All bleeding stops eventually

For much of TV's existence, shows didn't have a planned ending. If a show was successful, it would simply keep running, episode after episode, season after season, until the Nielsen numbers went down and advertisers dried up and the network finally pulled the plug. There were very rarely finales or acknowledgments that the story was coming to an end. They simply ceased to exist. In more recent times, many series have a planned story to tell and exist expressly for the purpose of doing so. Breaking Bad is a good example, in which Vince Gilligan planned seven seasons and ended it on schedule. Deadwood was a victim of the old trend. HBO simply pulled the plug in 2006 and we were left, after three seasons, with several storylines which seemed as if they could have been given proper, or at least better, closure. But I think that's kind of an erroneous view, based on the unusual hybrid that Deadwood was, and I don't think this evening's film really did it any favors.

Putting aside a lot of story questions that the movie actually introduced, rather than resolved, such as why the seemingly terminally ill Doc Cochran was more hale and hearty than central character Al Swearengen, I think the very basis of the film was superfluous. In an odd way, similar to those older series that were callously swept away, Deadwood became a progression that wasn't really about telling an extended story. The plot mattered less and less as the seasons moved along and it became more about simply spending time with the wonderful characters that David Milch and his colleagues had created; in the same way that watching later seasons of All in the Family weren't because Archie Bunker had become the owner of a bar, but because it was a weekly opportunity to spend time with the acerbic central figure of the show. No better comparison can be made than between Al and Archie, both of them with execrable character flaws and an often shocking lack of humanity, but an earnestness of action that made them entrancing and, yes, even lovable. Trying to wrap up All in the Family with a two hour film would have left the same empty feeling as the Deadwood film did. That wouldn't have been the real Archie experience, in the same way that this wasn't Al or Seth Bullock or Jane or Dan or any of the rest.

The one that sticks out the most to me is Jane. While it may be a natural progression for the character to still be alive because she'd stopped drinking, less bombastic Jane is simply less Jane. Calamity Jane earned her nom de plume because she was beyond natural. Showing her as wiser and more mature Jane degrades rather than enhances our memory of the character who likely used the phrase "Go fuck yerself!" with more meaning and wider intent than any person in the history of performance. The rekindling of her relationship with Joanie is meant to be sweet, but arcs into the realm of sentimental that belies the character, who often found sentiment at the root of her brusque actions but kept herself eternally guarded against actually feeling for anyone, lest she get wounded again as with Wild Bill.

In complete contrast, George Hearst's continuation as the Darth Vader of the piece was the most glaring piece of fan service among many. While everyone else had developed somewhat and mellowed with age and/or infirmity, Hearst was barely changed (and neither was Gerald McRaney, impressively), as were his actions. On the one hand, his continuing his path of theft, murder, and financial bullying was a measure of his contempt for the people he once had complete control over (financial, mental, emotional); peons to be manipulated or disposed of at his whim. On the other hand, doing so lacked any of the character's previous sense of subtlety and profound sense of perception for how people could be cadged into action, rather than simply threatened. This is even more focused because of him having risen from simple millionaire to US Senator (which is true of the actual Hearst), which takes some awareness of social interaction, even though Senators at the time were still appointed by whichever legislature they could buy off. His being beaten in the street by the same people that he scorned while now-marshal Bullock looked on in his own evident enjoyment was tossed out there for the fans to finally soak up. It's akin to Cersei having been killed by Arya or some other "just dessert" that many people would have wished, but which served the story and the character not at all.

Building the plot around Trixie's rash actions isn't new for the series and it allowed Paula Malcomson some room to continue her own path that she'd trod 13 years ago, with the birth of a child giving her space to admit her own self-worth ("Because I'm the bride and it's my special fucking day.") and finally allow Sol to marry her as what she finally felt: an equal. Plus, credit is due to Timothy Olyphant and Molly Parker for being able to convey the longing between Seth and Alma even after such a long time for both characters and actors. So, it's not as if the film is a total loss. But overall it was more of a Hallmark movie version of the show than the actual show. It lacked the dirt (despite the Gem still using a cloth banner for its main sign; one wonders how much of the set was still standing or had to be reconstructed) and the grime and the grinding intensity that the series conveyed so effortlessly. This was too clean and too easy. Perhaps it's as simple as Al not being himself and leaving the story without a center? Possible, but I think it's more complicated than that. The title of this piece is a line from Doc, acknowledging the mortality of everyone and everything. I prefer to think that the show bled its last 13 years ago, with the rougher image of the camp still firmly in my mind.

I'd like to have come up with something pithy, but so would they.

The title for my last GoT review could've been something like "All shows must die." or "Disappointment is coming", although that would have been more appropriate last week. But, no, there's not much sense in trying to be cute when one of the greatest TV shows ever dies a slow death over two seasons only to spectacularly faceplant in the finale. I'm not particularly outraged because I tend to spend my outrage savings on things that actually matter and also because, as noted already this season, I've pretty much just been waiting for Game of Thrones to end, since it had long since lost the label of "compelling television". But one thing you could be sure of was that at least it largely hadn't stooped to the level of "typical" in its storytelling. I noticed that Benioff and Weiss were credited under "Written for television" again and, holy shit, was it ever.

As mentioned before, George RR Martin didn't actually write the line about lack of attention and happy endings in the books, but he might as well have, since A Song of Ice and Fire was never destined to be a Happily Ever After kind of tale. If it were, Ned Stark would have been revealed to be alive and manipulating things behind the scenes a couple seasons ago. But, uh, let me just state for the record that: Stark Kids Make Good is about as Hollywood Happy Ending as you can get. Basically, all the good guys of the story won out, except the one latterly condemned by genetics. Is that the lone dollop of sadness in our otherwise uplifting tale about elected kings, the independent Stark kingdom, Tyrion the Hand, and Arya's adventures into the new world? Oh, sure, Jon gets stuck at the now mission-bereft Night's Watch (broken Wall, no more Others, Wildling allies that he's even helping resettle the land beyond the Wall- Why is there a Night's Watch again?), but returning the perennial outsider to the outside again is not the stuff of tragedy.

We seemed to be rolling for a bit, with Dany enforcing the policy of unnecessary celebration (i.e. Kill all who opposed me) and Tyrion searching amidst the destruction of King's Landing, his family, and his principles in the agony of victory. And then we reached the crux point of the expected assassination of the Dragon Queen (with imagery firmly ensconced in our heads as Dany walks to review her troops with Drogon's wings emerging from her shoulders) and all of the tragedy dissipated in that single moment that D&D had apparently decided was enough, leaving us with an easy stroll through what some might consider Fan Service Central.

Except most fans didn't want this.

Game of Thrones made its bones by not being afraid to confront the reality of people's choices. There was a debate on Twitter last week about the contrast between "plotters" and "pantsers" when it comes to epic fiction. The former have a detailed outline that they tend to follow through on, which makes their characters occasionally seem wooden, as they serve the plot, not themselves. Pantsers tend to simply write and see where it goes ("seat of their pants"; hence, title) which makes their characters quite human and enthralling, but also can lead to situations where the story escapes the writer and they have to work hard to get out of corners that they've painted themselves into. Vince Gilligan mentioned that the writing room on Breaking Bad enjoyed that process, as they liked to challenge themselves to see if they could make the story continue to work. And that's both cool and feasible when your story is largely driven by the motivations and actions of one or two characters. That's simply not feasible when it's driven by 15. Martin has obviously taken on the role of both kinds of writer. ASoIaF wouldn't be feasible without some kind of outline and his work as editor and writer of the collaborative Wild Cards series demonstrates an ability to move a story along step by step.

But he's also clearly a pantser, as he's spoken often about how the story has moved in directions he didn't expect because of this or that character or about how particular characters aren't "speaking" to him today (or this week or month or year), as an explanation of why writing hasn't proceeded as quickly as everyone would like. D&D, as screenwriters, have to be plotters. Given the demands of producers, directors, actors, networks, and a production schedule, you can't just dream up new stuff on set and delay while the story goes in five new directions that you didn't plan for. The process of wrapping everything up this season spoke loudly of their determination to move on, as it was rushed and sloppy (Starbucks, Jaime grows a hand), so we already had story problems that were bringing the series to a rather ignominious end. But at least we didn't have Happily Ever After, which belies the very tenets of the story that Martin started telling over a quarter-century ago.

And it was played to the very hilt, with the council of nobles almost leaning all the way into some kind of democracy before laughing that off; one Stark child ruling the North; another Stark child ruling everything else; and the two outsiders given free reign to pursue their own paths, with Jon returning to a place where he doesn't need to know anything and is the home of his first love, while Arya ensures that she never becomes a proper lady. This is to say nothing of Tyrion getting the chance to return to the role he always loved, even when he had to do it for his sadistic nephew, and the rest of the gang forming the Slapstick Council (Bronn defaulting to lord of Highgarden off a drunken promise that no one else witnessed; Sam becoming Grand Maester without the proper training or acknowledgment of the Citadel's hierarchy; etc., etc.) Pile onto that the world's only remaining dragon disappearing into myth and the casual departure of Dany's army of fanatical warriors and no one really had to worry about anything when the credits rolled. It's the end of the Third Age and has become the Time of Men with all that fantastical stuff and decent storytelling just disappearing into the mists that spawned the dragon queen in the first place. It's all so convenient, so typical, so weak.

A couple years ago, Benioff and Weiss revealed that the next project they were hoping to work on was a post-US civil war story where the South had won. My immediate thought was: "Don't these guys know how done-to-death that idea is?" There's a host of half-assed books out there about that very topic, most of them written with the extremely unoriginal idea: "What if the racists still ran our government and treated everyone without white skin as something to be owned, feared, and/or reviled?" Most sensible people would tell you to just read the news if you want to see that story in action, but there's a ton of very mundane fiction written about it, too. That's the story that D&D wanted to tell and get HBO to help them with. Given the plummeting quality of Game of Thrones over the past couple seasons, leading to this outright reversal of most of the dramatic principles that had formed the story's identity, I have to say that I've gone from disbelief that they'd want to pursue that idea to complete understanding. These guys were handed a gold mine of material and ran with it as long as they could. Once the ore ran out, they reverted to standard plot lines that fill space in all of the average TV shows ever produced. With GoT now wrapped, they can continue to pursue their very average ideas with average plots that they generate from them. Speaking of average stories, they're now slated to write a couple Star Wars films...

No one should feel cheated. We had several years of excellent television and storytelling. For those of us that read the books years before the show emerged, it was a treat to see it all come to life and to include so many of our friends and family members into this world that we knew and loved. The fact that it ended so limply is unfortunate, but that's the case for a lot of good things. Point of fact: Endings are hard, especially with stories this large and long and complex. There are always things that are going to leave at least some people unsatisfied, if not everyone. I was fully prepared for disappointment of some fashion. What I wasn't prepared for was the utter abandonment of the approach that had made the series a revelation to most of its audience, book-readin' and non-. All of the characters went home happy- in Westeros -while the audience was left to wonder: What the hell happened?

Technical stuff:

Why bother?

Lines of the week:

"There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story."

You don't say...? Well, we had one for years.

Happy endings

One of Ramsay Bolton's quotes has become something of a tagline for Game of Thrones: "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention." It's not from the books but it's assumed that it was directed at the audience of both books and TV show, since so many people are programmed from childhood to assume that "... happily ever after." is the natural order of stories. No one should have ever assumed that about A Song of Ice and Fire and this latest episode kind of drove that point home, albeit somewhat obtusely.

This is the first episode of the season where I felt that Benioff and Weiss were back to hewing to Martin's template, rather than just trying to tie up plot threads in as expedient a manner as possible. The end of some major characters and the transformation of others were things that were essentially fated to happen. Despite Varys' good intentions, the idea that the entire power structure, tradition, and thousands of years of history (and the entrenched power that dictated that history) of Westeros were going to transform into a peoples' utopia through the efforts of a small group of those same power-wielders was never anything more than actual fantasy. Similarly, anyone that was actually paying attention knew that Dany was weighed down by her heritage and, when push came to shove, was going to follow in the time-honored path of most Targaryens: fire and blood. There are no surprises here; a rather demonstrable lack of subtlety perhaps, but no surprises.

Likewise, Jaime and Cersei's story was always going to end in tragedy. Despite both of them being among the most interesting of all characters in the story (especially Jaime, for me), it was written into their bones that they would not be creating a new life in Pentos when the Dragon Queen took over. Cersei's ambition and viciousness were inevitably going to end her and she was the addiction that he simply couldn't break. You don't need a prophecy to tell you that (and I guess you could say he fulfilled it by taking her down to the catacombs where they both died, but that is a rather oblique finish.) Furthermore, her ending was always going to be kind of routine. There would be no moment where the audience could feel satisfied that the Evil Queen got her just desserts. Cersei as much as predicted what would happen during the siege of the city by the Baratheons; the same things that always happen to non-combatants in war. Their end was perfectly in line with expectations. What I think all of this appropriate drama suffered from is that the story is simply too large for the show to handle and always has been.

Dany's descent into the Mad Queen took place off-stage, between the execution of the one person she genuinely trusted and the opening of this episode. That's it. It's a progression that would have taken a few hundred pages in the novels, if not more. We didn't even get to see it because the series is wrapping up. It's the same problem that surrounds the Night King's demise. Here are huge events in the story, even on a very personal level with Dany, that need room for the audience to breathe in and absorb. Instead, they're happening like someone flipped a switch. And it's not just with Dany. Her decision to light up King's Landing even after hearing the bells is immediately taken up by her army, Dothraki, Unsullied, and northerners alike, with a show of bloodlust that fairly belied the circumstances. Here was a standoff where one side was visibly giving up and when the dragon starts roasting them anyway, that's a signal to attack...? There's plenty of history that tells you that when armies enter a city after a long siege, the looting and the raping and the pillaging begins. But this was a siege of a couple days and the scene didn't play that way at all. Dragon knocks doors down, army enters to little resistance, enemy surrenders, and... killfest time? Dany's descent into familial madness doesn't mean that everyone around her instantly follows. I guess you could argue that the nature of the Dothraki and the pent up anger of the northerners toward the Lannisters and the Unsullied led by the extremely outraged Grey Worm all contributed to that instant battle frenzy, but it struck me as very awkward.

But this is where epics sometimes run aground. Everyone who reads or watches a story has their own estimation of what the ending is going to be like and you're rarely going to please everyone. Take a look at the endings of shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad as examples. But when you're irritating pretty much everyone, not just with the events, but how they're delivered, there's something else that's wrong. And, again, this is the problem of switching media. D&D are trying to end this epic. These are tragedies that Martin has been building toward for 20 years. Trying to do justice to them in the space allowed by six episodes of TV just isn't feasible. This was the episode where it really felt like the series was back to the flavor and character of Martin's writing after a two year absence. But it's also the one that perhaps shows how it was never going to work in the first place.

Technical stuff:

George Patton once said: "Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man." But he was speaking from the perspective of someone in the 20th century, fully engaged in the concept of modern mobile warfare. Back in the Middle Ages or the approximate technology level of Game of Thrones, the worst possible thing you can do when trying to defend your fortification is walk outside your fortification! But now we've seen it happen in two episodes this season. Maybe you can justify it in the battle of Winterfell, since the whole plan was a delaying tactic until the Night's King could be drawn out... but, no. This episode had even less justification, since the troops were sheltering inside a ring of scorpions to keep the dragon away. Stepping outside to meet the enemy in the field wrecks that plan quite nicely. I'm not normally one to nitpick things in a fantasy story, but they at least have to make some kind of sense. This doesn't. Also, what exactly is the point of having gates with a visible gap between the doors, as one set in the inner walls of the city was shown? Inner walls are supposed to be used as stages to drop back to when under siege, which means that gates there should be the same as the ones shown outside and not be useless in a fight. Production error, like the magical coffee cup?

Speaking of scorpions, one upside was that we finally got to see what it's really like trying to use siege weapons against anything other than things that don't move (aka walls): They're slow, heavy, and clumsy. "Reload! Faster!" No, no, you're just not going to do it "faster" because siege weapons are not fast, especially when trying to engage the medieval equivalent of an F-15 with a fully automatic howitzer. Also, perhaps I missed something, but how exactly were the bells pertinent to Dany? We saw Tyrion explain his plan to Jaime and then explain it to Jon, but Dany wasn't privy to those conversations. So, when the bells are rung, that's what triggers her to act on Missandei's last word? That just seemed like something hit the cutting room floor that we otherwise should have seen.

One real downside of Martin not having his effective hand on the tiller is the degeneration of Tyrion as a character. As noted before, Tyrion's adherence to his new outlook on life has become less tragic and more annoying than anything else. He's wedded to the same fantasies that Dany and Varys were, but has spent all of this season and much of the last two expressing them in an ever more dolorous fashion. In the middle of trying to insist to Dany that she should find another way of taking the city, he insists on the crackpot plan of escaping to Pentos for his two siblings. Family loyalty and childhood memories run deep; I get that. But woeful, tragic Tyrion is a lot less interesting than canny, smart, and still tragic Tyrion. Martin has said before that the Imp is the character he's closest to and who carries what is essentially GRRM's outlook on life and it's never been more obvious that D&D don't have anywhere near the grasp on him than it has been since the series departed the books.

It was a nice touch to see Arya standing alone in the aftermath, which highlights her character in many ways. Adding in the pale horse ("Then I looked and saw before me a pale horse; he who rode upon it was named Death; and hell followed with him." - Revelation 6:8.) was also appropriate for those of us into those kind of apocalyptic scenarios.

Two fight scenes, two impressions: The Clegane Bowl was decent. I kind of wish that there'd been a way to distinguish between what the Mountain could endure just because he was Gregor and what being a zombie version of Gregor was able to grant him in that fight. Having to follow the typical zombie routine of "aim for the head" was, however, quite disappointing. But the Euron/Jaime "showdown" was completely superfluous. It was basically just a way to give Euron something to do other than being roasted by a dragon with hundreds of others and somehow grant a latter-day lover's quarrel between the two of them over Cersei. That's just completely ham-handed writing and a real waste of a few minutes of screen time.

Lines of the week:

"Alright, then, Let it be fear."
Kind of a setup line for something everyone could see coming, but at least it was delivered with conviction.

"I drink to eat the skull keeper."
Communication is essential.

But the winner, as always and forever, is the Hound:

"Yeah. That's you. That's what you've always been."
That line applies to so many characters in this episode.

Still the best character in the story, dead or alive.

Just waiting

Yeah, that's kinda what I felt like when it was over.

At some point, the process of writing tends to inform you, the writer, whether or not you know what you're doing. That can come early, if you're lucky, when you realize that you either enjoy what you're doing or you don't; that you feel confident about what you're doing or you don't; that you know these characters that you've assembled to tell your story... or you don't. But sometimes it comes late and you look back on however many hundreds or thousands of pages and discover that what you tried to do really hasn't materialized. I've been fortunate in that I've only gotten dozens of pages into something, rather than hundreds (or thousands), before I realized that the product wasn't matching the idea.

George R. R. Martin has been often criticized for his slow progress on A Song of Ice and Fire and he's often mentioned that "sometimes these characters speak to me and sometimes they don't." When they do, he can write them. When they don't... I've gradually come to the conclusion that these characters aren't really speaking to Benioff and Weiss, but they're continuing to write them because they want to be finished with them and move on to other things. After a decade of almost exclusive involvement with this one project, one can hardly blame them. But the fact is that what the writer writes, the reader reads. If my perception is that D&D have gotten to the point where they just want it to be over, then it's not difficult for me to be in that position, either. At this point, everything is proceeding by rote and there are very few surprises to be had. And I don't mean "surprises" as in which main characters are going to be killed off. Anyone who thinks that Game of Thrones' essential identity is killing off people to shock the audience is an idiot and should not be listened to. No one has died in the story, books or shows, who wasn't clearly intended to die. That's always been part of the identity of the world and the epic storyline. People die in wars.

I really hope we're upwind.

But there are no surprises for the way this is all proceeding, in general. The emotional conflict between Jon and Dany; the distrust by Sansa and Arya of anyone who isn't a Stark; Tyrion clinging to the ideals of Dany moreso than she is; Jaime having to be there at the last showdown with his sister; the dragons being neutralized so that the end is far more traumatic than it otherwise would be; and on and on and on. What's worse is that even when the nominally impartial observer (aka the viewer) can see that many of these choices are foolishly impractical (Tyrion), the way the character has developed over the previous two seasons hasn't covered enough ground to really sell the idea. Tyrion's path in the books makes him far more likely to have decided to base his existence on the better side of everyone's nature than in the show. But that's because GRRM has spent thousands upon thousands of words detailing that path. D&D haven't had that much time, so making their story conform to that path, however indirectly, leaves it feeling hollow and stilted and very, very staged. Once again, this is the difficulty of shifting from one medium to another.

Is this why Benioff and Weiss were given the credit "Written for television by", rather than the usual "Written by" for this episode? Did they detach themselves from this part of it because it's more Martin's story that they want to finish, rather than what they would do? Has the story been degrading over the past couple seasons because it doesn't have GRRM's hand on the tiller, as many suspect? I don't know. I just know that I'm to the point where I don't really care whether Martin ever finishes the books... and I don't really care about the ending of this show, either. Until you give me something that isn't underwhelming (last week) or patently obvious (this week), I'm watching this (and writing these) mostly because I've watched the rest of it for the past eight years and not because I'm particularly compelled to see what happens to anyone among the cast. I'm kinda bored and, like the writers, really just waiting for it to end. Dany spent a moment tonight asking the honest man, Jon, to lie. He couldn't do it and neither can I.

I'm either going to kiss you or tell you you're just another target to me. Maybe both.

Technical stuff:

That's not to say that there weren't some good performances in this episode. Among those that stand out are the shared moments between my favorite character, the Hound, and both Sansa and Arya. The former and Clegane commiserating over their shared suffering and how it forged Sansa into what she is now was as genuine a reunion as has yet occurred in this season. Similarly, the Odd Couple back on the road again was a welcome development that speaks to the chemistry between actors and characters. By the same token, while the performances weren't particularly great, the scenes between Gendry and Arya, as well as Brienne and Jaime, were totally appropriate. I know some people are ranting about "fan service", but both of those relationships were obvious from the moment the two pairs met and having both of them culminate in finally getting together and then inevitably separating because of the nature of the people involved is wholly appropriate. People squawking about those situations being "for the fans" or some such nonsense don't know shit about writing.

However, they're working the 'Jon is Really Aegon Targaryen' thing pretty hard, with him being the one giving the in memoriam speech before burning the bodies, instead of Dany or Sansa, and then the pointed difference between the austere and distant queen and the good ol' boy at the banquet. I think that's laudable to a certain degree, since you don't want the fate of the realm hanging solely on the lovers' quarrel about heritage and primogeniture. But anyone who's watched the show for any length of time knows that both of those characters are emotional enough that the rift between them is already believable enough without having to emphasize Jon's inherent leadership ability among the Westerosi and Dany's apparent lack thereof. In short, they're laying it on a little thick.

I am who you thought I was.

Also, I get that the point of Jon's series of goodbyes was for him to demonstrate that he was willing to leave behind all of what made him to this point. After all, he's going south to another war and he's discovered that he's not who he thought he was, so he's abandoning the "northern" part of his identity. But it's also putting the final stake in what was a running theme in the books: the Starks' connection to the land itself via the dire wolves. Turning to Tormund and telling him to "take" the eternally loyal Ghost not only doesn't make much sense in terms of the relationship they've shared (How is Tormund going to stop Ghost when the latter decides to head south? With a leash?) but it's OTT in terms of the "have to leave all that behind" theme. Again, given the short shrift that they've gotten, they really should have written Ghost out when the rest of the wolves' died or disappeared. It's just been awkward for a while now.

I wanted more Varys... and we got it! Unfortunately, it was mostly Varys spouting his particular brand of Marxism, which I wholly agree with in principle, but that often seems even more idealistic than Tyrion trying to appeal to his murderous sister. The Varys in the books recruited the Martells and Illyrio Mopatis because he felt that a Targaryen could keep the realm from exploding into the constant warfare that had beset the continent when it was actually seven kingdoms. He later revealed that his concern was for the people, not any particular regime. That's all well and good, but shifting gears now to someone whom he has to be aware will be pliable and indecisive because he doesn't want the job doesn't seem to be the wisest tack for the Master of Whispers. Yes, yes; spout all the old aphorisms about how the "best president is the guy who doesn't want to be president" that you like. It still seems too artificial for someone who's been playing this game for as long as he has.

Speaking of staged and artificial, my most ardent complaint was the Bronn scene. Now, in the books, Bronn leaves the stage in book 3 when given his compliant wife and a castle; easy street for life. I'm glad that D&D didn't follow suit, because Jerome Finn is a great actor and he's been fun to watch. But this scene was just poor from beginning to end. It was a Marx Brothers' routine, except not funny. So, you're telling me that this random guy is going to be able to stroll right into not just Winterfell, but the castle, hauling the most elaborate crossbow anyone has ever seen and not be stopped by anyone? Then he's going to walk in on the two Lannister brothers, extract an outlandish promise without witnesses, and then almost literally exit stage right, his bit done, and the new skit starting in a moment? Seriously? This isn't even good comedy, to say nothing of drama. The whole bit just screams: "Hey, we got this guy under contract to the end of the series. We need something. How about...?"

Yeah, well, I was still the sexiest woman in the whole series, so I got that going for me. Which is nice.

Lines of the week:

"We fought dead things and lived to tell about it. If this isn't the time to drink, when is?"
Jaime with the mantra of role-players everywhere. ("I'm getting drunk! Are there any girls there?!")

"We may have defeated them, but we still have us to contend with."
This is the backside of the theme of the series since page 1.

"You shouldn't envy me. Mostly, I live in the past."
Seriously, Bran gets the best lines these days. It's almost a GOP voter tagline.

"I'm happy that you'll finally have to climb for it. Do you know how long I've been waiting to tell tall person jokes?"
Tyrion still has his moments, though.