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Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa, originally of the Harris clan of Virginia, now head of the Perrys of North Carolina by way of the city where the good times roll. Sharpen your long swords, mount your dragons, and head with me now to Westeros where you know winter is coming because what is dead may never die. That's right, this past weekend, HBO aired the first episode of its Game of Thrones spinoff prequel series, House of the Dragon. Set nearly two centuries before Game of Thrones, the new show was centered around house Targaryen and a classic battle for the iron throne.

Speaker: Under such circumstances, it would not be an aberration for the king to name a successor.

Speaker: Then who else would have a claim?

Speaker: The King's firstborn child.

Speaker: Rhaenyra, a girl? No queen has ever sat on the iron throne.

Speaker: That is only by tradition and precedent laws-- [crosstalk]

Speaker: If order and stability so concern this council then perhaps we shouldn't break 100 years of it by naming a girl heir.

Melissa Harris-Perry: According to Warner Media, 9.9 million people watched the first episode of House of the Dragon, I one of them. It aired on Sunday night with a record number of viewers for an HBO series premiere. While a fan base is still there, critically this show has not been as positively received as early seasons of Game of Thrones with many reviewers questioning whether this new series does enough to justify its existence. Joining me now is Roxana Hadadi, TV critic for Vulture. Roxana, it's great to have you here.

Roxana Hadadi: Yes. Thank you so much. Nice to be here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's just start. Did you like Game of Thrones?

Roxana Hadadi: I liked the first few seasons of Game of Thrones very much. I have some dragon egg plushies and I have a denim jacket that's embroidered with the word dracarys. I was very much all in on those first few seasons. Things changed as the series went on, but in the beginning, all in.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Like everyone else on the planet, were you unhappy with the final episode?

Roxana Hadadi: Yes like everyone else on the planet. It's so funny you say that because I am so unsure of whether that was just my own Twitter bubble or whether it was really everyone but the fact that nearly 10 million people joined House of the Dragon makes me think maybe it was just my own Twitter circle and more people are willing to return to this world and give it another shot.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That's so interesting to me because I think for me, the reason that I tuned in for the House of the Dragon is both I don't think I have the dragon egg plushies, I maybe wasn't quite as onboard at the start but it was my disappointment in the end. In part my desire to return to this world and even though it's a prequel to see if maybe it could come out better this time.

Roxana Hadadi: Yes. I think there's a lot of that desire. I think there are two things. One, I think we want to go back to something collective. It sometimes feels like watching the finale of Game of Thrones was one of the last things we all did together whether you watched that on HBO, whether you pirated it because it was a huge show being downloaded at the time. I think there's some collective nostalgia that we want to go back to that.

Then, on the other hand, I think that the creators and showrunners of this show have for the past few months been saying, "Look, we heard your complaints about the sex position, we heard your complaints about sidelined female characters, we heard your complaints about the constant sexual violence, and we're trying to do a better job." I think there's also some interest there about what could an actually female-centered Game of Thrones universe look like. I think the results are mixed, but I think the interest and of course, the possibility of dragons are all there.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Yes, that's just obvious, we tuned in for the dragons.

Roxana Hadadi: Yes, we love the dragons. We want the dragons.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In some ways, I'll say I was willing because of my love of dragons to sometimes sideline the horrifying and triggering realities of watching Game of Thrones the first time. I guess I wonder did they hear what we were saying about violence against women. Did they? Because there was still a fair bit of violence against a woman's body in this first episode?

Roxana Hadadi: Yes. I laughed very much at how you said that because I went back through my notes when I was writing my review and for significant chunks, I just have like 100 question marks while certain scenes were happening, like why are we doing this? Yes, I think that what the showrunners will say is that this was a time of violence against women because they're thinking that it has a historical basis.

What I would argue and what I would love to see is why can't we imagine a history where this is not the case because we do now have various scenes where there are women who die in labor and it is gruesome and gory and very intense. I'm not necessarily trying to see that when I want to watch my fun fantasy show about magical creatures. I'm not sure how much really there's a bait and switch happening here when we're being told actually you're going to get the female perspective.

Which is not to say that the female perspective does not have physical and emotional pain. That's very true, but I think it seems like a little bit of a misdirect to tell us that this is a new spin on things when we're still seeing some of those same old elements.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It's also fascinating this notion that, oh we have to be historically accurate to this fantasy world. That's the point right, is that we could imagine something different. One of my producers suggested that this early gruesome childbirth moment might also feel almost a little bit too on the nose a little bit to message in a Dobbs v. Jackson post-Roe world.

Roxana Hadadi: Yes. I think it very much, sometimes the show feels to me like women in all caps with a trademark symbol.

Melissa Harris-Perry: I also want to dig in on race and representation. That does look at least a little different so far.

Roxana Hadadi: It does look a little bit different. I do think that to the credit of these fantasy adaptations between this and the Prime Video series Wheel of Time recently and the upcoming Prime Video adaptation of The Lord of the Rings we are getting a more inclusive world which is what fantasy readers who are of certain backgrounds have wanted for a very long time. I am excited to see that more diverse and just wide-ranging Westeros this time around.

Melissa Harris-Perry: All right. Our night's watch hasn't ended yet. Pause with me for just a second. We've got more takeaway right after the break.

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Melissa Harris-Perry resuming my watch here on The Takeaway. We've been talking about the Game of Thrones spinoff prequel House of the Dragon with TV critic, Roxana Hadadi. All right. Roxana, you name check there. Name dropped a little bit, the new Lord of the Rings production. I know you're not allowed to weigh in critically yet because it is still under embargo coming out under Amazon. How much of a response to House of the Dragon is this or maybe just the initial Game of Thrones is this new Lord of the Rings production?

Roxana Hadadi: It's really fascinating. It definitely feels like they're in conversation with each other, that there is this one-upmanship happening right now to see which streamer series can get the most fantasy buy-in. I definitely think that it is a reaction to Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones was the biggest show in the world for a very long time commercially and critically as much as we complain about what happened in those last couple of seasons people still really watched. I think every streamer is chasing this idea right now of building its own franchise in these magical medieval-type worlds. Netflix has The Witcher which recently concluded its second season and has been a very big deal as well for people who played those video games or read those books. Lord of the Rings is huge.

Again, those Peter Jackson movies were very big. He has no involvement in the TV show but Prime Video has spent $1 billion on this series which is an astonishing amount of money. I think they are really hoping that this is going to be the next thing that people watch. Wheel of Time was very interesting to me but I didn't necessarily think that it generated a lot of conversation, but Prime Video will tell you that it had huge viewership numbers. I'm curious to see what the reaction is to Lord the Rings, which is also, of course, a property. I think if you know anything about fantasy you're going to recognize and I think it's going to be interesting to see how does that money show up on screen.

Melissa Harris-Perry: A couple of things, one as much as I watched House of the Dragon, I watched it by myself. My husband would not watch it with me because he was like, "They're releasing it weekly. Not doing it. I'm willing to wait a year so that I can binge-watch it if it's good, bad, or otherwise." I think he felt mad, like, "It's not 1994. I'm not waiting until next week to watch the next episode." Why do this in a serial way? Are we done with binge watching as a society?

Roxana Hadadi: Personally, shout out to 1994, because I miss the '90's. I would just like to say let's keep 1994 holy and sacred. I think that we are not necessarily done with binge watching because I think that will always be Netflix's claim to fame. I really can't see them moving away from a binge model. However, I think that what we are seeing is that this is a little bit of a regression to traditional TV formatting, to waiting a week between episodes and to waiting a year between seasons.

I personally think that's fine, I think that it gives us as viewers more time to sit with the material, more time to unpack it, more time to tell your friends to watch it, and I think that's really what people want right now. What HBO Max wants, what HBO wants, what Prime Video wants. They want you to come back week to week, and maybe see what else is in their streaming catalog. What else could you watch to fill the time between this episode and the next episode?

I really think they're trying to chase down this communal collective experience that people had when you watch TV and then you talked about it at work the next day, and then you kept that conversation going for two months to three months. My partner and I recently right now are in the middle of a rewatch of the X-Files, and it is so wild that there are 25 episodes to each season. It's also going back to that time I think of having that investment, and hoping that you cultivate an audience who will want to spend this much time with you.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Well and you're talking about an investment. I can't imagine that X-Files cost a billion dollars which you're telling us is a Prime put into Lord of the Rings. This is really my other thing, as you talk about the decision makers, the green lighters, the underwriters making that decision to invest those kinds of dollars hoping for certain kinds of audience build, is that how it works? Is it the next thing that reminds us of that thing we loved before, that we decide to watch or our audiences looking for the next completely surprising visual experience?

Roxana Hadadi: That's a great question because I think it's a little bit impossible to answer, because I think that there are always going to be separate audiences who want each of those things. I think that there's always going to be an audience who think, "I loved Game of Thrones and I will give every single one of its spinoff shows a chance." Because this is just the first. There are five or six others that HBO has in development.

They're really attempting to build a sprawling interconnected world. I think you're going to get people for whom Game of Thrones is a little bit of a comfort watch. As brutal as it may be, I think that it follows some recognizable storytelling techniques that people want to return to, but then I do think you are going to get people who are looking for what is the really fresh new interesting thing? That's how you get a breakout completely in a different sphere and genre, but I think that's how you get a breakout like Abbott Elementary which is a docu-series.

It's like a fake documentary. It's fictional. It has that office, parks and rec format that we recognize, but it's a completely new story and a completely new location about a completely new set of characters. That was really a huge breakout hit from regular traditional broadcast TV last year. There will always be people who are drawn to different parts of it, and then there's always going to be someone like me who's watching all of it.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Boy, do I love some Abbott Elementary. That one just that sucked me in. What are the other kinds of things happening on TV this fall that are pretty different than hanging out in middle earth and the world of dragons and fantasy?

Roxana Hadadi: I think there are couple of shows that are really interesting, and by interesting they could be really good or they could be really bad, who can tell? If you're looking for something entirely new, there is a show from Sam Levinson who is behind Euphoria on HBO and the pop star The Weeknd. They have a new show coming out called The Idol that is supposed to premiere I believe sometime this fall but it is a dark look at the Los Angeles Hollywood pop machine. That's something that's very new.

Something that's returning that I am really looking forward to is the third season of Ramy on Hulu. Ramy has been really interesting in how it depicts Muslim-American life, and I think that each season is asking interesting questions about identity. Another show that I really like that is on Prime Videos Freevee Service which is their free streaming service is called Sprung. It's from Greg Garcia who did Raising Hope. It is about a group of non-violent convicts to get out of prison during COVID because of overpopulation, and they plan one great heist against a Congresswoman who has been embezzling funds and doing illegal stock trading. That's also the most wholesome working-class sitcom I've seen in a long time.

Melissa Harris-Perry: That one's going on my list. Roxana Hadadi, TV critic for Vulture, thanks for joining The Takeaway.

Roxana Hadadi: Thank you so much.

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