Autumn is Coming

10/10 because they left Sandor's death as ambiguous as it was in the books. Hah, he can survive those wounds...right? Please? Let me dream.

Usually I don't care about the wall storylines at all. Even in the books I find myself kind of skim reading a little bit because it just doesn't interest me. This episode, however, is the first in the series that's had my full attention from start to finish (which admittedly wasn't difficult seeing as the episode itself wasn't very long) I was completely emotionally invested, which was a bad idea seeing as Pyp and Grenn died. Even the initial scenes with Sam chatting with Jon and Aemon were interesting - the acting was great. The show was never going to please everyone, just reading the comments shows it. On one side, you've got people arguing that there wasn't enough fighting, that the action scenes were poor or not of high quality. On the other you have people arguing that there should have been more plot and less action overall. It just highlights the fact that there will never be an episode that pleases everyone. Especially seeing as this forum loves to criticize each episode so harshly... (don't kill me for saying that, oh god) I loved nearly everything. It felt like such a break from the normal structure of each episode, and I think that's what was needed after last week. Yeah it would've been great for Stanny to show up at the end, but the omittance of him doesn't render the episode as complete shit. I think including the scene of his arrival, scotch-taped onto the end, would've felt very rushed. Save it for the final episode, and make it the best finale yet. Edited to add that Thorne is a fucking boss.

I give it an 8 as well. Good amount of KL scenes, some decent Bolton stuff, and the ending really just boosted up the score.