Peter George Stewart

9/10 a pretty satisfying conclusion. Highly compressed, but great events. The show definitely isn't as good now that B&W have only the skeleton of GRRM's story to work from, and no actual text to adapt, but it's still a great show, still sad that the season's ended, still looking forward to next season. I have a feeling they're going to wrap it up pretty quickly in one season next season though, so everything will probably be as compressed as this episode was.

10/10 Laughing at all the Stannis fans. Never could see what all the fuss was about. The climax of Stannis events was sickening. The ending was soaring. Emotional roller-coaster. Awesome episode.

Excellent episode, 9/10. I'm pretty comfortable with the way they're moving the story forward. It's not quite as good as the stuff that was based on GRRM's backbone in the earlier seasons, but it's still a rocking tv show.

Yeah, a solid 8/10. Things are hotting up nicely.

With this episode, I feel the season is in the saddle now. I was a bit worried with the first couple of episodes that the series was maybe losing its way, but I think this episode is going to remind many people again of why they love the show. 8/10

Straight off the bat? 5. The show's lost a considerable portion of its magic with this episode. I can't imagine episode 2's ratings being very high after this rather duff start to the new season. However, it's still GoT, so because of the virtual solidity of the world and its characters, and the high production values, there's still lots of elbow-room for good stuff to happen, and it's still watchable at the very least. B&W do have some leeway to make mistakes, so here's hoping the rest of the season improves. But it would have to improve quite considerably from this rather poor start. I must admit, I'm a bit disappointed. I've defended the show up till now in terms of them doing a good adaptation of the books, with understandable foreshortening and truncation, and the occasional addition of a made-up character to bridge p.o.v. gaps. I thought they'd done pretty well so far. But with this episode, I'm starting to get the feeling there's too much made-up-shit in proportion to good-stuff-adapted-from-the-books, and after such a meh season start, I've lost confidence that B&W have a grasp of what they're actually doing. Even the dialogue isn't that hot (e.g. we could have had another "roadshow" with Tyrion and Varris, and that's no doubt what they intended, but it falls flat because the dialogue just isn't that witty). Note to B&W: anything GRRM writes is bound to be a ton better than anything you two can write, so use his stuff whenever you can, don't just make stuff up because you've got a successful show and you think that makes you good writers. It's a successful show because the material its based on is pure gold. Forget that at your peril.

Damn good, 7/10. I'm not that bothered by most of the things other book readers are crying about. I was never that convinced they'd have LS, and none of the omissions or additions bother me. Love the books for what they are, love the show for what it is, and it's faithful enough to the books for my taste, given the obvious constraints.

Read what I said, I didn't expect 100,000 to be attacking at that point, obviously, but what I did expect was a sense of 100,000 people hanging around somewhere. Given D&D's penchant for inventing scenes to supplement lack of p.o.v., I would have expected some kind of scene with Mance, and a huge CGI camp, like they sometimes do. All punters have heard is "100,000" vs. "100", but that's telling not showing, and I should think 1 mammoth and a couple of giants (CGI anyway, so it would hardly have cost any more to have more - it's not like they're individually priced) plus a few Braveheart weapon-beaters, isn't going to cut it to give a sense of epicness. Also, thinking further on the Stannis thing, I'm far from being a "Stannis lover" and I'm on record here as being baffled by all that stuff, but that he doesn't have his moment of glory as the one "king" who actually gives a toss about the events in the North, is annoying, even to someone who isn't a "Stannis lover". Also, I've been a big fan of what D&D have done with the story on the whole, but this is the one episode this season where I think they've dropped the ball big time.

4. On the one hand, it was definitely fun and enjoyable as a battle episode, but on the other hand, it's the worst episode in the season for my money. I guess big battles are such a financial black hole that it really requires a HUUUUUGE amount of money to make them look good, because this still looked kind of cheap and small scale, despite the undoubted tons of resources they must have put into it. There just isn't a sense of 100,000 being on the other side (even though this was just a test skirmish) - they could have done with more CGI "filler crowd" down at the forest, or perhaps some made-up scene down with Mance, showing the masses hanging back. Also, I can't remember if "100" was the number of NW left in the books or not, but the way this was played, too many NW were falling in relation to Wildlings, one felt that surely most of the 100 NW must be dead by now, after the "scale" of that battle. Also, where the hell is you-know-who? It looks like they're just going to jump to Jon doing the thing with the wildlings. Might have been better to end the episode with you-know-who riding to the rescue, mirroring the end of the Blackwater episode when Tywin comes in. Overall, certainly well done and a great effort, with some great 1v1 fights and some emotionally moving sequences (and Ygritte's death is heart-wrenching, as well as Pyp and Grenn), but still somehow disappointing. I can't help but feel they must have lost a bit of momentum among the general public with this episode.

Given the world GRRM depicts, Arya blurting that out could just as easily be seen as imprudent, rather than Sansa being cowardly - in fact, that could actually be seen as the kernel of Sansa being more of a player.

He was neither "taunting his enemy" nor "gloating", nor was he "showboating" or anything like that. He showboated a bit at the beginning of the fight when he twirled his spear, but he pretty quickly got down to business, and defeated the Mountain quite handily. The problem was that HE WANTED TO GET A CONFESSION FROM THE MOUNTAIN SO IT WOULD BE OUT IN THE OPEN THAT TYWIN ORDERED ELIA'S DEATH. And he wanted that so bad, he was focussed on it so much, that he let his guard slip. However, he did get a bit of what he wanted. While everyone "knew" that the Mountain killed Elia's children (who were potential Targaryen heirs at the time of the rebellion) and raped and murdered Elia, it was up to that point a rumour. (It happened during the sack of King's Landing, so chaos, so no-one really sure.) Now it's confessed fact, out in the open; that's the horror and irony of the Mountain confessing it while he's popping Oberyn's melon. Not quite the connection between Tywin and the Mountain's act that Oberyn might have preferred, but at least some damage has been done to the Lannister name.

I don't know if this has been mentioned, but I think Lann the Clever is a GRRM homage to s-f/fantasy author Jack Vance's most famous character, Cugel the Clever. GRRM is a known Vance fan. Swindling a family out of their hereditary castle is just the sort of thing Cugel might have done.