@avclub-c701a997d9bef627835b036efb4eca63:disqus I guess it depends on what you mean by a "cool ending", but there have been plenty of episodes that faded out on quieter moments. Those huge action shots have not been the norm.

Because I'm a big nerd, my favorite thing about the Thor movie besides Idris Elba was the way they depicted all the gods' shiny accoutrements as being sort of solidified magic— Thor's armor falls to bits when Odin takes his power and reassembles itself onto him at the end, the big death robot is just a sculpted metal…

Yeah, I don't know if the idea is that Darren Aronofsky was going for humor but Portman foiled his plans, or that Portman should've taken the initiative to play her role as funny because Aronofsky, who's well known for his hands-off approach, totally would've let that get into the film… either way, not the most…

@avclub-d0cf409eb912cc0cc950b41b6d892d07:disqus I'm sure they're capable of feeding themselves— at least the way they're portrayed in the books, there are islanders who grow crops and build houses and other normal activities, and in some areas they're hard to distinguish from people in Westeros. The real historical…

Yeah, when I went back and reread the book a while later, I was like "Wait, how could I have been surprised by that?" But I think Martin did a great job of misdirection there, because not only have you seen a lot of Dany struggling and being ineffective, but all the big discussions between her and Jorah and Barristan…

Yeah, I'm totally bewildered by the occasional comment I see from someone who doesn't like Headey in this.

"How great would it have been if after Daenerys tells the entire army they are free to leave they actually left"

The books have had a few more mentions of that kind of thing, both in the east and in the west. IIRC, the old guy who was in charge of making wildfire for Tyrion was a bit surprised that the "magic" part of their manufacturing process, which was just some pointless ritual that they did out of tradition, had started…

That, plus this guy is a successful slave trader in a huge city in a part of the world where the slave trade is pretty much the basis of everything, and it's been that way for hundreds or thousands of years. Based on his advice to Dany, Kraznys assumes that anyone buying a slave army is obviously going to use it to…

Nope, we never saw the melee in season 1. That was just in the book.

The sound of the language worked so well for this scene, too. The slave trader sounds like he's speaking sort of a mushy dialect of it, and his tone just screams "lazy asshole." But Dany sounds fluent in a way that she never really did in English or Dothraki— it reminds you that she's not exactly from Westeros, she's…

The rainbow thing did sort of make sense in terms of how Renly was presenting himself as a king: someone who's going to shake up tradition and make things fun, with a strong emphasis on pageantry, so being able to give your special knights names like "Brienne the Blue" helps in that regard.

Yeah, the point of picking Petyr to marry Lysa was that he grew up with her and Cat, plus he's a smooth talker and they know she's nuts enough to need careful handling.

I guess it wasn't clear to me that he definitely had come back to the same castle. Was that the same room he was in, or just some other place where they set up a cross?

Clive Owen… maybe one of the Golden Company characters, Jon Connington or Duckfield? I can see Owen playing someone who's sort of in a similar position to Jorah Mormont in terms of being a Westerosi exile soldier of fortune, but one who's got his shit together a bit more.

Yeah, he clearly hasn't joined them (as evidenced by wearing fancy shirts and hanging around with his family and Sansa, instead of wearing white armor and guarding the king). I guess that's a sensible move in the adaptation, but I'll be sorry if they don't somehow get in some of the book 3 dialogue between Jaime and…

It was Thoros that we heard a story about in season 1— someone, maybe Jaime, reminiscing about a battle where Thoros charged in with a flaming sword. Beric was only mentioned in the one scene where Ned picked him to lead the posse to go after Gregor for war crimes.

I think they may have just lost track of that little plot thread, Alliser Thorne going to the capital, far enough back that there's no way to effectively pick it up again and they'll need to make up something else. I mean, a major war has been going on now for a while, King's Landing was nearly destroyed, there's no…

Is no one paying attention?? The dragons each have two rows of eight tits. That's 24 naked breasts soaring through the sky. True they just look like small bumps that are basically indistinguishable from scales, but some people appreciate that look.

I was confused by the idea of her marrying Loras because, in the book, he's joined Joffrey's Kingsguard and those guys aren't allowed to get married. But I guess he didn't do that on the show, as I should've realized when he went on wearing expensive flowery shirts instead of white armor.