If I exclude the credits both episodes are almost exactly 60 minutes long. And the credits are ~5 minutes or so, so the displayed runtime is 1 hour and a few minutes. I have no idea where you get the 90 minutes from, that is simply not true.

I have watched both Rings of Power and The House of the Dragon, and both are essentially setting up the story in the first two episodes. There is plot in those episodes of course, but a lot is setting up characters and places and the world in general.

> have no idea where you get the 90 minutes from

>> but having the first two (allegedly: haven't seen it myself)

Not watching something that you critique, and instead basing it on what you saw on Reddit, HN or YouTube, seems de rigueur these days.

I did watch it. Enjoyed it. And will hold my final opinion until I've seen the last episode.

> Not watching something that you critique, and instead basing it on what you saw on Reddit, HN or YouTube, seems de rigueur these days.

Movie and television reviews have been around for decades. There are only so many hours in a day/week, and everyone has to decide how to spend their finite amount of time, so "pre-judging" a show by early episodes is nothing new. But if you want to try to watch everything as a completionist, start to finish, go right ahead.

But as the GP of this sub-thread, I'm was not so much "critiquing" and simply observing that there's a lot ways for people to spend their time, so if a show "wastes" 2 out of 8 episodes with a lot of what folks consider non-plot, then why should I spend my time watching it?

Again, I haven't watched it, and I'll wait until the season is over and see what the consensus is after the full season. But even if it does turn out to be good as whole, why did the show runners seemingly not do much with the plot for a quarter of the season?

The Expanse took about four episodes to really 'set' the universe, but even the first two episodes had quite a bit that happened ("Remember the Cant!").

How does a show producer worth their salt not know that you have to give juicy bits early in a show's run?

I'm not suggesting critique without completion is invalid: I am suggesting critique without viewing is invalid.

Since BBSs and Usenet there has been plenty of commentary of ongoing series.

But the difference now seems to be people having an opinion, sharing that opinion... and then calling out that they haven't even watched the part of the show that is out.

Which boggles my mind.

I probably wouldn't opine publicly on Sidney Poitier or Katharine Hepburn as actors if I'd never seen anything they were in...

Watched only the first episode of Dragons, but I am not convinced. What is the point of this show? We know that the real fight between dead and living is happening 200 years later. We know that all of the dragons will be dead at some point. The characters itself are pretty boring, compared to what Thrones had to offer. It is technically well made, but it is boring.

I recently binge watched a series (Irma Vep) that, very tongue in cheek, addressed the malaise of "platforms" affecting film/cinema. It's a very complex work (in terms of multiple layers of readings) spanning the director's closure over his lost love (see Irma Vep 1996), a hat tip to Truffaut's Day for Night, and a very explicitly expressed concern of characters of how "content platforms" have killed cinema and mutated it to "TV" and "series". Naturally all this was said, to wrap up the irony train, on HBO's platform.

Irma Vep (2022): https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13649314

Have to check it out. Not sure about the 2022 show, but the 1996 movie sounds intriguing. Don't remember anything about Day for Night, just that I found it similarly confusing as Fellini's 8 1/2. I do remember that I really liked Jules et Jim by Truffaut, but then again, it has Jeanne Moreau. I can recommend her movie Bay of Angels. It's a simple but great movie: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056846/

I really liked the 2022 -- there is a lot to chew on if you are a film buff as it is very self-referential in context of French Cinema -- but it's likely not everyone's cup of tea at the surface level. Technically, like (or surpassing) his Carlos miniseries, it is exceptional. Great acting as well. Lars Eidinger's was quite excellent imho, as was Vincent Macaigne's. (Plan to revisit the 1996, for Maggie Cheung. /g)

For me, I like the political intrigue. It's also a reminder that the quest for power is never ending, and even when one wins, it's never lasting.

But, to your point, it's not that dissimilar from other quest for power dramas. I told a friend the new GoT is a bit like Succession with dragons. The quest for power is part of the human condition, which is why I think so many enjoy the stories in whatever form they are told.

> For me, I like the political intrigue.

Have you watched The Expanse? If you like faction-y stuff, it's worth checking out.

Yep, can recommend The Expanse as well. I find the end somewhat unsatisfying though. There is potential for a sequel, 500 years later or so.

Of course, and read many of the books :)

I really like Succession, but sorry, Dragons is nothing like that. There is no political intrigue, just people in costumes making fairly obvious moves.

They both seem fairly obvious, yet still enjoyable. The one thing a GoT based show has going for it though, is they have historically not been afraid to kill off major characters. That willingness to kill characters keeps the audience a bit on their toes.

Now that you mention it, I have to admit obviousness is not the distinction between Succession and Dragon. I guess the dragon characters just seem dull to me, and I don't really care about what they are up to.

I disagree. Not every narrative has to be one over some apocalyptic threat. I actually prefer the more grounded (for fantasy I suppose) story over the zombie apocalypse-adjacent White Walker stuff.

If I want to watch a history lesson, I can do that, there are some great documentaries out there. Probably produced for less money. And I would actually learn something.

But of course, there are many interesting narratives that don't involve the apocalypse. The Wire has a great one. Bladerunner is superb. The recent Black Bird was captivating, too.

Dragons though? Just boring.

I'm not saying it's of the same caliber as the trilogy, but it's definitely not garbage which deserves one star. It's already better than the hobbit, however low of a bar that is.

If it was worse than everyone has said it was, it’d still be better than Hobbit 3.

I haven't watched the show yet, but is it not generally understood that plot and character development in television proceeds at a slower pace than in film? It's arguably one of the main reasons to chose one medium over the other. You cite House of Dragons, but I hardly think you can argue that the first two episodes of that show could make a movie.