114 replies to this topic

[mimi]

Almost gave it a 10. But 10 is perfect and I have a few minor quibbles. Wish I could do a 9.9.......I hardly took a breath during the whole episode. No, 'jerk me out of the fantasy world' scenes here!

Septa has had little mention & I think she did a great job facing her killers.

Maester Luwin is fantastic.

ALL of the acting was fabulous! (Can say that 'cause Littlefinger only had a few lines....)

So - GRRM STILL didn't tell us if Syrio dies!! Ha!!!

For the first time - THIS is my favorite episode. GRRM could write all the rest of the show & I'd be thrilled!

[JagfyrBlackfyre]

This was definitely the most dense episode yet.  I do feel that it may have covered too many events, and as such a few things felt a bit rushed.  Still, given the breadth of it, and the awesomeness of the new material not in the books (Drogo's especially), I still have to give it an eight, and an eight for me is not lightly given.  This episode seems to set up the ninth to be the marquee one of the season.  Obviously ten will have its wild moments as well, but after episode eight the tension is set so high that the plot can do anything but explode.

[Emo Jon Snow]

My 2nd 10 of the season, and probably the best episode yet as far as I was concerned.

I was very happy with the way the Syrio scene with Arya was done, and Tyrion and Bronn are already becoming my favorite on screen duo.

[Timekeeper]

A solid 9 for astonishing adaptation to the small screen. Arya's first kill and lack of Tysha's story keep me from giving it that perfect 10. Very much loved the blend of exposition and action with the scenes. Drogo's fight especially was a very nice improvement.

"Tell Lord Tywin, winter is coming for him. Twenty thousand strong, to find out if he really does shit gold." As soon as I heard the line, the only thing going through my mind was "damn, he did not just go there".

[Tywin's bastard]

valacirca, on 06 June 2011 - 12:11 AM, said:

whoa the 10's are leading the other ratings for the first time...

I kind of expected beforehand because people know this is written by George and I figured that at least some people would have their perceptions altered by that fact (in the same way people are viewing the show in light of the book).

Personally I found the episode to be great, although not sure if it's the best of the season.

mimi, on 06 June 2011 - 07:43 AM, said:

Almost gave it a 10. But 10 is perfect and I have a few minor quibbles. Wish I could do a 9.9.......I hardly took a breath during the whole episode. No, 'jerk me out of the fantasy world' scenes here!

I'm not trying to tell you how to vote but personally I think a scale of 10 is far too rough to have a grade dedicated solely to perfection (perfection is a strong term and if I had a scale where one grade simulated that I would never use it). To me it seems logical that a 9.9 would be rounded off to 10 rather than 9.

This bit accurately shows the biggest flaw of public voting though; that people don't even view the scales similarly. I reckon some people see the 1-5 grades as shades of poor, while others go by the devise that it's irrelevant to grade something poor and instead use more of the scale to talk about what's interesting, i.e. what's actually good.

[Lannister Fan]

I gave it a 9/10. I was surprised I loved Drogo's scene the best. Tyrion was awesome as usual. Really though, the whole ep was just pure awesomeness. I was actually not aware that George R.R. Martin wrote the ep until now and wondered why it felt different in some way. Not surprising this one of the best ep!

Edited by Lannister Fan, 06 June 2011 - 08:56 AM.

[Abaddon]

I'm going to go with 8/10.  As per my comment in the other thread, it was just too much crammed into too little time.  The only scene I actively disliked was Arya's 'accidental' killing of the stable boy.  Was glad we got a lot of Robb time and also that they are clearly building up Theon as very much in Robb's trust.  They needed to start doing that in preparation for Season 2 and did it well.

I thought GRRM did a nice job of being very economical with his dialogue, still managing to hit most of the high points from the book in very little time.

Also, BIG props to the actor playing Joffrey and in general to the writing/direction in general in the Sansa/Joff scene; it was so obviously staged (where Joff accepts Sansa's plea 'graciously' despite the 'protests' of his advisors) and it was just done beautifully.  It was weird to see Pycelle be so forceful; was it like that in the book?  I can't remember.

[ExLibris]

Best episode to date, GRRM should be scripting every episode (though then we wouldn't be getting Dance with Dragons in July  ). Aside from a few editing and production errors, this episode had me in its grasp from start to finish; the first 10 from me. Some highlights:

Spoiler

• Syrio Forel rocking knights with a wooden sword
  
• Khal Drogo defeating an opponent without a weapon and then ripping his throat out
  
• Ser Barristan being awesome
  
• Joffery doing an excellent job at being an ass
  
• Septa Mordane taking one for the team
  
• Little Robert Arryn doing an amazing job at being incredibly creepy
  
• Tyrion and Tywin meeting face to face
  
• Robb and the Greatjon
  
• Direwolves!
  
• Varys...the actor for him is perfect
  
• Sansa and Robb getting some more screen time and doing an excellent job
  
• The Hound..."who do you think sent me?"
  
• No lesbian sex scenes
  
• No red-headed wench named Ros

I'm sure I'm missing a few things.

[valacirca]

Intriguingly, I found that the material from this episode has been the most sharply written of the series. The written-for-TV scenes also seem to be then most well-integrated ones into the story so far. No doubt this is due to the genius of GRRM... but I thought that the directing from this episode left me wanting more.

I felt that there were a handful of scenes that were clumsily directed and the episode as a whole left me underwhelmed.

I gave the episode an 8. A far cry from the torrent of 10's that it's been getting so far --- no doubt due to the fact that people must be thinking that if it's written by GRRM, it must be perfect...

[Daenerys]

I was also disappointed with Arya's first kill, but another scene that was disappointing was Sandor's interaction with Sansa. Now I'm not a "San-San" supporter or anything like that, but I just think Sandor is a great character that's being wasted. And I'm not asking for a long scene there, I just thought something more than "Why do you think they sent me?" would be nice. Does anyone who hasn't read the books even know who Sandor is at this point so late in the season? I wonder because for the most part he's been muzzled and relegated to the background. He seems like a minor character more along the lines of a Meryn Trant or Kevan Lannister (characters you might notice but wouldn't really lose much if you didn't) than the major character he should be.

I guess what I'm saying is there's a lot of scenes in the show that seem to, for whatever reason, lack the impact they deserve and had in the books. Robert's death, Arya's first kill, the wight attack on the Old Bear, anything with Sandor, Dany's wedding (without horse ride), Jon's NW oaths, the KL tournament, most of the direwolf scenes (or lack thereof)...

[sammycakes]

Daenerys, on 06 June 2011 - 11:18 AM, said:

I was also disappointed with Arya's first kill, but another scene that was disappointing was Sandor's interaction with Sansa. Now I'm not a "San-San" supporter or anything like that, but I just think Sandor is a great character that's being wasted. And I'm not asking for a long scene there, I just thought something more than "Why do you think they sent me?" would be nice. Does anyone who hasn't read the books even know who Sandor is at this point so late in the season? I wonder because for the most part he's been muzzled and relegated to the background. He seems like a minor character more along the lines of a Meryn Trant or Kevan Lannister (characters you might notice but wouldn't really lose much if you didn't) than the major character he should be.

I think most non-book readers know him by now as the bad-ass loyal knight of the Lannisters, someone to be feared. That doesn't seem too different a characterization than book-readers had after the first book. They're aware of the Sandor/Gregor backstory. It's not until the second book, if I recall, that you start peeling back the layers a bit.

[Vargo's Pet Goat]

Excellent, wish they would let GRRM write them all.  But I liked the first 7, too, honestly.
I have been consistently impressed with how the changes have almost all been improvements, which I would not have thought possible.  For example, the way Drogo gets injured is much superior to how it occurred in the book.
As to the comment that the wound was too 'minor" I think that was done on purpose--it makes the subsequent events all the more, um, 'interesting'.

[Bronn Stone]

valacirca, on 06 June 2011 - 10:20 AM, said:

I gave the episode an 8. A far cry from the torrent of 10's that it's been getting so far --- no doubt due to the fact that people must be thinking that if it's written by GRRM, it must be perfect...

Maybe just maybe some people are interpreting the scale differently from you.  Is the scale linear or logarithmic? Is the show being compared to other television shows or some idealized imagined form of the book?  Different judges, using different scales get different results.

So far, I am convinced that this is the best bit of speculative fiction ever put on television.  Frankly, I don't think there has ever been a well-done fantasy series before this one.  The best of sci-fi (B5 and BSG, in that order, IMO) aren't as strong as this.  The only two shows I have seen that I am absolutely certain are better are The Wire and the old Shogun mini-series.  That makes it a ten in my book.  Proudly.  It isn't perfect, but television is a medium that seldom allows for the perfect.

You say this is an eight.  I say that means you think that 20% of the stuff on TV is better than this.  Then I'd say you are wrong.

[Starkess]

valacirca, on 06 June 2011 - 10:20 AM, said:

I gave the episode an 8. A far cry from the torrent of 10's that it's been getting so far --- no doubt due to the fact that people must be thinking that if it's written by GRRM, it must be perfect... [/font]

Or maybe your subjective opinion is just different than theirs? Several people have already stated that they didn't even know this episode was written by GRRM. I personally could care less who writes the episodes--what matters is how much I enjoy watching them.

[Abaddon]

Bronn Stone, on 06 June 2011 - 03:57 PM, said:

You say this is an eight.  I say that means you think that 20% of the stuff on TV is better than this.  Then I'd say you are wrong.

I gave it an eight, too.  That says, to me, that it's 20% worse than the best episode of GoT I could imagine.  (For the record, I've been giving out a lot of 9's, and would probably give Episode 6 a 9.5, but I'm waiting on a perfect 10).  I already think it's better than 99.99% of TV out there, but just saying "well, the series is great, so every episode is a 10" seems pretty shallow to me.

[Bronn Stone]

Abaddon, on 06 June 2011 - 04:32 PM, said:

I gave it an eight, too.  That says, to me, that it's 20% worse than the best episode of GoT I could imagine.  (For the record, I've been giving out a lot of 9's, and would probably give Episode 6 a 9.5, but I'm waiting on a perfect 10).  I already think it's better than 99.99% of TV out there, but just saying "well, the series is great, so every episode is a 10" seems pretty shallow to me.

emphasis mine

Fine.  You are welcome to judge on any scale you want.  But if people are going to compare the show to their own (mostly unreasonable) expectations, throwing a bone like the highlighted comment out now and then would make these threads a lot less vitriolic.

[Swordfish]

Bronn Stone, on 06 June 2011 - 04:51 PM, said:

emphasis mine

Fine.  You are welcome to judge on any scale you want.  But if people are going to compare the show to their own (mostly unreasonable) expectations, throwing a bone like the highlighted comment out now and then would make these threads a lot less vitriolic.

You think this thread is vitriolic?  Really?

Just because people gave the episode an 8 out of 10?

I haven't seen ANY vitriol in this thread. Like, at all.

[Huan]

My favorite episode so far. I hope the next two can live up to it! I almost had tears in my eyes watching Septa Mordane's dignified walk towards her doom. That was very well done, as was the Syrio-Arya scene. I even started to like Robb and his interactions with the Greatjon lived up to my expectations although I think that the Greatjon has a bit of a "Karstark edge" relative to the book. Joffrey on the throne was pretty much just as psycho as I imagined. I thought Sean Bean did a great job of portraying Ned as really not grasping the dire situation he's in. I loved the look on his face when Varys told him that Tyrion had slipped through Catelyn's fingers. I liked the way they translated and simplified the Drogo fight/wound scene. To me the weakest scenes were the Wall scenes.

[Rhaego Dragon]

I did not like that episode that much I liked the previous ones. I missed a little bit the action. Also was very much dissapointed about tyrion not telling about tysha. Hope that it will be mentioned in another way.

[Bronn Stone]

Swordfish, on 06 June 2011 - 05:27 PM, said:

You think this thread is vitriolic?  Really?

Just because people gave the episode an 8 out of 10?

I haven't seen ANY vitriol in this thread. Like, at all.

Note the difference between the term "these" and "this".  Previous incarnations have gotten vitriolic.