Rashtibram

Yeah, this was like one of the fastest hours ever.

Is it over?

I'm not even watching this, but HURRY UP STANNIS!!!!!

But the episode must be drawing to a close, no? So no Jon/Mance parlay?

Excuse the profanity, but this sounds absolutely fucking awesome. Maybe I should just fall asleep so I can wake up and watch it in the morning; I feel like a kid on christmas eve.

Is Grenn dead yet?

Holy shit! Sam shoots Ygritte?

WHAT?!

Grenn and Pyp are both dead?

Multiple giants on mammoths?

Episode summary next week says: "circumstances north of The Wall are altered by an unexpected arrival"

Sounds like Stannis to me

After an unexpected arrival. Kind of a key word. Hopefully they're just enhancing the surprise aspect.

No Dragonstone in credits!

Wait, like the location or are Dillane, Carice and Liam Cunningham not credited?

Can't watch the episode until tomorrow, but I'm counting on you guys to keep me informed. DETAILS, please! :P

Personally, I consider GoT to be so far ahead of all other TV (at the moment) that when I give it a six or a seven it's more like I'm giving it a 46 or 47 out of 50 (with the first 40 points already assumed). But a lot of people here do seem to consider a six or a seven to be a negative rating.

It's a 7, when trying very hard not to compare it with the books.

Starting with the Wall and Beetles, that was just nonsense. Missadei/Grey Worm was rather more interesting, but given way too much focus. I don't appreciate Sansa's transformation or his relationship with Baelish. I don't understand what Sandor and Arya are doing in the episode. Along with so much nonsense and inconsistency.

Then the important scenes. The Northern part with Theon and the Boltons was actually pretty solid. No complaints there. Jorah's banishment, in my opinion, was handled reeeeally badly. Dany had next to no emotions about it and it just came out of nowhere. And the duel. It was flashy and cool, I give you that, but it deserved much, much more focus, screen time and build-up.

All in all, I feel really underwhelmed. Obviously the show holds little shock value to me, but I don't feel like they handled this one properly.

7/10

Good:

- Loved the duel. The sudden and horrific nature of Oberyn's defeat in the books was a huge shock moment for me, and one (unlike the Red Wedding) which I didn't see coming, so i'm really glad they got it right in the show and didn't tone it down at all.

- The Sansa / Littlefinger scenes in the Vale were excellent.

- The Moat Cailin scene was great. Alfie Allen did a fantastic job of showing Reek almost falling apart while presenting himself as Theon Greyjoy in front of the Ironborn. The scene wouldn't have been anywhere near as compelling if he'd just strolled in and out of there confident with no signs at all of the frail, broken person behind the masquerade.

Bad:

- The love story between Grey Worm and Missandei is just awful. Pointless filler content that's probably going to drag on into the next two episodes.

- Arya and the Hound arriving in the Vale seemed like a pointless deviation to me, and the way Arya bursted out in laughter seemed so forced and random.

Indifferent:

- The attack on Mole's Town was forgettable.

- Not quite sure what to make of Tyrion and Jaime's conversation before the trial. I was waiting for some kind of point to the whole bug crushing story, but it never arrived. Perhaps the writers deliberately left it a mystery to get fans talking and coming up with crazy theories? Who knows.

- Jorah getting caught and banished was okay. Certainly not Emilia Clarke's worst performance this season.

Edit: Perhaps i'm being a bit generous giving the episode a 7/10 going by previous scores i've given this season. There was a lot of pointless filler content and bad deviations. I'm sure once i'm over the excitement of the duel scene the episode will probably seem more like a 6/10 to me.

It's very hard for me to count reviews like these as being positive, yet they would both count as "fresh" if we're going by the "Rotten Tomato" spectrum.

For those who keep harping about the "Rotten Tomatoes" score as if it means anything much...

I've applied what seems to be the RT algorithm to the forum's rankings of this episode -- 6 and higher is "fresh", 5 and under is "rotten". There are 642 "fresh" votes, meaning that the forum's RT score for the episode is ... 90.5%.

So all the episodes that score about 8 on the forum are equal to 90%+ according to "Rotten Tomatoes".

The problem is that what most people here would consider rotten would be any score between 1-7. I see a lot of posts saying "This episode was disappointing, I expected better, etc" and then conclude with saying they gave it a six or a seven (even sometimes an eight).

The burping was stupid and I actually felt bad for everyone involved in the writing, filming and even watching of that scene. It as stupid.

What? She's a whore and these are commoners, so burping is amusing? Really? Fuck off.

Oh, don't take it so seriously. It was meant to convey the dingy, raucous nature of the brothel. Such an insignificant scene to complain about, especially as it lasted about 8 seconds.

- Beetle scene. It was long and not that funny.

Who said it was supposed to be funny?

I'm honestly surprised by all the people claiming the beetle monologue served no purpose, or that they didn't understand its significance. After all the complaints about how over-the-top the show is, and how it spoon-feeds things to the audience, nobody seems to understand what's happening when they decide to throw in a (minor) dose of subtlety.

I suppose it has many interpretations, but I think the intended one was this: Orson represents the Gods who are supposedly judging Tyrion at his trial; the Gods who are responsible for the Red Wedding and all the atrocities committed in the show so far. And Tyrion was desperately searching for a reason for these atrocities, only to find that there was none, and that the Gods were simply handicapped people smashing beetles. An intelligent viewer might have analyzed that scene (and the delicious transition into the start of the Trial) and concluded that Oberyn was indeed going to be another smashed beetle, and that makes it extremely important in its own way. You can argue the metaphor was ham-fisted, but please stop postulating that the writers were only thinking "Duh, we like Nikolaj and Dinklage, let's give them a scene together because…" when they wrote the scene.

ETA: About the duel…I think they (and us) hyped it up far too much. It was never going to match expectations (at least not in the way 'Blackwater' and 'The Rains of Castamere' did). I do think they could have made a lot more out of it: added some appropriate music (the 'realism' vibe isn't something to strive for on this occasion IMO), made the cinematography more close-up and involved, shown Oberyn's growing rage and drive for vengeance…but these are all things I wish I could have seen, and not things that were bad about what I saw. As such, being let-down doesn't equate to thinking the episode was bad. It was a great hour of TV, even by GOT standards. I place it 15th out of 38 on my ever-growing 'best-to-worst' scale, below 'A Golden Crown' and ahead of 'The Ghost of Harrenhal.'

Cuddling for human companionship does not equate to sexual tension. Besides in the books Missandei is no more than ten years old when freed and a little too young to be involved a consensual eunuch/slave romance.

I think the implication was definitely that they're doing it for sexual pleasure. Also, this isn't the books. Show Missandei is at least around 18.

This was absolutely fantastic television once again. I rated it a 7, but it was very close to earning the first eight of the season. No weak links and a multitude of amazing scenes, from Moat Cailin and the Winterfell reveal to Jorah's banishment, to Tyrion's beetle monologue…the list goes on. My fourth favorite episode ever, surpassed only by 'Valar Morghulis,' 'The Rains of Castamere,' and 'Blackwater.'

The somewhat lackluster nature of episodes 4 and 5 have dragged the season down a little, but when considered with the final three episodes in mind (assuming they do them justice) it could become one of the greatest ever seasons of television.

The Dany and Daario scene seemed like it was cut from a bad porno...probably something titled "One Knight in Daenerys". I seriously kept expecting Daario to pull out a wrench and announce that he was there to fix her pipes.

This was funny. QFT. But I think it was my only criticism.

This was an excellent seven for me. The dialogue and acting in the final two seasons were exquisite.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel that this episode quite lived up to the standard we've come to expect from Bryan Cogman's material in seasons 2 and 3. This may be, in part, due to the material he was given to adapt, but the episode didn't seem to have the emotional grab, smooth character development and engrossing plot quality that characterized 'Kissed by Fire' and 'What is Dead May Never Die.'

When I say this is the worst episode of the season so far, that's not to say it was in any way bad. Moreover, it reflects the difference in general pacing between the first three seasons and this one. The reason 'Oathkeeper' felt so slow, so much so that it is worthy of comparison to 'The Bear and the Maiden Fair' and 'The Prince of Winterfell' in terms of a general sense of momentum, is that the Purple Wedding this season took on the role of the major plot catalyst we usually could expect to see in episode four (Catelyn taking Tyrion prisoner, Melisandre giving birth to the Shadow Assassin, and "Dracarys"). The decision to place such a momentous event in episode two (as well as the decision to compress the battles in the North into episode 4x09: I maintain that Ygritte's death would have made a perfectly satisfying "episode four moment") meant that the stretch of episodes between 4x03 and 4x08 have very little in terms of exciting book material to adapt. Whereas the previous seasons built to an epic mid-season sub-climax and then built again to an "episode nine moment," season 4 hit you right off the bat with a game-changing, climactic event, and is proceeding to wallow in procrastination while it waits patiently to arrive at the final shockers of ASOS in the closing three episodes. This seems, to me, to be an odd decision in retrospect (even though I admittedly fully endorsed it prior to season four's airing). So just because 'Oathkeeper' failed to live up to expectations doesn't suddenly mean the show sucks, or that Bryan Cogman's taken a jarring turn for the worse. I'm eagerly awaiting 'The Laws of Gods and Men,' as what with Tyrion's trial and Yara's attack on the Dreadfort he should be able to wrangle up something more like the emotional punch we all fondly remember from 'Kissed by Fire' and the closing scene of 2x03.

6/10

I thought this episode was the weakest of the season so far, but that isn't saying much considering how much I loved the last two. Ultimately, I thought it was very solid, with pitch-perfect pacing and more than a few scenes worthy of individual praise. There wasn't really anything that elevated it into "seven" territory though, and in the end it wasn't an extraordinarily memorable hour of TV, which can count as a legitimate negative in a show usually so jam-packed full of memorable events.

6/10

'Breaker of Chains' falls 25th out of 33 on my best-to-worst ranking of all Game of Thrones episode to date.

I'm really baffled by the fact that this episode seems to have generated such a luke-warm reaction on this site. Many of the popular criticisms I'm reading seem to be either utterly unfounded, especially when one takes the time to re-watch the episode with them in mind, or are the result of extreme and biased book purism. I found this to be easily one of the best episodes the show has done to date, and not just because we finally got to see Joffrey choke and die. As of now, I consider it to be 7th on my scale of best-to-worst GOT episodes, one spot ahead of 'The Wolf and the Lion' and one behind 'Kissed by Fire.'

http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/game-thrones-newbies-lion-and-rose-203386

This review pretty much sums up what I loved about the Royal Wedding. The slowly escalating tension, the way the murder-mystery aspect was played up by Martin's writing and Graves' superb direction, and the unsettling sense in that final scene – so perfectly captured by the cinematography, music, and acting – that the balance of power in the show had just been drastically altered beyond any hope of repair. The interactions between the various political figures of KL were all handled excellently as well, from Loras' parting retort to Jaime: "And neither will you" to Olenna sneakily (but noticeably) removing a stone from Sansa's necklace: "To kill a man at a wedding…horrid" to Oberyn's open and uncaring hostility towards Tywin and Cersei: "In other places the rape and murder of women and children is considered distasteful."

Considering the explosive nature of the second half of the episode, all the supporting arcs really needed to do was avoid major problems and carry the characters/story along in an acceptable way, but IMO most of them went well beyond that. I think I probably could have done without the opening hunt sequence, but it did provide us with an interesting parallel between the two primary psychopaths of the show (I believe this is discussed more thoroughly in the article linked above), and the later scene at the Dreadfort was quite brilliant. I'm interested – and a little apprehensive – to see where Locke's hunt for the Stark boys is going (Art Parkinson and Natalia Tena didn't film anything for this season, if I'm remembering correctly) but I'm also definitely looking forward to seeing Ramsay and Reek tackle the Siege of Moat Cailin.

The scenes on Dragonstone were also handled quite well. I particularly liked Stannis' line "I hate a good many things, but I suffer them all the same." I wasn't the only one in my viewing party who was of the opinion that he was talking about the burnings on the beach, as well as his dislike for the taste of fish. Melisandre's talk with Shireen was one of the highlights of the episode, and the transition from her last line about hell to Bran's POV Direwolf experience was sufficiently eerie and intriguing. Bran's visions were also good, although honestly I was expecting that scene to be a bigger deal than it was portrayed as: on the whole, it seemed a little rushed, and I don't think they illustrated clearly enough why Bran suddenly felt the need to go touch a random tree. My Unsullied friends were mostly just confused by the time the camera cut to King's Landing. I do like that they're playing up the dangers of warging for too long, though: I'm hoping we'll get to see more of that before Bloodraven's inevitable appearance.

Aside from all that, the pre-wedding KL scenes were mostly fine, if not particularly mind-blowing. Jaime/Bronn was predictably good, and Joffrey's petulant cruelty during the breakfast sequence was spot-on. The Shae scene was my biggest issue with the episode when I first watched it, but upon reconsideration I can't really pinpoint my problem: I suppose it felt a little rushed for what must seem, to the viewing Unsullied, like the farewell of a major character and an entire subplot, but when you really think about it it was sufficiently built up and will (hopefully) tie in well with the rest of her material for this season.

So, overall, a fantastic episode, a lot better than the premiere (and that's saying something). While it wasn't quite momentous enough to earn an eight from me, I rate according to a very harsh scale compared to other posters here, and as such nearly every episode falls somewhere around the five-six-seven mark ('Blackwater' and 'The Rains of Castamere' being the only exceptions, I believe).

7/10

Also: my friend returns as one of the Tyrell cousins! She's the one Cersei rescues from Grand Maester Pycelle during the wedding.

What's alarming?

I can't see the episode until tomorrow.

I'd suggest putting spoiler tags in if you're discussing TWOW material, Oldgodsnewtricks. Some of us haven't read the chapter you're discussing.