Hiram McDrogon

How so? Book: decides he's the rightful king, kills Renly with some regrets, fails to take King's Landing, licks his wounds on Dragonstone, decides to fight for the realm (and PR benefit) of defending the Wall, successfully defends the Wall, heads south to fight the Boltons and faces adversity. All the while thinking about but never quite making a blood sacrifice to the Lord of Light, and never really showing much emotional attachment to his daughter. Show: decides he's the rightful king, kills Renly with some regrets, fails to take King's Landing, licks his wounds on Dragonstone, decides to fight for the realm (and PR benefit) of defending the Wall, successfully defends the Wall, heads south to face the Boltons and faces adversity. All the while thinking about but never quite making a blood sacrifice to the Lord of Light, and at one point showing a deep emotional attachment to his daughter. Then he makes a blood sacrifice to the Lord of Light, and that sacrifice destroys any chance he had of victory. His ambition undoes him. I'm not too sure how the show butchers or simplifies the arc. Simplifies the character, maybe, but the arc? What Stannis actually does in the books so far is pretty close to what we've seen in the show - when and if we ever get more material for the arc, OK, we may say the show simplifies it, but for now I don't see how that can be said.

Wow dude, Arya's scene alone probably takes you up to 11/10. With For the Watch factored in, you're looking homicidal.

Pshaw. Obviously not a Doctor Who fan! We all know Littlefinger has a TARDIS, and when he gets there, he'll turn it sideways, and Sansa and Theon will fall in, with the swimming pool set up to catch their fall, just like for River Song when she jumped off a New York skyscraper. (Goddamn, I like the show. I shouldn't be writing stuff like this.)

Remember that when Thoros first resurrected Beric, he had no intention of doing so - they were just words he said when someone died, and he was as surprised as anyone when Beric got up (at least that's in the show - I can't remember what happened in the book). Who knows - coming to her god with humility may be what actually gives Mel the power she claimed, and perhaps thought she had, all along.

Actually the TV forum here is a much more positive and enthusiastic place during the off-season. It's full of people who enjoy the show. Or at least I hope it will be again - many of the more prolific posters at that time of year have disappeared during the on-season, perhaps overwhelmed by the negativity. It does amuse me that the two most popular votes are 10/10 or 1/10 (the former seems rosy-eyed uncritical enthusiasm, and the latter absurd), but I guess this is the internet, and reasonable dislike or enjoyment just isn't done.

Voting 8, I guess, although I'm having trouble disentangling ratings for the episode (pretty good, probably 8/10) from the season as a while (meh, 6 or 7 out of 10, oddly lower than my average for all the episodes). I liked Arya and Trant, even though it didn't really make sense to me, based on what we'd seen of the brothel last week, that they'd let people come in and just beat little girls. But other than that it was well done (and, um, bonus, kind of, for not doing any creepy sexual thing. Beyond random beating, that is). I think Stannis's story ended (?) marvellously well, even if it seemed a bit too cribbed from Macbeth at the end. I have no idea where it's going in the books, but that doesn't matter - in the show, I love this season's progress from triumphal hero at the Wall to a broken man who's destroyed everything he cared about. Plus I'm very curious what's going to happen with Melisandre now - her face when she returned to Castle Black was fantastic, the first sign we've seen of any character development for her. (I guess Stannis is dead now, even if a weapon being raised prior to certain death, followed by a cut, has led to real deaths approximately ... zero times in this series?) King's Landing and in particular Lena Headey were excellent, although I wish we'd heard something about what's happening to the Tyrells. Yes, the walk went on too long - good. I'm glad it seemed awful. That was the point. I also liked how Qyburn rushing up with a blanket instantly turned our dear little mad scientist into the most kindhearted man in King's Landing. Meereen was good, with Daario showing more character this episode than perhaps he ever has before. They found a more sensible reason for Tyrion to be ruling than I thought was possible, so that's good. (Still odd, but not as absurd as I'd feared.) I'm curious why Dany's interaction with Drogon this week looked so much better than it did last week. I guess I'm happy to see Varys back, but ... WTF?! I think Dorne, Winterfell, and Castle Black were all solid enough in isolation, but not that good when viewed for the season as a whole. Dorne: well, Jaime had a great scene there, and Myrcella was good too. I'm very surprised that she's (presumably) dead - with Cersei's prophecy, I was sure that she'd be queen after Tommen's death. But they got Alexander Siddig for that?! At the moment Ellaria's plan seems bizarre, but, well, if I'm going to give GRRM the benefit of a doubt on much of ADWD and AFFC until the next book comes out and hopefully ties it all together, I can do that for the show too. Winterfell: assuming Sansa is in this situation, all well and good, and nice to see Myranda dead, and Theon returning. But why oh why has there been no hint this season that she was even trying to play the Boltons?! Try and fail, OK, but ... did she try? And I've only watched it once, but from the way it was filmed, that leap off the wall looked like a suicide jump - if they wanted it to seem like a big gamble, where maybe the snow would break their fall, that didn't seem to come across. Castle Black: again, in isolation, the scene with Sam was good, and the murder was good. But it just doesn't make sense to me that, after they'd heard what happened at Hardhome, the murder would happen now. And as is typical for this season, there are just too many inconsistencies or implausibilities: as I said earlier, the brothel letting Trant beat girls; Sansa's candle briefly turning into some kind of arc light; Stannis somehow making it back to the forest before being found by Brienne; Dany going on what seemed a pretty epic hike for a bite to eat; Varys somehow having a spy network in Meereen ... none of these are huge, but at some point around the middle of this season the show punctured my suspension of disbelief, and I'm not sure if it's going to come back.

But that's all book knowledge, isn't it? I'm not sure if that information has ever been provided in the show. In the show, seeing as how Stannis's army came along the north side of the Wall, it's barely arguable that travelling along the north side made more sense. But to me it's another example of the show's occasional carelessness over relatively easy things to get right - if Jon and co had simply left Castle Black along the north side of the wall in the first place, I wouldn't have registered the return on the north as weird. But the fact that they left from the south side, and then came back along the north side, made it jarring.

7/10. I liked the Stannis scene. Maybe I've spent too much of my life reading ancient myths, but a ruler sacrificing their own child is a pretty classic trope and I like it when the story has old echoes like that. Yes, it was appropriately horrific, but I think it was probably the best done scene of the episode. The twenty men simultaneously lighting fires all across the camp was rather absurd. This may be the first episode ever when I haven't liked Arya's scenes. Come on kid - you're in training to be a secret assassin! Make at least some effort to not direct cold stares at your target as you slyly trail them, invisible as you can be, following them through near-empty giant squares with a seafood cart by the safe distance of what seemed to be five meters. Meereen solid. Not great, but solid. The gladiator combat was just OK; the Harpy insurrection was creepy and mostly well done, except that I'm confused about how they seemed to be randomly killing anyone and everyone. The show continues the long tradition of no one ever launching a killing blow when one would sensibly be launched, but, well, that's what TV and movies do. Good to see Daario, Jorah, and Tyrion working together. The combat with Drogon was fairly well done; the ride itself was, well, eh, ok, not that good, but I assume that making it look good would be very, very hard and expensive work. In my head I justified Jon being north of wall by remembering that Stannis's troops were north of the wall too. But a five-second shot of Jon and Edd heading out through the Wall a few episodes back sure would have made it less jarring. I have no idea what the Sand Snack paddy-whack scene was for. I keep hoping Dorne has a purpose. Will this just all end with Myrcella, Jaime, and Trystane coming to King's Landing, as Tommen apparently commanded? That seems something of a waste. As Season 5 winds to its close, I'm feeling much the same way about the show as I did after reading Books 4 and 5: I'll keep going because there have been some fantastic moments along the way and a lot of goodwill has been accumulated, but another season/book at about the same level, and they'll probably lose me.

Yeah, I watch it on my iMac, and when I first watched it in daylight, I was getting pretty annoyed that my own reflection was dominating lots of the scenes. It was somewhat better on a nighttime rewatch. The darkness is definitely a bit much on a computer - is there the same issue on a TV?

Yeah, that was a bit weird - too hooded, too motionless. I was expecting it to turn out to be a zombie for a last minute threat to the heroes, but I guess it was just a rower.

I'm not the one you're originally responding to here, but in Watchers on the Wall we cared about characters on both sides. That can make a big difference for how you view a battle. Personally I think the two episodes are about on a par in overall quality - yes, I'd say Hardhome looked cooler, but Blackwater and Watchers on the Wall had deeper character dynamics enriching them. If this makes any sense, I'd say Watchers and Blackwater were "human" battles done very well, whereas Hardhome was a morally black-and-white fantasy battle done very well (and, for TV, amazingly well).

My goodness I seem to rate on a different pattern than other people, maybe because I'm rating on an "all TV shows" scale rather than "normal Game of Thrones" scale. I give it a 9, maybe 9.49 (to avoid rounding up to 10; I believe I've given everything also this season 7, 8, or 9/10). The battle looked great. The Arya stuff was very good. Cersei was very good, and the scene with Qyburn was fantastic. The Thenn + Jon duel with a White Walker was fantastic, and I loved the economic character-building and deaths done with both the Thenn and the Val-figure at Hardhome. I think Sansa's been great for this episode and the previous one. Wun Wun was one of the coolest things ever seen on TV. But 10 is perfect, and it just wasn't. Tyrion and Dany were in my opinion OK, not great - while I hoped that Tyrion would bring up the Meereen material, I now fear the Meereen material may instead bring Tyrion down. For story weirdness and inconsistency, this episode was a step up on the past few, but where was the fire? Sure the Wildlings are on the run from the wights and Walkers, but they at least know how to use fire to fight the wights - that was long since established as the only real effective way to deal with them. The battle layout seemed too inconsistent, although maybe it'll look better on a rewatch - there are swarms of undead, and they're overrun, and then suddenly it's Tormund and Edd and Wun Wun and Jon with no zombies around. Sometimes the wights keep fighting when they've lost massive chunks of their body, other times an arrow through the skull seems to do them in. The zombies in this episode seemed to go down like orcs, and that doesn't match earlier in the story. There's a massive crowd of people pushed against the outside of the gate, and then suddenly they all presumably, um, back up into the fog to die in screamingly painful but unseen ways? Jon and Tormund seemed to be holding the rear, but suddenly there were lots of people left behind them. With the panicked flight from the beach, how could there have been a boat left for our heroes at the end? Yeah, I know these are all nitpicks, but there are enough of them that I can't justify a 10. Don't get me wrong - I'm giving at a 9, and I thought it was a fantastic hour of television! - but it wasn't perfect.

It's great to see him playing off a different actor. I'm fine with Emilia Clarke's acting, but for four seasons we mostly saw Glen just interact with her - it's wonderful he's been given a chance to work with someone else. (And I'm also looking forward to Dinklage pulling the Meereen material up a bit.)

When watching, I had a brief moment of thinking "Oh, clever! The poison only takes effect when someone's aroused! So that's why she's suddenly acting all seductive out of nowhere and for absolutely no reason!" But then, no, that's not where they were going - unfortunately. I think my own version of the story would have made a lot more sense than Bronn's poisoning suddenly coming on like that. That may be one of those scenes where I'll add a little head-canon addition so it all holds together better. A poison that takes effect when someone's turned on must have been done at some point, but I can't recall any examples. The only thing remotely similar I can think of is that Stratham (sp?) film where he dies if his pulse drops below a certain rate.

No. That's not necessary. The joking and detail about mechanics of rape really should stop.