Ben Shapiro DESTROYS "House Of The Dragon" (Season 2) 

“Why does everyone act like idiots?” It’s a common problem in several shows and movies. Writers and directors are not as smart as they think they are.

I didn't think it was possible to turn an entire season of a show leaving your audience blue balled, but thanks HoTD and HBO for proving me wrong.

They took the most interesting character and made him do Luigi’s Mansion for 6 episodes

My main problem with HOTD is that they are trying to give urgency to Rhaenyra taking the throne based on the Song of Ice and Fire prophecy. None of this really mattered as how it played out in GoT.

They ruined this season by straying from the original source material, focusing instead on Rhaenyra and Alicent’s friendship. They attempted to portray Rhaenyra as a good leader and person, which was a recipe for disaster. In the books, they are bitter enemies, and Rhaenyra is depicted as a terrible person. This story is about privileged kids who lack empathy for their citizens and are fighting for the throne at any cost.

I don’t like Ben Shapiro AT ALL. But I take my hats off to anyone who speaks the truth about how terrible this season was.

The Season was great until Aegon fell off of his dragon, then the pacing slowed down too much and it became kind of meh

Yeah I’m pretty upset we waited 2 years…. For NOTHING.

They turned Daemon into a whiny envious toddler who dreamt the whole season.

Everything that happens in the entire Season could’ve been compressed into 3 or even 2 episodes. They’re falling into the Dumb and Dumber (Dan and Dave), The Walking Dead, The Boys drag-a-season-out-and-do-nothing trope.

If peak Game of Thrones is a 10/10, this series is like a 5/10. I'm done.

Sucks they literally missed the point that actually Aegon should have been the heir by law, the king actually doesn't have the power to unilaterally declare who his heir is. The central theme should be a conflict between the side that believes the king is subject to the laws of the realm, and the side that believes the king can rule by decree. This is why in Games of Thrones itself, Stannis says Rhaenyra was a usurper, because she was. This mirror's Stannis's own claim as the legal successor to Robert Baratheon, which he was because of Cersei's children being bastards and Renly being behind Stannis in the succession.

The show is so boring I can't finish the cliff notes

Honestly, I'm really sad because I was actually happy after Season 1. I really thought we had something good. Season 2 comes in, and apart from a couple good episodes, it was a tired trailer for Season 3 that deviated so far from the source material that GRRM does even want to be associated with it.

Sounds like they took inspiration from the books. 5,000 pages of reading, only for the white walkers to still not invade, the Starks to still not get any revenge, and for Daenerys to still not return to Westeros. Just characters wandering around in circles and dying before they can accomplish anything noteworthy.

The characters and their motivations of HOTD can’t hold a candle to GOT seasons 1-4.

HBO ruined a great book with woke crap.

Game of thrones really speedrunning the “early seasons were good, late seasons were crap” thing. At least the original was really really really good for 3 seasons

The only redeeming quality of House of the Dragon Season 2 is that it made me really enjoy cancelling my HBO Max subscription.

THANK YOU. I've been called childish for complaining that nothing happened during the entire season. That season finale was a disgrace.

The main problem with HOTD is that you don't have creative filmmakers running the show. It's clear the executive board of HBO is calling all the shots. Season 2 was the worst, and sadly, no matter what they do, it cannot be fixed. The glory years of the first five seasons of Game of Thrones are gone forever. We'll have to wait for another sleeper series flying under the radar of the executive board to get some good story telling again. SMH

Season 2 turned into every other woke show pushing "the message". The entire season 2 was women talking about being women and how all the men around them are evil and or incompetent. Its just the same tired feminist propaganda we've heard a million times.

Ugh. Has no one learned from South Park? Everything that happens is followed by “and then”…”because”… Argh! They are squandering a truly great story-instead we get “feelings” and “angst”. And then they cut the balls off the main drivers of the story so we can have girl bosses. What. Shit.

The dialogues in this show are painful to listen to! Absolute dog shit. Characters are inconsistent and confused nd just going in circles... Character A: we must go to war Character B: no, we must find another way next episode Character A: we need peace Character B: no, we need to go to war

Matt Smith spent the entire season looking like a Final Fantasy Game villain.

It's not a war between the Targaryens and the Hightowers. The Greens are also Targaryens.

This show DOESNT HAVE TO SUCK! They made this season unbelievably woke. Its the writers who made the actual story, which is great, and made it trash. On top of that, they made a 2 season show last 4 seasons. It shouldnt and cant. Thats why we have story building. They dont want to waste all the action which would fill 2 seasons. Take the series shogun, which relied almost soley on great story telling. Rarely a whole lot of action but was still great. Writers have these "strong women" who literally do nothing. They have the men who just want to fight... they have race based characters who do not exist in the book like the Sea Snake. They have that new "female" sailor who id a RL trans individual. They had the unnecessary Daemon and mom scene. Unnecessary Rhaenyra and servent kiss. They have the unnecessary cole and alicent scenes... Its woke garbage

It goes deeper, not only is the season just bad but they also butchered the entire plot and the characters from the book. Characters which were ruthless and flawed like alicent have been reduced to a nail biting craven who just wants to run away and is willing to give up her own child for it

The show sucks and I'm thankful for you're honesty. People whining over valid criticism of this show need to go outside a bit more.

Yep. This season was awful. Could’ve been done in 3-4 episodes. What a joke. Terrible.

My biggest issue is the showrunners and writers are clear biased to team blacks and incompetent on how to adapt a story! Rhaenyra is a terrible leader and they act like the sun shines out of her arse! Even to a point where characters have gripes or criticisms of her behaviour just to have another character randomly defend her (namely her lesbo friend) They've completely destroyed the greens character. Aemond is a cartoonishly evil villain all of a sudden and don't even get me started on alicent!.. I doubt they had the brain power to recover from this unless they fire the writers and bring back the guy from the first season that made it work.

Yes it was disappointing. Daemon on shrooms for 7 1/2 episodes. Rhaenyra just flying around having meetings with her ememy. It sucked

The 1st season was so promising.😢

Everyone acts like idiots because of the D.E.I. writing and directing

The wife that was chaste, loyal, caring and duty bound is the one that is villainized, meanwhile the harlot that sired bastard children is the one that is deemed in the "right".

And yet this show is better than Rings of Power...

The entire season could have been condensed into two episodes.

It’s not the dragon people watched the Song of Fire and Ice series. It’s the characters that they bring to the show. The best characters in HoTD were Daemon and Viserys, the rogue prince and the tragic king.

The funny thing to me is the 'queen' regent, who was ruling in the stead of the king, was replaced and removed from the council. She then proceeds to give up on life, flee to the woods and float in the lake of depression ALL because she is no longer the center of attention. If this is not a metaphor for modern women I don't know what is.

This is why I've tuned out to big shows like this. Rings of Power, house of the dragon, etc. They have no clear plot, they have no clear characters, they have no idea what type of show/ movie they're making other than they're making a Z rated film/show with a AAA budget.

I recommend reading the book if you haven’t. It’s much better.

Biggest problem is that the source material is not long enough to stretch out for several seasons. Should have been a movie trilogy

I only subscribe to Ben Shapiro specifically for his reviews in tv shows and movies, because they’re the best reviews ever. I don’t care for politics, I just love Ben’s personality. Crucify me.

i stopped watching this show when Rhaenyra grew up into Emma D'arcy

For clarification the gay kiss was not scripted

Blame Martin, in the books, it's even worse.

The whole season was painful. If they dont pick it up for season 3, no way they make it to season 4

Nothing is decent these days

The show was victim to an 8-episode season. Originally it was supposed to be 10 episodes which would have helped the season feel more complete. It felt like every episode was building towards a climax that never happened

They really are twisting the teat for every last penny at the expense of the story. The book HOTD is based on is literally just that, one book, that they are purposefully dragging out; kind of like how the dinosaurs from Jurassic Park had the gaps in thier DNA filled with that of a frog, the writers of HOTD are filling in the gaps of what should have been a 10 episode single Season one-shot spin off with thier incompetence and lack of talent. In the OG series GOT, they had Martin's Magnum Opus to draw back upon at an average of 1 book per season. Where they completely screwed up is after Season 1 (which was literally word for word, scene for scene the book, simply adapted on screen) once they started changing the story from the books they exponentially screwed up until we got the dumpster fire that was season 8. George R.R. Martin is a genius, the series writers are not and it shows... all they had to do was type up the novels into script form.

The whole season was like 40 pages of the book. They could of at least did 60-80 pages!

You're always whining and embarrassing yourself, Ben.

Last episode title The House of Blue Balls: The Epic battle that never was

WTF Am I agreeing with Ben Shapiro

Game of Thrones blew me away when it came out. I thought the acting and dialogue was superb and they had just enough special effects to make it real for me. What I really appreciated was never knowing how things were going to turn out or end. I know a lot of folks hated the ending and I didn't care for it that much myself, but I can honestly say that it was entertaining to have it go a way that I didn't expect. The only part of the whole series that I didn't like was when the Queen burned the city for no reason - it just felt weird against everything else. But other than that, I haven't found anything remotely as entertaining as that series. And this House of Dragon series actually ruins a lot of the lore that I had in my head from GOT. These characters are bad, the dialogue and plots are bad, and things are mostly predictable - even the dragon death scenes. It's only entertaining to me because it somewhat helps me appreciate GOT a little more than I already did.

Daemon lost his aura😭...don't see him the same anymore 😒 HBO has a PhD in how to butcher characters fr fr

I tried caring about Porn of Thrones and all the spinoffs, but then I remembered I have a life

Gonna sound like I'm picking nits here but I come from a family of platinum/white blonds and it's always sorta bugged me that the Targaryeans in GoT and HotD don't have blond eyebrows.

Oddly accurate review. I binged watched the series yesterday and the comment about not caring if any of these characters died is true. The series really went nowhere for 8 episodes, adding 2 eps to ten would've just prolonged the misery.

At this point of the book, Rhaenyra is MIA. She's mourning Luke and recovering from her stillbirth. So the show had to find things for her to do.

Jaehaerys is NOT a waste of space. His character arc about wanting to contribute to the war effort, but not being able to because of his key position and dominiring mother, is relatable and logical I think. And he raised some very valid concerns about thinking twice before opening dragon riding to the common folk, to secure their exclusivity to the throne. It also tied neatly to the father complex imposed upon him, which I found to be very good writing.

Don't know if you've seen Peaky Blinders but that's one of the ONLY shows where the smart character remains smart and makes smart decisions the entire time. Is he a good person? Nope. Does he outsmart every plot against him and continually be 5 steps ahead? Absolutely. Hands down one of the best TV characters.

if this is the worst finale you've ever seen... you should have watched umbrella academy 😭

This season was a hot pile of garbage.

They even tried to follow Disneys lead. As eric cartman would say "they put a chick in it and made it gay and lame"

Nailed it! You summed it all up perfectly! Awful show so far

Here’s my theory. Viscerys died last season. They got rid of Otto this season. They’ve heavily foreshadowed that Daemon is going to die. Aemond’s sister basically came out and told him he is going to die. They didn’t want to go into season 3 with all of those characters dead. Who would watch? This whole season ended up being filler.

Writing is hard. Few can do it well.

Episode 2 was really good. Half of episode 4 was good. The rest? Woman good, man bad. Aemond's ball bag. Alicent is just a misunderstood girlboss.

The problem is Raenyra does want to do everything herself but she's a monarch that's just not her job. Then she bitches and moans about not being able to do anything when she has a military she can order to do things for her.

Another issue is that the paint the blacs as the good guys when the greens are objectively the good guys. Not perfect, but by far the better of the 2.

So you liked season 8 finale more than season 2? wth

Waaaaay overhated. Yeah the finale felt more like a preseason finale, but that doesn’t mean the story isn’t good. The build up was amazing

As a book fan this season was disappointing. Like even GOT worst season had action

Cutting episodes 9 and 10 was a huge mistake. Rook’s Rest was really well done and I think if we got the battle of the gullet it would have saved this season.

I approve this message....nothing happened.

Although the critic of the season being too slow and leading nowhere, ending pretty much where the last season ended, is a valid one, I think saying that "nothing happened" is way too harsh. Daemon's stoyline was almost completely pointless, it is true, but the interactions between team green were so dramatic, complex and human - you simply can't look away! And if you truly believe that the 20 minutes battle was the best thing by far - and not for example Alicent trying to reach out to Aemond/ Otto realizing the mistakes he had made, and what he lost but never truly appreciated in Viserys, who ruled with wisdom/ Rhaenyra making Alicent face an impossible choice, and to realize she was also responsible for it - if that was "nothing" then I'm sorry to say Ben, but I don't think you were ever the fan Martin had in mind. I think seasons 7 and 8 of GoT might be more to your liking. Bookreaders know what I mean.

He may a bit harsher but that is the jist of it and Ben here is the only person I’ve seen who just like me can tell that Rhaenyra is a terrible person but no the season 8 finale is GARBAGE

Watching Ben Shapiro talk about HOTD is infinitely better then watching the actual show.

Fun fact, it isn't the Hightowers vs the Targaryens but the one half of the Targaryens vs the other half. It's a civil war. Aegon and his siblings are full blooded Targaryens, not Hightowers.

Are you kidding? Calling Alicent more responsible is really dumb. She took her husband's confusing last words as something she wanted to hear. Deep down, she knew Viserys didn't want Aegon as king.

This season was affected badly by a) HBO stupidly cutting two episodes at the last minute, and b) the writers' strike, which limited their ability to rewrite around the lost episodes. They are sticking pretty much to the chronology of events in the book, but the book is an in-universe history book (and a biased, unreliable one at that), _not_ a novel, so all the emotional personal drama stuff has to be made up for the show. The next season should kick off with an epic battle that would have been the big finish to this one, and there should be a lot more action generally. Remember, it takes TIME to muster medieval armies and march them anywhere: you can't just call them up with a mass text message and fly them to the other side of a the world in a C-17 in 24 hours. If HOTD (both seasons) are guilty of a generic fault, it's "femwashing", i.e. they're trying to paint all the men as evil warmongers and all the women as innocent victims of the mens' plots and would-be peacemakers to a ridiculous level. In the book, both Rhaenyra and Alicent are far more proactive in both plotting and warmaking and significantly more culpable for what happens. There are three books in the Dunc and Egg series, so no, A Knight Of The Seven Kingdoms will not have to be padded out to three seasons: it's likely they'll do one book per season, since they're written to be stand-alones with recurring characters, rather than one epic story. They are, however, written as young-adult fiction, so if the show sticks to that, expect the sex and violence to be significantly dialled back by Game Of Thrones standards.

The show is horrible!!

I believe Rhaenyra was miscast. Alicent is much more watchable and enjoyable. But the producers seem to have lost their way, and The House That Dragons Built behind the scenes series show me that their priorities are wrong. They are focusing on things, not characters, not stories.

I think they should have had 9 to 10 episodes and had the battle of the gullet as the finale.

I called the first season "House of the Midwifes" and this season "House of Bridgeton" it's a show made for women.

Someone really needs to explain to Ben and his team that “whines about for several minutes” does not mean the same as “destroys”

I fucking loved HotD season 1, it was perfect in my eyes; but season 2... it was slow, it was dull and worst of all... it was stupid.

SIGH... BOTH Alicent AND Rhaenyra aren't villains or heroes, Ben. Martin is always making the point that he is trying to represent the human heart's struggle with itself. To show the good and the bad in people, and the resulting chaos of their character. Both these women did some very objectionable things to each other, and yet neither of them is beyond redemption. Why are you treating this adult story like a Marvel plot? Is this truly the highest level of interaction with stories that the all-intelligent Ben Shapiro is capable of??

You Know Nothing BEN SHAPRIO.

Alicent is honorable, duty bound... shame those qualities are not appreciated either by GRRM or the show writers, but these are lefties we are talking about and they have no appreciation for these qualities.

Literally disagree with you on everything, except this. What a terrible season of tv.

It follows the book.

The writers completely ruined a good series.. Also, they ignored many parts of what was in the book. Good Job HBO.

Watching an ad for HOD Season 2 before Shapiro destroys it. Classic.

If we remove half of characters nothing will change.

Worth season finale 😂 looks like you haven't seen season 8 finale

Aegon did more then drink. He got crippled!

Why people are still giving anything grrm touches a chance is beyond me.

I think that was a little harsh. A lot more happened than most episodes in GoT! It's building nicely. Stop complaining, Ben.