Dragons Are Real

Absolutely. And it's more than just the conversations and dialog. The entire show for the last several seasons has been a headlong rush towards the end. A trip that, by rights, should take several weeks, sometimes happens now multiple times in a single episode. Big reveal moments that should have time are thrown at as as fast as possible, then swept away as unimportant because the reveal happened. Interactions that should be complex and real, whether through conversation or even the little training scene in this weeks episode, are now just flash*bang*next and we're supposed to still see it as brilliant? You are 100% correct. There's no depth, and immersion is really difficult to maintain when it becomes clear to the viewer that the actors are just actors, not characters playing out real feeling lives before our eyes. While the show had it's problems before, it was easy to get lost in it and truly believe these were real people doing and saying real things. Once the Red Wedding passed, bit by bit that's been chipped away in favor of speed. I really wish the original plan of ten seasons of thirteen episodes had been maintained. If the Ds didn't want to continue at the correct pace to actually keep up the quality, perhaps HBO could have found someone that did want to? Watching the sometimes brilliant, but always enjoyable first few seasons turn into this rushed hatchet job where character doesn't matter, scenes don't matter, and plot doesn't even need to stay consistent with itself scene to scene? It's a sad and painful reminder of what we thought we were getting. That said, at least in episode two they tried to recapture some small portion of that greatness, even if only for a brief moment at a time. A couple of genuinely touching scenes is more than I expected, and the actors deserve huge kudos for making those scenes feel real enough to get lost in for those brief few moments they were allowed.