This is the first episode of the series I liked from start to finish, so yay.

This is the first episode of the series I liked from start to finish, so yay.

I love how dickishly Joffrey wears his crown. It's the Westeros equivalent of a sideways Ed Hardy hat.

I love how dickishly Joffrey wears his crown. It's the Westeros equivalent of a sideways Ed Hardy hat.

Oh, how I love my cheeses, cheese from around the world….

Oh, how I love my cheeses, cheese from around the world….

Firefly: Out of Gas
Angel: You're Welcome
Buffy: Once More With Feeling
Dollhouse: The Attic (it's been awhile, but I remember liking this one).

Firefly: Out of Gas
Angel: You're Welcome
Buffy: Once More With Feeling
Dollhouse: The Attic (it's been awhile, but I remember liking this one).

The last season
Will feature Walter Jr. murdering his father and taking over his business

I was glad they used Twilight, just so Leslie could say she didn't like it and was a Harry Potter girl, herself. Hermione FTMFW.

@reckoner I'd have to check the books to be sure, but a quick google search says no.

I'm not so sure that Coldhands = Benjen. You'd think Bran would be able to recognize his uncle. He would have seen him at the feast when Robert turned up at Winterfell, if nothing else. I don't seem to remember Coldhands's face being disfigured or anything either, so it's not like Bran would have some reason not to…

If this whet your interest
Lords of The Realm, written by John Helyar, is a fascinating look at the history of the business of baseball, especially the labor movement. Easily the best book about baseball I have ever read.

A huge second for Robin Hobb's books, mentioned above. There are multiple characters in that series that would probably be in my top five literary characters of all time.

What Miller said. My comment above was intended as hyperbolic as all of the ZOMG Raunchy Female Comedy overanalysis surrounding this movie and Bridesmaids (which was quite fun). But the main takeaway I took from the previews/ads we saw for this movie was to be insulted. Everyone loves piling on teachers.

Shallow Hal was a shitty movie

The bigger problem with this movie, that I haven't seen brought up
is not that it's Bad For Women so much as it is Bad For Education. Shit like this only further degrades public opinion of teachers everywhere.

Biggest surprise from this episode
The sheer amount of speculation and argument over the throwaway Pycelle scene in this episode. Seriously, I think there are about five threads on it between this review and the newbie one.

I also thought it was a bit disappointing. We still got dragons so it was awesome, but I was picturing a big explosion as she walked to the pyre, followed by Dany walking out of the inferno with some dragons. That would have been badass. It might have been too expensive to do SFX wise though.

They're going to split up Storm of Swords into two seasons - there's no way around it. I think they finish season 3 with the Red Wedding (ep 9) and Joff's wedding (ep 10) and finish the 4th season with the wildling assault and Jon's election/Tyrion's escape.