(Spoilers ahead. Loads of spoilers.)

Well, it happened. HBO premiered House of the Dragon last night. It’s the prequel to the hugely popular Game of Thrones. I watched episode one and have some thoughts. Let’s dive in shall we? Get right to the heart of House of the Dragons problems. So far. Granted this is episode one and the writers hopefully have addressed these issues. Episode one was just ‘Meh’. We have seen all this stuff before. The CGI dragons that knocked your socks off in GOT are back. Right out of the gate in HOTD we get an epic flight scene of a dragon and rider. And it’s meh. I don’t care. I don’t know who the fuck is on that thing, so I don’t care. And just having a CGI dragon isn’t gonna blow me away. It comes with the GOT territory. And it’s one of those long sweeping shots that you know producers were hoping would just floor the viewer. Meh. Not so much.

Okay, now for the meat and potatoes of the episode. Just FYI, I don’t know anyone’s name. So, there will be a bunch of loosey goosey nick names. I’m not invested enough yet. Just saying. Okay, the King on the Iron throne doesn’t really want to be king. It kinda just happened because the old king was going to die and didn’t want his daughter to be the ruler even though she was first born. Get ready for some serious patriarchy talk. So, the current king has a brother who’s a dick and a daughter. He needs a son, so he can hand over the Iron Throne to a dude. Patriarchy! The Kings wife is preggo though and the King is sure it’ll be a boy. Whew.

Queenie has a horrible labor. Breach birth. Ol’ kingy guy has to choose between mom and baby both dying or just mom. Gues what he does? Guess? Yeah. They save the baby and momma goes bye bye. Again: Patriarchy bad. Dudes are horrible people. Then… plot twist! Baby boy dies too! Now Kingy Von KIngy names his sole daughter as heir to the Throne! Oh no! What will she do? There’s never been a queen on the throne! Guess what? I don’t really care. For real. She seems nice and all but am I worried? No. Yes, there will be infighting and dragons and people fucking each other over. Plenty of tits and ass, but it’s all a rehash of stuff we’ve seen before on GOT.

Here’s what Game of Thrones had going for it. Ready? Stakes. The world was at risk from a frozen zombie horde and all these dumbshits were arguing over who was going to be in charge. And all of this was set in a world we had never seen before! We discovered Dragons and Elves and Magic. It was fucking wild! GOT opened with a mysterious zombie attack in the frozen forest. The viewer was all ‘what in the fuck was that?!” THEN they introduced us to the Starks, the Wall and Westeros. There was tension and stakes throughout the whole thing! House of Dragon (so far) is just rude people doing rude shit in a grown-up woke soap opera, but they have dragons. That’s not going to cut it. If House of the Dragon wants to be a hit, it’s going to need some “Winter is coming” type stakes. Gimme some impending doom.

At the end of episode one Mr. King dude tells his daughter she’s gotta be strong because his grandpa had a dream about a long night with some bad weather and she’s gotta be ready. Now, is he talking about the events that we’ll see in GOT times? Or will HOTD do the long night from the books when the White Walkers first appeared? Let’s hope that’s what they’re planning. Gimme some frozen zombies. Or gimme something we haven’t seen before. Either way, gimme some stakes. Cause right now the show is just meh.

Here’s what to expect in coming weeks: More “women can be leaders,” angry men in wigs and dragons doing dragon things. Meh.