I disagree. It *is* clearly a foreshortening of an existing word (even if it's a noun converted to a verb), and as such it should definitely have an apostrophe in place of the missing letters. Without that, it would seem like the ordinary conventional verb form of "ship," as in "shipping and handling"… and presumably…

I'm coming in at (eek!) 1900 comments, so someone may have already mentioned this… but while Myles is right about how annoying the show's chronological "shortcuts" can be, treating transportation and communication as negligibly quick and easy, that actually *didn't* seems like such a problem this week… and certainly,…

Well, yeah… but Tarly's line opened the whole scene; how would anyone miss it? (This is not a show to watch with less than full attention!…)

Haven't read through all the comments, so forgive me if this is repetitive… but *was* Tyrion still at Dragonstone after Dany had left? I remember him being in the beach scene where she learned the news from Casterly Rock and Highgarden, but I don't remember him being in the scene where Jon, Davos, and Missandei…

But why should a critic avoid comparing a show to its own past peaks? If there was a time when it had a more realistic sense of pacing, a more visceral experience of events, more attention to romantic and human moments… and now it has *less* of all those things… why on earth would one want to merely "accept" that…

I enjoy talking about character development and potential plot lines as well. But those are *also* things the show has been giving (relatively) short shrift over the past season or two. Instead, the writers are just ticking off a checklist of Important Plot Developments. They're not "dropping clues," they're asking…

I don't understand why it *doesn't* bother you. The (apparent) pacing of events on screen simply doesn't correspond to the timescale required for the events being depicted, and as a result many events seem disconnected or incongruous, not only between storylines but *within* storylines.

Yes, I actually do love long, in-depth worldbuilding in my fiction. It's fun.

I agree. It's an annoying TV trope… where characters are left oblivious to important information at key moments simply because no one has bothered to *explain* it to them like any normal person would do. It's a source of cheap drama that isn't really plausible. Real people don't have conversations where they're…

Hell to the yes about scouts! How many times in this show are we going to have to watch an army (or a navy!) arrive over the horizon surprising everyone in sight, because apparently the concept of trying to get some intel about your surrounding territory and your enemies' movements just hasn't occurred to anybody?…

Yeah, it's a tricky thing. The years from ASOIAF don't exactly apply, since all the characters were aged up for the TV show, but the intent that Dany is slightly younger seems clear.

The first season was particularly good about this — it didn't use title cards, of course, but it did have characters at least mention laborious travel times in dialogue, and refer to how much time they spent doing this or that. (Cersei: "we spent more than a month on the road." Cat: "I prayed by Bran's bedside for…

I dunno. Dragons are a *threat*, yes, but they're hardly a guarantee of victory, especially when there are only three of them. In terms of tech levels, it's like saying she has three primitive airplanes. Would a medieval army with three airplanes have an advantage over one without? Of course. But would that advantage…

It was stylistically unusual for GoT, but the show does stretch its boundaries every once in a while, and I thought it worked on that level.

Yeah, we needed to see those conversations. What we didn't need to see was Dany and company landing in Westeros *before* they had them. With a slightly different approach to pacing and plotting, and more concern for underlying motivations, the show could and should have had those conversations take place at sea… and…

I thought Lost's later seasons were really strong in a lot of ways, actually. It's just that the actual finale undermined a lot of what had (seemingly) been set up, and left a really sour taste in everyone's mouth.

Yeah, I'm sure HBO is crying all the way to the bank on this. It's an expensive show, but I'm sure what they're making on it dwarfs what they're spending.

I've never read the books past the first volume, but I *also* see season six forward as "sloppy, underwritten, and fan-ficcy." The show's change last year in tone, pacing, and complexity of both plot and theme was glaringly obvious, and with minor exceptions it was not a change for the better.

Hmm… you know (just thinking as I type here), the way Varys interrupted that meeting actually adds fuel to the fire of the "Varys is a double agent" theory. After all, from his POV outside the room it must have looked like Dany was about to make a powerful new ally, and he chose that moment to distract her with…

I love the fact that the battles are being glossed over. It's never been battles that make this show distinctive; it's great characters dynamics played out through taut dialogue… and this episode delivered that more than any other in quite a while.