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So Cammy, who has been a Vampire for one hot minute, effortlessly snaps the neck of an Original who doesn't anticipate her move because he senses a change in her breath in or heart rate or whatever else they can sense? Alright then. Although for some reason I always thought their necks were harder to snap than ordinary Vamp necks. I do like the idea that she has an advantage through her extensive psychological knowledge of Klaus, though. Personally, I would have preferred a Vampire with a heart of Gold (without the Angst) over yet another petulant addition to the Vampire community, but I'll roll with it for now. Davina's story looks interesting and I do hope they bring back Kol for real soon. He makes everything better.

This show is getting too dumb for its own good. Again with the Hitler was Wesen thing (and apparently all Nazis by extension as well or did the Nazi-Wesen simply trick humans into following them? But how would Wesen-World-Domination need any human involvement to begin with? Or did they mean to kill/subjugate them after accomplishing the mission? Or are all Germans Wesen, except the persecuted groups, of course? I could go on...)! I sometimes think they didn't manage to develop the Royals/Resistance dichotomy in a satisfying way and rather than scaling back to the formula that worked, they chose to go even bigger and more convoluted. Making it even worse. None of this is working for me. And somehow the glimpses of the old Grimm (I did enjoy parts of the monster by the lake story) make the rest eve more frustrating.

I liked this one best so far, the opposing counsel guys are hilarious. Overall, I thought the episode had a nice flow to it and they toned down Dean just that tiny bit I needed to find him entertaining rather than annoying. If they make the father more nuanced as well, I might run out of things to quibble about.

No matter how hard I try, I cannot stand to watch Lily and her not so merry band of annoying heretics, so I had to stop watching just after the first Damon/Lily confrontation at the Salvatore mansion. Partly because like Cattitude Plus I need my villains to have either charm, charisma or some at least vaguely interesting feature and they and Mother Meanest are just plain awful. I would really like to see how the characters I care for get on and I actually quite like it when stories jump back and forth between the presence and glimpses of a future, but I just can't do it. Apparently forcing myself through that travellers mess has obliterated my capacity to cope with parts I am not crazy about to get to the good stuff.

Did you notice? Not only did Raury show up in a Mexico jersey, but it had Trump's name on the back, crossed out with a red x. A stunt for sure, but I like how musicians keep getting in little digs.

And imagine what they could do with his luscious hair, WW Jon would be one terrifying ice spider riding troll doll!

I found this NYT review of the season finale made some good points. Particularly this: I tend to agree with this as well as with viewing Martin's book as "both source and millstone for the “Game of Thrones” writers". They currently seem stuck in the same trap as the books and I can only hope that in the next season they move ahead, no matter what's happening on Martin's end. Apologies if this sounds harsh, but he has used up most of my goodwill. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/16/arts/television/in-game-of-thrones-finale-a-breakdown-in-storytelling.html?_r=0

True, but personally, I would somehow feel cheated if a different Jon Snow got to see things through until the end - the original has been suffering so much abuse and belittlement that he's earned a shot at being a hero and being recognised as one for a change. Secondly, assuming Jon Snow would come back in a different body. Would that have to be a dead body or would he be "possessing" someone else's? That would feel all kinds of wrong. Then again, maybe they could find a credible way to put him into Karsi's body. I could live with that. Birgitte Hjort Sørensen enhances every scene she's in and if in the end she and Dany were to ride off into the sunset on a dragon, that would be a truly original take on a fantasy epic, I think. (I'm not big on slash fiction, I was just trying to think of how a new Jon could be acceptable to me and I know that this scenario doesn't make little if any sense).

You know, I was actually fine with Myrcella dying of poisoning since I assumed that happened while they were actually a good distance from Dorne, not in viewing distance from the fricking harbour as was revealed a couple of scenes later. If Jamie does not have that ship turned around and arrives back in Dorne screaming for the antidote and/or vengeance, they have made him truly useless. I doubt that Bronn has some antidote left from his encounter with the Sand Snake that was such an empowered female that she needed a random guy to repeatedly tell her she's the most beautiful woman in the world. And was Ellaria playing her Dorne version of the game of thrones with that stunt? I'm not sure about the Dornish acsencion order and I'm definitely not going to look it up in the books, but does the almost guaranteed death of Trystane (spelling?) advance any of her daughters in line to the throne? Or is she simply a woman who has lost all her rational faculties after the death of "her man"? This is all so very disappointing.

Bleakness fatigue is a wonderful way of putting it. It's what I've been feeling for some time now. The more I think about that ending, the less I can help but wonder if that wasn't indeed a compromise in order to give Martin the chance to make his own great reveal. From a pure TV series perspective, I remain convinced that having John "die" and come back to life in the same episode would have made for stronger story telling - if Martin really didn't waste everyone's time with years and years of building up a mystery/hero legend, just to pull out the rug under everyone and running off cackling to the bank, while ultimately useless Jon Snow is really dead. I may not be creative enough, but I cannot imagine this being the case because it makes no sense, even in an opus that prides itself of subverting common tropes. Another reason why I believe they did a disservice to the series is that while people can go on and on about the show and the books being two different beasts, everyone knew about the speculation and anticipation that has been building up for years (thanks again, Martin) and therefore delivering the resolution I assume to come already now would have accomplished giving both unsullied something to hold on to while floating in the sea of GOT despair and book readers an answer to a question that has been around for a really long time. If I am any measure, that would have left many people a lot more interested in finding out what's going to happen next year, but I'm probably not. Another thing that thoroughly annoyed me was the over the top bad timing of Brienne turning away and that damn candle finally lighting up the tower window. That was everyone just happens to be in the Water Gardens at the same time clumsy. I understand the rationale behind it, but would have preferred if the candle light had shown up one scene later, but they probably didn't have enough time. Sansa's timing for making a run for it, on the other hand, was fine with me. In my mind, she has practiced with the tool she found to be ready when the opportunity to flee presented itself. Now I only hope that she and Theon actually make it out and are not unceremoniously recaptured by a pack of hounds and a gleeful Ramsay in the season opener but rather meet Brienne and Pod or someone, anyone who will help them to get away. Preferably to the Wall, for I suppose that's closest considering Melisandre's travelling time. She did look utterly gutted from the moment they heard about the deserters, I'll give her that. Stannis. His downfall and realisation that he's been going about everything completely wrong was masterfully done, Stephen Dilate did a wonderful, wonderful job and made me feel for the character despite everything he had done. I really didn't expect that, but I'm a sucker for tragedies. Oh, and Cersei. Yes, the walk of shame was awful (and it seemed the High Sparrow really got a kick out of it), but she's nowhere near the road to redemption. She was even plotting her revenge while being carried off to a hot bath or whatever by her Zombie weapon of mass destruction, another development I'm not to keen on, but I've already hated it in the books. Finally, Dany. I loved the sounds Drogon made while getting ready for his nap and noticed that the show really seems to like scenes of Dany being encircled by something, it reminded me of the "mhysa" scene in Yunkai from season 3.

That's one thing I forgot to mention: I couldn't stand Melisandre in the books until we got to see her POV, which humanised her so much simply by showing that most of the time she didn't really know wha the was doing. I still didn't like her very much after that, but she was much more sympathetic to me than the show version who is too smug and convinced of the infallibility of her mission for my taste. Because of this I'm really looking forward to the moment she realises that she's been betting on the wrong horse all along - I feel we as viewers have endured enough to deserve this.

I think Davos knew or at least had a very strong hunch that something might happen to Shireen while he was away - I didn't know what was coming, but got a strong sense of foreboding from their goodbye scene as well as when Stannis was sending Davos back to get supplies from the Wall. I read that scene as Stannis sending Davos away to prevent him from getting killed for trying to stop the burning because we know he would have stopped at nothing (at least I am convinced of that). So to me that was Stannis' way of saying I don't want you here because something terrible is going to happen and you'd either die trying to stop it or be burdened by feeling guilty for having been here without saving her life. And Davos knew that something was up. Of course now, Davos is going to feel very guilty for not having insisted on taking Shireen with him or simply sneaking her out of the camp, but I doubt that's how Stannis will see it. I'm curious to see where this goes. This season has really given me pause. I always knew the source material was terribly violent, often very sick and twisted and I have often questioned whether either books or show really needed ALL of the gore and abuse and violence and more abuse and perversions to get their point across. Since so much of the books is meandering prose, I'm guilty of extensive skimming and maybe some of the books' sickness (for lack of a better word), but seeing it all in its gory technicolour glory is pushing it to the point of overkill, at least for me, but I may be too soft after all. ETA: Re: that poor burning horse. I was so hoping it was just going to start to roll around in the snow to extinguish the flames before the burns got too bad, but I suppose that's too much to ask of a mere horse...

This has been bothering me in the books too. I may be guilty of having skipped over it because I've done a lot of skimming, particularly in the later books, but what exactly is the point of the White Walkers? I mean, what's their aim? Are they just Ice Demons who appear roughly every thousand years and let's assume at some point they succeed in zombifying all of Westeros, then what? Everyone else has an agenda, but they are just terrifying for the sake of it, it seems. Can they reproduce in other ways? What are they going to do once they run out of human babies to steal and turn? This is not to say that I'm not enjoying the way the story is unfolding with some Ironborn exceptions, but it sometimes takes me out of the story because I want to know WHY the White Walkers exist in the first place, what their purpose is and if there's something that "triggers" their rise. Like a connection to the levels of decay in Westerosi society or rulers losing their way and the White Walkers rising as a consequence and laying waste to everything.

If you're "lucky", the writers will forget over the summer that they brought him back and you'll be free :) This episode was weird for me. Although they did many of the things I wanted them to do and it probably worked on paper, it fell kind of flat for me, but I'll give them that they at least pretended to resolve the disaster that was Hexen-Juliette. For lack of a better word, the episode felt shoddy to me. Many things hastily thrown together and not very well connected. It reminded me of those undergraduate essays that clearly were written in one energy-drink fuelled night and are basically a random collection of everything an increasingly panicky student could think of with some phrases thrown in that are supposed to convey that considerable time, thought and research had gone into that assignment.

That was incredibly hard to watch and I wish they had not gone there. However, I did get the feeling throughout that Sansa did know what she was getting into. After putting Myranda in her place in the bath, I took her expression as one of steeling herself for what was to come. That doesn't mean that she did not suffer when the rape happened and it probably was then that she realised just what she would have to endure while going through with LF's (not so) grand scheme. After all, she seemed to realise just how much of a sick fuck Ramsay is during the dinner scene from hell and what Myranda told her only deepened the abyss she would have to look into. Now do I think that rape is a great tool to further female character growth? Absolutely not, but I continue to feel that this is a different Sansa who chooses to endure her victimisation for the time being rather than the wide-eyed and constantly shell-shocked girl we saw in the King's Landing days. Still, what a terrible, terrible scene. I think what added to the general sense of despair was that, since they left out Lord Manderly's (spelling?) revenge, there was not a single glimmer of hope for the Freys and Boltons to pay for what they have done, which makes everything feel even more dire to me. No real sign of the Great Northern Conspiracy on the show and I hate that - still hoping for significant development in that direction from here on, ideally with real agency on Sansa's part (lighting a candle in the tower doesn't count). Also, I partly revise my previous verdict on LF, what a glaring lack of due diligence, I really thought he had done his homework on the former Bolton bastard. Way to be blindsided, master schemer.