Best string of episodes?

His commentary explains that a lot of it was cut up and re-arranged with 3.08. He didn't write the Jaime/Brienne, Robb/Talisa or Theon/Ramsay scenes but did write the Sam/Gilly ending which was supposed to be 3.07's ending, not 3.08's. There must have been something else of his that was moved forward to 3.08, but I don't remember what it was. I do think all the scene shuffling didn't work out as well as it usually does. I don't really think s3 had a great flow in general, though, s4 worked much better in that regard, and I also s2 is underrated. 2.05-2.09 had a pretty good flow imo.

s3 seems to dip and rise with quality more every week. 3.01 was ok, 3.02 great, 3.03 had some good scenes but the ending cut with the rock music felt super weird (though I did first watch the ep through less than legal means, so my version had the music starting even earlier than it should have), 3.04 & 3.05 were high-points of the series as a whole, but hating LF, I wasn't a fan of his chaos is a ladda ending montage for 3.06, 3.07 was pretty disjointed and unremarkable, 3.08 was pretty solid but Dany's scenes felt like out of place to me in the Stark-dominated 3.09 (though I'm not sure where else they could have gone and I confess I wouldn't have been that invested in her fight for Yunkai in any case), while 3.10 had some great RW follow-up for Arya/Sandor, Roose/Walder and Tywin and co. but Sansa's IQ dropped even more in the sheep-shift scene and idky they used her big s3 cry in 3.06 and had only a quick red-eyed shot in the finale, Kit/Rose didn't really sell the Jon/Ygritte penultimate scene for me and the fact that Jon was completely recovered by s4 makes it seem even weaker on re-watch, and this was all overshadowed by the tone-deaf ending imagery with Dany. (Just as Septgate overshadowed 4.03 but the rest of 4.03 was imo much, much better than the rest of 3.10.)

ETA: IA, the first season is the most enjoyable to re-watch but how much credit can we give them just for using stuff from the books? As a first time viewer only spoiled for Ned's death, I think it wasn't til the Catnapping of Tyrion that I really got hooked. All of the invented filler scenes work pretty well, but none of them rise to the level of, say, Yoren's inspiring Arya's list in s2. (Though none of them sunk to the level of certain later Lannister scenes that went on way too long either.) And while I think the last 3 eps of s1 are still some of the finest the show's ever done or maybe will ever do, none of them are flawless adaptations the way Blackwater is. 1.10 in particular is only great because of all the big plot moments from the book, but I think the structure could have been better, and I much preferred having the KitN scene as an ending climax in the book instead of at the halfway point in the ep.