I agree. The problem is there are just so many subplots that INTERSECT. It's not like Mad Men where we could have an entire episode about Peggy, then one about Don, because there's not much going on plotwise; Game of Thrones has so much plot happening that if we spent an entire episode with Tyrion, we would miss crucial Cersei scenes or whatever, and if we had an entire Jon episode, we would be behind on everything else. But man, if they could make it work, I would LOVE to see an episode that just took like 2 or 3 characters and worked through heaps of their stuff, then did the same for different characters the next episode, and so on and so on. Like if, this season, they had had an episode that was like 40% Stannis, 40% Theon, 20% Tyrion, then did 40% Robb, 40% Dany, 20% Tyrion next week or whatever, that could have worked better because there would be more breathing space for character development. I'm no showrunner or TV writer though, so I don't know how it all works. But I hope next season they tackle the issue of pacing and structure a lot more, because it could possibly become a big problem if they keep going how they're going. Anyways, I'd give this episode an 8. It's a television show based off a book series, not an identical adaptation of a book series. When TV Theon does something, I'm thinking of TV Theon, not book Theon, in my mind the two stories are as divorced as I can make them. I enjoy the books and the show much better that way. I much preferred Jon VS Qhorin in the show, as it added some ambiguity, which makes Jon more interesting (I think it took much later for Jon to get interesting in the books for this very reason, he was too good all of the time, not enough moral ambiguity). Did Jon kill him because he understood he Qhorin wanted him to infilitrate the wildings, or did he do it because he was angry at Qhorin, or was it both? That sort of stuff is great. House of the Undying was alright. Loved the Throne/Wall/Drogo visions, the ending with Pyat fell a bit flat, but I liked the ending of this arc. Dany has learned to place her dragons above all else, ambition and family, and has sort of accepted being a Dothraki conquerer type leader, by stealing the gold. Also, learnt not to trust so easily. Not the same lessons she learnt in ACOK mainly, but still good ones that made character sense. Theon's ending confused me as a book-reader, but thinking from a show-watcher perspective it makes more sense, although it was still pretty clumsy. I think the idea is to trick the viewers into thinking the Ironborn did it as they left Winterfell, just like the rest of Westeros thinks, then next season, to create a Season 3 plotline for Alfie Allen, explore that it was actually Ramsay and so on. Revealing it was Ramsay right away would probably get viewers a bit apprehensive about Roose (yes, Ramsay may have acted against his father's orders, but that wouldn't be everyone's first thought), which makes the Red Wedding less surprising, and I bet Season 3 is all about building to the Red Wedding. Season 2 was stronger than Season 1 in my eyes because it tried to tie the episodes together thematically, rather than just break a season long plot into 10 episodes like I felt season 1 did.
