I thought this was a terrible episode. -Winterfell: I know horse battles are insanely difficult to pull off and that it must have taken incredible amounts of time and money just to do what they did, but it still was extremely anti-climactic. Perhaps ditching the horses and having a battle on foot would have allowed something more satisfying. And with Sansa simply escaping like Jeyne did (with no manipulation of the Boltons), even the staunchest defenders of the plot have to admit that going to Winterfell was an unambiguously bad idea on her part. -Arya: decent but ham-handed, between Trant hitting the girls and the overpowering scary music at the end. Dorne: epic fail. With the one major consequence of the trip (Myrcella dead) due to Ellaria, then there was absolutely no point to the Sand Snakes. They literally could have been written out of the season with no effects whatsoever. And after the reception they got this season, I expect they won't be returning next year. -Meereen (without Daenerys): mostly wheel spinning here; the dialogue was fine, but it didn't advance the plot much, if at all. -Daenerys: I was fine with this until the 'Inside the Episode,' when Benioff/Weiss actually stated to my disbelief that the ring she dropped is a 'breadcrumb' for people who'll be looking for her. Finding a ring that size in a small lawn is difficult enough; the idea that anyone searching through miles and miles of grassland could find that thing breaks my disbelief more than the existence of dragons and White Walkers. Cersei: credit where it's due; this was done very well. Excellent performances all around. -Wall: too rushed. One of the keys to this scene in the books is how the people who stabbed Jon had understandable reasons (he was sending hundreds to die in a hopeless gamble at Hardhome and declaring war against the Boltons with a Wildling army backing him). Here, the entire Watch is apparently composed of narrow-minded assholes. I gave D&D credit for making Throne a much more complex character last season and last episode, but now I have to take that praise back, what with him motivated by nothing other than pure bigotry (the fact that D&D referred to him as a 'bad guy' makes my point). My ideal final score would be 3.5, leaving me to waffle between 3 and 4. This is one of the lowest scores I'd give to any episode in the entire show (no episode from the first four seasons would be anywhere near that low). I'll go into a detailed critique in another thread later about my opinions on the season as a whole, but I'm not all that optimistic about the last two seasons.
