This episode felt awfully rushed. Episode 3 was amazing, albeit long for what it was; They could've cut some scenes and gave more screen time to other characters, all whilst keeping the exact same impact. Episode 4 and 5 was the opposite, they gave us a baddie that had an immense amount of screen time but packed little to no punch and was gone in a matter of seconds. Another small nitpick with her, although a leader, Kathleen looked immensely well-fed and soft-spoken for someone who just crawled out of a torturous regime wherein they traded apples for people's lives. Bad casting? I think so.
Henry and Sam... where was their screen time? Did Kathleen eat it up? We didn't see enough interactions between the two duos at all. I cried watching episode 3 having had more than enough time to grow attached to the characters, but I didn't have the time to grow attached to Henry or Sam.
I thought the idea of making Sam deaf was fantastic, it wasn't weird or shoe horned in.
TL;DR: They gave too much screen-time to a miss-cast baddie, a slight too much to the couple in episode 3 but very little to Henry and Sam, making their impact significantly less. It's just a good, rushed episode that missed the marks for being a great one.
The ending was later game of thrones stupid.
Daemon running out there like an idiot, and the dozens of archers firing at him miss, again, again, and again, and again, and again, and then oh now finally they hit.
All the while he's fighting against opponent, after opponent, after opponent, against multiple opponents, as the crab feeder sends out dozens of his men.
It's just stupid. And his dragon stayed back because? No reason. Could have been attacking the archers.
And it turns out Daemon didn't do this solely to try and kill the crab feeder, but to try and bait him out so he/his allies can kill him and his army?
But wait. Allies said they had around 700 men. They're in a war. So crab feeder must have hundreds or around that number. Crab feeder wouldn't be stupid enough to send out a big force just for daemon, especially because he was wounded by arrows and on the ground, and still being attacked by them. Plus, we saw him send out what two dozen of his warriors? Against Daemon. For some reason.
Then when allies show and dragon attack, Crab Feeder and his allies don't go back in the caves? Which was their usual tactic each time for literally years during the war.
Even though they're in a losing war, Daemon and his allies win at the end.
None of this makes sense.
Writing quality across the whole episode is lower than the previous two, and we have now reached later game of thrones level of stupidity.
Would Daemon have really done that stupid run? Oh and we also see more of his dishonorable nature by nearly beating a messenger to death, and then betraying the white flag of truth. Even though he at least seemed to have some honorable aspects to him in previous episodes, even though he was brutal. Was this all in the book? The stupid suicide run, the dishonorable actions. And was it in the book when Daemon charged right in the middle of battle on his dragon and got pounded by arrows and almost died? He got lucky because one went into his shoulder. This is stupid. Even on the run he could have been killed by the first volley of arrows. I'd be very surprised if any of this was in the book.
Edit: And we don't get enough info about things regarding the status of armies, and the numbers we do get don't make sense. So Valeryon's forces have 700 men left? Eh? That low? And you're waging a war? Been in a war for years? How many forces does Daemon have? Does he have any left? He had goldcloaks right? For some reason. I guess he had so much of their loyalty is what it said in previous episodes. Yeah i guess they just followed him to Dragonstone and then into war. Where are they? Are they still a part of his army? If not, then it's just him? Why did the Valeryon guy say Daemon is helping them lose the war, he has a dragon. He's consistently helping, especially so if he's contributing his goldcloak forces, and i assume that's all Daemon would have, since we don't know if he's the lord of anywhere and able to conscript people.
So many questions like that. All through the episode about things. When an episode is a mixed bag like this, you start to see and question many other things. I still enjoyed the episode overall though.
Edit 2: Since a lot of people seem to agree with me, i thought i'd go into more detail. The show hasn't completely broken down yet like later Game of Thrones, nor has the logic been twisted too much like middle Game of Thrones. The previous 2 episodes i thought were really good, but this episode you could tell had a different writer, and that's not good, because it makes you less immersed, like sometimes you feel these characters shouldn't be saying what they're saying. Contrast that to Game of Thrones season 1, and i couldn't tell who was writing what episode, as it was good across the board. So early into this season and i'm seeing a mismatch in writing is not a good sign.
I think we have a lot of interesting characters in this show and i'm looking forward to continuing. I'd rate this episode a 6.5/10, but 6 or 7 is valid to me. Most of this episode i thought was pretty good, but there were too many things for me to choose 6. The mismatch in writing, the timeskip, the brattiness of Rhaenyra, the white deer heavy handed symbolism, the end of the episode and the anticlimactic nature of the crabfeeder. The king feeling a bit too lost in his soul, when he's supposed to be king and has been king for a long time, and has a queen and children. I understand the reasoning, i just don't buy it much. But i still like the many conversations, politics and intrigue in the show, and the characters and story.
Might be that the series has been on hiatus since 2019 due to COVID, but there were quite a couple of things I forgot and had to look up, which wasn't the case with other shows like Russian Doll or say Atlanta. Anyways, what about this season? Was it any good? I could see people picking the season finale as one of the best episodes of the year but I found the seventh one to be amazing and show what Barry is good at doing. Sure, it's a series about a hitman who wants to be an actor but the show doesn't feel like it has embraced too much of its lighter side as often as it believes itself to. For example, we know things are going to get darker in Breaking Bad however we never really forget Walt is a drug kingpin in the works, Barry, on the other hand, doesn't really demonstrate that he's turning into an actor. Anyways, everyone deserves some awards attention, particularly Henry Winkler and Sarah Goldberg, who both turned in some amazing turns. Hader's great, always has been, but as a showrunner, I feel like he and Alec Berg seem to be using the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul technique of doing now and solve later, this works great for the Albequerque universe, but not so much here since S1 ends on a cliffhanger that really destroys one great character arc and 2 goes into some lazy tropes. Although this does fix some of that, it ends with me wondering if they even have a series after this. Barry is arrested? And considering S4 wasn't labelled as to its last, I'm gonna be surprised to see what this show will look like next year. Anyways, some amazing moments but Barry is awful and I can't say he's like other anti-heroes, I seem to find him repulsive and that goes for the other characters on this show like Jean and Sally as his enablers. If I pick newer shows over this at the end of the year, its because I believe TV needs to be a place where you tune in for someone you want to see every week, I can't say that's the case here or at least not for a good portion of its run.
