I like elements of it. I conceptually like Will's character as the bullish, abrasive, intelligent, centre-right free speaker who calls bullshit when he sees it. I thought the dismissal of criticisms of Obama's gun stance and India trip was strong. Jeff Daniels' performance is outstanding, even if he occasionally has…

There's a difference between having an opinion, and having a hardlined stance. Reviewers with hardline stances (for or against) will  look for and expect confirmation of their opinions, and can easily become biased by rose coloured or, ummmm, darkly tinted shades.

There's a difference between having an opinion, and having a hardlined stance. Reviewers with hardline stances (for or against) will  look for and expect confirmation of their opinions, and can easily become biased by rose coloured or, ummmm, darkly tinted shades.

@avclub-c156902f5b20b572848be18c11634dfb:disqus "Squicky" was exactly how I felt watching it, considering it's such a recent, intimate tragedy (as opposed to the enormous ones which are somehow easier to abstract). I'm incredibly sympathetic to the anti-gun message (I'm Australian and centre-left, so US gun culture is…

@avclub-c156902f5b20b572848be18c11634dfb:disqus "Squicky" was exactly how I felt watching it, considering it's such a recent, intimate tragedy (as opposed to the enormous ones which are somehow easier to abstract). I'm incredibly sympathetic to the anti-gun message (I'm Australian and centre-left, so US gun culture is…

Wouldn't it have been great to have a scene where David talks to Weylan, making the latter slightly less useless and the former slightly less baffling:

Wouldn't it have been great to have a scene where David talks to Weylan, making the latter slightly less useless and the former slightly less baffling:

I totally agree. Cersei is a character I'd been having issues with lately, because I felt they were making her too ignorant/villainous. I felt this episode gave her a lot more depth and complexity, which was very welcome.

Theon did attack the other place as a feint, right? Before setting out to Winterfell? It seems reasonable to me that you'd put two and two together and think "hmmmm, they're not here any more, the place is abandoned so it's just us, the defenders left in Winterf-OH SHIT!" *races back*

Totally, @avclub-1d6b0e3b7a587e87857db4e74fd94a40:disqus. The sequence was going really well until it got to the whole "I have a plan but I need your help" part. Then it just became one long, implausible cliche. I'm glad he didn't get away with it or it would have felt even cheaper!

I think in the hands of a capable actress Daeny could be a good character, but gorgeous as Emelia Clarke is, her ability to 'pretend to be another person' is not great.

I feel like there should be a difference between "not being very good at the game" and "being completely and utterly incompetant at the game, and not understanding the basic rules". I mean, she was Queen for 15 years or however old Geoffrey is, and her father is one of the most politically astute people in the…

@avclub-23dc117ef9479407fb6c6a666005af40:disqus You're right, there's not a lot of character depth in the sense that most of them have very narrow personality types. However, I think, largely due to more screentime, we get more range, and much more 'downtime' with the male characters, which gives them a sense of…

@avclub-3db41011acc2d229176bf6a92202728d:disqus, I mean she seems quite two-dimensionally villiany these days, and not very clever. Her evolution as Tyrion's punching bag kind of grates. My favourite Cersei scene is when she confronts Littlefinger about the nature of 'power'. It's clever, it's threatening, it's…

@avclub-42998cf32d552343bc8e460416382dca:disqus But a dead Theon should be asleep in his bedroom and so wouldn't raise the alarm immediately, whereas I'm thinking when they find the dead guard they left at his post out in the open that might raise some eyebrows.

I'm with the others - he doesn't know, but he respects that she thinks before she speaks and she doesn't give away more than she has to. I don't think there's any affection though - I get the impression he would cut her throat without hesitation, like she was a deer and he was on kitchen duties.

I do like that maybe if the Hound has taken to protecting Sansa, but he's still on Arya's hit-list, that will potentially lead to conflict down the track of a genuinely ambiguous nature, rather than a "one's clearly in the right and one's clearly in the wrong" manner.

Reeeeeeeeeeeally? I think GoT's women are pretty… wooden. My friend (whose opinions I respect very much) who has read the books says George Martin can't write them well at all, and that doesn't surprise me based on the show so far. The only developed female character I feel we've seen is Arya, and that's because,…

@avclub-001d507e80c4e4d2ce4ba0a5590f8313:disqus  At the risk of labouring the point, I think that's the problem exactly. When Theon returns home with a reasonable proposal from someone he has just embraced as a brother, only to have his blood family, who are little more than a pathetic defeated band of pirates, spurn…

@avclub-db0c35ce2663c0e8c4b3f38642a49748:disqus, you're right to a large extent - there was more nuance in Theon's character in Season 1. Thinking about what you've written, what really grates me is the opening of Season 2 - if they didn't labour the point so much that Theon was serving by Robb's side it wouldn't feel…