Black Sheep

The last scene was running along so good untill they had the blackout. What the hell? They're ok with having gold melting in five seconds but need a whole night to hatch dragons? Really underwhelming in an episode where the cinematic flow was otherwise the best in the season (I'm talking about great music, about fluid scene transitions, about epic Mormont voiceover). Other than that it was a great transitional episode, setting up characters to their arcs in the next seasons. Some scenes really gave me shivers, as I knew what anticipated them. I would give it a 9

Don't get it, it's not as if Martin described some supernatural sight of human-zombies hatching from purple chicken eggs. The thing we are discussing here is a human character, the concept is delivered the same whether it's through written word or filmed scene. There have been movies and tv series depicting children killers, from the top of my head The Wire and City of God are pretty strong on this. You can accept that certain circumstances lead to such extreme taboo behavior or you cannot - still it doesn't have anything to do with the media itself. Regarding the camera work - I've noticed some of this in earlier episodes as well. Some weird in-scene cuts, or weird zoom-ins. I too doubt it was incompetence, just poor choices. Again - book readers could handle it then so could viewers. Most of them would forget what she'd done by next season and just be sad for the girl and what she undergoes on the road and in Harrenhal. It certainly wouldn't be hard to have shown her killing the stableboy on purpose and deliver that she is extremely devastated by this.

Nah, I was just kidding, Roz is a great gal, she can stay. But them ruining the joke annoyed me a little (minor thing, I know...)

Book readers could (or could not), so TV viewers could too (or could not). Besides the stabbing moment was all sorts of weird due to the camera work. Tyrion's and Shagga's exchange about chopping the manhood was weird and came out of nowhere, especially since I'm guessing it was supposed to be comical. They should have at least two or three instances of Shagga saying this to deliver the comedy in the later exchange. Then I noticed that GRRM wrote in his blog that Tyrion and Bronn's meeting up with the clans was supposed to occur in Episode 7 (and was actually written by Dan & David) but was pushed to Episode 8. So I'm guessing it was trimmed down to fit into the episode and we've lost some great "I'll chop off your manhood and fit it to the goats" moments. Oh Roz... what have you done to us...

It's an evidence that House Targaryen continues to exist and will have offspring, and it's as much an insult to Robert (from his fanatic Targaryen-hate stand mostly) as it is a threat to the realm. Why is it a threat to the realm? I guess that a son that has a right to the lands of Westeros will serve as a better catalyst to Khal Drogo rather than "Oh my creepy megalomaniac brother-in-law wants me to go overseas to conquer some lands where Mountains decapitate horses (shivers)"