I'm with you. Frankly, I was so horrified by Shirreen's death, it kinda spoiled the rest of the episode for me. Dany on her dragon is great and all, but still not enough to lift me out of the "sacrificing-your-only-child-to-an-eldritch-god" funk. I guess they wanted to end this episode on a higher note.

Right above the comments here is a "Sponsored Link by Taboola" that asks, "Do you come from Royal Blood" and advertises some ancestry site or another. And I'm thinking, "I hope not, 'cause then Melisandre will be after me next."

More so than most seasons, I'm really wishing they made more than 10 episodes. 10 is usually a pretty good number but not this time.

Agreed. Her plot has simply put her in waiting mode, but I'd have enjoyed just a few more moments of her and Pod bonding. That stuff has been priceless. (And after all this time, training Pod, he'd better be bad-ass on the sword now).

I think any episode following Hardhome was gonna be tough. We got some dragon-flying. We watched a child be murdered most horrifically by her father. Those two things are a big mixed bag of emotions that can't compare with, "WOOT AWESOME!" like last week.

There's still the finale to cook something up with. But I agree, it was mostly rather uninteresting.

I want Brienne of Tarth to swing in and kill them all.

Tywin would never go in for this hokey magic mumbo-jumbo. He'd say that gods don't win wars, soldiers do. And then he'd go out and prove it. But then too, He was ready to kill Tyrion. Maybe not in such an excruciating way, but I'm not sure that gives him any moral high ground.

Ok, I'd probably agree with you on this point, though I'd have to go back and study more carefully. I think that may be true when characters are given things to do that they didn't have in the books to do because they are trying to keep the character list to a few hundred instead of a few thousand. It's like, "Well, X…

But… but… I don't really think there's been any compromise on that front. Like I said, Martin didn't kill anybody of note in the scene you were complaining about either. And hey, Barristan Selmy, Shirreen Baratheon and even Robb Stark's wife are all alive in the books still, so the show actually is winning the body…

They haven't had time to harp on this in a while, but he's a really well-read man, in lieu of being a dashing, hunka man. He's not a maester, but he studies history and has a natural curiosity about things that drives him to do somewhat nutty things like… ride north just so he can get a look at The Wall.

Actually, it's the presumed flab of the Owner Class that made it believable for me to think that Tyrion Daario and the others are gonna escape that stadium. Numbers are good, but only so much against professional warriors. Think of the difference between Spartans and Athenians in 300, if that helps :)

"No, but a Lannister always repay our debts!"

Who can we root for at this point? Can't leave Lannisters on the throne. I'll do something horrible to myself if Stannis gets it. Here's hoping Tyrion can mold Danerys into the ruler Westeros needs, if not the one it deserves.

i expect to see some machinations in the finale next week. Dorne is a superpower in Westeros and this whole "make nice with the Lannisters" thing does not abide. Heck, I wanna see the snakes and Bronn go off on another secret mission, together this time.

How can you say the show has no balls, right in the episode with Shirreen's sacrifice? And for the record, the fighting pit scene in the book had a bit more intrigue but the exact same key-character body-count as tonight's show. So, no, it's not that show runners are wimping out.

Time has been a little wonky this season :(. I think the expert review noted that we never see anybody traveling anymore. Martells show up in Braavos after spending about the whole season getting there, while Jon Snow goes to Hardhome and back between two episodes. Meanwhile Tyrion crosses an entire continent to get…

I was just thinking that. I spent the rest of the episode a little physically ill and don't think the Meereen scenes had as much impact as they should have. Bravos seemed completely irrelevant. :(

I'd forgotten that we meet Stannis burning things on the beach for his God and moving right along to the murder of his own brother with a spooky revenant. Since then, it's been a long slow, generally amiable time with Stannis as he proposes himself as the most feasible alternative to Lannisters on the throne. And he…

I hear ya. I keep reminding myself, too, that it took a year or so for Jon to break in some new writers, and turn "The Daily Show" into "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." But it'll be back to being "The Daily Show" after Aug. 6 and who can say how long til it's the proper "Daily Show with Trevor Noah." I just can't…