six

This. The show version is underwhelming and surprisingly void of sexual tension. I wonder if it's deliberate.

I gave it an 8. It was better than last week's, and the good bits were very good. The good, in no particular order: I love show!Margaery, she's the perfect foil to Cersei, who for all her manipulating and plotting is really quite useless. She should take notes from Marg; this is how it's done ^_^ Lady Olenna is great as well. Jaime/Brienne have a really fun dynamic nearly as good as in the books, and both actors are knocking it out of the park. Sansa/Shae is really cute Arya! Arya's journey in SoS is my favourite along Jaime's. I loved Thoros' introduction, too. I could do with a whole episode of just Arya as far as I'm concerned. Sam and the NW is always a winner with me. The bad: Did we need that Shae/Tyrion's scene? We really did not. Ugh, Talisa go away. Cat's dialogue... It wasn't bad. It wasn't as out of character as some seems to believe, imo. But why was it to Talisa? Why not Robb? I can't with Talisa. Brienne/Jaime's fight, I didn't actively dislike it, but it was so different that in the book which means that book readers were always going to be disappointed. And the dialogue during the fight in the books was just perfect and didn't need changing. I don't understand this decision, tbh.

I gave it a 6/10, but I have to admit I'm a slightly biased as two of my favourites (Arya, Jaime) were missing and I'm not so hot on Sansa - love her in the books but tv counterpart doesn't quite do it for me, although her scene with Shae was cute and funny; I'm loving Show!Shae. It had many good bits, such as Tyrion/Tywin, Margaery/Joffrey (I adore Joffrey, for all the wrong reasons and Margaery is just great, so rooting for her over Cersei :D) and Dany, but felt more like a catching up episode, which is fine as a kickstarter but I wasn't overwhelmed. I'm not completely convinced by Jon's faux-motivations for staying with the wildlings... I thought it made more sense in the books. I liked how they tweaked the Davos/Melisandre/Stannis plot as it's more effective this way. Robb being angry at Catelyn is meh and can't get my head around it. I still don't love Talisa. I want Sam to slay something ASAP. The acting was amazing as usual. Bring on next week!