The Anti-Targ

7 for me. I was expecting Slayer, didn't happen. Didn't particularly like clingy Stannis, that just felt wrong and weak. Jaime's hand: where were the arterial spurts? That was so fake is was cheesy, moar blood in those situations please. Dumb whore scene with Pod, merely an interlude, and a waste of time, purely to get some female nudity on screen as we've been a bit light on nakedness this season. Breasts and vaginas on screen for no other reason than to have breasts and vaginas on screen is pathetic. Pod ogling Ros' cleavage was perfect. Riverrun was near perfect. Other than the lack of blood, Brienne and Jaime were great. Arya scenes were brilliant. Loved the bits with the hound, loved the parting with Hot Pie. Pretty good at Craster's keep. I hope Sam gets his moment next episode. Astapor was great, can't really fault anything there. Was almost an 8 but just a few too many negatives.

How do people give this episode a 1 (or 2 or 3)? Seriously, this is season 3 and it's far from the worst episode ever. If you hated this episode then you must loath the series in general, so why are you still watching? Is it just so you can come here and give the show crap scores? You folk should be in the "Who stopped watching the TV series" threads.

A good homage to Reek, having Ramsay pretend to be the cleaning boy who is actually an emmissary from Asha Yara sent to aid in his escape. That's going to really screw with Theon's head. Arya scenes: great. Having the Hound out Arya had rather a rushed feel to it, but it does show how badass the Hound is, given he had no particular reason to have paid Arya any attention, yet he recognises her trying to do her best impression of a peseat boy. My Isaac (Bran) has [physically] matured. Nice solution to the problem of an ever growing Bran and how Hodor is going to move him around. Great Intro of Jojen and Meera. I think we need as many scenes with Osha and Meera as possible because that's set up for a nice bit of female badass rivalry as chief protector of the merry little brand hiking north. I think, because Rickon will actually be old enough to be interesting, when the group splits we might see the show keeping tabs on Rickon and [probably] Meera. As long as the show doesn't spoil us as to Rickon's ultimate destination before TWoW tells us. Talissa and Robb continue to be the bore of the show. But I did like the reveal about what the people of Essos think of Westerosi. Kraznys was rather disdaining of Westerosi, but then he's an evil slaver, so his opinion doesn't count for much in the audience's mind.

Very good episode. The only cringeworthy scene was Cat and Talissa. A few other nitpicks, but nothing major. Yes Brienne vs. Jaime looked too staged and not as fuild as top swordspersons should look, but it worked well enough. Very very happy with QoT. Great scene, pulled almost 100% from the book (dialogue-wise of course). The show didn't make me want lemoncakes as much as reading of them did.

It was like a highlights reel, which was all well and good, but I felt somewhat unsatiated when the credits began to roll. Lots of poor adaptation decisions (changes from the book) from S2 coming home to roost in the form of rather weak plot points in this episode. I can't blame S3 for the sins of S2 so I grant them the lesser offence of having to do the best they can with the mess they created last season. So a pretty generous 7/10 to kick things off.

Watching the episode a second time allowed me to detach from the disappointments associated with the mangling of the source material and assesst it on its own merits. I must say I enjoyed the episode over all much more second time around (an experience I've had for almost all the shows this season, unlike last season). I realised how there were very few scenes to which I reacted negatively, but they were substantial problems from my perspective so they coloured the entire show. There was really very little wrong with the show before Robb's wedding scene. So I can see for non-book readers that the finale was pretty decent, which while it doesn;t really give me any greater personal satisfaction it does give me confidence in how well the series is set for maintaining popularity going into season 3. Now it's just a matter of hoping they make a better go of the upcoming material knowing they have 2 seasons to play with to get through aSoS.

The season did not end on a high note for me. Too many unsatisfactory tying off of plot threads. Robb / Talissa - ill conceived modification of the story to start wilth and ended with a pathetic wimper. I think a lot of people will be thinking Robb more or less earned his fate, albeit no one ever deserves that sort of fate. I think this will have people reacting very differently to how they reacted in the book. I just hope they find some way to convincingly contrive Talissa as being a reasonably good strategic match. In aSoS Jeyne Westerling is not bad as a strategic match, not as good as marrying a Frey, but still marrying into a Western noble family has its uses vis-a-vis the conflict with the Lannisters. Marrying Talissa has no such utility. And they way it was handled with the one scene with Cat was very very weak. Not at all happy with how Jon and Qhorin came to fight. Having an actual pre-determined conspiracy between the two, I think, is an important part of the story. Again a conclusion to a plot thread which took the story in a strange direction, purely to get more screen time between Ygritte and Jon. More than happy with how things ended in Winterfell. Just enough show and tell. Dany, again the ending was the logical conclusion to taking the story in a less than satisfactory direction. Fine with Doreah dying, given she's dead in the books, but now Dany has no handmaidens. I guess that leaves Dany with young...her name escapes me just now... from Astapor as her sole handmaiden. I guess that's fine as far as it goes. I suppose killing off the whole 13 leaves Dany suitably positioned to be able to leave Qarth at her leisure, rather than having to escape at short notice. But then again if XXD and Pyat Pree hadn't colluded she could have burnt down the HotU and still been able to leave in a leisurely manner. No doubt the 13 12 would have paid her a sufficient sum, and given her a ship to have her be on her way. Anyway, kinda so-so about her situation right now. Great to see the wee dragons in action though. Poor old Tyrion, it's all down hill from here. As far as it goes the scenes in KL went well. The gloating of Maester Pycell was good. Not sure what to make of Varys-Ros. But I like every scene with Varys, so kind of mixed feelings there. I knew the 3 blows of the horn would come this ep. But somehow attacking in broad daylight didn't quite work for me. Still was a reasonably ominous ending. Fugly White Walkers, but for me, not shit my pants scary. Arya's ending was fine. Having Jaqen do his thing worked, it's just a shame Tom won't be back with us in future seasons, he did a fantastic job. So, I toyed with a 6/10, but decided it wasn't the weakest ep of the sason so I gave it a 7. So on balance Robb and Jon being let downs in particular (Robb especially being weak TV irrespective of the books) with a few other little gripes prevented me from giving it a better score.

Too many scenes that didn't quite work for me, probably most disappointingly Brienne and Jaime, There didn't seem to be any chemistry, Nikolaj seeme to be going through the motions with his delivery. I blame the direction, because Nikolaj has delivered some great lines these past 2 seasons. Though that's their first scene together an perhaps there will be a chance for the chemistry to develop. It's an important relationship for Jaime. So I guess some Stark loyalists will need to capture Jaime in order for him to lose his hand...or will it be the Brotherhood? Jaqen and Arya will need to have one more scene, so Arya can unsay his name. I expect we'll see the coin and the face change then...we'd better or Arya's story will go 100% off the tracks. I didn't like the lead up to naming A man for death. It shouldn't have been Jaqen refusing to kill Tywin, regardless of the reason. Arya should have opened with the I need your help line. I suppose they are rescuing Jon and Qhorin's story arc a bit. I still think it's crazy that Ghost has gone completely AWOL. But I do have a personal need for Qhorin to tell Jon what must be done. The show also put the brakes on the season, slowing down the pace which didn;t quite work for me. I did think Tyrion and Cersei worked well, and Theon / Asha was good. We all knew Robb / Talisa was coming so it was what it was. I think they got that entire thing wrong, but the error was in the original decision so what happened this episode is neither good nor bad, it just is the next logical step. Most of what happened in Winterfell was fine. Robb / Catelyn was OK. I do think it was a cop out not showing the manner of the escape, too much suspension of disbelief required to think they could slip out of the camp unnoticed for long enough for them to get a decent head start. I don't know whay they didn't have Jaime's captivity based based at Riverrun, given they marched right past it to get to the Westerlands, it's not like Hoster Tully would ever cave in to promises of gold for Jaime. Bad choice, and I can't think hiring another castle would be more expensive than having it all happen in an encampment. Great to see Varys back in the picture, and good interactions with Tyrion. Ros being used as the mistaken whore, expected and played well. 1 1/2 minutes of Dany and nothing really happens, pointless. I was happy with Stannis and Davos, even though the scene was really only to remind the audience that they're there. It sounds like I have mostly bad things to say about the show, but overall I still liked it well enough Time is precious with only 10 episodes per season. I feel somewhat cheated by having "previously on GoT" eating up 2 minutes of airtime. That's 20 minutes of potential extra show content over the season lost from doing previouslies. :-( Not that this is unique to this episode, but I just haven;t felt like expressing it before. 7/10

Not sure I agree with that. The show set things up so that Jaime will not survive the night without Catelyn's intervention. Catelyn knows (or at least is convinced) that if Jaime dies then her daughters die. As I see it there are 2 ways to keep Jaime alive: cut off his sword hand to try to appease Karstark, or at least delay Jaime's execution until Robb returns. Or send jaime back to KL getting his guarantee that the girls will be returned. Either decision is internally consistent with the TV version of the story, and it's an empowered decision from Catelyn, as opposed to her doing it on the say-so of Littlefinger. So it works for me. I'm thinking Catelyn might take Jaime's hand. With the way things are working in Harrenhal I'm not sure how they're going to work in the capture of Brienne and Jaime and the hand being removed via saddistic sellsword. They set up the imminent removal of Jaime's hand quite well with Jaime saying that he'd be nothing if he couldn't be a warrior. Catelyn knows that Jaime knows that Catelyn can't kill Jaime, so Jaime thinks she can't hurt him at all. Also knowing that Jaime would prefer death to total and permanent disability we know that Catelyn can give Jaime a fate worse than death. I would prefer Cat to remove Jaime's hand, but aiding his escape at this point is OK by me. Though I'd prefer the escape to happen in EP 10.

OK if this is how Jon's story plays out I'll consider this a very strong episode, almost worthy of a 9: The band who has surrounded Jon is relatively small, so Qhorin et al descend on them to rescue Jon. Ygritte escapes with a few wildings, Jon joins back up with the Halfhand and takes all sorts of shit from his brothers. Then Ygritte returns with a much bigger troop of wildings and we're back to how things play out in the book. I NEED Jon and Qhorin to have that conversation, if that doesn't happen it will be the biggest disappointment of the season. What gives me hope is that Ep 8 is GRRM's episode, ETA: No it's not, Ep 9 is, OK so maybe THE convo happens in EP 9. Hopefully he insisted on being the one to write that scene. I thought Cersei coming out and actually admitting to Tyrion that the kids are children of incest was going too far. Cersei may turn to Tyrion as the only adult family she has, but she'd never fully let her guard down like that. It doesn't sit right with the nature of their relationship, especially with her attitude and deep seated loathing of Tyrion. Of course it does probably segue into Cersei being a complete bitch to Tyrion next episode, and she has all the more reason to be all out nasty because she showed a moment of vulnerability to him. Still I do not approve of the admission. King of Qarth, and murdering 11 of the 13. Did they need to go there? Not sure. It certainly ramped up Dany's jeopardy, and Pyat Pree is certainly all sorts of unsettling. Drives Dany into desperation and urgent need to move on, and ultimately to head to Slaver's Bay. So a mixed bag in Qarth. Good ending with Jaime/Catelyn and Theon and the effigies. I think they did a bad job with the paper mache dummies for Bran and Rickon. OK I've never seen a tarred body before, but they even seemed to lack heft hanging on the ropes, so they just screamed out FAKE so kinda took me out of the scene a tad. Great expression on Theon's face though, so a very strong finish. Pretty sure the noobs will see the bait and switch though. Too many clues in the episode, still Theons expression at the end will give people pause, wondering where the truth lies. 8/10 from me.

Well the riot was effectively still going at the end of the episode. So there's a chance these lines will make it into Ep7, though I think it unlikely given the audience tension has passed, so there's probably not a lot of point in labouring over the imposition of a curfew.

Good lord! By the depth of your disappointment in the disappointing elements of the episode I'm surprised you gave the episode a pass mark. I was expecting a 5 or less from you. If I take Rotten Tomatoes as a reference point (for what constitutes a good score vs a bad score) 6/10 means the episode was still objectively good despite some terrible flaws. The way I read your review I got the impression that you think the episode was objectively bad despite some very good scenes. I've just realised I can un-vote and re-vote. So I down-rated the episode to 7 (originally voted 8) and am surprised I'm only one point away from your score, given there are a number of points of difference between your and my impressions of the episode.

I do find the 1/2/3 ratings curious. These ratings mean not only is it poor adaptation of the books but objectively bad TV all around putting all gripes about book adaptation aside. I fail to see how anyone can call GoT total rubbish, especialy from people who like the genre and are OK with sex and violence in their reading material. For myself, I could see rating a bad episode of GoT 4/10 (this one I rate well above that). Generally bad, but there will always be good elements, even if it's just the actors making the best of a bad script. I'll always enjoy Peter Dinklage's chracterisation of Tyrion. Maise, Jack and Sophie never disappoint in their characterisation of Arya, Joff and Sansa. Quality actors will always raise any screenplay above the level of abysmal. I think the annoying elements of this show can be largely overlooked as I donlt think they have major impacts on the characters' developments, aside from Jon possibly. I initially gave the show an 8, but on reflection I would change it to a 7 if I could, but I'm OK with leaving it at 8. I fear next week's show may drop to a 6 if Jon's story line ends up where it appears to be heading.

Very worried that they are not going to pull off Jon / Qhorin climax with as much poignancy or emotion as in the book, worried indeed that We've seen the last of Qhorin. Other than that very happy with the episode. 8/10

I think it's great that Qarth seems comfortable and homey for Dany at the moment. Funny I kinda disagree with all the disappointments from Linda and Elio's review apart from not dooing the shadow assassin right. I did think that Renly's shadow on the tent moved strangely / ominously so I agree that they might have tried to do it according to the book, but there was a last minute change. Perhaps there was some difficulty with making it look right and it was quicker to do a Lost-esque thing which they had to settle for due to time constraints. Didn't mind Loras not blaming Cat/Brienne, but yeah I thought Loras' grief was otherwise a bit too muted. He could at least have punched one of the guardsmen in the face with a mailed fist and blamed them for letting an assassin get through them. So without the bloody mummers is it going to be Northmen (Roose) who capture Jaime and Brienne. Upon capture they are still loyal to Robb, so cut off his hand, then they turn their cloak and send Jaime on his merry way. Will they keep Brienne there for Jaime to come back and rescue? Or will they save time and send her off with Jaime? The more the series goes on the more they will cut for expediency and because cutting something early means whole threads unravel, so minor plot lines get bent out of all recognition. It's interesting, in CoK I supported in general Stannis' cause. But I'm finding Stannis to be not worthy of support in the TV series. If there's one plotline I think they've done poorly it's Stannis', and it remains one of the flaws of this episode for me. Stannis comes off as petulant, and altogether too personally ambitious for the Iron Throne. He should be the iron - grim, hard and unyielding - that Donal Noye (is that right?) describes him as in the book. In the book I can see why Davos is so loyal to Stannis, in the TV show I can't for the life of me understand why Davos would be so unwaveringly loyal. I thought it was a strong episode and best of season to date. The other highly analytical, non-professional watchers of the show, but who know nothing of the book all breathed a huge sigh of relief that the season very much got back on track and were very glad to leave episode 4 behind. Interestingly I think there is a widening divergence of opinion on the merits of episodes between book enthusiasts and unspoiled non-readers. Objectively I think this was strong drama, but subjectively there was plenty of divergence from the book with which book fans can choose to be upset / disappointed.

Best of season so far. Don't really mind any of the changes, and only sad that we have no Reeds. Quite happy for Loras not to blame Brienne, it's a sub-plot that goes no where in the book, and actually shows Loras has some smarts. Brienne left because she thought she'd get the chop, and her loyalty was to Renly, not Tyrell, Baratheon or anyone else. So she's pledged fealty to Cat and that's as far as it needs to go. Only thing that irked me was Dany with her handmaidens, they were altogether too familiar, but it was a small thing. I swear, the best episodes are the ones with the least T&A because that leaves space and time for real narrative and drama. I don't necessarily want GoT to become PG, but I'll trade explicit sex scenes for quality drama any day of the week. 8/10 a big improvement on Ep4 and very hopeful for the rest of the season.

I don't know what it is, I'm finding it hard to feel the love this season. Film/TV adaptation never lives up to the book, no matter what, and changes are necessary. I know this absolutely so it can't be that. After all, I like the book of LOTR much better than the movies but I still loved the movies despite some of the adaptation changes, some of which I didn't like at all. I think I'm not connecting with the characters like I did in Season 1. The shows have all seemed a little rushed, edited highlights if you will. So some of the added scenes have maybe felt a bit annoying as there's plenty of the book being excluded and additional scenes which I don;t think add much by way of important context, narrative or exposition. I don't mind so much the truncating of Arya's storyline. I'm fine with her becomming Tywin's cupbearer and Tywin knowing she's a girl at first glance. Kinda vastly accentuates the irony of the situation. I also was more than happy with XXD being a Summer Islander, really shuts up all the complainers about there being a well tanned person in Qarth. Still, disappointed that even the Qartheen have toffy English accents. How much of a monoculture is the whole of Martinworld? Seriously, Summer Islanders at least should have a decent Jamaican or African accent. I'll take Javik's Prothean accent from Mass Effect 3 over XXD's garden variety English accent any day. Some really good scenes from this episode, But pretty much all lifted more or less verbatim from the book. Tyrion v. Lancel - brilliant. And Lancel isn't an awful actor up against the mighty Peter Dinklage. Though I thought the Parlay between Stannis and Renly was not a great piece of acting. Renly didn;t quite hit the right level of dismissive flippancy for me. Still it was a good scene and great to see the words lifted from the page and put into speech. I was really worried about what Ros (are there only 3 whores in the whole of King's Landing aside from Shae?) was going to be made to do with that rod. Damned glad it ended up only being more beatings, thank the gods for small mercies. Shadow baby was suitably creepy. Davos was suitably grossed out and freaked in equal measure. Off to lurk on the TWOP forum now. 6/10 for me, all points going to the scenes lifted more or less right off the page. Gods I hope Littlefinger doesn't help Cat escape Renly's camp next week.

7 from me, almost a 6. I thought the episode was going quite well, and then that abomination of a final scene. Still don't see much subtlety in Melisandre's character.

I just watched Thronecast for Ep1. And part of the monologue reminded me of what I thought was one of the stupidist bits of dialogue in the show: when Shae says the city smells of cum. Especially funny that he sprayed deodorant around his crotch after runing through Shae's list of smells. Reminded me that there's some dumb dialogue in this series, and without too many exceptions the best dialogue is the stuff pulled straight from the books. After all other than cum the list of odours Shae lists would have been totally fitting, and still would have been enough to make her horny. Adding cum just made it corny.

A solid start, 7/10 I figure I've got to give the season room to get better. A pity they didn't start with the prologue from the book, but I can understand why they reaquainted the audience with the central, surviving, characters from the past season. I did like hearing Sandor's line backing up Sansa with the whole bad luck to kill someone on your name day. As usual the best dialogue is the stuff taken straight from the book.

I can see Sophie Turner being a stand out star in Season 2. She's going to show her inner Stark and fans will be cheering every small victory she achieves against Joffery.

My first 9. Oddly I don't think it was the strongest episode, but it's the episode where I had the fewest nitpicks. It only failed to get a 10 because every episode with a scene with Ros's vagina gets an automatic -1. Not because I have a problem with seeing it per se, it's very nice, but it just seems like tokenism at this point (not to be confused with Tolkienism). Ros is there so they can flash some occasional bush. Hey! we haven't had bush for a few episodes, quick let's write another Ros scene. Ahh, that's better. Right, on with the story. I liked The Wall, I liked Dany's scenes, I liked Arya's scenes, I liked Sansa's scenes, I liked the San-San interactions, I liked the Tyrion scenes, I liked Catelyn v Jaime, I liked Bran's scenes and I really liked the dragons. It was a very good finale.

Still can't go above 8 for any episode in the series yet. While I can understand why they didn't have them for various reasons it was still a bitter blow not to show any battle scenes. I really wanted to see Tyrion do something on the battlefield, and to be knocked unconscious before the battle even begins was rather pathetic. I thought they did the final scene very well, and having that one word between Yoren and Ned was a nice touch.

Great, a little disappointed at some of the cuts. Most disappointing is Sansa's first betrayal of Ned in going to the Queen to fess up about the escape plan. I liked that step as her hitting bottom with her infatuation with Joff, and now slowly (then not so slowly) the film is removed from her eyes and she sees Joffery and the Queen for who they truly are. Still a great episode, and it seems to have had the fl00bs all a flutter with heart pounding.

Would have been a 9 but for Ros' training day scene. Which put it back to an 8.