The book World War Z sort of played with this - the US government fled to the Rockies and managed to eventually launch a retaking of the US, where one of the biggest threats for the military was lone-wolf survivalists who were all convinced they were the Last Ones Left and reacted REALLY badly to the army rolling into…

Near as I can tell, it was a combination of the "ARG" thing that was hot for a minute on the internet PLUS AWK trying to get out of a shitty contract. Instead of just changing his name to "The Party formerly known as Andrew", him and some friends did all this Steev Mike stuff and he started claiming that he was an…

This is where I am with it - they brought back Beric once to show it can be done, then sat on it to bring Jon back when things seem "hopeless", which makes the Catelyn reveal more powerful in a "well, why DON'T they just go and resurrect Robb or Ned or anyone else?" sense.

say what you want about the tenets of The Walking Dead, Dude, but at least it has an ethos

Not gonna lie, I'm a little pissed that Ackroyd revealed there's a Bill Murray appearance. I would have preferred that remain a surprise as long as possible.

One presumes, yes, he's been out running other errands for the Raven.

You know, a little quicker thinking and they could have patched it all together - Gilly was north of the wall because she'd been kidnapped by Wildlings and was to be sacrificed to their fell gods or married to some raving Thenn or whatnot and Sam was part of a party that rescued her.

Valyrian Steel can melt steel beams kill White Walkers.

As ringleaders of international assassin cults go, he seems like an okay guy - but he's still the ringleader of an international assassin cult. I don't know what people are expecting here. Did Deadpool affect you that profoundly?

Westeros is just coming off a civil war which left much of the country's middle region devastated. It may not be the economically wisest place to pack your production off to.

It's the medieval version of those Taiwanese CGI news reports.

my own theory is that The Waif has been there for YEARS, and is jealous that Arya shows up out of nowhere and is Teacher's Pet all of a fucking sudden.

The show means for him to be a hero, because the kind of people who consume that show identify with heavily armed uber-patriarchs whose moral certainty is absolute and to cross them means certain and inevitable horrific death.

SHOCKING TWIST: The Walking Dead's version of Utah is surprisingly chill. The Mormons fortified the BYU campus and things are very very crowded, but people are surviving just fine. Friday nights are board game night!

Nobody's shot a White Walker yet, so who knows.

Yeah. I audibly scoffed at this headline. TWD is *the* most nihilistic show on television today - the only people you can trust are your immediate family, all social norms break down in a crisis, any gathering of more than a dozen people will inevitably break down into backbiting, betrayal, and conflict, etc.

But once they overthrew him, they have been pretty consistent about sticking it to women, gay men, etc.

Sort of the inverse of "Hank Pym is a wifebeater" from Marvel Comics - the infamous scene was scripted as "Hank shoves past Jan", but between the penciler and the inker it became "Hank slaps Jan across the room" at which point it came to eventually overwhelm Pym's characterization, even though it was never the…

That's pretty much the show take on it - it was never intended to be a rape scene, we aren't treating it as one for narrative purposes, everyone go about your business.

The more I think about it, the more they could have intentionally sat on LSH until after Jon comes back.