Agreed. I noticed that bit of dialogue missing when Tyrion and Oberyn met on the show, and when they brought it back tonight I couldn't help but admire what a smart adaptation choice it was. Much more powerful in that context.

HA!!!

Greenwald's reviews, minus the snark if that's not to your taste, are leaps and bounds better than these ones in terms of analyzing themes and the overall direction of the show. And he hasn't even read the books. These reviews basically veer between lists of things that are different from the source material, and…

Yes, so much that. I remember being one minute into the Halo 3 climax and thinking, "Goddammit - we're really just doing this again?"

Yes, the plot sucked. But who played Halo 2 for the single player?

That misses why Halo was such a massive success though. Lots of capital-L Launch Titles and repurposed games are go-nowhere duds. Halo had the benefit of being set in an engaging world, having groundbreaking and massively influential controls and simplicity of design (which they've of course fucked up by making each…

He's a pretty talented impressionist (both acting and singing), and not a terrible comedic actor. He's no Colbert, but compared to my initial impression of him I think Fallon's OK.

Oh my.

My wife (who hasn't read the books) had no idea that the poison was in the necklace until last night's episode. I was waiting for her to ask, "Hey, why even give Sansa a fake necklace?" - but she never did.

That right there is why you find yourself a Webster, or a Gary Coleman. I don't care if it's weird to have a black Stark kid, that's just what you do!

Except for the one effects shot of Dany and her banner, this was a really good-looking episode in a low-key way. Not so much with the mind-blowing sets and effects, more with just finding interesting and pretty ways to film people talking to each other.

I agree. Besides which, I thought the non-effects portions of the episode looked really nice. Lots of nice use of natural lighting in those many dark scenes with candles and fire.

Tyrion almost certainly knows. Tywin also is smart enough to have figured it out long ago, but he's so focused on preserving the Lannister name in the history books that he would never say it out loud. The stakes of maintaining that lie (that Cersei's kids are Robert's and not Jaime's) are far too high on every…

This is a lot of words to say, "He kept collaborating with Tim Burton while Burton drove both their careers off a (critical) cliff," and "He kept pumping out Pirates sequels because all the money."

^ Right. A lot has been made of the difference between their first encounter as depicted in the show and books, but it's all the subsequent encounters in the books (glossed over very quickly) that make clear that Drogo falls squarely into his culture's norms for husbands, until Dany bends him into a different shape…

My argument is to not be in such a hurry to pillory them in the town square and make out as if their motives are Pure Evil. Yes, I do think authorial intent matters when you are trying to hang them with arguments like this one: "They reduced what might be a complex bit of emotional manipulation in the books into a…

I agree. I'm not the biggest cultural relativist, but it seems clear that that was a depiction of a very different culture - a guy acting the way warlord husbands act, and a woman (a disturbingly young woman, which I think also plays a part in this) realizing this and eventually accepting and forgiving it, even if it…

If they wrote and shot most of what's on the page, then it probably was more ambiguous. Editing could easily remove that ambiguity depending when they decide to end the scene and which particular shots and bits of dialogue they leave in or remove.

I agree with you. I don't mind discussing this at all - it's an important enough issue and worth talking about at length. But the regular infusions of OUTRAGE! make it frustrating. People seem to want to leap to the worst possible conclusions about everyone involved because it's easier to get worked up and condemn…

It's quite possible that the director intended this to be a straightforward adaptation of the book scene, but some editorial choices messed that up and he hasn't taken a close enough look at it today to understand where people are coming from. I'm inclined to give him a little more benefit of the doubt, just because…