SeanC

Yes, we did. She first appeared in ASOS Jaime IX. We knew where Arya was then, and it was nowhere near King's Landing.

A few GRRM comments about TWOW (apart from commenting about opening with the two battles, which we already knew about): It sounds like Dany will be adventuring with the Dothraki for a while, which is what I was expecting (she's not going to appear at the end of the Battle of Meereen and then immediately pull up stakes and sail for Westeros, which is what some people are convinced is going to happen). He describes a lot happening at the Wall, which suggests we're either going to get Ghost!Jon POV chapters, or else Mel will be the POV there for the next little while.

He said "Boo-shee-me".

Is that really how you pronounce "Buscemi"?

That would never work (even apart from her being way too old to plausibly be Arya). Fake Arya's whole point, character-wise, is to be an innocent that Theon saves. Myranda is a cartoonish psychopath.

The amount of "groundwork" in season 4 for Dany's book material is really not that huge. Hizdahr showed up for one scene, the dragons were chained (oh, and I guess Dany banged Daario). The idea that they're going to run through Dany's entire ADWD story (and Tyrion's), plus the battle of Meereen, and the aftermath, seems a little far-fetched to me. Particularly as Dany's story doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's tied to the pacing of a bunch of other stories, and the rest of the show seems poised to end Season 5 at the end of AFFC/ADWD (Bran and Sansa excepted, and in Bran's case he has so little story that they really didn't have a choice). There are many stories whose paces can be rejigged without too much trouble, but I rather doubt that Dany showing up in Westeros with her dragons and army is one of them.

Where is Paige supposed to gotten this money? $600 USD circa 1981 is $1,570 USD today. That's an absurd amount of money for somebody Paige's age to have -- either she was saving a bunch of money on a really good summer job, or she has an obscenely large allowance, or both.

Holy, Morello's insane. I'm glad Christufah doesn't have a dog, or else I'd be worried about it getting boiled in a pot.

James Carville's famous adage is that Pennsylvania is Pittsburgh and Philadelphia with Alabama in between.

This episode basically covered her first two chapters, and rendered the rest probably irrelevant.

The writers of the show are really fond of zero-to-sixty character shifts. Sansa's is one of the more dramatic ones even by their standards (complete with vampy wardrobe change). I like seeing the character portrayed as competent, but they really could have stood to ease into this. One thing I will say (I noted this before somewhere else), but Sophie Turner is one of the only actors on this show (Conleth Hill, perhaps, being the other, though with Varys' murky motivations it's hard to tell) who plays her character acting as if she possesses all of the acting skills of Sophie Turner, without any actorly cues to convey that she's being dishonest (Natalie Dormer's Margaery, for instance, is so obviously dissembling whenever she's "playing the game" that it's a wonder anyone believes her; and I love Dormer, don't get me wrong; Aiden Gillen is another obvious example). I was impressed that they made Oberyn's death as gruesome as they did. Also, Indira Varma's reaction to his death was everything I was expecting from Cersei's reaction to the death of Joffrey; that's the only time Lena has really underwhelmed me).

I was contemplating possible scenarios for future seasons, just because I find it interesting to consider where they might take this show once the "faking it" premise is past (which seems imminent, one way or another; that title will very likely seem like a total artifact if this show has a future). One of the things that came to mind, going back to the original ruse that gave rise to all these events, was Amy and Karma being exposed as fake at the moment they become "real", which would put them in the position of being in a relationship, but nobody at the school believing them. I'm not really sure how this exposure would happen at this point, and it's probably an overly neat reversal of the premise of the first season, but whatever, worth spitballing.