boojam

Watching again. (1) The whole sequence from the IB conference room to Salladhor Saan is just a gem! What fine actors. (2)The Yara/Asha side story. When she's giving the pep talk on the ship, what the hell happened to about 30 of the other Ironborn? Maybe she picked a rading party? , but season 3 there DID seem to be 50 really ornery Ironborn bad asses. Why are there only five Ironborn heavies with Asha? How come she looses even two of them? Ramsay seems to lose all his men! All things being even, Asha should have just killed Ramsay just for the hell of it? Actually the way the scene cuts away she really does not seem concerned by the dogs. I can see that D&D wanted to reinterpret Asha as less glam but hard bitten salty sea-bitch as Yara (George may have wanted them to change the name?) So be it, I am liking Gemma Whelan in this role. (Gemma , herself, is no glamor queen, but in real life attractive... sure have made her a hard as nails looking.) (3) At the small council meeting , odd thing. Varys knows about the Hound's dust up at the inn, but says nothing, but nothing about Arya? No, his 'birds' would have known who she was. Curious. Strangely Tywin , sort of dismisses the dragons, while at Harrenhal tells Arya Dragons are WMDs. If they ever become War Dragons Westeros is toast. What did he write on that paper Mace fetched?

I thought Varys answer , this: Tyrion asks Varys if he has forgotten his promise to remember that Tyrion saved the city from Stannis;Varys says that he never forgets a thing. ...oddly vague , as if he ducked accusing Tyrion of anything. I would have look in the book to see what Varys says at the trial, since his actions are Tyrion friendly later.

10 Wherein Bryan Cogman places Ace for Adaptation!

Interesting , over at IMDB: 3003 votes: Arithmetic mean = 8.8. Median = 9 Over at Rotten Tomatoes ~40 critics on balance reviews give it a 'rating' of 10. At least all these reviews give , in most cases, an analysis, in some cases an extensive analysis. After watching the episode again, not clear , to me, why it worked out to be 1 point less than I estimate it at. I had given it a 10 but after reading this week's reactions I might subtract a point, but don't agree with the faults I have seen posted, so a puzzle as to why it did't wind up with a 9 or at minimum an average at 8. Oddly scored episode. O yes, for a lengthy review someone who is a reader Myles McNutt at Cultural Learnings is always a good read: http://cultural-learnings.com/category/game-of-thrones/

I have seen this criticism a lot. Especially in Cersei and Marge's exchange. To me both sound like crafty Machiavellians , subtly disingenuous. Politeness only a veneer. Same with Cersei's other exchanges.

She looks the same to me.

We got another Chekhov's Gun this episode. Moon Door. Why the heck is that thing , that far open? With an over protective mom and addled Suckling Robin running around? Put a Osha :) standard hazard label on that thing!

IMDB lists Peter Dinklage as being in this episode, so that makes it hard to check if there is one where we was not. This is the only one I can note.

Anybody notice that Sucking Robin (Lino Facioli) looks pretty much the same as season 1?

I might be misremembering but seems , in the books, we don't have in quantitative knowledge about Casterly Rock's mines. I always figured mines running or not they had a 'Fort Knox' type of deal and drew on that, but we don't have any knowledge of that either. I think you are right , it's kind of fuzzy , Tywin has the means but does not want to bankrupt the Lannisters. I remember vaguely that House Tyrells' wealth is from having a large taxable population. They have a large 'middle class'? Doesn't anybody get wealth in Westeros by trade commerce? The Iron Bank of Braavos again! We even go there this season. I don't think it's a spoiler because GRRM has brought the IB into play in the story already, but they start to seem be a bigger player more early on the show's story.

It's passing odd D&D were quite pleased about getting Roger Ashton-Griffiths and I don't think he's had more that two sentences. Odd. I also noticed, at least I think I did, either a stand in or a maybe a visual cameo by Dianna Rigg , hard to tell, for Olenna, would not minded having seen Rigg get one last parting scene.

This is , I think, the 2nd best written episode of the season. 10/10

Over at Rotten Tomatoes (they ought to rename that site!) there are , if I count right, 36 positive review, with analysis, one negative review. Over all score 97. RT does not seem to collect all possible reviewers (I like Myles McNutt long reviews over at Cultural Learnings) but it's a pretty broad spectrum of TV reviews. (I keep noting that the New York Times Arts Beat Jeremy Egner reviews each episode this season, I don't know if NYT did this in former years or not, it's been positive... in contrast to Mike Hale's muddled season previews which turn out negative but are kind of mixed, but mostly worthless.) Over at IMDB S4E4 got a Arithmetic mean = 9.0. Median = 9 out of 3478 votes. The sample is fairly big and they have histograms of two kinds of stuff but no error bars. Never know what to think of IMDB. I don't know if trolls vote there, does not seem their kind of thing. Message boards on IMDB are overrun by adolescent and arrested adolescent trolls, signal to noise is very bad.

No I like Michiel Huisman as Daario, only trouble is even tho he's in episode 1 and 3 , and 4 yeah have to look hard to see him I think he has only had lines in E3!

Yeah I can't remember either! Just think when Natalia Tena comes back next year won't know who she is either!

By the by Ciarán Hinds must have some sweetheart contract , I am not even sure he is in the next episode?!

It's odd George has seemingly revealed what we just saw, but then promises or maybe he is teasing , a surprise about the PW to come. Not sure I really care about a surprise now.

They already moved Arya 13 to episode 1, and RW stuff was last year. (Well part of Arya 13.) If she does not get to Saltpans until E10... then it was all travelogue and a village stay. I suppose they could run into the mountain clans, missing since S1. Almost halfway done, wonder how much shooting time Maisie had last year?

Looking back at episode 2, Roose didn't even order Locke to KB. Was there a line of dialog like that? Locke asked where he might look for the Stark boys, and Theon speculated. So Prest-O Change-O there is Locke at CB! I guess they wanted to get some more Noah Taylor , he has that same creepy 'Batman' whisper-voice, which is getting on my never. Maybe that Noah Taylor normal speaking voice? I checked, he does have a bit high pitched voice, and another of those mysterious UK accents, but he does sound 'wispy' on the videos I have seen.

No Melisandre mentions The Great Other in Storm of Swords. Melisandr's thinks R'hllor represented by Stannis should go to the wall to defeat the Lord of Darkness. George made that all murky to me in the books, since by the end of Dance Stannis is off messing with Roose. The whole Great Other story , others and wights stuff is just thin in the books so far in the novels.

Finally the Targaryen sigil, took four seasons. No dragons names yet. I thought Roose tasked Locke to take a troop of guys to Castle Black? Tho it kind of makes more sense this way. I wondered how they were going to get Locke mixed up with a Stark. Apparently Locke get killed during or after the Craster Keep dust up. The Other's stuff, hmm... is that D&D's invention ? Or they get it from George? Sooo... what the hell do you do with a baby wight? Very strange.

When you say 'ratings' do you mean viewers?

Dany only has 5 chapters in COK. A great amount on the page is inner thoughts. Dany IV is visions, visions, visions... I think Dave and Dan threw up their hands and outlined something 'actionable' , so to speak. Then didn't write very good dialog for Qarth, and George did not write a single sequence there(I mean the show). They hired an actress to play Quaithe and hardly involved her. I thought the first two episodes of season 2 were ok. What they were going to do with the HoUD must have been a challenge, Dany's visions there, only two, worked for me, and the action in her escape was ok, with a bit of clumsy dialog. All and all do you think , if D&D were not interested or were flummoxed that they could have looked for a writer to have transfered all the difficult content of Dany's Qarth chapters into good visual drama? I mean it would have taken some imagination, it might have come out , so to speak, sort of 'abstract'... not exactly box office with most viewers. I think something could have been done with another writer but they did not make the effort. They are really over worked so dont know if I can blame them...

Welcome back! This sure was an oddly controversial episode, for such a generally standard narrative episode. The Jamie/Cersei scene looked more like a writing boggle than anything else, I was kinda MEH about it.

Poll comparisons are a bee in my bonnet. No good reason.