Ravi Seaworth

Objectively, an episode should be rated in isolation, taking into consideration all the relevant aspects of its realisation: scenery, cgi, acting, writing, etc. This means that, even if a single aspect deserves a 1, the rest should not be ignored in a serious critic. More importantly, it does not make much sense to judge episode 10 basing on the writing of episode 9, which is what is happening here. People hated the burning of Shireen and so, out of spite, decide to vote 1. I partially agree that that scene was badly written in terms of the overall story of Stannis, but I think that it was an excellent scene in isolation. The inconsistency should be reflected in the evaluation of the whole season, not the episode. And here, I only think that the season did not give the right emphasis to every storyline, thus justifying why certain actions of certain characters felt rushed or unbelievable. This is definitely a problem of packing two books into one season, and not necessarily evidence that D&D are that bad. Consequently, this would never lead me to hate the show. There was one great episode, that ranks as high as any other in the show, and many good individual scenes worthy of GoT. The overall drop in quality is not sufficient to deter me from watching, and I couldn't care less for what some people here think. I read some legitimate complaints, but others just seem out of people who are too emotionally involved with the story that they lack the maturity to cope with the realities of adapting books to television. To you, I say relax. I definitely like the books more than the show. The quality of ASOIF does not drop because the show is not as good as you wish. Nobody has to watch it nor to like it. That does not mean you have to flood every thread with countless posts repeating your opinion ad eternum. As for spoilers, everybody knew that this was going to happen, but again some people are too immature to cope with the frustrations of reality.

Depends on the mindset. I don't watch the show expecting a literal transcription of the books, to the point of using the same dialogue, such that if they make changes, then they have to give a very good reason for that or else I get very upset. No, they have a multitude of reasons to change the source material. Most of the time, it's to simplify, which is perfectly understandable given the complexity of the story. Sometimes, they just need to change for the sake of the medium. It's completely different to portray motives and emotions of a character in a chapter and do that in a one-hour episode without the support of the narrative to do it. Once you make these changes, you may have to make more significant changes to at least try to preserve the consistency of the story. One example is Craster's keep. This doesn't always work well, but it's not necessarily true that the best option is to stick to the books. Regardless, I cannot take the critics of some users seriously, when these derive only by their fanatical devotion to the source material. It's not different from those hardcore Star Wars or LOTR fans.

Unlike many of you, I liked the first half of the episode, as usual set up. Simply, I think the acting was good, especially in the Eyrie and with the Boltons. The scene with Missandei was normal, but the interaction between Danny and Jorah was good, different from everything we have seen from Daenerys. Mole's town was indeed a little more of redundant violence, given what we saw in previous episodes. Arya's seemed ridiculous at first, but to the unsullied viewer it is actually an appropriate reaction. Nothing ever goes as planned; it's so ridiculous that you can only laugh. Jaime and Tyrion was somewhat boring, but their conversation was a lyric introduction to the fight. Compared to the trial, this clearly lacked a greater emphasis, but I prefer rushed to dragged out. I guess they really tried a different approach that didn't work with many people. To me, it was fine. Not perfect, I agree, since I was not totally impressed. But not knowing what was coming would have helped to increase the shocking effect. Overall, a solid 8. Worthy of being amongst the second best episodes, but not there along with the typical WOW episodes, as episode 9 should be.

You summarise it perfectly. The season is getting hate around here because it is now starting to make significant changes to the books, which is very controversial. Not that it is necessarily worse than other seasons.

The combination of Oberyn, Varys, Tyrion, Jaime, Tywin, Pycelle, Cersei, Jaime, (damnit, the whole Kings Landing), in that trial, as well as in the pre-trial was simply too much acting talent gathered together for it not to bee outstanding, and nothing cheapening it. I wasn't too impressed by the Dreadfort, not because of the acting nor the argument, but how it was executed. Not bad, just not nearly as good as the rest of the episode. Everything else was good, except the trial reached an unseen level.

Agree about the Vale. And the ending was anything but bad; maybe not a Dracaris moment, but still pretty good. I think this was more like episode 3. A lot of set up, decent scenes, nothing bad, nothing great either.

The point is not whether the scenes are different. I think most of us agrees with this. Rather, the concern is whether Jaime will still be an interesting character in the show, at least for the non-readers. I can't tell yet. My friends clearly though it was rape, but I am not sure if they felt bad about it. They were more shocked by the fact that it happened next to Joffrey's coffin. The same applies to every difference from the books. Often, people complain about the differences and not about their impact in the quality of the show. Or at least, people often measure the quality of the show in terms of its distance from the books. We can have a good show even if the story and characters are not strictly the same. The main events are there. As for the characters, I am more conservative about deviations, but changing the motives of a character, like they did with Stannis, does not ruin the character for me entirely, as long as ultimately he behaves in a similar fashion to the books.

I am not the best person to notice these things, but it seems plausible to me that the cup could have been a little more to the right, lying behind Marg in those frames. You see her laying the cup down from a side perspective, lacking any sense of depth. I haven't noticed any frame dismissing this hypothesis. Or maybe it's really a continuity error and we are overthinking it. EDIT: I forgot about Tyrion. He clearly goes all the way to the end of the table.

You're right, but as you said before it may be from that POV. The cup could be laying behind Marg. But I don't dismiss the pie hypothesis, though. The cup could very well be a red herring.

Is it because she is really distressed for losing a second husband? Could it be that she was forced to do it, against her own will?

It's strange. The only still where the cup is missing does not show up in the version I am watching. I am talking about the one where Margaery has her hands covering her mouth, right after Joffrey cuts the cake. I see basically the same still, but cut in half, where the cutting point is approximately where the cup should be. Or am I missing something? Regardless, it is hard to believe that QoT had the opportunity to poison the wine when there was a soldier just next to the cup. I bet on Marg. EDIT: In the frame immediately after, I can see the cup on top of the table, next to the other glass of wine.

People complain about how cheesy the last scene was, but did not like the reunion between Jaime and Cersei and the RW reveal to Sansa. I am on your side with regard to the Mhysa scene, but not in terms of the other two scenes. I felt that any kind of dialogue would either have to be too good in order not to be cheesy as well. So, they decided to show without showing, leaving the actual reactions to the imagination of the viewer.

I immediately thought of the Titan's bastard, although he is already dead.

I don't believe it is about making fun of the disabled. They probably left that out because of its apparent insignificant impact to the story and silly look. Just like they left out Belwas. Why is it so important to include such character?

Being critic about the episode is great, but not acknowledging the merit of the writers and producers is being heartless. My initial voting was 9/9.5, because I did not think the episode was perfect, although I am not very good at expressing everything I feel. However, given the difficulty of the task of adapting this event and living up to the expectations of so many people, and since the reaction of the non-readers was beyond any expectation, I decided to change my vote to 10. This is because I think their effort deserves a bonus and there was nothing badly done. On the contrary, the RW and the Bran/John scenes were nearly perfect, given what they were trying to accomplish. The former could have been done in different ways while accomplishing the desired effect, and some of which are not necessarily better than others; I choose to judge them according to what they tried to do and not compare it to what I imagined. The latter scene, in the books, was very good and, aside from a few simplifications, they were pretty faithful to it; thus, even the purists can only nitpick about insignificant details, considering that the acting was very good. The only scenes that did not deserve a 10 were Daenerys's for two reasons: it contained a cliché of three badass fighters beating dozens of men and it did not create any significant impact with the outcome. This can be explained by the limited budget, so I see no reason to freak out with the fact that so many people gave it a 10.