jmk51

Shae either has to die, shack up with someone else, OR would they dare replace her as Penny in the Penny storyline? I never liked Penny in the books, but dragging Shae across the world would be stupid too.

I'd be disappointed if he doesn't strangle her. I'm not a book purist/alarmist, but that really would be a crappy divergence.

Don't really get all the TV-Stannis bashing, but whatever. Still the same plot points. But I thought way too much happened there.

Also the reveal of Stannis going to the wall was interesting. I'm thinking they intentionally avoided another random army showing up to save the day, like blackwater?

The Dany scene was also weird, but they did show her at her apex, as well as visually described this throng of people she now has to travel with.

Always suspected they could leave out coldhands/gate/ironborn as they are cool ook points but don't advance the plot as of yet.

I was also a little disappointed with the RW. It didn't hit me as much as the book did.

But I wouldn't dismiss Benioff and Weiss rewriting yet. Because they also added amazing scenes which were not in the books e.g chair sequence with the small council, Mill dialog between Rob & Edmund.

As good as the writing of R.R. Martin is, after SoS and the killing of Tywin the story goes downhill. It felt like "Lost" after season 3. The story is going in circels and there are many new characters added for them i cant care less.

If Benioff and Weiss can improve on that, everything is forgiven.

Is that a fair standard to hold someone to? A shocking plot twist didn't impact me as much the second time? Unless someone invents one of those memory erasers from MIB, we'll never be able to figure out which one is more impactful, and it would vary based on the person viewing/reading.

I'm sure many people thought the sword to the unborn child was much more shocking and unforgiving than what happened in the books.

It did.

It turned the Red Wedding into a Romeo and Juliet love story tragedy where the young couple in love are murdered, with the focus on the love story.

Lack of Northern bannermen erases the fact that the North is still loyal to the Starks, that multiple people died trying to save Robb Stark's life at the Red Wedding instead of having them all slaughered without much ability to fight back with the only person trying to save Robb being his mum. There would have been no cost issue to give 2 or 3 Northerners some screen time this season [instead of Shae or Ros or Pod] and then have them die heroically at the RW.

Lack of direwolf action is a shame because it robs Greywind of the heroic death he had and it reduces the link between the Starks and the wolves, but plot wise its not a big deal.

So, the plot is still the same, no? North is basically done for a while, and a wolf is still dead. Do any of the people that haven't read the book think the north isn't done for? Then mission accomplished.

Lack of Bannermen... didn't change anything.

Lack of Direwolf action... didn't change anything.

Everyone has the right to nitpick incessantly, but you have to remember the long game, ie, telling the story. 10 episodes per year, cramming in a lot of material, while trying to stay as true as possible to the story while making it compelling to a wide group of audiences.

It costs nothing, literally, for GRRM to sit down and type out thousands of pages in a book. Its a considerable cost to take those words and put them on a screen.

It was awesome - loved that it was more of a mob hit than some epic battle. And I'm still amazed anyone cares about the bannermen not being there. By the reaction of the people that haven't read the books, it wasn't missed.

If you don't like the nudity, wait till it comes out on AMC. Otherwise stop your batching, it's HBOs MO.

And Boardwalk Empire doesn't have lots of gratuitous nudity? They have women walking around naked and entertaining men all the time. Gip got shot being "aphixiated."

I agree, but to a certain degree I think all of the characters are suffering from such alterations. Some are being whitewashed and some are being darkened. The characters are diminished by this and made considerably less...challenging. I truly enjoy the show...for what it is. Unfortunately, the lack of nuance and subtlety in the show's character development does not allow viewers the freedom to interpret the characters. As troubling as the "re-imagining" of major characters can be, I find the problems particularly prevalent with the characters for whom we have no PoV in the books. I feel we are forced to swallow the show writers' interpretation of these characters, where in the books we have a great deal of freedom to view the characters in a myriad of ways.

The overt absolution of Cersei for the Bastard Hunt and the attempt on Tyrion's life serves to coddle the audience by providing easy answers without having to engage their minds. When left ambiguous, as in the books, the viewer is given freedom to speculate about who took the actions and what the motives may have been. This provides each reader with a sliding scale of morality and righteousness and leads to wildly differing opinions on who and what the characters are...to which anyone who frequents these boards can attest. :)

As much as I enjoy the show...and I do...I barely recognize these characters in their altered and simplified forms. Heh...Guess I will just have to start a reread as a pallet cleanser. :)

Not to be trite, but I think you missed the "nuance" in the bolded part.... she never said anything, Tyrion apparently took her silence as acknowledgement of it being Joffrey's idea.

It's not impossible that one whore could read, nor is it odd that Varys didn't see the two beds on the bill of lading. He's not Sherlock Holmes, he's a schemer.

The odd thing to me was that Ros saw 2 beds and she deduced it was a plot to whisk away Sansa. Makes me think this is a LF scheme.

I'll hold judgement on Mance for a while. Book Mance was different, but maybe they thought some harp playing bard leading a cast of "savages" beyond the wall just didn't make sense on the screen?

Maybe a little too much Tolkien type fantasy for the world they've created, which is more like Conan low fantasy?

Besides the usual book deviation whining, I thought the opening scene between Blackfish/Edmure was perfect. Established Blackfish as a bad as and Edmure as incompetent in 3 minutes.

By far the funniest episode so far.

Well she must not be able to act outside of her native tongue then. It almost seems like she's memorizing the lines but doesn't know enough english to understand them.

Or maybe that's on purpose, because her character is not only a native English (or whatever you want to call the Westorisi language) speaker, but was brought over to be a prostitute on a slave ship? Guessing maybe they didn't have Rosetta Stone as part of Hooker 101 training?

True. I thought Karstark was implying that the Freys were/are leaving, but the whole point of the RW is that Robb thinks the Freys are like "Nah, we're cool! Let's seal being cool with you with wedding Edmure to Roslin." Then.. bang, we're not cool.

Yeah, I guess that's true - they'll show up in Riverrun, bring in Edmure, work that out with the Frey's, then have the RW. That makes sense.

I thought it was excellent overall. Some thoughts on the show/comments.

Shae - I'll hold judgement on what the character is until the "end." I think part of it is the fact she's written to obviously have english as a second language, so everything she says should be broken and disjointed. Not sure why she holds Sansa in such high regard, unless she's going to be more of a sympathetic figure to Sansa/Tyrion. Also could see the jealously thing worked in from the wedding.

Reeds - seem much better than in the books - like Jojen's "coolness."

Karstark/Robb conversation - seemed correct to have that pointed out explicitly, but yeah, are the Frey's still with them? That needs to be clarified. I think most people have completely forgotten about the Freys.

Talisa/Robb - I like they are showing the conflict in Robb between his duty and his personal feelings. Many book readers seem to think loyalty/duty/honor trump love, but the show is taken a much different approach to this.

Joff/Maegery - This wasn't to show another sadist rant by Joff, it was to show how she "plays the game," so to speak. Done unbelievably well.

QOT - awesome, didn't miss the song one bit.

Brienne/Jaime - his hands were bound, obviously he was going to lose.

Sam scene - Liked the part were Rast was made to be in charge of Sam - very army/team building thing to do.

I agree; she's just teasing him and giving him grief for checking out other women. She's not seriously mad.

Yeah, it's called having a relationship with a girl. They do this stuff all the time. To me it just seemed like a playful scene between two people in love. They have to keep some of these characters involved for continuity/viewership purposes, unlike the books, which go complete books without scenes.