Rehashed plots with dull characters may not be the best approach

Those of you who've been reading for a while (all three of you) may remember when I was regularly writing about Game of Thrones. It was, for the first five seasons at least, one of the best shows on TV at the time. It takes some real talent- writing, acting, producing -to make a series of that quality for that long and that's why, in the somewhat-pre-streaming era, GoT became what most are referring to now as a cultural touchstone. It's one of the last series where people were gathering around the water coolers (you know, when people used to go into offices?) to talk about the Sunday night episode that had just dropped. The Battle of the Blackwater. The Red Wedding. The duel between The Mountain and The Red Viper. How hot the sexposition scenes were. All that. That's a more difficult scenario in this, the age where entire seasons can be consumed in a day, but there are still shows that have a bit of a culture-wide thread by dint of both their restrained production (weekly episodes) and the high quality of their acting, writing, direction, and overall production, like Better Call Saul. The first spinoff from GoT, House of the Dragon, has set itself in that first mode, repeating GoT's Sunday night schedule, but is lacking significantly in the latter aspect.

The first Damocletian sword hovering over the series may, in fact, be its connection to GoT. I'm not sure there's a parallel in television history where a show of that quality took such a nosedive in not just its last season, but its last three seasons. The capper, of course, was the final couple episodes where it was more than evident that the producers and writers were really eager to say goodbye to Westeros before HBO could try to throw more money at them. Of course, one could look at the mother series and think that another factor that torpedoed it was the lack of George R. R. Martin's plotting. Once the story had moved past his books, it was David Benioff and D. B. Weiss with an outline and no one to tell them they were wrong. House does not have that problem because it not only is following Martin's "novel", Fire and Blood, but also has him directly involved in its production (perhaps to forestall a downturn in quality? Hard to say.) But part of the issue may be the story itself. I refer to the book as a "novel" because my brief experience with it found it to be more like a fictional documentary in book form. Martin and some collaborators had already produced The World of Ice and Fire; a coffee table-style tome that was something of an encyclopedia about the world that contains Westeros and Essos. Said tome contained a great deal of detail on the "Dance of the Dragons" which is the general term for this period in House Targaryen's history. Then he produced Fire and Blood, which goes into even more detail on said period. I got about 30-some pages into the latter before realizing that I was just rereading the same history (not story, really) in even more detail and put it down, never to be opened again so far. Just like with Star Wars, if you're doing a reboot, tell me it's a reboot. Don't try to sell me on something new before handing me the same thing I've already seen or read.

And, of course, a lot of people will say something similar (or already have) about House. It very much is back-to-basics Game of Thrones. In a sharp turn away from the pointless action scenes and rather brusque storytelling of the final couple seasons of the mother show, the showrunners for House have decided to invest heavily in the action-by-discussion method that produced the often-wonderful political machinations and storylines of the first series. The problem with that is two-fold: 1. Doing that in the first episode produces a pace that likely has already alienated some viewers. 2. You really need compelling characters to sell that approach, especially in the first episode. What made the later seasons of GoT still somewhat must-watch TV were the characters; most of whom were introduced in that first episode in 2011. House had precisely zero of that kind of character in its opener. There was no witty but rueful Tyrion or menacing but conflicted Jaime or earnest but frustrated Arya. In fact, almost none of the characters presented in last night's opening episode had any personality at all. They were just inhabiting roles to move the plot along because the script said to do that. The only exception was Matt Smith as Prince Daemon. His personality just happens to be "arrogant dipshit", which isn't really a selling point, but there it is. At least he's something other than a dilettante or a mannequin, which really defined the rest of the cast. I mean, perhaps it's a compliment to the veracity of their characters that most of them are so accustomed to being above all of humanity that they didn't actually display any humanity for the entire hour? I'm all about characters that are appealing because of their lack of emotion (witness the comic version of V in V for Vendetta as opposed to the Hollywoodized and stereotypical film version), but they normally have to be a bit more dynamic than anyone was in the first episode of House.

To break up the tedium of discussions about stuff we already know and tittering about what someone is wearing to the joust, the producers decided to continue in the GoT vein but even more over the top, as it were. Not only did we have the obligatory orgy scene, but were handed a feast of blood and violence that was even more gratuitous than anything this side of the nearest direct-to-video/Amazon streaming slasher flick. We already knew that the queen was going to die in childbirth (even if you hadn't already read Martin's histories, it was obvious that she was there to present the "difficult birth" scene from the moment she appeared on screen.) Exactly how many minutes of Emma (Sian Brooke) screaming from her pool of blood did they think was necessary to get that across? For that matter, how many skulls needed to be split open to demonstrate that jousts were violent contests? One probably would've been enough, but not for Ryan Condal and Martin, apparently. Those were the moments of "action" that were supposed to provide respite from the sneers and muttering of the Targaryen (and hangers-on) family, but all they really were was a different form of tedium. I used to do a "Lines of the week" feature for each episode of GoT. I can't think of a single moment from last night that was clever enough to jot down as being memorable.

Pilots are tough. Opening a series with all of the baggage that Westeros still carries is an even steeper hill to climb. But the showrunners did themselves no favors with this beginning. We've really (in some cases, literally; pun intended) seen it all before and it wasn't nearly as interesting as it was the first time. I'll keep watching for another episode or two, but if the writing doesn't improve quickly, my disdain will be overwhelming and it will have nothing to do with the stink of a dragon.