Ran

They only show set locations, like castles and cities and such, generally speaking. That's why there was never a Red Waste shot as well. Renly's camp is on the coast of the stormlands, apparently near but not actually Storm's End. So that's why it's not shown. I guess Dragonstone... well, I guess they figure it wasn't necessary to remove it. It may be a sign that originally they had intended to have a scene with Stannis there, though, which they dropped.

Sibel Kekilli's actually a brilliant actress. She may or may not be playing Shae well (I like her), or perhaps it's the writers not writing well (think they're doing fine), but she's exceptionally talented. Watch her in Die Fremde and weep.

The thing that the novel does with Theon is that George deliberately writes an extremely unreflective Theon to start with, who bends with the wind and goes wherever he imagines his destiny or ambition lies. And then the cracks start to show deeper into the novel. So that's where the ability to look into a character's head suggested to GRRM that he was going to gloss the actual decision to join with Balon, so that he could follow that up down the road. Whereas here, the show -- not having the internal POV -- decides they can't afford to gloss it, they need to show the decision now. Makes sense, and beautifully done.

I've no problem with Theon's letter even on a purist front. Days, maybe weeks, pass between Theon's two chapters, and nothing says he didn't go from that first meeting with his father pondering whether to warn Robb. Obviously they've adjusted the timing, but anyways, no issue. Not least because it's a brilliantly executed sequence. The only thing that would have improved it is if Theon did the hard-core drowning ceremony, not just the baptismal thing that passes for it these days, to prove himself. That would have been amazing to have on the screen.

I think this episode (and the next) are better than the first two, but in some sense it's a little easier -- fewer narrative threads, so they could focus a little more. Theon sequence with the letter and the reconsecration is my favorite sequence in these four episodes.

What'd you think?

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A tally of ratings: 7.04 unadjusted average, 7.15 adjusted score after removing the top 5% and bottom 5% of votes to normalize data a little. That's a bit lower than last week. Also, the median vote is 7 this episode, vs. 8 for the previous episode.

You do have to suspend disbelief a little bit, re: Bronn as City Watch commander. But I don't expect he'll be holding on to the post after this season -- Tywin will almost certainly shoo him out of it.

Yeah, Ros is not taking the Jeyne role. Either they'll do something else with it or they'll just introduce Jeyne, "Oh, yeah, she was in Winterfell and was Sansa's friend and just accept she was there." George has mentioned this sort of thing before, when talking about the Sopranos and the way suddenly some lieutenant of Tony's exists on the show and is a major player even though you've never seen him or even had him mentioned before. Just have to accept it. But yeah, Ros is definitely not going to try and be passed off as Arya,

Oh, yes, Conleth Hill remains absolutely perfect as Varys. He's a better Varys than Dinklage is Tyrion.

GRRM has noted that American audiences are particularly unwelcoming to casting changes during a show. I think people would have been annoyed by someone else being called Rakharo. And, truth be told, I think he did leave a memorable presence -- Elyes Gabel's got a lot of charisma, and he sold that Dothraki language like no one else -- and a recasting would stick out like a sore thumb. That's a nice point about the hypocrisy of Tyrion, by replacing Joff's baby-killer Slynt with his own baby-killer-if-I-get-paid Bronn. Obviously, the idea of an illiterate, lowborn scumbag like Bronn being able to run the Watch is kind of silly -- it's a police force, you can't just get any old guy off the street to run an organization that has its own logistics and bureaucracy -- but we can suspend disbelief because it was really pretty clever as a way of cutting out Bywater and streamlining the story a bit. Lets just hope this doesn't mean Bronn meets Bywater's fate at the Blackwater. Jerome Flynn has been terrific. Oh, and if you haven't rated the episode yet, please do so! Bunkster, Yeah, the dragon statues are cool and a nice reminder of the Valyrians. I haven't had a chance to say here -- though I did in our episode coverage -- that I was really looking forward to Lucian Msamati on the show. I loved his performance in The No. 1 Lady's Detective Agency, and knew he'd do great with this role. He did. And as I note, it looks like they've gone with the notion that he's adopted Lys as his home port, but he's not originally from here -- episode 4 should make that clearer, I think, in an indirect way.

Oh, and something I've wondered between screener and final episode: did they keep the order of Theon with the captain's daughter, and then the brothel scene? I thought that was a very poor editing decision.

It certainly very hasty, I'll grant you that. But we don't really know what motivates Stannis to sleep with her in the novel, so I suppose the whispered promise of a son might be all it takes. It does make me wonder how they'll deal with it when a son isn't exactly forthcoming -- not the sort of son Stannis imagined he'd get, anyways. Melisandre has been explicit in ASoS that she births her shadows by sleeping with Stannis -- she tries to get Davos to sleep with her because Stannis's energies are depleted, so to speak. And yes, ADwD makes it even clearer.

It's clear Stannis has slept with Melisandre in the novels -- the shadow she gives birth to is his shadow! -- but it's quite subtle.

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How would you rate episode 202?

Welcome, folks!

Neil Marshall has noted they have green screen to set up a number of different ship sets, as well. I would not worry about it. Probably they wanted th extra ships built to be able to actually show boarding actions or "ramming" without the need for CG effects, but we'll see plenty of that, I expect. Removing outliers to normalize results, the episode rates 7.63 among viewers on the board. This is, BTW, also the most-voted episode of the show to date, by quite a margin.

AL = After Landing, referring to when Aegon the Conqueror (founder of the Targaryen dynasty and the unified Seven Kingdoms) landed on the shores of Westeros with his small army, his fleet.... and the three dragons he and his sister owned. No spaceships here (that we know of!) So 1 AL is more or less synonymous with the first year of Aegon's reign, and now the show is in the year 299 AL. Eunuch. Varys is a eunuch, but that happened in the Free Cities, where he's from. Revealing why he is a eunuch is a bit of a small spoiler, so I won't say -- perhaps the show will reveal it this season, as that detail comes from the second book. In general, eunuchs are an Eastern thing -- it's not a practice of Westeros (castration may happen as a punishment -- for example, rape -- but the purpose is punishment, not creation of a unique class of people) -- and it can be done for several reasons. Generally, eunuchs in the east are slaves, and their lack of functional genitals might make them useful as servants in various ways (whether it's in the seraglio of a merchant prince, watching over his women, or serving in pleasure houses, or simply as administrators who have no chance at sons or daughters or wives to give them reasons to be disloyal). Historically, that's how eunuchs tended to work out in Asia and elsewhere: they became members of the bureaucracy. And yeah, Lysa is extremely troubled, overly-protective to the point of madness.

For those who are arguing the wolves -- they are real wolves the show is using. Not CGI models. They composite them into the scenes digitally. This is why their proportions are like those of real wolves. Proportion problems aside, these wolves look a lot more realistic than TV-grade models would have looked. I'm not complaining.

Yes, it really doesn't fit at all. It's a scene that woks only if you suppose he's somehow not been at court for over 15 years and has no sense as to what she's capable of.

About a 7.6 average with 205 ratings. Throwing out the top and bottom 5% to normalize the results, it goes up to a 7.7 I think that's pretty fair for this episode, so far.