Dany’s wig was more distracting to me than her covering herself up in a lovers’ context (and in fact, mock coyness in a lovers’ context can be fun :) ).
Second the googly eyes being disturbing, they always remind me of when things used to go horribly wrong modding Oblivion. You’d get everything set up seemingly just right, fire up the game and - googly eyes, and your heart would sink :) But the fact that they’re a bit disturbing I think makes them seem like an authentically weird religious rite, it’s a nice touch, and in fact one of the things that kind of caught my attention about the series in the very first episode (along with the silent sisters’ odd Asian-style wicker flag stand backpack thingies). Little touches and details like that (e.g. the design of clothes, armor, etc.) immediately felt like a lived-in world, but not our world, a dream-like world that’s both similar and different from our own.
I must admit, I found this first episode a bit dull, and things like the scene with Missandei talking to Grey Worm, seem like a complete waste of screen time.
Also there are weird things like, I bet you EVERYONE who saw the show wondered whether the bald Unsullied guy who gets killed was Grey Worm and they’d changed the actor. That’s far too distracting a thing to have right at the beginning of a season, especially coming on the heels of people having to wonder who the fuck the little girl is (although it’s pretty obvious pretty quickly). But still, shouldn’t have happened, there shouldn’t have been that opportunity for confusion, the guy should have looked very different from Grey Worm. Bad, silly slip up there, I think, not important, but perhaps indicative of how difficult juggling everything must be, and how hard to keep an overview or perspective on from the end-user’s point of view (but then again, that’s the while POINT of a producer/director role - to see a thing as the audience sees it, not as one of the makers sees it, i.e. to be able to hold both wood and trees in the mind at the same time).
But the show still has a lot of energy and goodwill it can coast on in the first few episodes while it sets things up, and it’s not a bad enough first episode to make me give up on the whole thing.
It is a bit scary being in a position of not knowing what’s going to happen - and that’s good. Although, the shoe being on the other foot, it’s like when I initially watched the first and second seasons again, before I’d caught up with all the books.
