@avclub-47624136cf832b0092161cd37e3952aa:disqus No, RedPariah guessed wrong— they really don't make special episodes for the kids to comment on. They've done commentaries on episodes that had sex scenes, they just said something like "uh heh we're going to fast-forward through this part because it's embarrassing" and…

@EvelKareebel:disqus I can't explain the whole story of The Rains of Castamere in a non-spoilery way since it hasn't been explained on the show yet, but it is indeed a Lannister song about the downfall of one of their enemies (the lord of Castamere, whose halls are empty and getting rained on at the end of the song).…

@avclub-d980b15d49101608dc407770f35b1d75:disqus I may be remembering wrong about whether Roose had officially distanced himself from Ramsay, but the Boltons were still Stark bannermen and Winterfell had no grievance against them. It was House Manderley who insisted on holding Bolton's whole house responsible for…

I think the book implied that he didn't learn everything from her— he independently invented cunnilingus, of which Ygritte knew nothing.

Nice moment when Kraznys starts going on about how crappy the Dothraki are, and Missandei has to pause her translation for a second like she's not sure where he's going with this— it's just a string of insults and the business-related point isn't yet apparent. But she doesn't seem too concerned, since this probably…

Rodrik Cassel led the hunt for Ramsay, after news got out that he'd killed Lady Hornwood and taken her castle. I got the impression that his serial killing hobby was not a well kept secret, but this was his first noble-born victim so it was no longer possible to ignore it— even Roose publicly denounced him after that.

Yeah, and it reinforces one of the main themes in Robb's story in book 3: Robb realizing that some of his own guys are not good guys. We see so little of non-Stark Northmen in books 1 and 2, it's easy to assume that they're all either basically decent like Ned or colorful rowdies like the Greatjon, so it's really…

It's not hard to explain the hand-chopping and keep Bolton's story more or less intact:

It's possible that they're also reaching way forward to pull in some of the non-flashback plot from book 5…

I'm not sure why I was so surprised by that in the book— it's a pretty logical thing for her to do, and although it seemed to me like it just came out of nowhere, I'm sure there were a couple chapters in between the setup and the event so you have some time to think about it. I think it works because, in the…

I think the show is kind of screwed either way, with the body hair thing. At least judging by the Internet, it seems like every time a naked woman appears with more than a tennis ball's worth of fur, about half of the audience is unable to notice anything else and they think it's really weird and gross, and some of…

@avclub-8f000234c91b39310f3b53529587b5f9:disqus Martin has talked about the similar-names thing in interviews: it's not that he ran out of names, it's that he noticed during his research that repetitive names are an annoying characteristic of real-world aristocracies, whereas fantasy writers often go to ridiculous…

It's still arguable that Edmure's fuckup here was totally understandable (if this was so important to the war, Robb should've spelled it out better ahead of time— even more so in the book, where it was way more important), and that Robb is just taking out his frustration on the nearest target. But I think the scene…

Thoros is definitely still a red priest— they've talked about it in promo materials, and he's got some priesty lines in the previews. My guess is that they're saving that reveal so that newbies have a chance to go "Oh yay, the Brotherhood is a bunch of cool anarchist guerrilla dudes, let's all join them," and then…

Yeah, even though Stannis has gotten short shrift time-wise, I think they're at least trying to give him a more interesting character arc. In the book he's deep in denial about his part in killing Renly, and he pretty much stays that way. On the show, last season he went from "This sex we're having is just for…

I think so too, but it does come off differently since in the second book he was pretending to be a gross, horrible, psychotic ally, not just some helpful guy. Also, IIRC, his impersonation of Reek wasn't so much a well-thought-out plot to infiltrate Winterfell, it was basically to save his skin because a posse of…

@avclub-d980b15d49101608dc407770f35b1d75:disqus Well, if they're keeping anything from Vargo Hoat in this Locke character, then his motivation for chopping Jaime wasn't really as simple as that. Hoat was violent and volatile, but he also had a (not very smart) scheme in mind: knowing that Karstark would pay big for…

Well, first, in the book only one of them was Ser Kevan's kid; the other one was his nephew. But I think there's a pretty good reason to make them even less notable than that, and it might be the same reason they made them younger: to emphasize that they're as unrelated to the war as possible, so that when Karstark…

Rabinim?

@avclub-28b1819668d7c62501acb9852cad10a9:disqus If you bothered to read the comment Hypnomatic was replying to, Aldo said that Tolkin sounded like "somebody who is in no way religious," not like "somebody who doesn't have insight into evangelical Christians."