Ran

731 votes, 8.12 average, 9 median, 8.36 normalized average, 90% "fresh"

Anarchosaurus, It's well-acted material by both of the actors, and fleshes out two of the very few surrounding cast around Daenerys (especially now that that cast has fallen by one). I have no issue with it, just as I had no issue in S1 when they had Rakharo and Irri arguing with one another as a way to flesh out a budding romance there, as well.

Indeed. And that's how RT works -- there may be reviews in there that you think are pretty mezzo-mezzo, and those are regarded as "fresh". The other thing is... I think for my part, the reason I've never thrown a "rotten" review at something is that there's a certain minimum of craft, production value, performance, etc. that is simply kind of default for a prestige show like this. Others, of course, may rate differently. But then, critics and the people who vote at places like RT also each have their own unique criteria.

Since people keep holding up the notion that the forum's average episode ratings are "far" from sites such as Rotten Tomatoes -- which rates movies/TV shows based on collating reviews and determining whether the "fresh" (positive) or "rotten" (negative) reviews are most predominant -- I figured I'd apply RT's algorithim to the votes for past episodes. RT determines anything it deems 60% or higher to be a positive review, anything under that to be a negative review, so I just counted up the total voters who voted 6 to 10, divided that number by total voters, and figured out what percentage of the total ratings were "positive". So, 96% fresh means that 96% of the votes were 6 or higher.

There are plenty on this forum who stopped watching after the first season, as well, who aren't voting. I don't think we can draw any conclusions based on the hypothetical votes of people not voting.

More RTizing of scores: Highest rated episode of the series, according to the forum, is "Blackwater". It has a 9.5 rating. Its RTized rating is 98% fresh. Lowest rated episode of the series according to the forum is "Breaker of Chains". It has a 6.98 rating, last I looked. Its RTized rating is 80% fresh. Here's the RTized score of all the episodes this season: Episode 1: 8.18 -> 96% fresh Episode 2: 8.41 -> 95% fresh Episode 3: 6.98 -> 80% fresh Episode 4: 7.78 -> 86% fresh Episode 5: 7.40 -> 89% fresh Episode 6: 8.76 -> 97% fresh Episode 7: 8.128 -> 96% fresh Episode 8: 8.15 -> 90% fresh Season to date: 91% fresh.

Because despite the insistence that those who are unhappy about changes are completely ignoring it against other shows, those people aren't actually doing so. They're saying the episode is "only" at 60% or 70% of what they wanted, but that still makes it more good than bad. ETA: Also means the show has a 100% fresh rating from me... :P

For those who keep harping about the "Rotten Tomatoes" score as if it means anything much... I've applied what seems to be the RT algorithm to the forum's rankings of this episode -- 6 and higher is "fresh", 5 and under is "rotten". There are 642 "fresh" votes, meaning that the forum's RT score for the episode is ... 90.5%. So all the episodes that score about 8 on the forum are equal to 90%+ according to "Rotten Tomatoes".

693 votes, 8.16 average, 9 median, 8.37 normalized average.

656 votes, 8.14 average, 9 median, 8.37 normalized average. An overview of the forum's voting for this season: Episode 1: 8.18 Episode 2: 8.41 Episode 3: 6.98 Episode 4: 7.78 Episode 5: 7.40 Episode 6: 8.76 Episode 7: 8.28 Episode 8: 8.14 Average to date: 7.99, which if it maintains (I suspect and hope it will improve on it) will make it the third highest rated season of the show according to the forum.

That's okay. I've dropped mine to a 5 just to balance things out. :)

ground_control, Yeah. Can't blame Benioff and Weiss for not remembering scripts some other guys wrote in the first season.

Though, I do admit, I did find the "I love mocking disabled people, makes me feel better about myself" a bit at odds with his first season "I have a fondness for crippled, bastards, and broken things." One can of course be a hypocrite, and they're talking about when he was younger, but I wouldn't have minded if he made it plain that his feelings have matured a bit since he used to stare and laugh at Orson.

548 votes, 8.12 average, 9 median, 8.33 normalized average.

There's this Tumblr thing I saw that made a funny point about that. Hrm... ah, here.

500 votes, 8.09 average, 9 median, 8.33 normalized average.

That was 4 minutes of conversation. Oberon and he could have had a very illuminating conversation in the same span of time, as well. Breakfast optional.

Cas, Every minute of film put on the screen costs a certain amount. Some minutes cost more than others,, but still, they all cost. Lets say a 54 minute episode costs $6.5 million. That gives the per minute cost of an average scene as $120,000. Shave two minutes from that episode and, depending how you do it, you could in theory save $250,000. Across 10 episodes, that's $2.5 million that you could choose to pour into a single marquee episode (ala The Watchers on the Wall)

Cas, It's budgetary. Basically, the seasons that have huge set pieces -- aka "Blackwater", "The Watchers on the Wall" -- tend to have resources saved up by reducing running time. Seasons that are less focused on huge set pieces -- like last season -- are given more run time per episode (remember, they even made a point about how we got "almost an extra entire episode" across the season because each episode was 2-3 minutes longer than season 2).

365 votes, 8.14 average, 9 median, 8.44 normalized average

320 votes in, 8.15 average, 9 median, 8.39 normalized average.

We know why George kills them, so that doesn't really make sense. (He kills them because it's a dramatic part of the story he's telling to his audience, obviously.) It was really just about Tyrion's powerlessness to effect his own fate. His mind turned toward the pointless and meaningless, and given his fate being decided, no surprise if it turned to a more morbid thought.

They have likely changed the Unsullied to not be entirely cut, I'm guessing. And Farinelli seemed to do all right with his love life despite being the most famous castrato singer of his age, so... yeah, we'll see how they go with it, but I don't mind a romance, even if it might be essentially platonic.

Wrestled with the score for this one, and I've decided that I'm just going to go all in with it -- it's a 6 for me. That's the third episode I've rated a 6 across the whole series. Why? Littlefinger, the man without a plan, dimishing the character yet further, and needlessly. Dark Queen Sansa, so ham-fisted. Arya's reveal, and the sinking feeling that the next time we see the Hound and Arya they'll be trudging back down the high road unmolested with no one think that maybe they should inform Robin Arryn or Petyr Baelish. The endless Orson speech. The heartfelt promise that he wouldn't die, telegraphing that he was indeed going to die. The horribly frenetic editing of the fight scene, the direction choices that left it impersonal, the choreography that necessitated so much stunt double work which meant less intimate scenes and poor pacing. It just was not good at all. For what should have been the most memorable fight scene in the novels, they turned in something that was, frankly, forgettable up to the final moment. The good stuff: the attack on Mole's Town, the Missandei-Grey Worm material, the Sansa and Littlefinger dialog after she revealed herself to the Vale lords, Moat Cailin, Pedro Pascal's performance.

Let us know what you think!