'House of the Dragon' Wants Men to Get Their Asses to Therapy

House of the Dragon has been back for over two weeks now, but we’ve perhaps never been more back than this Sunday’s episode, which features a generous heaping of full-frontal nudity in a fun (?) little callback to the show’s predecessor, Game of Thrones. But there’s also surprising emotional depth at the core of this graphic scene at a King’s Landing brothel, which sees Aemond fully naked and cuddled up with his mommy-prostitute-therapist when Aegon and his Kingsguard frat bros bust in on them. Meanwhile, Mr. Uncle-Husband Daemon Targaryen is camping out at the haunted house that is Harrenhal, where, after his anticlimactic conquest of the ancient ruins, he’s confronted by a chilling vision of a young Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock!!!) sewing the slain baby Jaehaerys’ decapitated head back on. It’s the first time in the whole series that Daemon is forced to confront his own behavior and who he’s harmed, and it’s also the first time we ever really see him display human emotion.  It’s hard to not interpret the events of this episode as HotD instructing all men—particularly these three—to book it to therapy. While Rhaenys is counseling Rhaenyra on averting war and Alicent is trying to stop her failson-king from flying off to battle on his dragon and getting himself killed, for Aemond, Aegon, and Daemon, this episode largely explores their struggles to cope with recent events.  For Aemond, that seems to be his internal reckoning with killing Lucerys in the Season 1 finale. And, in an utterly illuminating interview with Variety, director Geeta Patel details all the other things Aemond is struggling with that have prompted him to turn to a significantly older madam for the healing that he’s never going to find from his family—as Aegon’s mocking and bullying him this episode very clearly demonstrate. “What we came to is that Aemond was hurt. He was bullied when he was little. Since he was hurt, he had created this persona that was the exact opposite of how he was feeling. He created a persona of someone who doesn’t give a fuck,” Patel said. She continued: “That shift, from someone who’s vulnerable to literally watching him put on his armor, was what we were going for in that scene. It’s one of the few times you see the young child in him and you see the pain in him. Slowly he starts putting on his armor and when he stands up, the fact that he doesn’t care that you see his penis is such a strong visceral shift. And so, of course, Ewan [Mitchell] was like, ‘I want to be fully nude in that moment. It’s important to me because that’s who my character is. That’s what he would do.’” I am, personally, not particularly moved by any of this considering that Aemond killed a child and inevitably started this whole war. But I’m certainly intrigued by the level of thought and consideration being devoted to male characters’ mental health on a show that, in another director’s hands, could very easily be little more than a hollow gore-fest.  #HouseOfTheDragon #HOTD #DemDragons literally everyone else in the realm panicking and bracing for war: aemond: pic.twitter.com/iMMI9u6kdM — BIG BAD CHUCK! ???? (@yawningemoji) July 1, 2024 Then, of course, there’s Aegon. The end of episode 2 sees the young king privately break down in tears following the killing of his young son. Alicent walks in on her son in this vulnerable position and… simply walks away to have more gross, passionate sex with Ser Criston Cole. So, we can infer that Aegon is not doing well and his family isn't…