I withdraw what I said earlier about GRRM knowing or approving the Sansa storyline. (His lack of acknowledgement in his blog post that he approved or was consulted about the scene means, to me, that he didn't know.)

kat and t, I agree with both of you that this does not seem to fit with Littlefinger's motivations in either world. I hated that they went there with her. Not that it's any better to go there with Jeyne Poole but, it just sucks.

Also loving Arya stuff.

Has it been two weeks since we saw Daenarys? It seems like forever.

Last night's ending was horrific, but I can't agree that it was out of character for Littlefinger to set Sansa up like that. The only thing that separates him from Joffrey and Ramsay is better acting. He's utterly without morals.

He's without morals, but he does have weak spots, and Sansa has seemed to be one of them. Though, if he's setting himself up to save her, that does fit into what we've seen of him.

Yeah, I think Littlefinger has had a consistent loophole/blind spot/I don't know what to call it in his general "Fuck you, pay me" world view when it comes to Catelyn and by extension Sansa. I didn't read him ever selling Sansa out like that. And I've read that the writer (or maybe the director) of this episode has said that at least in TV show land, we should assume that Lord Baelish doesn't actually know the extent of Ramsay's sadism, but that just doesn't jibe with what we've seen of who he is. Maybe only Varys has been more connected, more in the know, and more pulling the strings behind the scenes than Littlefinger. I don't buy that he hasn't heard what a twisted little puppy Ramsay Snow is. It just didn't sit right with me.

I don't know if it's even a matter of him not selling out Sansa as much as I suspect his end game is to have her for himself and he would want to protect her as his possession meanwhile. Morality certainly doesn't come into it.

I was sufficiently disturbed by last night that I'm not sure I'm going to keep watching the show. It was just so narratively unnecessary and gratuitous to me. It told us nothing about the characters we didn't already know, and if anything negated the growth we've seen in Sansa becoming a player in her own right. I know what kind of show I'm watching, and I don't expect it to be pretty or easy for anyone, but that scene was beyond what I bargained for even with this particular brand of grimdark.

Gliding over the frightfulness of that last scene: but didn't Sansa look like Queen Elizabeth I in that dress? (I think it was the giant collar.)

I think that the producers doomed themselves to this as soon as they changed Sansa's storyline and merged it with the book character who isn't in the tv show. And sadly, we were doomed to watch it. It was both horrific and predictable.

They didn't doom anything. They didn't have to follow that storyline to the letter. They could have adjusted it for the fact that, you know, Sansa is a very different character and a very different person.

Patti Lupone on Penny Dreadful! I love this show.

I've been rewriting that scene in my head all week. If they really wanted to keep close to the book plot but with Sansa in the book character's place, I would've found it more believable as something she didn't just walk into with Baelish's encouragement. I found it A) too contrived that a player as well-connected as Baelish wouldn't know Ramsay is a sadistic sociopath, and B) unbelievable that Sansa would need to go straight to Winterfell and marry a Bolton to try to reclaim the North instead of making straight for Stannis's army or any number of families with fond memories of her family who would support her in claiming the Stark inheritance. If they'd made her try to do one of those things and be CAPTURED by the Boltons, the plot would make more sense to me.

Or they could've actually had her join up with Stannis or the Mormonts or whoever and claim Winterfell that way. I'm not saying it would have to be a happy, easy thing--this is GoT, after all. What we got on screen was both appalling AND made no sense in terms of story logic.