The timelines and logistics are a symptom of broader issues. If the episode had been strong, if the character motivations had made sense, if the story had been told well, it'd be a silly afterthought. Look no further than the dragon battle episode. Plenty of issues to nitpick there, but the consensus was the episode…

The other possibility is that it used to be really good and now it's kind of bad and people don't like that.

This deserves better.

Agreed. This is the kind of weird shift in tone and quality I expect when there's a change in showrunners or something — very much like Community's "gas leak year" season, when the characters are suddenly strangers and you can tell the new writers are trying to mimic the elements but don't really understand them.

It's not just that, though. In early seasons, they took source material and adapted it deftly with strong, engaging storytelling. Not only have they run out of material to adapt (and I'm sure they have plenty of GRRM bullet points to work with), they've utterly lost their touch in execution as well.

But what are they playing him for? If they want him dead, they can kill him.

Soooo much more sense. They already laid the groundwork for the dragons taking a liking to him. This would have at least developed that relationship a little bit instead of whatever the hell they were thinking with Benjen,

I mean, what can you say? Pick a facet of good storytelling — dialogue, pacing, character development, motivation, authenticity, you name it — and B&W have lost it. Characters make incoherent choices and say nonsensical things. Anything the plot needs teleports into existence the moment it is necessary and is never…

Is this controversial? ME3 had a bad ending, but in terms of gameplay and inventory, I thought it nailed it.

Totally agree on this. They did an OK job with customizing your own character (although with as much time as crafting demanded, I really would’ve liked the ability to build customized guns and items like DA:I rather than mod’d cookie cutters), but let me play around a little bit with what everyone else is using. You…

The key here is that people want more *Mass Effect* — the weird, wonderful version of the Milky Way they fleshed out so well in the first trilogy. Andromeda was both flawed and incredibly divorced from what they built in the first games. You don’t need Shepherd to build on a popular setting and themes. This was more…

Don’t bury the lede, though: That lost generation is real, and if the Republican party continues to drift into the clutches of lunatic shitlords, they will put it in the ground. The pool of voters willing to reflexively check that box is not an indefinitely renewable resource. American millennials grew up watching the…

Follow-up: What percentage of pro athletes vote, period? 10? 20?

The height requirement for dunking makes this a no-brainer. Fewer than 3 percent of American men are 6'3" or taller. In China and India, it’s fewer than one-tenth of one percent. The vast majority of the world simply won’t be able to reach the rim.

After the home run, one of the Cubs’ broadcasters made an actual decent joke, deadpanning something like “Javy Baez has always owned Scooter Gennett.”

White Walkers proper may not be (though it stands to reason they might be, given the obvious thematic links between dragonglass and the magical nature of dragons in general) but wights are, as I recall — didn't Jon kill one with fire pretty early on?

I actually don't know — I'm a pretender here myself — but I do feel like the show has done some decent working establishing his crazy bona fides. Jaime's post-hand removal hot tub speed still stands out as a highlight to me.

I think the method — burning — is the trigger here, and they made a big show of that in the way the scene unfolded. As you said, it's far too evocative of the Mad King

My pet, almost-certainly-wrong theory is that the valonquor is her next kid.

At this point, the show's problem with the dragons is that they're so powerful that it has to invent reasons not to use them to solve every problem. Can't take King's Landing with them because that makes you the Mad King 2.0 (sure, makes sense). Can't fly north with them because then Cersei get the edge again (OK,…