The Anti-Targ

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.

Yeah, the minute or so spent with Roz and Theon could have been better spent on actual events of the story. Osha came of as rather Gollum-ish. We swears to serve the master if you spares us our life. The scene as a whole was OK. But I was looking to see a direwolf there. I really hope we see a bit more of the dire wolves. Golden crown was golden. Seeing the heart eating was great. Showing Arya's needle prowess, even while distracted with her troubles, marvellous. Just one more scene with Syrio I fear. Gosh such a pity, would have loved to see some more dancing lessons. Good opening scene. No doubt second watch will be even better. 8 from me.

On first view I was thinking 6.5-7, but after second viewing I'm giving it an 8. Fortunately I waited until my second viewing before voting in this thread. My only real gripe is Renly's characteristation, and it's not really related to changes from the book per se. Because I'm looking at his characterisation from the point of view of someone who doesn't know the books and whether such a person will really think of Renly as worthy of the crown. So far it's a negative (nothing to do with the gay thing either, that was fine).

Definitely a step up. Ghost looked great, and TBH I never really cared that Ghost was mute, that's uber-geek stuff and I'm just a regular geek. I thought it all came together fine. I think they've done it reasonably well by bringing in some history at this point, though I do wonder if Ep4 might not have been a tad late to bring the N00bs up to speed.

7 from me. Good bits and bad bits IMO with the good outweighing the bad. Seeing Syrio was great, and the interplay with Arya wonderful. Didn't much like how things went across the narrow sea. I liked what they did at the Wall given the constraints. Though I thought some of the scripting could have been done better. And not having steamy breath on the wall when they did it well for the prologue was disappointing. I thought all the scenes with Ned, Sansa and Arya worked well. Was less impressed with Littlefinger's characterisation than I thought I'd be, but could be having too high expectations in the first place. Renly might as well not have ben at the small council. I like Varys so far. Didn't really dig the Bob, Selmy, Jaime scene. I did like the Ned, Jaime scene in the throne room. So yeah, too many negatives to give an 8, but a solid show none-the-less.

I was mostly happy with the progression from Ep1, but like others have said I thought the Dany scenes didn't quite work. They are doing a great job of making Tyrion a sympathetic character and thus creating some of the complexity of each House having its good eggs and bad eggs. Marked it down one from Ep1, so it's 8 and 7 so far from me.

Let me be the first to welcome you to the forum. If the bean reference is a hint, then this is not out of the realms of possibility. If he'd bean younger he would have made a GREAT Littlefinger.

Investing in a quality actor like Dinklage, and obtaining the services of a quality dramatic director like McCarthy are pretty good signs for the future. What I really want to know is if they have optioned the 2 for a full series should the pilot be picked up for at least one season. I guess that "little" news won't be forthcoming from anyone any time soon. I can't imagine McCarthy signing on for his televisual debut if he thought the screenplay was a dog.

My guess is cast/crew announcements.

Freestyle Antipodean Moussaka Turn on your computer, connect to the internets, go to google, type in Moussaka recipe, hit the enter key. Easy peasy. OK so after I did that about 4 years ago, getting a recipe off a 14 year-old Greek kid who posted it on the interweb as an English assignment, I proceeded to figure out the tightwad's, lazy arse version, and here it is, vege and non-vege (with the purist ingredients alongside). All in metric too sorry. Guess the movie. [quote]You don't eat meat? Is OK I make lamb.[/quote] Meat Sauce: - Lamb mince 500-750gm or more depending on how many you want to feed (Purist: lamb shoulder finely chopped or diced). Regardless fresh NZ lamb IS the best!! - Optional: If you want to be really cheap, use less lamb and bless it with various finely chopped or grated vegetables to whatever quantity you think you'll need: Mushroom, carrot, zucchini etc, also a good way to hide veges in food for fussy kids. - dried parsley, no particular quantity just put in as much as you dare (Purist: 1/2 cup of fresh parsley). - 1-1/2 tsp allspice. - 1x 400gm tin of tomato puree, If you like things particularly tomato-ey then using 30 or 40gm of tomato paste as well ups the ante a bit. You can also use your favourite brand of pasta sauce if that's what your into (Purist: a crap load of seeded and chopped fresh tomato - too much like hard work if you ask me). - 1 onion finely chopped - garlic to taste, I use the chopped garlic from a jar, but fresh is always best - Your choice of cooking oil I pretty much use grape seed oil as my std cooking oil - Heaps of grated cheese, whatever is your favourite, I use cheddar or edam as the base. A tad (is that metric or imperial?) of feta gives it a nice flavour especially if you use goat feta, otherwise I use parmesian for a more subtle flavour boost. - Salt & Pepper according to taste - a dash of lemon juice (because I almost alway use it) and a splash of worchestishire sauce (again because I almost always use it) - Optional: chilli powder or cayenne pepper for some zing, but not too much, this is NOT meant to be an obviously spicey hot dish, but if your into it spice it all to hell for all I care. - Optional: your preferred colour(s) of capsicum (bell perpper I believe come may call them) finely chopped, or sliced as you prefer. Capsicum is pretty much a stock standard ingredient for this sort of stuff for me. - 1 1/2 x 380gm cans of fried eggplant (aubergine) in tomato sauce 'Tamek' brand from Turkey if you can get it (Purist: fry your own damn sliced fresh eggplant you lazy sod, bugger that I say). Cheese Sauce (Purist: Bechamel sauce) - 50gm butter - 1 cup of milk - 3Tbsp flour (if you want to be gluten free I find half and half rice flour and fine grain cornmeal is pretty good. Note NOT cornflour) - 1/4 tsp nutmeg - salt & pepper according to taste - Optional: mild curry powder 1/4 - 1/2 tsp I think, I never measure. OK so the meat prep: - In a medium heat pan put in a dash of cooking oil, fry the onion, garlic, capsicum, allspice, parsely, salt, pepper and chilli powder/cayenne pepper. After a minute or 2 add the lemon juice and worchestershire sauce to make a bit of a paste. Let it reduce a little, but not too much. - Add the lamb and stir-fry until reasonably browned. If you're particularly anal about the amount of fat in your food...well you shouldn't be making this, but if you are making this then you can drain off the fat (and a lot of the flavour) before adding the tomato. To be fair, lamb mince is pretty dang fatty and I usually drain off a fair amount of fat myself when I use lamb mince. I normally drain it into a container, stick it in the fridge and once the fat solidifies I scrape it off then add the aqueous portion back to the meat - Add the tomato puree/paste/pasta sauce/ freshly chopped and seeded tomato. Continue with the stirring and frying. - Don't ask me how long, but after a while (if you're using fresh tomato, probably about the time you can no longer see any chunks of tomato) it will be time to add any finely chopped/grated veges you've decided to use. - Keep on stirring, but by now you are probably no longer really frying in that stirfry sort of way because you should have a meat sauce. Basically once you get everything evenly mixed you want to let the sauce simmer (i.e. turn the heat down to medium/low) until it reduces to a nice thick consistency. No one likes a watery meat sauce, so if you added the veges you'll need to simmer for a bit longer. At this point if you've opted for the diced lamb shoulder (which I personally think tastes best and provides the best texture in the finished product) you want to make it fall apart tender (mmmmm melt in your mouth lamb is THE BEST, hands down, full stop, no correspondence will be entered into). So you can transfer to a casserole dish and throw it in the oven on 150 DegC for an hour or so. It is VITAL IMO that the lamb be cooked to tenderness. OK while the simmering is happening we move to the white/cheese sauce. It's meant to be Bechamel sauce if you're a purist and know how to make bechamel sauce, but I just go with what I know and it comes out OK. Do I need to write how to make a cheese sauce? Come on, really? OK quickly then: Melt the butter (microwave or saucepan whatever you prefer, again I prefer the lazy way so I nuke everything), mix in the flour to make a thick paste, SLOWLY add milk, stirring constantly to prevent clumping, add salt, pepper, nutmeg and curry powder (this is my own quirky thing, I just love the flavour that mild curry powder gives to cheese sauce, no matter what you are using the cheese sauce for). For things like moussaka and lasagne I like to make a thick cheese sauce, but... you know... do what you like. After the sauce is reasonably thick add a decent wadge of your grated cheese (BUT don't use any Feta here), as per my usual precision measurements a handful is what I normally use. By the time I'm done my cheese sauce is nearly thick enough to stand up a spoon in, sometimes I overdo it and almost turn it into playdough, still tastes pretty good though. Aiiight, so now we have the cheese sauce and the meat sauce should be pretty well reduced, so turn off the heat on the meat sauce and get ready to construct the moussaka. Oh yeah, if you're using fresh eggplant don't forget to fry it. I ain't going into the whole prepping of fresh eggplant for frying palava. I've done it a couple of times and while it's nice it ain't worth the hassel IMO. If you don't know how and want to try just ask any half way decent cook of Middle Eastern or Greek (Italian too??) origin. Otherwise go for the canned stuff like me, you won't regret it... well you might if you're a stuck up cullinary snob. Where was I... Oh yeah putting it all together. So you need an oven dish. You know a rectangular, or oval, dish like for lasagne. Sort of what, like 300mm x 200mm x 50mm, or maybe 200 x 150 x 50 if you are making a smallish quantity. Now you do some layering like lasagne but the eggplant takes the place of the pasta. So, bottom layer eggplant (no need to oil the bottom of the oven dish because the eggplant is plenty oily enough). Be reasonably spare unless you have plenty of eggplant because you need to make 4 layers of eggplant. Alternate eggplant layers with layers of meat sauce so you end up with 4 layers of eggplant and 3 layers of meat sauce. After you've done the layering pour on the cheese sauce and spread it out to make a nice even covering. With the remaining grated cheese (crumble the Feta into the grated cheese if you're gonna use it) lay out an even covering of cheese over the cheese sauce. Put the prepard Moussaka into an oven pre-heated to 180 DegC. As the meat sauce is already hot you only need to bake the moussaka until the grated cheese is melted and slightly browned and crispy. When the cheese is melted to the point where it is exactly how you like it take the moussaka out of the oven and serve. Normally I only eat it with a garden salad, but some sort of potato side dish might be good. I don't drink at all so I have no idea what sort of wine you should take with this. But I understand you normally have red wine with red meat dishes, right? VEGETARIAN: Do exactly as above, EXCEPT leave out the lamb (naturally) and use a shit load of grated/finely chopped vegetables. In addition to the vege mentioned above I've used cauliflower, broccoli and spinach sliverbeet. If you want some more substance to it and you know how, use lentils I suppose, but I've never tried this myself. Chickpeas might also be a goer. Not sure weather beans would be any good, maybe black beans? VEGAN: Well without the cheese sauce is just isn't moussaka is it? So this one isn't really suitable for you. I went to a local greek restaurant once, they served beef moussaka. It was bad. I don't recommend this variation.

[quote name='David and Dan' post='1645381' date='Jan 12 2009, 19.57'][quote name='Mike the Magnar' post='1636324' date='Jan 3 2009, 10.54'] I am just saying what if. He is already deeply vested in the show. I wish he would just jump on here for two seconds and say, "I can, in no way, act," or "I am a great actor I just haven't tried it yet and was waiting for this to jump in." Then everyone can stop voting for him in the polls, and I can stop defending my great idea.[/quote] I can't act. Trust me on this. The Hound is one of my favorite characters and I'm flattered by the suggestion, but we'll get someone way more talented than I am to play the part. D [/quote] :lmao: And here I was thinking it would be some major announcement.

[quote name='Brudewollen' post='1608551' date='Dec 4 2008, 19.50']I'm just crossing my fingers that D&D don't decide to throw in [s]any[/s] many big musical numbers in between those two lines. :P[/quote] Fixed. There will have to be at [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGpVcdqeS0"]least one[/url] during the big feast at Winterfell. :D "Weeeee're knights of the round table, we dance when e'er we're able..." A perfect fit.