HODOR. I just can't. It was too much. ::still sniffling::

Arya's storyline is the one that's irritating me right now, simply because it's so stalled. You are A Girl, you're not A Girl, you are One of Us, you'll never be One of Us, you can fight, you can't fight ... I want something to happen there, finally.

Arya's storyline is the one that's irritating me right now, simply because it's so stalled. You are A Girl, you're not A Girl, you are One of Us, you'll never be One of Us, you can fight, you can't fight ... I want something to happen there, finally.

SERIOUSLY. Hoping this mission of hers gives us something actually compelling to watch.

Yeah, it seems like there's always one storyline that stalls pretty badly each season. Like the showrunners can't figure how to really advance the story for that character in the season, but they don't want you to forget about them, so the character just kind of spins their wheels.

Also, a day later and still in shock, I feel like George R. R. Martin has completely blown Joss and Tim out of the water for Most Emotionally Traumatizing Character Death Ever.

I didn't care for this episode. Didn't ring true for me.

So, Not-Mel over in Mereen...bad idea, guys. Although it's nice that they're explicitly calling out the "No, THIS one is the Prince(ss) Who Was Promised" thing.

I think the Close! Up! Penis! Was to attempt for equity, but....meh?

I do find the spin on the staged story interesting, although I suppose it's basically the official version. I would have thought there would have been a little more "fuck alla y'all" overseas. For a second, I thought they were going to go to a "Cersei was fucking Joffrey" place.

I really hope that Littlefinger wasn't lying, for Brienne's sake.

I do not like the off-handed way they're killing the wolves.

The thing about going past the books (and there's a large part of me that instinctively thinks of the show as "unofficial" or less real) is getting support or confirmation of theories. Jon, obviously (on both the Not!Dead and R+L=J fronts), but also the origins of the White Walkers.

My boyfriend was very confused by basically all of Bran's stuff this episode.

The thing about going past the books (and there's a large part of me that instinctively thinks of the show as "unofficial" or less real) is getting support or confirmation of theories.

Yeah. With regards to Hodor, though, I have to agree with the AVC reviewer that I'm actually glad I got to experience it on the TV show first because it was able to handle it in a way the book wouldn't be able to, intercutting between past and present and actually being able to hear "Hold the door" become "Hodor," though I'm also very excited to see how GRRM writes that scene.

Using the "Law & Order" rule of star wattage, I assume Anya will spend a bit of time with the troupe, only because Richard Grant was the leader of it.

I do not like the off-handed way they're killing the wolves.

Me neither.

and there's a large part of me that instinctively thinks of the show as "unofficial" or less real

Oh, that too. Except it's not just a part, I'm gonna say all my parts are in agreement.

I like thinking about how while we see the Starks as sympathetic and noble they could easily be painted as the villains in the south: they're basically all wargs, they worship the the old gods instead of the seven, they rebelled after Ned was executed for treason that he confessed to, it looks pretty bad. The play was interesting from that perspective.

Is it wrong that I think the show is better now that they've gone past the books? I haven't read the books yet, but the women seem to have much more agency this season and things are actually happening.

I think that a lot of the issue in the last season or two was that the books got kind of weird with the timelines -- Martin essentially realized that he had too many characters and too many places, so the last couple of books just focused on a few each. The show couldn't really do that, thus, we had Arya and the Hound wandering around Westeros forever until the rest of the stories got up to the place where she could go to Braavos. Though, I kind of expected something more to happen with her -- the show hasn't been following her storyline exactly, but she's in roughly the same place in the show as she is in the books now, while a lot of the other characters have moved a lot further forward.

I liked Sansa embroidering the wolf on her dress. In the books, it's kind of a thing that she doesn't really identify as a Stark, or as a northerner, too much -- she sees herself as her mother's daughter -- so that struck me as a big deal. That she's sick of playing the southern courtly games, and she's all in with the North.