I recruited my friends Tinkered Thinking (✍️📚 author of White Mirror & The Lucilius Parables) and Jameson Olsen (🎧 host of Becoming the Main Character) to do a *deep* dive on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's 1998 novella The Hedge Knight.
🚨 If you haven’t seen the show, bookmark this and come back. Seriously. This one’s worth avoiding spoilers and going in blind. 🚨
I was totally charmed by this series. The writing, the chemistry between actors, the music, the cinematography, the sets, and the costumes. It all feels more tactile and real than most of what's on TV right now. And here's the thing: after we watched it, we all read the novella, and we all agree the show might actually be better. That almost never happens with adaptations.
In this pod, we go episode-by-episode, compare the novella to the show, and argue about what we want from season two. Along the way, we get into trailers that ruin movies, what makes a great villain entrance (hint: it involves a horse 🐴), the philosophy of praxis, David Goggins taking souls (😱), and why Dunk might be one of the most lovable protagonists on television right now, despite being “thick as a castle wall.”
Some of the rabbit holes we go down:
Why narrow scope is this show’s superpower, and why more IPs should tell bite-sized stories instead of promising the world and failing to deliver it.
The Die Hard approach to the final fight: he doesn’t win because he’s better, he wins because he won’t stay down.
"Are there no true knights among you?" The gap between the title and the oath. ⚔️🛡️👑
Why Aerion knows every loophole. Showing up to a bar fight with a few Navy SEALs.
Everything the show added to the novella (Lyonel! Flea Bottom! the goose eggs!) and why most of the additions are improvements 📙
Dunk thinks like a child, Egg thinks like an adult. The inversion is the point.
Where could Egg’s arc go from here? Can the show actually make us hate him? (Tinkered has a theory about the series finale that I kind of want him to write.)
Word of the day: praxis.
Lesson of the day: “Get up.” (Maybe it’s a whole philosophy 🤔)
🎧 Listen on Spotify
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🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts
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📺 Watch on YouTube
🔎📫💚 🥃 Reminder: As I explained in Edition #628, prices are going up for the first time on May 1st to catch up to six years of inflation. You can lock in the old 2020-era pricing for a year by becoming a supporter now. ⏳
Without your support, this steamboat sinks 🌊🚢⚓
⚔️ Visual Parallels & Easter Eggs 🥚
📖 The Joffrey-Jaime Scene 🗡️
This is the clip that primed Jameson for the whole show before it even aired. Joffrey flipping through the Book of Brothers, landing on Ser Duncan the Tall's four-page entry.
🗄 More TV & Film Podcasts from the Archives 🍿
🎧 White Mirror: 31 Stories, a $1,000 Puzzle, and Sci-Fi to Reboot Your Childlike Wonder 🦾🪞📖🦋
🎧 David Senra on Deadwood (also: founders, entrepreneurs, civilization, Henry Singleton, Walt Disney, David Ogilvy, etc)
🎧 Sicario by Denis Villeneuve: Going Deep with Ed William and Dylan O’Sullivan 🎥 🎬 🎞️ 🍿
🎧 The Last of Us: Going Deep on HBO’s Amazing Show with Matt Reustle and Tinkered Thinking 🍄
🎧 TENET Deconstructed: ↔️ Christopher Nolan’s Mind-Bending Time Thriller 🔁 (with BOTH Tinkered Thinking and Dylan)
🎧 ‘Severance’ Season 1: Going Deep with Mostly Borrowed Ideas (MBI)
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