MegaMagick

God that sucked, I know some people liked it but that sucked. Major battle? 20 guys in the yard fighting a lot of guys on the wall standing around and looking, no sense of urgency. And the Wildlings use the worst battle plan ever. The attack consisted of 4 guys climbing the wall, 1 Mammoth, 2 giants and maybe 5 or 6 guys storming the gate with them or poking the mammoths ass with their spears. The guys on the wall killed more of their own than than Mance did. And Mance actually breached the wall with that force. Are you kidding me?

This was all about the battle in the yard where the Wildlings seem to slaughter the 20 men defending it over and over. Yig got 20 kills by herself. Ghost was totally wasted, Ghost vision, quick shot of his mouth, then a long shot of him eating. Apparently Jon needed Ghost to kill one Wildling really badly. Thought Sam was cheesy, don't care if Grenn or Pip die, Gilly is still annoying and can't act. The forward or backward role seems to be the wildling standard for fighting. Jon was ok and had a decent fight scene, thought Thorne was the best in the episode. Honestly just did not feel much emotion it felt bland. CGI was decent, nothing special, really just kind of blah about the whole thing. Nothing really happened except a few secondary characters die who have no emotional attachment too on the show. The cliffhanger I new was coming, and I get it but that doesn't mean it works all that well.

One thing I really couldn't stand was the wildling line, at no point did it look 100,000 strong, maybe 5000 which you know is fine, but for most of the episode whenever they showed them, they were standing there growling and snarling grrrrr, grrrrrr harg, snarl. Was the direction ok guys I need you to act like idiots. And what are they growling at, the men of the Watch are 700 feet up, they can't see your face, you like ants to them and they probably can barely hear you. Some stood there snarling and got shot, and about 10 seconds later after the third or 4th guy gets nailed they all act shocked and back up. This was suppose to be bigger than the Blackwater? Not even close, not even in the ball park.

I give it 4 because Jon and Thorne were solid, it had some solid CGI here and there but for the most part everything around them sucked. Low energy, no emotion, bad acting. And that was not a battle is was friggin skirmish in the training yard.

I am glad some liked but it just did nothing for me, this is episode 9 and that was boring.

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!"

I mean, are they really that acquainted with each other in the texts? Bran doesn't know who they are when they arrive at Winterfell. Maester Luwin has to tell him who the Reeds are and why they're so important. Sure, the show does plop them into the plotline pretty quickly, but I think it's a stretch to say they were "friends/playmates" in the books.

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.