MegaMagick

You pretty much summed it up for me. At the end i was like, really? And it wasn't even about being a Stannis fan for me, the episode was just sort of...lackluster.

Hype deflation aside(I'm a huge Stannis fan and i hate being strung along like this :(), i thought this was a decent episode. Definitely not Blackwater 2.0 like everyone was thinking. Jon was heroic, Ygritte shot some arrows, Aliser redeemed himself (kinda), some cool special effects, and explosions.

Man Sansa was great this episode, her speech was amazing. Littlefinger revealing he didn't know anything about it made it even better. I thought the Moat Cailan part was pretty funny, kinda similar to what happened to Theon in Winterfell. I felt sorry for Jorah when he got the boot out of Daenaerys' camp, that part was really well done. As for the duel....man....short but sweet -- and absolutely brutal! Oberyn's death in the show was on par with how i envisioned it in my head reading the books, bravo! The worst part of this episode by far was the Mole's town girl belching songs at the beginning. Yeesh.

As a book reader, i was pretty much on the edge of my seat the entire episode. I knew exactly what was coming. It didn't disappoint either. In fact, the scene looked almost exactly how i pictured it in my head, even to how Roslin Frey looked. Once they showed her face, i was like "Robb you stupid motherfucker!" because i knew he was going to get it and i realized that he didn't even LOOK at any of Frey's daughters to begin with. You could almost see it in his eyes when he saw her like, "Man, i fucked up.". He swore an oath to Frey that he would marry one of his daughters and a oath/vow in general is sacred(particularly in those times) but the oath of a King is HUGE. Walder Frey took it as the last straw, the final spit in the face, and decided that he was going to take vengeance on the people who pissed on him for so long. Not saying what Frey did was justified, but Robb made a lot of STUPID decisions(That irony of which that most of them were decisions his Father never would've made) and either one of them could've came back to cost him his life. Final thoughts on the scene, and i know this will sound terrible, but i kinda laughed when Catelyn got her throat slit at the end. There was the long pause and then this guy comes up and then *cuts* and fade to credits. As for the other stuff: 1. I liked the banter between Arya and The Hound, there's great chemistry between the two. 2. I'm starting to like Jon again, i like how he gutted the warg and basically told him to screw off. Things are about to go DOWN on the wall. Which makes me think of how much they've mishandled Mance, i almost forgot he existed. 3. Bran's story has finally become semi interesting again, but you know i actually think the show focusing on the wild adventures of Rickon and Osha would be more interesting than all the warg crap. But it will never happen. This and Blackwater are the two best episodes of the show and i think the next season will have even greater moments.

This show needs more littlefinger, he and Jaime have been cast perfectly and both actors nail every scene they're in. I loved the scene between him and Varys. Melisandre meeting up with Thoros was also very interesting, as was her interest in Gendry. I wonder where they're heading with that, his path is COMPLETELY different in the books. The one thing i'm disappointed in is the lack of dungeon Davos, i'd rather have that than Samwell singing to Gilly. Samwell sucks in the books and even more so in the show, too many other interesting characters and too few episodes to be focusing on such a bad character. The wall scenes were pretty good up until they climbed the thing, i can't believe HBO can't afford better CG than that. Hard to take it seriously. Some other side notes: Arya's actress is becoming plump, which is a little distracting. Her character has also become irrelevant as of late, but her time will probably come when Clegane pops up again. Bran's actor looks old, his nose is getting HUGE and it's ridiculous how they have him set up under a tree in every scene he's in. They really should've recast his character.

What the ever loving hell did this show do to Stannis? They transformed him into somebody's sleazy, drunken uncle. "You leavin' me!?" "Why you gotta go, where you goin' to!?" "Gimme some lovin', please come on baby i need another son!"

It's been almost a year since i've read through the books, but i remember Bran and Rickon being quite friendly with the Reeds along with the Frey children in winterfell.

Although i'm not a big fan of Jon's chapters or the north/wall/wildling storyline in the books, i felt that they completely dropped the ball here on the show. It's not really interesting at all, especially with Samwell and the night's watch, just a bunch of walking and marching in the snow. You'll probably get a steamy sex scene between Jon and Ygritte but that'll be the most interesting thing to come out of that. The northern storyline really doesn't get interesting to me until Mel and Stannis enter the picture, which will probably be a ways off. The way they introduced the Reeds is laughable and kind of lazy, in the books the Stark and Reed children were friends/playmates and Jojen had talked to Bran frequently about his dreams/abilities. In the show, all of a sudden some weird kid randomly pops into Bran's dreams? "I've been searching for you" Okay, whatever. Bran's chapters are probably the least interesting to me in the books(next to Samwell) and it's going to be cringeworthy/amusing to see how they work around the actors age and apparent growth spurt. As for the good parts, i like how they're handling the relationship between Margery and Joffrey and i think Brienne and Jaime's story is pretty well done, i liked their little fight at the end. Thoros and the BWB have been set up very well and i can't wait to see Dondarrion introduced along with his eventual clash with the Hound.