It's definitely a show that if it was overhyped to you before viewing it, you might be let down. It succeeds only when you view it as a quirky underdog, a show that works better than it "should".

Exactly. Who exactly would benefit from his death? Perhaps Varys and team Dany, but they don't really seem in position to execute a king right now.

Ramsay? No. The pieces aren't in place for him to go yet
Rickon? Not yet. Osha? Maybe. I'd be tempted by those odds.
Tommen? Not Yet.
Greyjoys? No, we need to have a Kingsmoot first

Well, at some level pragmatism does have to take over. Although Jon Snow is alive, publicly the Stark male blood line is dead. Houses rise and houses fall, and staying loyal to a fallen house may be honorable, but isn't exactly smart.

It's also far less likely Ned would have raised Jon Snow as his bastard if he was a product of rape. Ned made a serious sacrifice in how Catelyn viewed him to protect Jon.

The legitimate blood lineages and bastard children of the major noble houses of the time would basically be publicly available information.

The faceless man is not all knowing.

Yup. I'm pretty sure those cries Ned heard were the wails of his sister giving birth.

Shouldn't Ramsay just kill Rickon on the spot? It seems like having a potential legitimate male heir to Winterfell just hanging around is a bigger liability than just offing him quickly and quietly. Then again, Ramsay isn't the most rational actor.

Being originally Northmen, my Brother and I prefer freshly fallen snow for our dramatic confrontations.

So… democracy.

It's like it's more about character than plot or something.

I can't blame Olly for his opinion. As much as we the reader/viewer love Jon Snow, Olly does have a fairly legitimate reason to hate them.

I'm pretty sure GRRM and the showrunners agree "Hey, there were one too many Stark boys"

Even Littlefinger's plans have gotten mucked up by the fact the Bolton Bastard is a cruel bastard in the show. His book plan is still going okay.

Well, she also tends to assume she won't need allies… after all she has DRAGONS. She has shown very little interest in building a coalition on Westeros to overthrow the Iron Throne.

The problem with the Kings Moot stuff is aside from possible investment in Yara and her attempts to take her deceased father's place, does it matter if it's his brother who acts like a priest or his brother who favors war who won? I honestly can't recall who did win.

I found the Dorne storyline in the books largely bloated, other than GRRMs's borderline pornographic descriptions of all the foods he likes to eat.

Yeah, his character was a victim to the show wanting to clean up Dorne and trim an incredibly bloated cast list.

In the books this is much less true. Some of the timing of events was adjusted for TV timescales.