The time jumps, while necessary to get the plot where it needs to be later on, are starting to hurt the show IMO. I feel like the Aegon stuff could have easily been an episode 4 event. Cutting from Rhaenyra realizing her best friend has supplanted her to suddenly showing Alicent well into her second pregnancy just feels like it's hurting development to me. The third episode could have been the confrontation between the two friends, the wedding, Otto revealing the next phase of his plot, and just as importantly...setting the stage for the prolonged Stepstones war. Viewers who are coming off GoT are probably wondering why that would take years, when they had two dragons. Sure they discuss how the crab feeder's men hide in the caves but I don't think that was good enough. Certainly not when this guy has been discussed for two episodes. Cutting to the end of the war, not seeing his tactics on display or getting a sense of his competence hurt the stakes of that scene IMO.
There's also an issue with nearly every scene featuring the same characters, in the same setting, back to back to back. In this episode they at least were outside of the Red Keep for most of it, but most of the scenes were either in that pavilion or Rhae and Cole at a camp ground. Speaking of Cole...this is his first scene with the princess since she named him to the KG. He's an important character, and I'm baffled they didn't even try to give him his own scenes. Maybe a scene in the last ep where he moved into the White Sword Tower, which is where the Kings Guard live/train. In yesterday's episode he mentioned that Rhaennra added his name to the White Book. That could have been an interesting scene. Maybe a sparring match with a KG member to show that he's not on their level yet. Point being...scenes to build him up as a character and to get out of the same couple rooms most scenes are shot in.
I like the show, I'm just think some changes need to be made. While the show/book is mainly about a handful of characters, there are a lot of opportunities to spread things out and get people invested in characters. At this point I'm not sure people know the names of anyone on the Small Council outside of Otto and Corlys.
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