In my opinion Hod's big time jump was a huge mistake. HOD does so much right. But it obviously cannot dodge the biggest mistake all mainstream entertainment does: It rushes things. Episodes 1 - 5 should have been the complete first season. That would give us the opportunity to really dive into the world; to immerse and to love or hate the characters. The only characters I really feel for are Rhaenyra, Daemon and Viserys. Which is quite a lot! But that could be so much more if they would take the time. Rhea Royce is a great example. She was introduced and everyone said: What a cool character, her lines and the look. And then she was killed immediately. Also the war at the Stepstones and Prince Drahar (the Crabfeeder). That should have been the central plot in season one with Drahar dying at the end with a big bang. He did not even had lines to say for Pete's sake. We still love this show; finally back in Westeros again!!! And it feels like Westeros (unlike this McDonald's version of middle earth in ROP). But I would have loved it, if HBO would trust HOD and not have a foot in the door to cheap, quick boombang-entertainment.
GOT became one of the greatest shows in TV history because it stayed on course (at least for a while) without pleasing the impatient part of the audience. These viewers do not care deeply for the story anyways. This is not about having an audience. It is about maximizing the audience. And that is always the death of quality. But this is "complaining on a high level" because HOD is still a good fantasy show and does it's job as prequel quite good. But by the seven gods ... why is success not enough? Why it must always be the most money they can get? If HOD avoids the big mistakes GOT committed at the end it will easily make a ton of money. Why has it always be this quick return of investment?
This is why successful shows often lose something after their first season. Unless they have someone who has a firm grasp of the big picture.
But even then the shows that have a slower growth tend to do better.
The problem with some of this streaming thing is that... I don't know it started out as Netflix going "we'll save the shows you don't want cancelled" and now it's "we'll cancel everything"
In streaming it's almost as if something has to be a big hit immediately or it'll get canned.
This is just general tv ramblings I guess. But it'd be nice to have a slow burn fantasy epic who slowly built its audience over several seasons... A Breaking Bad of fantasy epics perhaps.