Oh,Californication, how are you both so awful and so hard to give up? Much like Hank Moody, actually. Well, Duchovny... but at the same time, the show itself is like Henry Miller's twitter feed or something...it's weirdly fascinating.

OMG, this was my very favorite GoT episode yet! Pretty much every scene was a major ongoing plot development. Particularly the discovery of the horn and the obsidian daggers, which remains, arguably, one of the most pivotal developments in the whole frakkin' series.

Agree with the spoilery stuff.

Fun quote from James Poniewozik's recap/review:

* Game of Thrones is often at its best when it simply pairs up interesting characters—Arya and Tywin, notably—and Jaime and Brienne have the potential to be the show’s next compelling odd couple. Though I have to wonder if he isn’t more dangerous with his mouth ungagged than with his hands untied.

Read more: [link]

I like this one:

Speaking of Arya, Maisie Williams simply must get an Emmy nomination at some point for her work in the series. We might cheer for Arya regardless, but this is a prime example of the difference that the right actress reading the lines can make: Her “A man can go kill himself” gave me chills.

I am a HUGE Maisie Williams fan. She possibly the single best child actor I've ever seen.

Sean, is what you spoiler-fonted about this episode, or is it spoilery for upcoming events? I don't want to highlight it if it's the latter.

ita, it's not really spoilery for anything specific, and no actual upcoming events are mentioned. It's more of an overall comment, and should be safe for highlighting. In general, I try to avoid too much about specific future events, and I will never utter a peep about full-on HSQ moments, even in spoiler-font. It's a little amazing how this story makes those who know *want* to keep the unspoiled unspoiled. How could you ever rob someone of that much HSQ?

Mostly, I point out that one seemingly insignificant scene is much more significant than it appeared on the surface.

Poor Hot Pie. It must be a terrible burden going through life that thoroughly ignorant. Love the actor, though. He's bringing enough honesty to the role to make the character more sympathetic (not that he's unlikable in the books, just not as affable, I guess)

It gets very confusing with GoT to know what's safe and what's not. People might be spoilerfonting TV spoilers, or book spoilers, and then who knows if the show will follow the book in those respects anyway?

Conversation makes me dizzy.

It's a bit of a trick trying to talk about the show. The desire to not spoil people is there, but the desire to talk about the show and how out relates to the books is also strong, so those of us who've read them occasionally find ourselves making conversational contortions, our just refraining altogether.