I never liked Bran on the show or in the book. I'm fine with them just leaving him offscreen more often. It's certainly working with Arya, who is far more interesting than her brother.

As in a lot of other storylines, the show loses out for its lack of ambiguity. Cersei's paranoia is more interesting in Feast because while you think Margaery might be a schemer, you don't know for sure and you particularly don't know how much is a scheme and how much is her actually kind of being a nice person.

Wait, you think it was surprising that Margaery didn't kill Joffrey? I feel like the books lay it out pretty plainly that it was Olenna in cahoots with Littlefinger.

DwD definitely has its issues, but I think it would have read better if we'd been able to read it in full. It's been said in interviews, I believe, that Martin had both of the battles the book is leading up to already written, and the editor chopped them out because the book was too long.

I liked the King's Landing stuff generally, but yeah, the north stuff dragged on for a long time and was wholly unpleasant (and virtually all of it was extra-canonical to boot). I also agree with @underscorex:disqus that we really are getting a lot of rapes in this year (though I think the Margaery stuff is…

Ditto on thinking that the show couldn't excite me anymore. This was a great episode, maybe one of three or four that I've legitimately enjoyed all year. I think the jump is a great idea.

Wasn't sure if this had been covered down below or not (obligatory complaint about nuDisqus), but I would imagine that the reason why a lot of sitcoms do this is because they are reflecting the interests of the shows' creators, not the overarching needs of television feminism. For example, 30 Rock's Liz (who always…

I don't like Biden, but that show sounds great. I can just see him non-sexually hitting on middle-age Midwesterners and dribbling chili down his chin at a divey hamburger joint.

I know I'm not in agreement with a lot of people who love Introduction to Finality, but I just don't think this show is very good at finales. The best one is probably in Season 1, and after that, there's nothing that rises above the level of pretty good.

C+, though the cold open and tag are so good I almost want to bump it up to a B-.

I, too, will join those saying that the show definitely tried to pull viewers in with the mysteries. If the show had made it clear that all that bullshit was just the "scaffolding for the internal drama," then I would have quit watching, because the internal drama was some of the most boring shit.

Arrow was pretty shitty for a long time in the first season (so much so that I gave up on it, though I've heard it's gotten a lot better).

I have really mixed thoughts on Pulido. I loved his "The Tape" issues of Hawkeye, but I thought he was entirely wrong for his Shade issues and I didn't care for Hawkeye Annual at all — then again, that was mostly because of how much of it was in silhouette.

It was a TENTPOLE! A TENTPOLE!

Oh, Pawnee sucks for sure, but as an elected official, she shouldn't be crapping on it in a public forum. Also, if I recall, she was angry about the recall and about how the townsfolk were reacting against some of her agenda items, not about the actual systemic horror that is Pawnee.

That's true, but the Leslie that shit all over her town earlier in the episode is less so.

This is the first episode I've unreservedly liked this whole season. Why? Because Leslie isn't being a competitive, unpleasant crank.

I think there's definitely a lot of actor contribution involved here. Don't forget that Lucas directed the original Star Wars, which has some great performances in it, and also don't forget that Ewan McGregor is actually pretty watchable in the prequels. I mean, his dialogue and many of his character's plot points are…

If that's the case, then mark me down as another commenter who'd like to see regular coverage.

These weren't perfect, but they were far and away the funniest episodes of what has otherwise been a lackluster season.