No one's demanding a gushing review. And there's a major difference in reviewing a show and an episode of that show. Most reviews here dabble in both—"Here's how this episode fits into the overall scheme of the show"—and it's often detrimental to the criticism, because great shows have lousy episodes and vice versa.…

There's also the fact that a lot of people actively hate Aaron Sorkin—his personality, his ego, his distinctive (I'm being value-neutral) writing, his politics, and the fact that invariably *he* is the star of every show he orchestrates—and are therefore much more assiduous in seeking out, finding and then howling…

Fair enough: some of your readers are spoiled for validation. But not all of us; some of us just want a reviewer who is professional enough not to give in to childish exasperation when writing about the show. (That includes you, Mr. Van Der Werff—you had a wonderful point last week about the show's "beautiful poison,"…

Absolutely not. As I stressed, this was a poor episode, and well deserving of a critical dressing-down. Cheerleading criticism is just as bad as Hatewatching criticism. Bad work deserves a bad review. But no work presented in a professional context deserves a badly written review, and this was a badly written review.…

To be fair, I think that Jim's annoyed/annoying persistence is coming from his realization that this whole "running away to New Hampshire" scheme was a major exercise in cutting off his nose to spite his face. So, being Jim (i.e. a Sorkinish "bright-and-brash young man" character), he's going to steer into the skid…

And once again we have to haul out the "why are people hate-watching this show, and why do they come here to have their pain validated by others" argument. But the folks who log on here to do that don't need any hand-wringing bullshit from me, and won't get it, I swear.

Spoilers: I suspect Season 4 will have Balon's (still mysterious, no?) death happen early on, so that the rest of the Greyjoys can have a proper, Season-long arc, which they'll spend emerging as characters and entering into their 'Whither now, non-Sowers?' phase of societal existentialism, leading up to the Big Meet…

Season Four: PROFIT!