First of all, thank you for responding to my comments and noting my nuances. This is something far too few people get online, so kudos.

I'm probably goign to watch 3 Body Problem in the near future; it looks like it will be contending for Emmys this summer and it sounds more interesting to me than Game of Thrones was. I guess my genre is more towards the future than the past at times. That said, a question you might be better served to answer than most: Having never seen any of Game Of Thrones, is it possible someone like myself could watch House of the Dragon and still enjoy it, purely as an artistic work? With the second season less than a month away, I'm considering at least looking at it. For better or worse, it will likely be contending for Emmys in the near future and I'd like to know if its worth my time. I know prequel series have the abilitiy to be at the level of the original: it was true with Better Call Saul and Bates Motel.

Second on a side note with the final seasons of Game of Thrones, I have to say that the Emmys went into overdrive with recognition of the last two seasons. This is particularly true of the last season: even after a disastrous ending, it still received 33 Emmy nominations, including basically the entire cast and won twelve Emmys. They went just as overboard for the penultimate season too. I will allow for the fact that the Emmys were probably making up for the fact that thye had ignored GOT when it was at its peak (though to be fair, it gave those Emmys to Mad Men, Homeland and the final two seasons of Breaking Bad so few could fault them there; there were a lot of great shows in the 2010s) and they seemed to go into overdrive for the second half. I bare a bigger grudge for those two seasons particularly because it led to the final season of The Americans being ignored for Best Drama (like GOT it was considered one of the greatest shows ever made) and the final lot of nominations killed any chance two of the greatest shows of all time, This is Us and Mr. Robot, along with Saul, were shutout in their primes. Given your statement of the final two seasons, I think you'd argue the Emmys really screwed the pooch with those last two seasons. I do blame the system rather than the players, to be sure, but the final two seasons are a low point even for the Emmys.

aNYWAY thanks for your compassion and I'll be commenting on somre of your other articles later,