By: Alex Tilton

Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon had an interesting problem. How do you follow up on the most popular show in HBO history? To complicate things even more, how do you redeem the most popular show in HBO history from its infamous train-wreck of an ending? Factor in an unpleasable fanbase and an author who famously doesn’t get his books finished on time and you’ve got a real problem on your hands. What to do?

Go back to base clay and start over, apparently. The very first thing that House of the Dragon tells us is that this is 174 years before the events of the original show. They’re being as clear as possible that this will not be the same show. And it isn’t.

Individual episodes are set anywhere from several months to several years apart. In midseason the show is set to jump forward a full decade in its internal chronology. We don’t examine each and every development in the lives of our characters. Rather we catch up with them at crucial moments. This has some benefits and some drawbacks. On the plus side, the writers don’t have to break their brains stitching every moment of the show to every other relevant moment to prevent continuity errors, thus giving the show a much freer feeling. On the down side, we now have to sit through a bunch of expositional scenes where someone just flat out tell us what happened during the two years these characters lived through since last we saw them. Those scenes are done well, this is HBO after all, but expositional dialogue is better when it’s happening during some kind of plot action.

Aside from a few out of character moments that the plot needs in order to move itself forward, I have no real complaints. The show does a good job of humanizing most of its characters, with a few requisite exceptions. You can’t have a plot without an antagonist, and this person is necessarily hard to empathize with. Matt Smith does a superb job playing the casually violent Daemon Targaryen. He’s the clear standout in this cast, but he benefits from being the only really colorful character in the story. Daemon believes in the supremacy of his bloodline, and the natural right of his family to rule in whatever way they see fit. Everyone else spends most of their time being stoically uncomfortably in their position at court. Our protagonist, Rhaenyra Targaryen, has what you might call ‘princess problems’. Milly Alcock is a good enough actor to make them feel real, and painful, but no matter how good she is her character isn’t written with enough flare and flash to really stick out. The same can be said for Alicent Hightower (Emily Carey). Her character is supposed to be a well raised, obedient, stoic young woman…and she is. So, what is there to talk about? Carey does as good a job as anyone could do but there just isn’t a lot there. King Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) has a little more to work with. His character is bent under the weight of the throne, driven to drink by the various nobles hectoring him for one thing or another, and desperate to find some way of keeping the kingdom from civil war without ruining his daughter’s life in the process.

But all of these judgments are provisional. Remember that the season is only halfway complete (at the time of this writing). A lot more remains to unfold, and we’re also getting a new cast of adult actors to go with it. We can assume they’ll all be good, but that won’t help them if the characters aren’t interesting. I get it that not everybody can be a core character, but the original Game of Thrones did a good job of giving every character that you spent significant time with some kind of a gimmick. Even Podrick Payne (Tyrion’s / Brienne’s squire) had big moments and an interesting personality. I’m hoping to see more of the same in the second half of the season.

But the reason I’m spending this much time on the blandness of certain characters is because the rest of the show is completely fine. Even the bland characters are done really well…they just don’t pop out. But the background they’re blending into is a richly detailed, highly believable, and fascinating one. It’s just nice being back in the world of Westeros again, and so far they’ve given me good reason to want to stay.