On my old TV, I always used to have to mess with the brightness levels to make this show even marginally visible. On my new TV, on the other hand, it all looks fine. It's OK on my computer, too. I know nothing about the relevant technology, but if you have the option, maybe try watching on a different device and see…

Probably one of Granny Olenna's very first lessons to her grandkids in Hearts and Minds 101 was "refrain from killing members of religious orders." She couldn't have known that some moron was going to arm them again!

And "Who has the power" is, in large part, determined by "who 'wants' you." If no one wants you to rule and no one will fight for you, then it doesn't matter how legitimate your claim is: you still aren't going to have any way to take the throne. Or, for that matter, to keep it for very long.

Just about anything would have improved that scene, agreed. For that matter, if they didn't want to go that simple, how about having one of the Snakes slightly more hesitant about instigating a war? Let one of them have to be convinced by the others. Maybe then we'd be able to tell the three girls apart.

"It's like crossing a psychopathic magical Viking with a William H. Macy character"

I hope they go even further with that horror genre tone. (Not slasher, mind you, but more abstract horror. No dog rape, plz!) The equivalent chapters in the books had this really fun claustrophobic cabin fever edge to them. Very much like a "snowed in with unseen but scary things" horror movie. With the benefit of…

Has there ever been a group sanctioned to commit violence that doesn't attract its share of sadistic freaks who just like violence?

It does feel more as if it fits. The Doom of Valyria is itself such a high fantasy thing — it almost sounds as if it comes from a different genre altogether, doesn't it? — that it seems like the creepy illogical high fantasyesque Stone Men belong there.

I don't think there's going to be a battle at all. Yunkai was dismissed as a concern at the beginning of the season. There may be civil insurrection going on, but I'm pretty sure the battle with Yunkai is out.

A Feast for Crows, friends, was boring. We must not say so.

The man's something like 65 years old, and he was surrounded by an entire mob! And yet he still struck down approximately a gazillion of them before succumbing to his wounds. Just how unrealistic do you want them to get with this? There's a line that once crossed, just makes everything unspeakably cheesy. Maybe they…

Yeah, that's my interpretation. Arianne winds up part of Aegon's throne grab in the books, so no Aegon means no Arianne. But they still need some intrigue surrounding Myrcella, so Ellaria and the Sand Snakes can be after her, while Trystane is trying to Queen her and Jaime is trying to bring her home. That's my guess…

Well, we have thermonuclear weapons. And yet plenty of people still believe in god(s).

The beard was classic. And his disgruntled little mutter of "Always the Maiden" made him my favorite character for about three seconds last week.

Oooooooh…

Ugh. Okay, so that was a long digression that didn't, in the end, really have all that much to do with what you wrote, for which I would like to apologize. I got so caught up in trying to pin down exactly why I had so disliked those chapters that it all kind of got away from me. I'm sorry about that. You wrote a…

Ah, that was good old Caligula who threatened to make his horse consul. Incitatus was the horse's name, by the way. According to Suetonius, the horse would also occasionally invite important personages to come dine with him in his stables. I certainly hope that he offered them human food, but I have a nasty suspicion…

Huh. I thought his uncharacteristic reluctance to sleep with the whore was meant to show how conflicted and in turmoil he was? Not sure if I think that was really the best way for the writers to go about it, but I'd say they certainly were trying to show him as a changed man.

Yeah, same kid as last season. Sorry, you don't get to feel *completely* at ease with the situation. Just maybe a little better than you would if you'd seen him playing an eight-year-old just a couple of years ago.

You know, historically, these sorts of marriages happened all the time. History is littered with examples of members of the nobility who entered into marriage with enemy families and yes, even with people who had killed their relatives. In a political system in which blood succession is important, that's just politics.