CloudFlare

Wights aren't zombies in behavior or appearance. They have the apparent ability to play dead and carry out rudimentary order, as shown by the attack on Lord Commander Mormont. Classical zombies eat brains and not much else. Wights don't appear to decay. The two zombies that attacked Mormont didn't have corpse stink, and Coldhands isn't decaying.

I think the show writers were in a bind with Dany and S1/S2. If they stayed true to the books her storyline would have been pretty boring(or difficult to convey) in a visual medium. Dany gains inner strength during this time, but the only external struggles she faces are her minor scrap with Viserys and MMD. The book HotU reveals the prophecies and Dany's destiny, but the visual action is fairly tame. Her defeat of the warlocks is mostly by accident, and is carried out by Drogon. The kidnapping plot was a good attempt to make it work better on TV, but the showdown with the warlocks kind of flopped. Dany stumbles around in the tower, with the warlocks letting her into the super-dooper-magic vision room for a while, then they bind her. Didn't make much sense, or have much tension. Maybe the warlocks underestimated her?

Yep, Bran-Hodor-Asha-Rickon-Jojen-Meera have to evade the flayed men, otherwise they head to the nearest village and wait for a northern bannerman to show up. ETA: Maybe Luwin crawled to the godswood before Winterfell was sacked? Theon getting thumped betrayed was pretty fucking cool. The non-book readers who were watching with me cheered to see him get punished. Oh, what little they know...

Umm, in Sam's last scene, were those _Others_ on the horses, or wights? The one that stared at Sam looked nothing like the S1 other. Hell, he looked like he was half tree. Hmm, WeirwoodSwampThing?

+ Infinity. Turning Joff's name day joust into a sword fight is perfectly fine, but this scene demanded horses. I know it costs more, takes more time to film, and there's the physical risk involved... but it just made no sense. The king walking like a commoner? Tyrion wouldn't be able to handle. With horses, it's a symbol of the commoners dragging the high lords down into the gutters... on foot it's just a fight between some people we know and some we don't.

Hmm, the more I think about it, the worse the sigil scene between Arya and Tywin seems. A non-noble girl lying to a high lord about where she was from would certainly raise Tywin's suspicions, yet he lets it go. I know what the show was trying to convey, but it doesn't make any sense. Edit: Given the differences in elocution between the high and low born that we see in the later books, it makes even less sense that Tywin wouldn't be suspicious.

Yep, that's right, they considered the dragons 'theirs'. I wonder if we see more of the dragons' personalities when they are young in the show? In the books they're portrayed as cat like, but we don't get much on how intelligent they are, or how aggressive or friendly they are to humans. Later, well, we all know what happens. Can't wait for the House of the Undying next week!

Maybe wildfire will be retconned as what gave the Targs the ability to force Westeros to obey after the dragons all died?

I'm pretty sure that clause exists in the books. Good episode. I loved how Doreah interacted with Drogon. I've alway imagined that Dany's original khalasar interacted with the dragons when they were small, almost as pets. It would have been something to bind them all together during the dangerous times. I liked the jealousy between Doreah and Irri.

Correction: Amputating people. Maybe the Starks have a bit of Bolton blood in them?

Same here. On the show the boys didn't have a tactical advantage, and they lost their leader at the beginning of the fight. I think they would have yielded very quickly.

Same feelings here. I just don't get the sense of 'iron' from TV Stannis. He's not physically impressive, particularly compared to the actor portraying Davos.

I think LF's spying on spies was to show how how convoluted King's Landing politics really are. I'm sure his whores spy for him. The semen scene(as disgusting as it was) showed that LF can think on his feet and, ahem, keeps his customers happy. He got to where he is today on his smarts, not a sincecure from a lord. You know that from the books, but the casual viewer doesn't.

Was Littlefinger spying on someone having sex, or was he spying on someone spying on someone who was having sex?

While everyone in the books closes their eyes and go 'It's Arya Aray Arya!' I can't see them doing the same for Ros. The red hair is just too much of a stretch.