that awesome. Mainly because I didn’t know or care about any of the characters involved. Oh no! That dude who we kind of got a glimpse of once just got a hatchet to the head! Who am I supposed to care about? And why? I don’t know.

And, frankly, that’s the major issue I have with the show. The stakes are large because of the nature of the narrative, but I feel like we’re constantly being asked to be introduced to and instantaneously care about characters without giving us a real sense of why we should care. That said, there are some characters — mostly because of the performances — that I’m into. And these are characters who it almost seems like the writers put more into than others. Or at least fleshed them out in a way that wasn’t one-note. First, you have your Freddie Fox as Gwayne Hightower. Dude is great. He brings levity and energy and real human reactions to situations that are heaped upon his more nuanced character. Tom Glynn-Carney is also terrific as the all burnt-up Aegon Targaryen. His roadtrip-self frees him from the gloom that has settled over all of his Targaryen brethren. Again, we get some humor and electric energy in his performance that is missing from the constant scrunched faces and low-key mumbling and scraping of most of the others. And, lastly, we have your James Norton as Ormund Hightower. A man who hates bad smells and is such a weirdo priss in a world that values neither gourmet grub nor a lovely stick of incense. I miss characters like him with the punchable faces and the complicated motivations. He’s excellent every time when he’s on screen, but it’s a shame we won’t have him for season four. I guess, based on this, that I’m team green. At least when it comes to whose scenes and performances I enjoy the most. Team black has just become dull and staid.

I’d say, despite my grumbling, that this was a reasonably successful season of television. I just don’t know or understand what the level of expectation is or should be. If I were a true fan coming in, I might feel a bit let down. But, as a member of the lookie-loo class, it was just fine. I mean better than fine if I’m going to compare it to a normal program. It generally kept me engaged, and there is intrigue and some decent plotting. But something in the dour, stuck-in-mud feeling of the main characters kept me from enjoying it as much as was possible. Something about it feels very… British. Like if you’ve ever watched Brit shows, they are generally less excitable and often filmed in single rooms with lots of talking. I imagine, for a lot of them, it’s a budget thing, but I think that’s just the sensibility English people have. Oooh, don’t get our pulses up too much or too often! Mumble more. Scream less. Which is funny, of course, because the author of this series and the creators and show runners are American (despite all of the actors being from the UK). Maybe it’s just the nature of costume dramas? Whatever the case, I found myself way more into scenes with some wit and others out and about in the world than I was into folks in chambers plotting and stewing. Maybe that’s just me, though. My hope is that they figure out the balance in its fourth and final season, and really give these characters the freedom to be a little more out-of control and kookie and give us, as the audience, the ability to both laugh and laugh in horror at what they do and say to each other.