Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

The first two episodes of Knight of the Seven Kingdoms were a little hard for me to get through. I don’t mind a lack of action if the character arcs are doing a decent job of carrying the story. But the main character Dunc is super annoying and extremely frustrating to watch. The only reason I am even continuing with it is because Egg is a little cutie patootie and I will power through to see his story unfold.

Episode 3 starts off with Egg arguing with this horse and it's hilarious. This kid is adorable. I still am not feeling the “humor”. The horse pooping is supposed to be funny but it's just not. All of the Game of Thrones projects share a certain intellectual standard. In that the subject matter is heavier and thus is very dialogue heavy. The problem with Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is that it doesn’t share that same intensity. Which would be fine if the entire thing was a comedy, but it's not. There are moments of immature, crude humor against the backdrop of the Westeros we know already. It's inconsistent and it makes the whole show horrible to watch. Consistent tone seems like asking for the bare minimum.

I like this little scene of Dunc and Egg bonding over breakfast and then over the tournament. I anticipate that much of this story is going to be about their relationship so setting that up is important. Especially since Dunc is extremely annoying and his relationship with this little kid seems to be his only redeeming quality. Egg is quite adorable and he just wants to belong somewhere.

The Targaryen prince is a little shit, which is something I should have known I suppose. I have yet to meet a Targaryen man worth anything. We all know the women of that house are the only cool ones. This also seems to be the shared sentiment of the actual characters. The Targaryen's are not being well received. This makes perfect sense because these two chucklefucks are such assholes. This is the era of Targaryen's that are assholes just to be assholes. And Duncan actually does something worth liking which is kick the shit out of the little prince. This is the first time I’ve given a shit about his character in three whole episodes.

“The dragon will never lose”, bitch you ain’t a dragon, Dany would chew you up and spit you out. Dunc is also like a foot taller than literally everyone around him, so it really does take 3 or 4 dudes to take him down. And the Egg jumps in to save Dunc who finds out that his little buddy is also a Targaryen prince.

I would imagine that is a pretty big bomb to drop, yes I knew but in fiction what a good twist. It seems that the show has finally found its groove. The first two episodes were a little rough, I found this one much more enjoyable. I think the pacing was better for this third episode. I still don’t think the show has found the tonal balance that it wants, but it also seems to be settling into something so I will continue to give it a chance. Egg was always my favorite but now that we all know that he is a Targaryen I feel like my love for him is only going to increase.

It also forces the Targaryen’s to be a bigger part of the story. I love that there is this unspoken agreement among the fandom and the people producing these shows that we only care if the Targaryen’s are involved. That also seems to be Martin’s stance on his own world and I appreciate it.