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Why would any of them want to talk to Dr. Sullivan? She's been compromised before when MonA was blackmailing her, she's alredy been shown to be quite incompetent with her hyper-adrenalized reality BS diagnosis. Hanna should have screamed, thrown her coffee at her and run for the hills. They should have brought back the hot school counselor. If they only have 3 weeks until graduation, does that mean the show is going to resolve who is Current-A (a.k.a. ChArles) before doing a time-jump?

I totally agree. I think she's the only character I liked decidedly less once we got to see inside her head. I thought her chapters were really well written, conveying how petty, short sighted, and vindictive she was, and her warped view of reality. I just didn't like her.

Ollie, because why the hell not. Gregostein accidentally steps on him. Bland Snake number 3 teleports to KL flashes him and stabs him The number of options are endless and nonsensical.

Over in the Show vs Book thread, someone posted a comment from his editor stating that it'll take her about 2 weeks to edit it. Which basically means she runs it through spell checker and reads it a couple of times but provides no meaningful feedback. "George, you said 'words are wind' 274 times, can we cut a few of those?" "NO". "Okay, ready to publish! It's perfect! [please don't fire me]" Option 24b(1) for avoiding this situation: postpone the FTW attack until season 6. 1. Show-only watchers wouldn't notice something that wasn't included. 2. Book readers would speculate wildly that either Jon didn't die in the books or the producers were just saving it 3. Completely avoids having Kit Harrington having to answer speculation for months, and gives him every reason to be on set when they're filming 4. Gives them a nice shocking event for 6.02 or 6.02 (like Joffrey's death) that avoids a hidesouly slow start like the first 7 episodes this season. TVTropes calls it Darkness Induced Audience Apathy. I like your version better. And GoT's entry has already been updated to reflect last night's events.

In asnwer to an earlier question, Grey Worm speaks like Tarzan because he's still taking his Westerosi-as-a-second-language classes from Missandei, and he's missed a few sessions being all stabbed, so he's gotten a bit nostril. I think he's dead, though I do recall a scene from Season 2 where Jaime is in a pen, with Catelyn and Brienne confronting him that ended with a similar edit. I don't have a huge problem with Brienne prioritizing killing Stannis over her endless vigil waiting for the Candle in the Wind(ow). When she swore herself to Catelyn's service, she included the clause "promise me that when the time comes [to kill Stannis], you will not hold me back". I saw that too. I thought his eyes turned a bit red. They could have avoided the whole "is he really dead or only a little bit dead" crap for the next 6 months and still had a nice cliff-hanger. Trim out some of the wasted time on Dorne in this and previous episodes. Have the stabbing occur earlier in this episode, then finish with Jon emerging alive from his funeral pyre a la Dany. They'd have people guessing all through the break "wtf was that?". It's still a cliffhanger, but more hopeful and more likely to draw viewers back for E6.01. If he is well and truly dead, then I wonder if they're reaching the point of audience alienation. With some of the previous major deaths, they at least had some new and interesting characters added; e.g., after Ned and Drogo died, they added Stannis and Davos. I guess there's some potential with what we've seen of the casting calls for next season, but they'll probably screw up as badly as they did the Bland Snakes. And frankly those characters aren't as interesting and complex as late-comers Oberyn, Grey Worm, Missandei, etc.

Lackluster ending to a really mediocre season. The only way I can salvage the Dorne fiasco is: 1. Doran authorized killing Myrcella as part of his (very very well) hidden agenda 2. The boat is owned and crewed by Martell loyalists who will keep Jaime and Bronn prisoner to prevent them from immediately killing Trystane. Who knows, as fucked up as the show has gotten, they might get transported to Meereen. I think Tyrion and Varys working together in Meereen is an attempt to recapture the season 2 King's Landing vibe. It won't work though, because KL had so many other characters for them to play off, especially Tyrion / Cercei and their partnership / rivalry / backstabbing. I guess Meryn Trant's sadism is supposed to be a call back to when he beat Sansa in season 2. As if he wasn't despicable enough already. Jon's last words were "Olly?" Definitely not up there with "Et tu, Brute?" I don't care what the actors or producers say, he can't be permanently dead because we'd have no sympathetic characters at the Wall. You know, the place where real shit is going to go down. I guess we could do an episode called "A Day in the Life of Dolorous Edd". Arya's going to be Beth the Blind girl, yawn. More wheel-spinning in Braavos. Badly. I flashed back to the horrid X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie where they CGI'd Patrick Stewart's face onto what appeared to be a hard-boiled egg. Lena Heady was fantastic though.

I hadn't thought of it before, but maybe Book!Mel doesn't consider Mance and his baby to have kings blood. It would explain the Mance / Rattleshirt switcheroo, if she surmised that Mance would be more useful alive. Jon's fear for Mance Jr. was probably unfounded, though understandable.

While I appreciate the creative plot-welding of Trystane = Aegon VI, I think it would come across on TV as soap-opera writing, comparable to having a character have an long lost evil twin. Jon being a secret hidden Targaryen is bad enough, but at least he's been around from the beginning. "Little baby Aegon has been alive the whole time and hiding in Dorne" is kind of an ass-pull. I think it's more likely that Doran is executing a version of the Queenmaker plot, with Trystane becoming the King and true power behind the throne. Tommen might be getting a visit from some Sand Snakes in their stupid ninja outfits.

I don't like the prophecy much either, but in the books it's slightly justifiable because it appears that she did a good job of repressing the memory of it. I thought her chapters were fairly well written, because GRRM did a good job showing that she's such an unreliable narrator. For example, she told Lady Merryweather that Robert hit Joffrey once because of some silly business with a cat. In her mind, it was Robert being a terrible father. The readers, however, had already heard that story from a different POV, and knew the "silly business" was Joffrey vivisecting a pregnant cat to see the unborn kittens. It was a nice way of showing just how warped Cercei's mind was. So when she tells Qyburn that her childhood friend accidentally fell down a well, it's pretty easy to piece together that Cercei probably pushed her into the well. She killed her friend, but twisted the memory so much she actually believes it was an accident. I think she did something similar with her memory of the prophecy even when pieces of it started happening (17 children for Robert, 3 for her). Only when confronted with Joffrey's death did her subconscious memories start to break through in dreams, and she probably stil denied it consciously until Tyrion snuck through the hidden tunnels and killed Tywin. After that, she started filling in the blanks: valonqar = Tyrion, YMB = Margaery. Probably wrong on both counts. None of that is in the show, so it comes across more retconny.

Mona wasn't in this episode for plot reasons. If she was, and they were able to talk to her, they'd get an explanation of how she even knew about Charles DiLaurentis -- she's the one who left the anagram clue for Spencer to eventually figure out. Along those lines, did Spencer tell Ali about the home movie? "Yeah, Charles had an 8mm film (which makes no sense since it would have been filmed way after home video cameras were around) of you, your mom, and two older boys. Since you mom told one of them to kiss his sister, presumably that's Jason. The other boy was Charles I assume. Hey, can we ask Jason or is he high again?"

I don't remember if it was the Quentyn-stuck-in-Volantis chapter or the Tyrion/Jorah-stuck-in-Volantis chapter or the Aegon/Connington camped outside Volantis chapter (they blur together), but someone mentioned that the Yunkai had sent emmisaries to a bunch of places looking for troops to help overthrow Dany, including someone trying to bring a khalassar down on her. So it doesn't surprise me that she'd run into Khal Whoever The only semi-pausible reason I could see for them to follow her is if they're awed by Drogon, and somehow get it in their heads that he is the Stallion that Mounts the World. I'm also picturing Dany spending 300+ pages corralling the Dothraki, communing with the Dosh Khaleen, etc.

I really hope not. I thought Arya's adventures in Braavos were somewhat interesting in the books, but ultimately involved a lot of wheel-spinning. Plus they've already mooshed a lot of her stuff into this season: 1. Tedious chapter being a servant in the HBW, ending with her ridding herself of (almost all) worldly possessions -- done. 2. Tiresome chapter(s) as Cat of the Canals, selling seafood, ending with killing Daeron the absconded NW guy -- mostly done, substitute Meryn Trant for Daeron. 3. Endless chapter as Beth the Blind Girl, ending with hitting the Kindly Man. Skipped so far 4. Cat of the Canals stalking the Insurance Underwriter, followed by Ugly Girl killing him. Mostly done, though she hasn't / might not kill the Thin Man. Becoming Beth the Blind Girl seems like a step backwards. I think her season long arc in Braavos has been poorly received; for me, it's right up there with Dany's sojourn in Qarth in the "meh" category. If they set her up for spending part or all of next season there, I'll be folding laundry during her scenes. I'd really prefer if she'd get her butt to Westeros and start ... well, anything.

The only way I can see her going from hostile in the first scene to groveling in the second scene to "hey, Jaime bro, what's up?" in the last scene is if Doran filled her in on his plot, whatever that might be. She put on a mask of civility with Jaime because she knows Doran is actually actively Seeking Revenge. I don't understand why Jaime didn't notice the sudden shift in attitude. "Uh, who are you again? Do you have a split personality, were you recently possessed by a demon, or do you have an evil twin?"

I won't lie, I want one.

I'd also like to thank the show for giving me a literal nightmare last night. Surprisingly, it wasn't Shireen's off-screen screams that did it (I'd like to see an interview with the actress where she talks about how they prepped for that), but the god damn Harpy masks. Even more creepy Uncanny Valley than last week's zombies. [shudder]

Information flow and travel times on this show are infuriating sometimes. Joffrey died in 4.02, and by 4.04 the news had reached Meereen. Jaime and Bronn took two episodes to get to Dorne. Jon Snow did the roundtrip to Hardhome in 3 episodes. Yet it takes Mace for-freaking-ever to get to Braavos. Cercei's been in prison for a couple of episodes; doesn't Doran know that? Maybe he does, and we'll get a good expository scene with Trystane explaining what the hell the point was of this season long plot cul-de-sac. Oberyn has 8 daughters in both the book and the show. Ellaria is the mother to four of them. In the books, her four daughters are all children under 12 and have only been referred to in dialog. The four adult Sand Snakes (Obara, Nym, Tyene, Sarella) are not related to her. On the show, they made Tyene one of her daughters. Obara referred to her own mother as a separate entity, so she's not Ellaria's daughter. I don't remember if they ever defined Nym's parentage on the show. The only other daughter named on the show is his fifth, Elia. He was writing a poem for her last season when Cercei interrupted him to try to influence his vote in Tyrion's trial.

I was listening to the E4.09 commentary track (actors for Jon, Sam, and Ygritte commenting), and all three of them were heaping praise on the actor playing Olly, how great and multitalented he is, etc. I had to laugh out loud, because I've found his performance this season to be Jake Lloyd levels of bad. I always thought Tyrion was speaking for GRRM when he said, "Prophecy is like a half-trained mule. It looks as though it might be useful, but the moment you trust in it, it kicks you in the head". Also, there's Marwyn's opinion...

Hizdar was late to the show and said something like "I was making sure everything was prepared." When the Sons of the Harpy attacked, I was sure that was what he was preparing... then he got stabbed. Guess not. In the books, I'm pretty sure the Green Grace is the leader of the Sons, but she's not on the show so I figured it'd be the only named Meereeneze person. I guess they don't have a leader. I didn't really understand their tactics either. They started slaughtering randomly. If they're trying to drive out the foreign conquerer, massacring civilians doesn't seem to be the way to win their support.

There was a spoiler at the beginning of the season that we'd have four named characters dead this season that are still alive in the books. So far, it's been: Mance, Ser Barristan, and now Shireen and Hizdar in E5.09. Does this mean Meryn Trant isn't going to die next episode? Damn.

The two important scenes have been covered already, so I'll only mention 1) I said "oh shit" when Shireen was playing with her toy stag and a burning brazier was directly behind it in the shot. Pretty unsubtle camera work, to be honest. 2) Did anyone get an Attack of the Clones flashback when the protagonists were surrounded in the pit and Drogon comes flying to the rescue? Not exactly the best movie to do an homage of. Totally set that up, Arya pretends to be one of the underage brothel workers and kills him. When Arya went back to the House of B&W, I couldn't tell if Jaquen could tell she was lying to him or not about the Thin Man not being hungry. He kind of gave her a look but I couldn't tell. They sure did waste a lot of time with Arya following Mace / Meryn around all day. Speaking of wastes of time: the Dorne plot. Ellaria was all over the map, I couldn't figure out what the fuck was going on with that. And Doran, what the hell are you doing? Friendly sit-down with M&T and Ellaria, then have her arrested and threatened to die so she caves. Unless there's some scene next week with Doran and Tristane where he reveals that he's not the utter Lannister toady he appears to be, then I'll consider his character completely assassinated from the books' version.

S05.09 Episode description: 1. Stannis's decision: either a) when / how to attack Winterfell or b) burning / don't burn Shireen. Ugh. 2. Jon's return to the Wall: Seen in the previews, his confrontation with Thorne over letting the Free Folk through. Though it could include Ollie getting all stabby. 3. Mace visits the Iron Bank. Oh, that could be hysterial, watching him deal with the banker that Stannis and Davos talked to. Talk about someone who's out of his depth. 4. Arya encounters someone from her past: Meryn Trant, have a nice death 5. Dany opens the fighting pits. Will this include Drogon's special guest appearance and her absconding on his back?

The books have also set up Chekhov's Horn. It's entirely possible that the horn that Mel burned wasn't the real Horn of Jorumun, and that it's actually in posession of the White Walkers. It might even be why they're attacking now; they recently found it. Arguing against that is the Show has done nothing with magical horns. If it's crucial to the plot, it'd come across as a total ass-pull for the Unsullied. Another possibility is that while the wall does have some magical properties, the entire thing isn't zombie-proofed. Maybe Coldhands couldn't come through the wall because that secret passage has an anti-wight spell on it (similar to the Children's cave), but the rest of the wall is wight-permeable.

the book had Viseryon briefly sit on Brown Ben Plumm's shoulder and act friendly to him. Well, as friendly as a flying death machine can. They could do something similar when Dany introduces Tyrion to the dragons, like V could give him a head-tilting look of curiousity, then stick his face forward to be petted like Drogon did for Dany earlier this season. "He seems to like you."

Brings up a point I've wondered about: the letters he was sending when he told Tyrion that "some wars are won with a quill and paper." One was obviously to Walder Frey setting up / approving the Red Wedding. Was there another to Sybil Westerling nee Spicer? (Robb's wife Jeyne's mother). Jaime has a discussion with her after Riverrun surrenders. She says Tywin promised marriages for her children, that her daughters would get lords or heirs for husbands, and her son would get Joy Hill (Jaime's natural cousin) as part of the deal she made with Tywin. My question is, what was Sybil's part of the bargain? What service did she render to Tywin to merit this "reward"?

Show!Ned had an opportunity to come clean with his wife regarding Jon: Show!Cat told Talysa a story about how Jon got the pox as a little boy, and wasn't expected to live. She had a self-realization that she was the worst person in the world for the way she treated him, and made a promise to the gods that if he survived, she'd treat him better. He did survive, but she broke that promise and went back to despising him. During her self-flaggelation period when she was feeling so guilty for Jon getting sick after she'd wished him dead, Ned could have revealed the R+L=J truth. Cat would have treated Jon differently afterwards, and anyone who wondered why would be given the explanation of "I realized Jon isn't to blame, and I promised the gods to treat him right." That story wasn't in the books, and given Cat's other impulsive, irrational actions (nabbing Tyrion, e.g.), I can understand why Ned took the safer course. In the wise words of the theme song to Pretty Little Liars, "two can keep a secret if one of them is dead." I don't know how canonical AWOIAF is, but it states that shortly after one of their children died in infancy (before Viserys was born), Aerys was convinced his wife was cheating on him, so he essentially placed her under house arrest. She had to stay in the Red Keep, and two septas were assigned as bed-mates to keep her faithful.