My wife and I watched the episode last night (it’s tough to do Sunday nights for whatever reason), and the Big Scene was a success, I think.
Let me explain: my wife hates movies with bittersweet or (generically) non-happy endings. She’s willing to go through a lot of dramatic crap in a movie or show, but the end had damned well better be butterflies and rainbows or she will hate every person involved with the production for perpetuity. It’s rough, because I love war movies.
Anyway, she was floored by Nedd’s death and yet still is itching to see next week’s show. That’s good. Dunno if she’ll keep watching after the Red Wedding, but I’ll cross that bridge in a couple years. She also thinks that Drogo is going to recover, but I don’t think that’s as big a deal – she calls him “Conan the Rape-barian”.
I was disappointed by the on-screen model of The Twins. The castles seemed too small and the river didn’t look particularly formidable to me. I guess I just didn’t buy that there was no other way to cross… looked like a pretty easy swim and there seemed to be a fair amount of timber for rafts. They are limited to the geography in… Ireland?.. so I can’t hold that against them, but whatever. The animated version in the credits was pretty cool though.
I liked the layout of the Frey’s court: a church-like plan where the Frey brood takes the place of the choir singing the praises of Walder. Awesome.
My wife pointed out that Walder is the janitor guy from the Harry Potter films. Not a bad choice, and he delivered the lines well, but as others pointed out he seems younger than he should be.
I didn’t mind that they short-changed the battle scenes, but I didn’t care for Tyrion getting accidentally knocked out before his big battle. To me it was unclear if he only woke up from that blow after the battle or if he had woken up to lead the hillmen and taken another wound to the head later.
I take it that Bronn’s pointing out that Tyrion does not have a squire means that Podrick Payne will not be a character in the series at all? That would be a shame.
Someone pointed out earlier that too many of the nighttime scenes in the book are filmed in daylight for the show, and I think that’s true. The “crazy tent” scene would have worked a lot better at night. Just a quibble.
I am disappointed with how the directors fail to get across the scope of the crowds. They do pretty well with the GCI of massed tent camps (especially the Lannisters’), but scenes like the tourney and almost every shot with Drogo’s khalasar utterly fail to give the impression of vast groups of people and end up looking like a poorly-attended Ren Faire. The shot of Balor’s Sept was just so-so… when Nedd looks out at Arya it seemed pretty good, but the crane-shot of everyone assembling… meh. I know, I know: they are doing what they can with the number of extras they have, but I think a more skilled director might be able to do more with just as little.
I liked how they handled Arya in the last couple scenes. You nicely got the impression she had been living by her wits, and showing Nedd interacting with Yorin was a pretty good deviation from the books. I also liked how they managed to show all the High Council (one by one) trying to convince Joffrey to spare Nedd after his pronouncement.
I sure hope that the (pretty good) scene with Maester Aemon is all we see of Jon Snow’s conflicted loyalties. If I were to pick one scene from aGoT to strip out of the show, it would be Snow’s abortive ride through Molestown where his buddies catch him and bring him back in one of the oldest tropes out of any “boot camp” story.
