00:00Welcome back everyone.
00:07It is Amelia.
00:08I hope you are fine.
00:09House of the Dragons Season 2 Episode 5 is a quieter installment but also
00:14an important one.
00:15The Dance of the Dragons has fully started now after the events of Episode 4.
00:20But this is a chance for both sides of the civil war to assist their wounds and regroup.
00:24While they're doing that, Damon sinks further into his adrenal nightmare with some very
00:29surprising narrative choices along the way.
00:32Damon's visions at Harrenhal get weirder than ever as Episode 5's installment includes
00:37having sex with his long dead mother, Alyssa Targaryen.
00:41Damon's mother died when he was around 3 years old.
00:44So there is perhaps a sense of Damon wanting to feel the motherly love he missed out on
00:49while also searching for a woman who will take care of him and feed his own ego and
00:54desires.
00:55This is certainly an, yeah rem, interesting scene, although even a bit much incest-wise,
01:00even for the Targaryens.
01:01That vision drives the rest of Damon's arc really as he goes on to declare that he wants
01:06to be king and not king consort.
01:08Matt Smith is superb here and clearly having a great time.
01:12He gets to be utterly despicable and arrogant and rude and all of Damon's other charming
01:17qualities and yet also manages to find the character's vulnerability, not to mention
01:22confusion which is important to making this story work.
01:25I don't think everything here works perfectly, in part because there is so much happening
01:30to Damon within a single episode.
01:32He goes from threatening the Brackens to coming up with a plan with the Blackwoods, which
01:36is then executed and then the Riverlords angrily come upon him without a real sense of the
01:42passage of time.
01:43It also makes some key changes to the book in him wanting to be king rather than seeing
01:47Rhaenyra rule and while that's not inherently a bad thing, the jury is out on how
01:52that will work for the story going forward.
01:55In terms of the fallout from the battle at Rook's Rest, I think the scenes in King's
01:59Landing are where the show really nails it.
02:01There's plenty of drama given King Aegon could still die and Damon gets to go even
02:06more full throttle into villain mode as he gets to take control like he's always wanted.
02:12Even Mitchell and Olivia Cooke once again do great work in their scenes and it begins
02:16to show the cracks in Alicent.
02:18Despite the bad she's done, Cooke does make you feel for her.
02:21The scenes with the small folk were particularly good because it would be so easy to overlook
02:26them.
02:27It's always great to get a sense of the real people who are living and dying underneath
02:31the rule of the nobles, those who cannot find food while their rulers squabble over a big
02:36chair.
02:37It does a nice job showing the escalating struggles and tensions among the residents
02:41of King's Landing and I look forward to seeing when that eventually boils over.
02:46Plus, as visuals go, a dragon's head being carted through the streets is a very striking
02:51and powerful one.
02:52Illumin, or not?
02:53Give me some ideas related to my video in comments on below if you like this video and
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