It's not a minor aside to point out that he's right, he'd make a much better king than Stannis. One could view the whole story as illustration that simple lineage is a lousy way to choose leaders.

To be fair, the comet is a central reference point throughout much of Clash of Kings but vanishes thereafter. I'd've been surprised if the early episodes didn't feature it in one way or another.

Throughout every book, Martin is obsessed with food and armor. He loves describing the greases of various meats and boiled leather. Oh, with the boiled leather…

Real wolves are quite a bit leaner and shaggier than "wolfish" domesticated breeds. I could tell that Grey Wind was a real wolf, but the effects to make him look almost twice as big as he really was were the awkward part.

Roose understands the power of torture and terror when judiciously used, and doesn't hesitate to use them. Ramsay loves inflicting torture and terror on those he has power over for its own sake. Ramsay will ultimately be undone by his cruelty; Roose (or someone else just like him) will persist. Which is worse: a short…

For Skins UK fans, she was played by Hannah Murray (Cassie), to go along with Joe Dempsie as Gendry (Chris). They should cast Nicholas Hoult as an arrogant young knight or lesser lord.

Architecturally speaking, Riverrrun is pretty uninteresting so it's not surprising they're not spending much time there. The important stuff can all happen in Robb's war camps. The dying Lord Hoster stuff doesn't add a whole lot, either. @avclub-1c94d7ee62364576f2f61996170fe903:disqus : Catelyn is at Riverrun with…

After the meeting between Robb, Grey Wind and Jaime, my wife (who has not read the books) said that they should cut off his hand because, as a great swordsman, that would hurt him most. And now I have to hold my tongue for (probably) more than a year.

It looks like they're cutting out the sojourn in the empty city in the desert, the perfect place to pad out her story a bit…

Tyrion seems to be keeping Shae in the Tower of the Hand with him, a pretty big departure from the books.

It's not even technical. Jon betrayed his brothers in the Watch in very serious fashion. The penalty for that is never ambiguous.

Jon's direwolf is not called "Ghost" for nothing.

I was speaking objectively. He had AMC going in a pretty positive direction (building small, fuel-efficient cars, of all things) until he left; now it's gone. Michigan, since that period, is not often held up as a model for other states to follow.

One of the things I've always enjoyed about this show is that the Boomers (other than Sally and the other young 'uns) are mostly off to the side; it's not about them. The bulk of characters are from my parents' generation, often called "The Forgotten Generation." The small one largely born just prior to the Great…

George Romney leaving AMC for Michigan gov't did favors for neither AMC nor Michigan. Most people these days probably don't even know that those letters once denoted a car company instead of a cable network.

Is it incest if you molest your younger self, al la the titular time traveler in The Time Traveler's Wife?

And the fact that she's a vet has to come in handy at some point. I thought that's where they were headed in the Rapunzel episode, when they had a wounded Wessen out in the woods.

Leaving aside the previews that indicate that next weeks' episode will be primarily red universe, anything that deals with David Robert Jones is at least tangentially related to the other universe, since he can cross back and forth. His presence was felt throughout this episode even though he was physically over in…

Astrid doesn't play for that team, if ya know what I mean…

Since I never thought they'd sacrifice Lincoln at this point in the story, I'm glad they didn't pretend too hard that he was a goner. I hate when shows feint that they'll kill a valuable character all the way up to the brink, then pull back at the last instant (ahem, "Sons of Anarchy"). It definitely works better to…