The House of the Dragon Scorecard is an accounting of the events of this week’s episode in which points are awarded to characters and dragons on a scale of 0 to 10. Points will be awarded for any or no reason.
It took three episodes and two of the worst murder plots you’ve ever seen, but Rhaenyra and Alicent are finally talking again. Kind of. It’s more whispering than talking, seeing as one of them is undercover and holding a knife. But still, this counts as progress. Or rather, it might have counted as progress if the conversation moved anything closer to peace instead of revealing that the war everyone is hellbent on fighting is the irreversible result of a drug-addled old man not telling a story well. Whoops?
Elsewhere in the realm: Daemon goes to Harrenhal and refuses to eat; Criston remains terrible at almost everything other than sleeping with his boss’s mother; and Mysaria continues to rise in both Rhaenyra’s court and our season totals.
Let’s tally up some scores.
Images have a way of sticking with you longer than words, and I suspect the look on Rhaenyra’s face when she realizes exactly how, and why, she lost her spot on the throne will be burned into my brain for a while. Just the look in her eyes, really, as she learns what we already knew, that the whole thing boils down to a miscommunication between her opiate-riddled dying father and her former best friend. Not a plot. Not a long-developing scheme. Just an old man telling a story for the 800th time and someone interpreting it wrong. If Viserys and Alicent had named their son, say, Larry, there would’ve been no Aegon confusion and Rhaenyra would be the queen right now. I doubt this makes Rhaenyra feel any better about it.
It probably makes her feel worse, actually. At least with a plot or a scheme there are bad actors to blame, evildoers to curse, enemies to get revenge on. Something this stupid is just flabbergasting, like if you prepared all week for a big job interview and a bird pooped on the windshield of a car in front of you and the driver rear-ended someone else and you ended up stuck in traffic for 45 minutes and the job went to the less-qualified person who was supposed to interview after you. I would be furious about this forever.
What I’m saying is that between this and the warmongering council that talks to her like she’s a child, she deserves an episode or two where she just flies around on her dragon to clear her head.
We could go a lot of ways with this section. We could discuss Alicent also having a council filled with warmongering goofs. We could discuss the raven she sent to Rhaenyra. We could, as always, discuss her idiot sons and boyfriend bumbling about the kingdom. But I want to talk about security.
Specifically, I want to talk about the thing where war is on the horizon and her grandson was just decapitated in his own bedroom and her enemy was almost assassinated in her own bedroom and yet, despite all of that, the same enemy — and former friend — was able to dress like a nun and sneak all the way through the city and get close enough to her that they could have a private conversation at knifepoint. This is … not ideal.
There’s a temptation here to attribute this to sloppy storytelling, just the whole oh come on, be serious of it all. Which I get. But I do ask that you consider another, much funnier alternative: that many characters on this show are a stupid as rocks and that’s why these things keep happening. But we’ll get to Criston soon enough.
Hey, what’s Daemon up to? Well …
• He lands at Harrenhal and makes a dramatic play of claiming it for Rhaenyra and demanding to be addressed as “Your Grace,” which is met with shrugs by dudes who live in a dilapidated, wet castle.
• He skips what looks like a lovely meal because he thinks someone might want to poison him.
• He’s now having visions where his wife is a child and sewing the head back onto the toddler that was killed due to his bungled plans.
Other than that, doing great.
I got so excited when this little demon started stomping his feet and acting like he was going to swoop into war on his dragon. That would have been thrilling. He would have died within moments, surely, or at least gotten knocked off his dragon and hidden under a tree in knee-knocking fear until someone big and strong rescued him. I would have enjoyed that.
Instead, he gets talked out of it and goes to a brothel with some bozos where he gets drunk and mocks his brother a little. Very unsatisfying.
ON ONE HAND: Saves everyone on his little mission by identifying a break in the clouds and a swooping dragon.
ON THE OTHER HAND: I know he has other responsibilities as the Hand now, but I still feel it speaks poorly of his command that Rhaenyra got that close to Alicent, and that Aegon was stumbling around a brothel whipping open curtains that any reasonably competent assassin could have been hiding behind with a sword to run through the dumb king’s throat.
It is no small feat to be considered the most incompetent character on this show but, man, this handsome goon is making a heck of a run at it.
AEGON: I am going to war on my dragon!
LARYS: [sighs, realizes Aegon will surely get murdered and waste weeks of manipulation]
AEGON: I’m mean and tough!
LARYS: Actually, everyone thinks doing this makes you weak. They talk about it a lot. They think you’re a stupid little baby.
AEGON: I have decided to stay.
LARYS: As you wish, Your Grace.
This is the second consecutive episode where the show has attempted to make me feel bad for Aemond. Last week, he was curled up in a little hairless ball in Sylvi’s lap, moping about the various indignities that have befallen him. This week, he does the same sad thing but is also interrupted by Aegon and mocked about it in front of the new Kingsguard bozos. No! Stop! You cannot make me feel bad for him!
Especially not in an episode where he is rude to Sylvi. Sylvi is cool! I know he was embarrassed and hurt and just lashing out at anyone who doesn’t have the power to fight back. I know he’s a very broken little boy! But still, you can’t demean and stomp away nude from the one person who listens to your whining all the time! Jesus Christ, Aemond, come on!
Wait. Wait. I know how I can fix this …
There. That feels better.
I choose to believe there is a universe where Baela gets to that field 30 seconds earlier, disregards her orders completely, and just swoops down to torch Criston Cole and his squadron of dopes and let her dragon eat their remains to get rid of all the evidence. No one would have known. She could have flown home and been like “Nope, never saw them. Weird. Anyway …”
I would have cheered out loud.
Oh, you know, just your standard mom-daughter conversation about motherhood and mortality and how sometimes daughters have to forgive their mothers for having torrid affairs with the security detail that leave their son unprotected on the night a ratcatcher and an assassin show up to behead him. You’ve seen it a hundred times.
Turns out Mysaria did tip off the guards to thwart the attempted Parent Trap murder, and she uses it to barter her way into Rhaenyra’s inner circle. And she immediately uses the position to help Rhaenyra sneak into town to get next to Alicent. Say what you will about Mysaria, but the woman is efficient. Also, do not say anything bad about her. I will get angry. She might be my favorite character on the show now. I wish podcasts existed in the HOTD universe so she could do one that reveals everything she knows about everyone. Mysaria would be a tremendous influencer.
All Rhaenys ever does on this show is tell the truth and put incompetent dopes in their place. Every time she shows up, I start trying to figure out which poor sap is about to get cooked. It’s a fun little game for me.
Two things are true here:
1) Corlys is very worried about his line of succession and whether any of his ocean-averse descendants will be able to lead his prodigious fleet of ships going forward, which is understandable.
2) “The Sea Snake” is an incredibly cool nickname and I think we should try to find a professional athlete we can bestow it upon, whether their sport is water-based or not. I’m leaning toward Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa.
Both worth thinking about.
One of the main differences between me and Rhaena Targaryen is that if someone pulled me aside and said, “Hey, due to all the recent murders and attempted murders and ongoing plots for additional murders, we are going to send you off to a safe location with some mop-topped little kids and baby dragons for a while,” I would kiss that person directly on the mouth.
I want to ruffle that beautiful head of hair so bad.
A few notes about Ulf:
• He gets the full GoodFellas tracking-shot entrance as he glad-hands his way into the brothel, which leads me to the reasonable assumption that we will be seeing a lot more of Ulf going forward.
• He appears to be a big drinker who makes grandiose claims like “Actually, I’m a secret Targaryen but do not tell anyone” to whoever will listen to him, which is a promising development for me, a viewer who loves messy drunk characters with big mouths.
• The existence of a character named “Ulf” is delightful on its own but even better when you factor in that someone references a dude whose name is just “Jason” earlier in the episode, which is a fun reminder that sometimes people on this show say things like, “Greetings, Your Grace. My name is Lexhaedryn the Benevolent and this is my colleague Wally.”
Speaking of new characters with interesting names …
When did you know Gwayne was going to be a sniveling weasel? Was it when he made that smug (and deserved) face at Criston? Was it when he started talking about taking a night off to get drunk with his buddies? Was it when you learned his name is “Gwayne”?
I’ll tell you when I knew: The instant I saw his face and realized he’s being played by Freddie Fox, an actor who is probably very nice in real life but who was also on Slow Horses as a character named Spider who I hated with the searing heat of a glowing hibachi.
I am thrilled to have him on this show.
Simon is not impressed with Daemon. He does not seem to be all that interested in anything that’s going on in the kingdom, for that matter. He just wants to eat dinner. I respect this man very much.
I choose to believe they were buried in the same grave because none of the characters on the show knew which one was which either.
Okay, a correction and clarification are due here …
In last week’s edition of this scorecard, I said I was happy for the dog because he was now free of the abusive owner who kicked him during the murder scheme that ended with a decapitated child. A friend of mine reached out via text the next day to inform me that it was the other assassin who kicked the dog, not the dog’s rat-catching owner, and the look on the dog’s face could have been sadness instead of relief upon seeing its owner hanging from a noose.
My position on this is as follows: I regret the error but I am still happy for the dog for being free of the kind of owner who would drag him into a scheme that resulted in him being kicked and a child getting murdered. Either way, I have awarded the dog an additional five points for the confusion. I think that’s the right thing to do.
• Jacaerys Velaryon: 23
• Mysaria: 23
• Rhaenys Targaryen: 22.5
• Larys Strong: 19
• Corlys Velaryon: 18
• Sylvi: 18
• Rhaenyra Targaryen: 16
• Baela Targaryen: 16
• Hugh the Scorpion Maker: 16
• Helaena Targaryen: 15
• The Ratcatcher’s Dog: 15
• Alicent Hightower: 14
• Alyn: 9
• Criston Cole: 9
• Simon Strong: 8
• Erryk Cargyll: 6
• Arryk Cargyll: 6
• Ulf: 6
• Aegon Targaryen: 4
• Otto Hightower: 4
• Aemond Targaryen: 3
• Rhaena Targaryen: 3
• Gwayne Hightower: 2
• Various Ratcatcher Assassins: 0
• Daemon Targaryen: 0
