I respect everyone's opinion---or rather, their right to have one---but I really can't gripe about this episode. It almost looked like a movie. They saved a lot of budget for this one. Outside of cramming a lot of story into it, that is. They should have finished off the Wall in one episode; Episode 9 was already short at 51 minutes. Give that episode 66 minutes and free up the time in the last episode so you don't have to truncate the scenes. Nevertheless, the Hound's fight with Brienne kicked major a$$. I kept thinking, "But they can't kill her..." every time it looked the Hound would get the better of her. Excellent deviation from the book. I'm glad Jaime didn't get his confession scene. Leave the brothers with the only semi-healthy relationship in Westeros. Tyrion already has enough darkness on his shoulders. I liked the touch with Varys, when he heard the call to arms from the Keep. "Oh, s***, maybe I better get on this ship myself." Glad we didn't get any more Sansa this episode. Her material from the books is nearly exhausted anyway. Gripe, gripe, gripe about Bran reaching his destination. Are you joking? Okay, so the animated skeletons didn't "look 100% real". They were scary enough. And the imagery of the tree was gorgeous. (Did anyone cue R. Kelly in their head when Bran was told, "You'll never walk again; but you will fly"?) I think Stoneheart was saved for next season because there's so little of her in the next books....two, three chapters at the most? Looking forward to the Sand Snakes.
Really solid episode, I agree that maybe they should've left all the stuff with the wall in episode 9. Also, in the books, didn't Varys kill someone on his way out too?
I wasn't big on the Brienne/Hound fight. I guess as good as she is, I have a hard time believing her best the Hound, although I guess it isn't too crazy. I also didn't like the skeletons. They didn't look good to me and while I remember Bran having some opposition getting to the cave, I don't remember it being skeletons. There are already Wights and Others and Giants, this felt like overkill. I was happy to see a season not end with Dany having the big closing moment. Great call having it end with Arya. I was a little disppointed Stoneheart wasn't the final scene. It doesn't seem too supernatural seeing as we've already seen Beric Dondarion resurrected. I liked the episode for the most part. I really enjoyed Jon and Stannis discussing Ned. Actually, I'm probably in the minority in that I liked a lot of the Wall scenes this episode.
I think that you have to take into account that The Hound was weakened by "the bite". Remember Arya mentioning that he was much slower (when approaching The Eyrie) since getting bit.
Didn't even play the angle of Tywin's hypocrisy when it comes to whores and how that was a big motivator for Tyrion to kill him. The Breanne - Hound fight was dumb. The skeleton fight outside the cave was pointless, it ate into time when there was precious information to give out. I understand that people will want action, just situate it properly. Also, I don't remember Qyburn really trying to save the Mountain...he was experimenting on him.
I remember in the books. . the mountain was SCREAMING for days and heard all throughout the castle I *REALLY* wanted that Rocket River
It was a pretty disappointing episode as an adaptation. Decent as a stand alone TV show, but they had the book material to make it the best episode ever and what we got was disappointing, and I'm not even really that disappointed with no Lady Stoneheart as long as she shows up later. How did Tyrion know about the secret tunnel to Tywin's room? Shae never used it, Varys never mentioned it, it seems it was only known to Tyrion because that's what he does in the book without any of the context. Shae's TV character makes no sense. She had multiple opportunities to leave with wealth safely and be financially secure and rid of Tyrion, but she was insulted to be called a w**** who wanted money when Tyrion offered, even though she was one. Then she is sleeping with Tywin...? What's the motivation? She can't expect Tyrion to ever find out for it to be some sort of "revenge sex". How can she be so insulted by Tyrion's offer and yet so quickly end up in Tywin's bed? Why does Tyrion care if the woman who framed him for murder, tried to kill him with a dagger and was sleeping with his dad is called a w****? Tyrion's called her a w**** several times in the last few episodes. Even if we buy the complete character change that he loved her still, it just means he loved a w****. Calling Tysha a w**** was insulting because she wasn't, and Tywin treated her like one and made Tyrion believe it. It seems to me that Show-Jaime would now choose to leave the King's Guard and take his spot as heir of Casterly Rock, AND not have to marry anyone else with Tywin gone. He is on good terms with Cersei, all he has to do is get her to have Tommen complete the paperwork. With Jaime and Tyrion still on good terms it seems he would make efforts to support Tyrion. Jaime flip flops from being the book version focused on restoring his honor, and not caring about his honor or the white cloak on a regular basis, so I'm not really sure why he wouldn't reclaim his inheritance at this point. They didn't mention how the wildlings wanted access past the walls, but also refused to follow any of the laws of the seven kingdoms. Instead Mance told Jon that he sent sent an overwhelming force of over a thousand wildlings over the wall to hit Castle Black again (a force that we never hear the fate of, and if that was an option you have to wonder why he wasted those lives on the relatively tiny Ygritte raid), and offered peace without listing any conditions, and Jon didn't accept. Jon wasn't officially sent to negotiate, but realistically he should have accepted and gone back to discuss the terms with the other members, or at the absolute least warned them about the thousand plus wildlings climbing the wall. Of course it was a plot point that Stannis arriving killed off so in the end it didn't matter. It's just funny how the writers seem to feel the need to invent silly changes that they know they won't have to address because the character is going to die or the situation is going to alter drastically. The wildling camp of 20 people that was supposed to represent 100,000 wasn't unexpected due to budget, but it was underwhelming, as was Mance not even trying to fight. On a much lower nitpick level, no "Stannis, Stannis!" warcry. Speaking of which we go to Cersei telling Tywin about her and Jaime's relationship. Book-Tywin would likely respond with something like "Oh go ahead- reveal it all, just don't expect me, or my Lannister army to be her any longer if you do, and don't be surprised by what the Tyrells and Martells will do to your incestuous bastards." Some will argue that show-Cersei just isn't reasonable and that is reason enough for her irrational threat, but it's a complete opposite of her book character, so the question is "Why?". With Tywin about to die this episode it wasn't even a plot hole they needed to create! So they completely reverse Cersei's character to suddenly being back in love with Jaime, and not caring who knows it. So why isn't she concerned about someone walking in? Just because she told Tywin doesn't mean Cersei and Jaimie can just not care and suddenly be a couple in public. In fact it is the opposite, as if someone walks in, then she won't have to threaten to tell the realm about the truth of their relationship, the realm will know. Apparently wights get much faster if they lose all their flesh. If the white walkers can reanimate corpses that are just skeletons, why would burning the dead matter? We have several cases of wights being put down by fire in the books. Burning won't reduce bones to ash in most cases. Drogon's dragon fire didn't turn the kid's bones to ash. Even modern cremation doesn't turn all the bones to ash, they are actually ground up after the fact. All the wights in the books still have flesh and it's implied that this is required for them to remain animated, even if they have torn flesh or missing limbs and organs. Children of the forest throw fireballs now apparently. The lack of follow up to the Hound and Arya visiting the Eyrie the last time we saw them made no sense. Robyn is still Arya's cousin, the Hound has a huge bounty on his head, and the guards didn't even bother to tell Littlefinger that they were there before letting them go? The Hound fought basically to the death to keep Arya, and then told Arya to go with Brienne.... What? Brienne and Pod went to search for Arya, but didn't hear the Hound yelling for Arya to kill him or bother to go to the high ground where seeing her would be practically guaranteed? Now that Brienne knows that Lysa is dead, what is her plan if she actually found Arya? If Arya doesn't want to come with her, and Arya has no known living family, then how exactly does she "keep her oath" even if she had Arya? There were some good scenes. I liked the locking up of the dragons, and I liked the final confrontation of Arya and the Hound. The sets and general acting was good on most of the scenes, even if they were poor adaptations of the book material. I can see it being considered a good episode by non-readers or people who are able to completely judge it separate from the books. I will always judge how well they did as an adaptation first, and seeing what they did with the best material the books has to offer doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the future of the show. Maybe my expectations were just too high.
Also, I knew that they were going to cut Tysha, when they didn't re-show her story in the "previously on Game of Thrones", but I still think it was a mistake that greatly reduced the whole impact of Tyrion's escape. His father made him think that the one woman who really did love him for him, was a w****, he made his brother lie about it and then he had her raped by all his soldiers, then made Tyrion go last. Calling her a w**** over and over set Tyrion off because she wasn't a w****. The break with Jaime means Tyrion is completely alone with no one to call on for help in the books and no one he cares about or who cares about him. He still has Jaime in the show, who unlike the books doesn't seem to care that much about being leader of the King's Guard. It probably works ok for TV viewers, but it was considerably weaker than it could have been, and they had enough pointless filler scenes that they could have cut to remind viewers who Tysha was in conjunction with replaying the original story on "previously on game of thrones" prelude.
The last two episodes have been some of the worst I can remember and certainly the worst of the season. I don't understand the deviations from the source material when the deviations are stupid or don't solve a problem realistically. So Varys is going with Tyrion? I guess they will omit Illyrio and have Varys fill the role of Tyrion's guide.
