Northern Soul

My favourite episode of the season, edging out episode 3. A solid 9/10. I just feel like every sequence delivered and was purposeful. Great mix of character/plot development and action. It had s similar feel to episode 6 of last season, where the tension and talking started to ramp up and the tempo increased. Arya scenes were great, Winterfell was intense and emotive, Jon sequences were great for world building and furthering his story, Robb scenes were very watchable, KL stuff was gripping, even Dany was quite interesting. Only downside was nothing from Stannis and his gang, but you can't have everything.

As we saw the dragons struggling to feed in the first episode, because they're not yet able to cook meat and don't have a mother to to it for them, I wondered whether the implication is that they are weak and Dany was worried that if she let them see her dragons all pathetic and weak they wouldnt let her in at all? Seems a bit of a strange time to get an ego complex.

This is my concern. I don't understand why there isn't more exposition in the show. Take the Harrenhal scenes; did anyone actually mention they were at Harrenhal? And the Davos / Stannis scene about the finger bones; how on earth is a non-book viewer supposed to understand what's happening there. I mean, it's not that challenging. When everyone approaches Harrenhal, someone says: "That's Harrenhal, it's warped and grizzly because dragons burnt everyone alive there hundreds of years ago." As for Davos, someone could just ask him about the bones. He tells them the story. Bingo. If they couldn't have worked that dialogue into the script, why not simply cut that bit of mishandled characterization out completely? Interestingly, on the UK airing on Sky Atlantic we actually got the HBO 'previously on Game Of Thrones' recap pre-credits, which we've never had before. I wonder if broadcasters, of not producers, are concerned that audiences are (still) watching but in danger of not following what's happened.

Don't know if anyone's mentioned it, but did it strike you as weird that Yoren and Arya had that heart-to-heart at the end of the episode amongst the rest of the Night's Watch recruits? I mean, they've both gone to all this trouble to conceal Arya's identity, and then here they are chatting quite openly about Arya's experiences in King's Landing. It's not explicitly revealing who she is, but anyone listening in would probably figure out that 'Arry' is not quite who 'he' says he is. It's not a biggie, just that it showed the characters being a little careless. They could have easily had that chat outside, with Yoren rousing the men when the Lannister troops showed up. Overall I loved the episode. Scored first ep of season about an 8 and second a 7. This has to be an 8 or 9 in my book.