Well, what the season needed was a better written season 5 and better writing itself. At this point, the series is coasting on the character development of much better seasons and providing fan service. That's fine, but it's become more of a guilty pleasure for me when they give us an episode like this one and a slog…

Kit Harrington has one expression: dopey.

Nobody's perfect.

I wouldn't have found it very satisfying, but it would have been more interesting.

The cast is locked in until the end at this point. Jon, Sansa, Tyrion, Dany, Arya and Bran are completely safe. Why do you think the show is bringing back characters only to kill them off? They want to recreate what made the first four seasons so interesting, but they seem to not understand that the deaths are only…

Ramsay was spectacularly good at everything on the show.

Ultimately, you need the overwhelming force to keep overly ambitious lords in line. Whether or not she's a good ruler is difficult to say, because she has yet to rule in peacetime. She was trying to put down an insurrection pretty much from the moment she took Meereen.

My problem with the Yara agreement is that it seems more likely to get her killed by the Ironborn than anything. These pirates aren't suddenly going to go, "Oh, I guess we can't plunder and rape no more if the first female leader we've ever had says so."

So Sansa in the space of about four episodes has turned into a machiavellian mastermind and brilliant military strategist. That would actually be dumber than writing her as an idiot.

After all the theories about why Arya was being an idiot were proven wrong in the next episode, and given the unbelievable amounts of stupidity seen on the show the last two seasons, why does anyone think Sansa's stupidity in keeping the Knights of the Vale secret from Jon will be anything other than what it seems? I…

The Karstarks are fine allies for the Boltons. The rest of the northerners should at least be grudgingly giving them their support, unless they were bannermen of the Boltons themselves. But the politics of minor houses haven't been important on the show for quite a while.

Sure, if you can accept that they're allying with the house that betrayed Robb and his bannerman/their families.

Wouldn't it have been fun if Jon had capably led his men to victory only to have Littlefinger arrive with nothing to do but maybe help them clean up? Oh well.

Here's the thing. If fans of your show have to devise theories in order to rationalize uncharacteristically stupid behavior by your characters, you've done a poor job of writing them. That said, I expect everyone to behave stupidly. At least this episode had some very well done action sequences and beautiful shots.…

The chase scene would have been better if it'd mimicked Bloodsport, too.

The one where they win and Blackfish turns his sights back to the Riverlands with allies from the North is a pretty big loss.

He agreed to Brienne's absurd plan. That she didn't carry it off is irrelevant. You don't just leave a couple thousand armed soldiers under the command of the Blackfish to make trouble in the Riverlands in the future. Assuming you trust that he'll indeed march off to the North.

I get that the show has muddled things in the North, but the King (or Cersei) presumably does not want to aid the presumptive murderer of his brother.

Among many issues I had with the episode, in what world would a commander let an enemy army march off on the promise that they'll help another enemy army? This show is getting dumber and dumber.

I think he was playing the monster for part of his speech, but they've already reaffirmed his devotion to Cersei this season in equally melodramatic ways. I also think the rumors Qyburn was investigating are the caches of wildfire around the city. While I think it makes little sense based on the series portrayal of…