Could watch it in my sleep

The title of this piece is perhaps counter-intuitive because most people's dreams aren't predictable. Indeed, what makes many dreams so memorable is precisely how unpredictable and bizarre they often are. They're potentially great stories, although sometimes lacking rhyme or reason (Let me be far from the first to state that Rick Veitch's Rare Bit Fiends was awful, self-indulgent crap.) House of the Dragon, in contrast, has been utterly predictable from the opening moments of the series. No one ever did anything surprising. Few enough of them did anything that one would connect with a human's often irrational and emotional reactions. Everything has been acted out precisely to form, as if we were watching a dramatization of the Westerosi encyclopedia entry of The Dance of Dragons. As I've mentioned before, that's essentially what the "novel" Fire and Blood is. But it's disappointing to see it conclude without a single deviation from expected form, to where you could recite the outcome of each scene (and its pedestrian dialogue) before it happened.

Now, I can see someone arguing that I'm complaining about the converse of what I was complaining about with regards to the finale of Rings of Power. But the problem with Rings wasn't that they stuck to form. It's that they savaged their encyclopedia (the appendices of Return of the King) for a cheap marketing trick. Theirs was a failure of approach and perhaps philosophy, rather than execution. The problem with House isn't that it was setting up for a stunt ending. It was that they weren't really interested in doing something even vaguely as innovative. Case in point is Rhaenys Targaryen. Eve Best has had the misfortune to play a non-entity for 90% of the series. Outside of one scene where she reproves the young Rhaenyra for having the temerity to think that women could make their own choices in Westeros, she's had basically nothing to do but be an add-on to whatever room she found herself standing in. She doesn't really do anything and, when she does, it's the most obvious reaction of scolding her overambitious husband or grieving the loss of her children. This all changed when she came bursting through the floor on dragonback. Suddenly, she had agency. She could make her own choices and people had to pay attention or get roasted or eaten alive. That is, of course, the prevailing theme of the series: women who lack agency, despite the intelligence and will to compete evenly with the men around them. But when she does achieve this agency, she uses the latter half of the finale to simply stand off to one side and smile knowingly at whatever Rhaenyra or others do to prepare for the coming war, almost like she could've predicted all of it because, well...

Now, you could say that part of the problem (which I've mentioned before) is that House revolves around one house (appropriately) and said house is made up of Targaryens who consider themselves to be above typical humans. Daemon certainly acts the part. In a way, it could be considered as the same problem that DC Comics has with its characters, who are superheroes first, humans second, in contrast to the far more successful and relatable Marvel heroes, who are almost always humans who just happen to be super-powered. When all you're writing about is demigods, it gets difficult to find ways for their very human readers to relate to what they're doing and how they act. But I'd argue that the Valyrians don't have to be presented as aliens among men and could, in fact, present a very human side that would not only make them into characters that people would find appealing (an Arya; a Tyrion; a Hound) but would also create genuinely interesting opportunities for the story. Aegon is the perfect example. Here's a man who is repelled by responsibility, is plagued by self-doubt, is an alcoholic, and is obviously depressed about all of that, but mostly about being dragged into the role of king. With all of this written plainly on his face, his doting mother hands the borderline suicidal king-in-waiting a dagger when they're riding to his coronation.

My immediate thought was: "Yeah, the best thing they could do here is have him wait until the crown he doesn't want is put on his head and then stand up, turn to the crowd, and slit his own throat with that pretty knife." Not only would that be his last attempt to show them his own agency and how much he's taking in order to not be forced into this thing that he fears and hates, but it would send all of their precious plans into a tailspin and force the writers to come up with a few more turns as to how they actually get to the big, impending conflict. Instead, what we got was the utterly unbelievable moment of the man who hates all the attention suddenly transforming into the king his family wants because he's given more attention by a cheering crowd. Wut? It will, of course, lead to the perfectly predictable situation of them having finally rid themselves of the king no one liked having on the throne (Viserys) because of how he wouldn't act kingly only to have yet another king no one likes because he's an alcoholic deviant who likes to watch kids claw each others' eyes out before screwing the victor. In other words, we'll just be in essentially the same situation we've been in for the first season where everyone plots behind the king's back because he either is incompetent or they assume that he is. Yawn.

Lighting up the table may have been the most exciting part of the whole episode

This is all so obvious that it's approaching tedium. I sat through a film last night (Ticket to Paradise) that was almost exactly the same: totally predictable; no character deviating from their assigned role in any way; boilerplate dialogue; and an ending that was almost too saccharine to be believed. House at least lacked the Hollywood ending, but it was still something that anyone could've seen coming from the opening credits: child dies, mother gets angry, war is initiated. There's nothing interesting here, except for a few moments of Matt Smith having to be the lone emotional outlier. The writers decided to capitalize on that for the almost baffling choking scene, which the showrunners later declared was the way they reminded the audience that Daemon was dangerous. I've reminded five-year-olds that coin flips are random, too. It's every bit as exciting.