House of the Dragon Scorecard: Bad Plan, Worse Execution

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.

When we last saw our collection of dragons and devious blondes, civil war was imminent. As of season-two premiere “A Son for a Son,” it is … still imminent. Perhaps more imminent, now that Daemon has orchestrated an assassination plot that goes so crooked a toddler gets decapitated by a ratcatcher. Rarely what you’re looking for.

Elsewhere, the Greens and Blacks lay the groundwork for the battle they seemingly cannot avoid. Rhaenyra and Alicent grieve and contemplate and try to prevent the men in their lives from setting the world on fire. Aegon continues to be a brat. A man named Hugh gets paid. And naturally, there is scheming. So let’s assess our most and least valuable players as the Dance of the Dragons kicks off in earnest.

Rhaenyra spends most of the episode flying around on a dragon in search of proof her son was murdered by a different dragon, finds it, cries and hugs her surviving son, and then holds a ceremony for him to say good-bye.

Rhaenyra has had better weeks. Not many, given, uh, everything that has ever happened on this show. But some. Points are awarded just for dealing with stuff sometimes.

To be perfectly honest, Rhaenys could have walked into my apartment and kicked me right in the shin, and I still would have given her five points just for the thing where Daemon tries to order her to go on a dragon mission and she responds with the show’s version of “lmao no.”

But she didn’t kick me, so 7.5 feels right.

Daemon:

— Wants to start a war so bad.

— Is getting thwarted repeatedly by the women around him.

— Tries to have his chaotic counterpart killed but hires two idiots who mess it up and kill someone else.

If we don’t get a scene where Daemon and Aemond sit across a table and tell each other they’re “not so different, after all,” I swear to God, I will eat my MacBook.

I’m torn on Alicent. Sometimes it seems like she wants to do the right thing, to avoid war and destruction and letting the men around her scheme their way into both. But she also has to get some blame here, probably, on account of raising two of the most awful children you’ll ever see on television. It’s tricky. And it might be why we saw her spend a not-insignificant amount of this episode shacking up with dreamboats and washing the same spot on her shoulder in the bathtub with an intensity that implies she’s trying to scrub away a lifetime’s worth of torment.

We will continue to monitor this situation.

The grandson Otto installed as king is overruling him in front of the people and getting bamboozled into ousting him as Hand by a man who trades secrets in exchange for lustful glances at Otto’s daughter’s toes. Another grandson is plotting battle strategies behind his back with the man his daughter is having an affair with. His great-grandson just got beheaded by assassins sent by the husband of the woman he screwed out of the throne. His daughter is angry at him. No one really likes him that much, now that I think about it.

Other than that, it’s going pretty well.

I was tempted to give Aegon zero points on account of him being a little snot who orders adults to give his son pony rides and wants to murder everyone who is mean to him while also making everyone like him. Pathetic behavior across the board.

But then I saw him sitting around with his idiot friends getting drunk and talking crap, and I actually felt a little bad for him. That’s probably all he wants to do. Just slug wine and run his mouth. He didn’t ask for this. I don’t know why I suddenly went soft on this little goon. I’m sure I’ll go back to hating him soon.

It’s good to step back and remember that a fair amount of the mess everyone is in right now stems from Aemond being an angry little dweeb who couldn’t control the dragon he basically stole. That’s why Lucerys died on the diplomatic mission and why everybody is ready for war and why Daemon tries to have him assassinated in a plot that results in a different blonde royal child getting murdered. There are a lot of other moving parts and plenty of bad blood dating back long before he was born, but let’s be sure to never forget that part.

The Sea Snake is remarkably chill about the Rhaenyra and Daemon thing. Think about it all for a second: His son married Rhaenyra and then “died” — a faked death, but still — under mysterious circumstances. His daughter married Daemon and ended up committing suicide by dragon. Shortly after both of these things happened, his recently widowed daughter-in-law and son-in-law got married. Then his brother went in front of the king and all their friends and (correctly) proclaimed that Rhaenyra was attempting to pass off her bastard children as his grandsons and Daemon decapitated him on the spot for it.

I’m just saying, like, if anyone has a right to hold a grudge, you know? I’m still a little upset at my old college roommate for taking my George Foreman grill. The Sea Snake is a much more forgiving man than I am.

He’s a sweet boy with wonderful hair who just lost his brother and learned about Winter.

When did you know the plot to kill Aemond was going to go sideways? Reasonable arguments can be made that the answer here should be “immediately” because lord in heaven knows no one on this show can carry out a complicated task without getting double-crossed or bumbling into disarray somehow. I won’t fight you on that. But I’m going to go with “the instant he kicked the dog.”

Did I think it was going to escalate from there straight to beheading a child in front of his mother? Well, no. In my defense, I really don’t see how any of us could have made that leap without advance knowledge. It’s … a heck of a leap. Maybe not for this show.

Is it weird that I was more upset by the dog-kicking than the child-beheading? It’s probably weird. I swear I’m a good person. I’ve just seen enough spoiled children on these shows grow up to be little sociopath kings that I expect the worst out of them now. The dog did nothing wrong. Leave the dog alone.

It’s usually pretty tough sledding for the female characters on this show, but, even with that low bar, “married to a wannabe tyrant and forced by assassins to point out which child to murder in front of her” is a lot.

I hope everyone leaves her alone and lets her do her little arts and crafts for a few weeks.

ON ONE HAND: Power-hungry murderous weasel who is meeting with Aemond in secret to make battle plans behind the backs of everyone who is allegedly responsible for making battle plans. Strikes me as the kind of guy who might drown a cat if it was making too much noise outside his window. Not to be trusted.

ON THE OTHER HAND: Very handsome. Just outrageously handsome. With his face and hair and armor and eyes that could melt the entire Wall up north. There’s a reason Alicent keeps inviting him over after insisting the time before was the last. I really cannot stress in strong enough terms that he is a handsome man. So there’s really a lot to consider here.

Say what you will about Larys and his methods and his transactional relationships and his willingness to have his own family murdered in the name of acquiring power, but the man can absolutely spot a mark 100 miles away. Aegon does not stand a chance. Larys manipulates the poor dope by telling him everyone thinks he’s easily manipulated. He’s playing chess against an opponent who calls the knights “horsies.” It all appears to be leading to a Larys vs. Otto power struggle with Alicent in the middle. I’m weirdly thrilled by it.

I have decided I like her and want her to be free from whatever Daemon is dragging her into. I reserve the right to backtrack on this the instant anything happens that makes me feel otherwise.

Things worth noting about Hugh:

— He went up to Aegon and requested that all of his fellow smiths be paid up front for their work.

— He succeeded.

— His job is to make massive crossbows called scorpions that are used to shoot fire-breathing dragons out of the sky, which is cool.

— I love him.

I do not think it is unreasonable to ask that we get an entire episode about Hugh at some point this season. Just a solid hour of him and his buddies making weapons and going to the pub afterward. I hope he shoots Aemond with one of the scorpions. Hugh is a man of the people.

I have made peace with this show having a Rhaenyra and a Rhaenys and a Rhaenya. I can’t really get mad when my name is Brian and there are also people out there named Bryan and Ryan and Brianna and Rian (Johnson, Knives Out) and Ryne (Sandberg, Chicago Cubs). But I am going to have an impossible time with Erryk and Arryk, the twin brothers from the Kingsguard who split up and aligned themselves with opposite sides of the Green vs. Black feud. Erryk was the one we saw this week talking to Daemon after the meeting with Mysaria. Arryk is still with Alicent and Otto and that whole crew. It is my strong suspicion that we are headed toward a sword fight between the two of them where I will have no clue which one is which, just a flurry of clanging steel and people shouting names that both sound like “Eric” until one of them kills the other and makes my life much easier going forward.

I understand that this is a small and petty complaint, but I need you to know that I heard Erryk say, “Arryk and I were named to the Kingsguard at just 8 and 10,” and it sent me into a spiral about whether they were really twins or if there is some magic on this show that creates a two-year gap between identical twins until I remembered that “8 and 10” is just how people on this show say 18. I’m sorry, but one of them needs to go.