Well this is the first time an episode has brought me to the forums (bank holiday - time to geek out) with a comment so go easy on me, but I thought it was the best so far.. Not much happening plot wise, but the whole team has to be given credit for an excellent job in riffing on the themes and characters GRRM provided. Clearly many of you novel purists will think this was a (relatively) sub-par episode due to how much it differed from the books. However I thought it was truly spectacular. The sheer amount of subtlety in every scene and the way it respected the characters and plot, while admittedly straying from the purely canon interpretation of the source material, frankly dropped my jaw. For instance, I have watched the Brienne, Roose and Jamie scene at least 4 times now and found new delight with each viewing. minor things such as the way NCW wavers his knife like a balance scale when discussing finances, and then stills the motion when talking about the consequences of displeasing his father, or GC's reaction to his immediate refusal to accept her staying as he is released. Now that is some serious top quality acting (and scripting ofc)! Every scene simply drips care and attention and manages to pull off some pretty major script changes while staying true to the spirit of the source material. The fact that this is averaging 8/10 while doing so, tells me that despite this GOT has writers and actors that are more than capable of elaborating on the source material, plus Alik Sakharov has to be given credit for some superb orchestration... I give this a solid 10/10
