Don’t hold back John – what do you really think?
The conversation between Tyrion and Jaime is a consequence of the early arrival of Jaime in King’s Landing half a book ahead of schedule. It changes A LOT as far as Jaime’s character is concerned and the effects can sometimes be pernicious. GRRM agonizes over when characters arrive at a locale and can interact with the other POV characters, because it can have such a large impact on the story (the famous “Meerenese knot” when writing ADwD was about this issue with GRRM’s plot).
In this case, we see why. It’s the Butterfly Effect, once more, in full flight.
That episode was maybe 2% from the books. Literally the only things from book 3 was Ser Pounce and Jaime giving Brienne Oathkeeper, and any scene with Jaime back on track for his redemptive arc felt off after the fact that he raped his sister was ignored by the show.
Dany’s scene in Mereen and the invasion of the city through its sewers was on track with the books, as was the crucifixion of the Wise Masters. Petyr’s and Sansa’s conversation was stripped right form the book, though show Sansa is not quite as naive as book Sansa – again, she’s older – so Petyr’s answers are a little different.
We never see Oleanna and Margaery talking in the books as neither is a POV character. The scene resolves that Margaery knew nothing of the plot to kill Joffrey (which cannot be true in the books as they were sharing the same wine cup in the books so she had to know not to drink the poison by accident) and otherwise moves forward with setting up the Margaery vs. Cersei battle of Queens which plays out quite nicely.
Bran’s story required changes (again, an early arrival North of the Wall), so doing so without involving the supernatural seems to work out well. People will whine and howl over how Jon would never meet Bran and would never have let him go, but Book Bran is 8 and this King of the North in the show is 13 or 14. And more importantly. this Jon Snow is not yet Lord Commander.
We will see an attempt on Bran’s life by Locke and Jon will know that he cannot keep him safe at Castle Black. He will let him go.
This was arguably the worst episode in the entire series so far.
That’s your opinion. I rather liked it.
I do think you are going to have to readjust your expectations. The series will divert more and more from the books as AFFC and ADwD have whole swaths of pointless crap in them which will never be shown on the screen. Readjusting character’s tales (because they cannot just park them and do nothing with them as GRRM does for whole books at a time) will have continued MAJOR impacts on the storyline. Deal with it.
Soon, we will all be “unsullied” with no idea what is going to happen. Thete will be no spoiler free threads on the Internet – as there won’t be any spoilers left. Last night’s episode gave us a major taste of what we will feel through much of Season 5 – and all of Seasons 6 and 7.
