Missing U Rhaegar Targaryen
by DICK CHENEY
Game of Thrones
creators David Benioff & D.B. Weiss
HBO, Sundays at 9pm
Guess who's back. Back again. Cheney's back. Inform no one of my presence here. Ever since Lost went off the air I have been preparing hundreds of jokes about Khal Drogo, and Anna Holmes goes and ruins them after only one week. There were 19 instances of doggy-style intercourse in the first two episodes of David Benioff's adapation of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones, and there are guaranteed to be hundreds more. Since they appear to have borrowed the sets from Black Knight for the series, it's best to focus the attention on the foreground.
As Daenerys was being raped for the second straight episode, this time in front of some dragon eggs she plans to incubate, I really felt for Ms. Holmes, since this meant she was going to have to read at least 800 comments about how much Ms. Targaryen was "asking for it" on various Game of Thrones fansites. My favorite suggested name for a Game of Thrones fansite is "Winter Is Humming" and my least favorite is "The Eerie Eyrie." Extra credit for those who can work in the name of Jon Snow's magnificent direwolf Ghost.
the eyrie - Tyrion seemed a lot smaller IRLAfter Laura Miller's The New Yorker piece hit newsstands, George was so embarrassed by his failure to complete A Dance With Dragons, the seminal fifth volume in his fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, that he spent the next week killing off Arya Stark in fanfiction covertly posted around the internet. Did you think he had something better to do with his time?
Martin has always come out strongly against fanfic, which is strange because the television adaptation of his novels is a Young and the Restless-style reinvention of his familiar themes and characters except that everyone is freshly showered and Jaime Lannister, the Dragonslayer, has become a wincing man-boy. I also sold my stainless steel reproduction of Jon Snow's sword Longclaw today. You don't understand how traumatic a decision that was.
It's ironic that GRRM and the boys from Lost are so mad at each other. This feud will come to a fever pitch when Carlton Cuse posts the true name of Jon Snow's mother on his twitter. Game of Thrones steals so much from Lost in its execution so far - wasn't most of Lost Matthew Fox standing breathlessly next to some sick individual and weeping like he lost his syndication checks, just like Catelyn does for Bran? Nothing would exist today if not for Lost, except maybe Hot in Cleveland, but Valerie Bertinelli's retro-sexuality would not be nearly as appreciated had it not been for Evangeline Lilly.
you guys, I think this was in A Knight's Tale
People are keen to disrespect Lost these days. All I hear is whining about Deus Ex Machina and how dumb the finale was on every single messageboard I visit. (Some enterprising Lost blogger recently bragged about keying Brian K. Vaughan's Jaguar.) This is rank hypocrisy. What exactly do you think the White Walkers of the North are, George? GRRM set up a Deus Ex Machina in the very first scene of A Song of Ice and Fire and he still hasn't paid it off in four books, and Damon Lindelof is the liar? We're about as close to uncovering the secret of Jon Snow's real mother as we are of having Daenerys return to the Seven Kingdoms, and he's taking potshots at Lost? What a world.
Instead of montage sequences, which are costly for television and require planning, Lost just had flashback sequences. Game of Thrones has used neither so far, not even recapping the outcome of the rebellion and Robert Baratheon's destruction of Rhaegar Targaryen, the man who ran off with his wife and Ned Stark's sister. The casting has been about as successful - despite traversing a desert, Daenerys' footwomen are for some reason entirely Caucasian, since Hollywood would collapse if there wasn't enough roles for Kate Beckinsale look-a-likes. Jaime Lannister has had three lines, Sean Bean still thinks he's playing Boromir, and Catelyn Stark is so unappealing that her husband abandons her in his family's castle in the first episode of the entire show. Never mention the name Sansa Stark to me again.
After Jason Momoa ruined Stargate Atlantis, he began to hone in on the part of Khal Drogo, thinking his acting skills would be improved by having no lines of dialogue. He is no Khal Drogo, the real Khal Drogo was a bigger man with pecs shaped like dandelions and a scent that was vaguely redolent of cherries. The real Khal Drogo only looks at a woman's face on YouPorn.
Likewise, the mere idea of walking a direwolf on a leash is downright retarded, Sansa. Sandor Clegane had his face burnt off, not slightly damaged, and I don't think the word "cunt" was very common in King's Landing and its environs, but I'll have to check my copy of Languages of the Seven Kingdoms. I can't believe I'm still waiting for Arya to be reunited with Nymeria, I'm going to die or join the Haley Barbour campaign if it takes any longer.
God I miss Lost. Lately all I do is complain about how Paul Ryan wants to ban color copies at the Pentagon to Donald Rumsfeld and bathe my balls in vinegar so that the closest my darling wife Lynne gets to them is my 365 photo tumblr devoted to my testicles. With Mad Men gone until 2012 and given that our next president Tim Pawlenty won't talk to me since I told him that nobody respects people from Minnesota, I required a new meme.
My Lost reviews now comprise a critical part of 21st century literature. I will never forget the time I went after tumbledore, or when Matthew Fox was so upset about how much I made fun of his acting that he called me up to complain and ended up telling me the size of Dominic Monaghan's cock. The best part of Lost (some wiseguys says the only good part of Lost, as if there had never even been a hatch) was the wonder of good fantasy, where things we previously thought impossible are revealed as load-bearing pylons of a new universe.
In its eagerness to get in hundreds of plot points per episode, Game of Thrones strays from the humble moments of magic: a singular head standing on a pike, a Maester's complicated remedies, a dwarf's broad intelligence in the shadow of his evil father, a woman alone, pregnant and fearful across the Narrow Sea. Martin initially resisted putting dragons in his high fantasy because he considered the concept boring and overdone. In the end, he blogged about how glad he was he kept them, because the lost dragons of the Seven Kingdoms became another wild element in a series full of them. When it happens on television, all we can think is that every dragon egg must eventually hatch.
Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can find his reviews of Lost here. Next week he will be indicating the size of Charlie Pace's penis with his hands. The hatch was an installation of the Dharma Initiative where Desmond listened to records and missed Penny a lot.
"Back in the Dancehalls" - Felice Brothers (mp3)
"Dallas" - Felice Brothers (mp3)
"Ponzi" - Felice Brothers (mp3)
