Editorial

The North Remembers: Waiting for Game of Thrones S2

Posted on by Hear Marko Roar

Raven LogoThree years ago we were impatiently waiting for season two to start (the premiere was on April 1, two weeks earlier than S5!). There were promo shots, character portraits, first (p)reviews, collectible Entertaintment Weekly covers, regular TV Guide covers, and all that jazz.

  • A new writer was added to the team, Vanessa Taylor. This reminds me that we miss female writers on the show. Too bad Jane Espenson did not stick around after her one-episode stint in S1.
  • Speaking of S1, the boxset of the first season came out in March. It was high on the charts, and the first-week sales record for HBO shows was broken with 350,000 units. A big hit from the start, no question about it.
  • Episode titles for 203 through 206 were revealed. Do you still remember them? ‘What is Dead May Never Die’, ‘Garden of Bones’, ‘The Ghost of Harrenhal’, and ‘The Old Gods and the New’.
  • We got this glorious Simpsons GoT opening.
  • Four trailers! Seven Devils, a classic, The More You Love, Nowhere to Hide, and The Price for Our Sins.
  • On top of that, a 22 min promo You Win of You Die was released, looking back as S1 and offering some glimpses into S2, alongside two shorter videos introducing new characters and new locations.
  • They also gave us SIX clips from episode 201, and THREE clips from 202. Way too much, heh heh.
  • The companion book to the first two seasons penned by Bryan Cogman was announced that month (as you know we got both that and another for seasons three and four since).
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15 Comments

  2. I think you have to be very careful not to just appoint a woman for tokenistic reasons. I was never that impresssed with Vanessaa Taylor, and her work since hasn’t wowed me either. I do rate Espenson though, but I just have a feeling that she didn’t mix well with D&D (but I could be wrong). In any case, it’s a difficult one; where would a female writer go. Cogman deserves 2 episodes, and if Hill’s script is good he sshould have the opportunity to have another go. I do think that it might ease D&D’s workload if they only did 6 episodes, so maybe there will be a slot there.

    However, it is a lot harder to make excuses for why they aren’t any female directors this year, but if they are the best people for the job I don’t care (but you don’t know, and that is the problem).

  3. Jeb,

    Hopefully season 6 will give us more female directors, Michelle MacLaren did a great job in season 4 so I would love her to return.

  4. I don’t miss Jane Espenson at all. She wrote some of the worst episodes on Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, and I didn’t care for her Thrones episode. Don’t get me wrong, she has plenty of talent, but serious-minded genre fiction isn’t her strength. She’s definitely better off doing the campier stuff she’s up to now (and began with).

  5. Season 2 had the best trailer without a doubt. The second trailer of season 5 (the wheel) is up there as well, we’ll see how it ages. Way better than the first trailer of S5 with that boring Hero song, sounded so 80’s.
    Just my thoughts

  6. Isn’t Vanessaa Taylor the writer who wrote those shit scenes with Dany and the Spice Trader (the one where she was yelling like a Viserys maniac), as well as “WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS!!!”

    also, did she write this masterpiece:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elHaFwbv4BA
    Best decision D&D made was cutting that scene!

    thank god shes gone…

  7. HelloThere,

    Goes to show female writers for the sake of having female writers isn’t always the best thing. Her episodes were noticeably lacking in quality.

  8. My two cents in two sentences: I didn’t like Taylor’s writing either and I don’t like tokenism. There are good female writers out there.

  9. Im fine w/ D&D and Brian

    They’ve been doing this for a long time and I don’t think there is any reason to hire more writers. (Unless they are too stretched). And if thats the case, they should hire the best writer regardless of gender.

  10. I remember when HBO put out the first 15 mins of the pilot weeks before the premier. I must have watched that 40 times before they finally aired the episode. IMO the show hasn’t matched the creepiness in the opening prologue since, though they came awful close with the Walker King scene.

  11. According to the HBO Latina schedule, ep. 507 and 508 are 57 minutes. So that’s 58 minutes in HBO schedule terms. So far, it’s a season with 5 out of 8 pretty long episodes:

    501: 53 minutes
    502: 56 minutes (this has recently been changed, it was 58 before)
    503: 60 minutes
    504: 51 minutes
    505: 57 minutes
    506: 54 minutes
    507: 58 minutes
    508: 58 minutes

    Compared to last season for the first 8 episodes:
    Season 4: 435 minutes
    Season 5: 447 minutes

    #uselessfacts
    #boredom
    #12daystogo

  12. Dutch maester,

    Season 1 remains the longest, but this one is, for now, the second longest, along with the third season. Based on the first 8 episodes:

    Season 1 (457 minutes / ≈57 minutes average)
    Seasons 3 and 5 (447 minutes / ≈56 average)
    Season 4 (434 minutes / ≈54 average)
    Season 2 (430 minutes / ≈53.5 average)

    So, after 5×08, we’ll have almost a quarter hour more of Game of Thrones than last year by “The Mountain and the Viper.” Nice.

    Now, if we have a long episode nine and an extended season finale, as we’ve had since 2012, this season may approach season one.

  14. Dutch maester,

    Not that useless, I enjoy these facts. Thank you!
    Episode 8 is on the schedule but no title so far, I hope we’ll get a title for it this week.

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