My dream casting for Doran Martel was always John Laroquette, but I guess he's not swarthy enough for what the show is going for with the Dornishmen.

Cersei is so insecure, she chooses to surround herself with idiots to make herself seem more capable. As mentioned above, these books WERE written during the Dubya administration.

A Dance With Dragons came out in 2011, well after the Iraq War

Drogon named in honor of her dead husband Khal Drogo
Viseryon named in honor of her dead (scumbag) brother Viserys
Rhaegon named in honor of her dead brother Rhaegar, the Dragon Knight

It also echoes both Nedd Stark's execution (though in mirror image, interestingly enough) and, further back, the scene in the first episode where Nedd Stark himself beheaded the deserter from the Night's Watch (who deserted, recall, because he'd been driven mad with fear by seeing the White Walkers kill his companions)

GRRM was writing the source material while Dubya was invading Iraq, so the comparison is probably not without basis

agh, beat me to it. Sarah pulled off the posture passably well, but couldn't nail the walk at ALL

Once again impressed by how well Maslany embodies her different characters. Like when Sarah tried to mimic Cosima, you could tell because her posture wasn't upright enough. Sarah as Rachel gives herself away by having too much swagger in her walk.

As much as I enjoyed every! single! thing! about Helena's dream, there's nothing in the whole episode I liked better than when the scorpion started talking

I was thinking the same thing in the first scene where she showed up… shades of Walt on "Lost." Either they're gonna need to fast forward the timeline, or introduce some fast-aging side effect of being angelic clone-daughter…

The big black scorpions you always see in the movies are emperor scorpions. From what I've read, either they don't actually have venom, or it's too weak to hurt people. The little amber-colored scorpions are the deadly ones, despite not looking so big and impressive.

That was totally the point I was wanting to make. You saved me the trouble of putting it into words…

She IS a man!

The moment when she jumped in the air and grabbed onto the rocket-sled thingy and didn't get her arm torn off (or even dislocated) was the moment I was like, "well, so much for even SciFi realism"

Crane Mother! As good as this show is, my absolute favorite thing about it is how excited it's getting me for the eventual/inevitable Iron Fist series

Curare!

It's interesting… it seems to be trying to play to the whole political spectrum by combining the right-wing idea that crime is a disease and criminals are scum only deserving of punishment with a left-wing sense that crime is caused by the greed of the rich and powerful… criminals and plutocrats conspiring against…

Speaking of precedent… Tale of Two Cities anyone?

The story I heard is that the TV people were worried that "Bruce" sounded too gay. (Worked for Batman, but that was the sixties, so…)

Double-checking, I discovered that it's not actually improper grammar to use "that" instead of "who" as a subordinating conjunction when referring to a person. Apparently, it's pretty standard in British usage. Still, Oliver's constant "Working for other people that…" "the small Chinese woman that…" "she’ll sleep with…