Winters is totally right by the way. Oz is, like, the Albert King to The Sopranos' Eric Clapton. Obviously, anyone into blues knows King, but *everybody* has heard of and heard Clapton.

I didn't really catch what they told the dentists. Strikes me as kind of unrealistic. The FBI dudes aren't dentists-they know she was injured but they don't know the kind of injury. I bet people go into dentists with tooth shit all the time. She just walks in casually in the middle of the day saying that she thinks…

Yeah, but that was a decade ago.

I've always seem HoC as more of a guilty pleasure. I just don't think its an intelligent enough take on its world to warrant the self-seriousness.

No

HoC is definitely too flawed to be fantastic, but I agree that OITNB is a great show.

-6800? I thought they screened for stupid

Yeah, those weird box sets are sort of the hardcovers. If you're patient you can get it later for cheaper without all the bells and whistles.

I haven't read AFFC since it came out a decade ago, but I also seem to remember GRRM promising at the end that the second half of the story, with the rest of the characters, would be forthcoming in the next year or so. Right?

I thought he basically wrote AFFC and ADWD at the same time, it was just so huge that it had to be chopped into two books.

I can't believe that there are two books left. WoW will come out in 2016 *if we're lucky*, the final book probably between 2018-2022. If he lives that long. I've been reading this series since the mid-aughts, I think I'm tapped out at this point.

Merribald's speech is indeed fantastic, but one great scene/speech does not make for a great book.

The underappreciated quality of AFFC is probably the most popular ASOIAF fan slatepitch. No, I don't understand it either.

I reread it when ADWD came out. And by "reread" I mean I reread all the Jaime and Cersei chapters and wiki'd the rest.

Hell no. Shitcan the Showrunner(s) Syndrome is a very real and very deadly television disease.

I guess it depends on the ratings. If its still a cultural behemoth, then yeah, they could milk HBO for more money. If they're just keeping GoT stuttering along with a reduced budget because it's a sort of serviceable drama anchor because they still haven't found their next Sopranos/The Wire, then much less so.

He better watch out. I hear Wee Man's been pestering his agent to get him on a prestige drama.

I sure hope they show book-readers new plot points. I don't think I could sit through a season that's just a straight up AFFC/ADWD adaptation. I might fall asleep.

Yeah, good point GoT's seasons are 10 episodes. What's the average for a serialized prestige drama, about 13? So that means every 3 seasons, GoT has about a season's fewer episodes than the average prestige drama. So 10 seasons of GoT = about 7 seasons of a regular prestige drama.

Yeah, but L&O is a procedural. It's harder to milk more seasons out of a serialized drama.