Episode 5x09 Poll

I saw that and was shocked. Although he explained it well, in that he expected this from Stanni, i.e. Agamemnon 

WHAT

CGI was marvelous and Trystane is on the small council now. That's huge. Tommenn is a goner.

Elio giving it an 8 is par for the course. He and Linda don't give two shits about the "controversial" stuff that get other fans riled up. They didn't have a real problem with the Jaime/Cersei scene or the Sansa rape so I didn't expect them to be up in arms over this.

They get pissed off about shit that pretty much no one else does, like the show putting Tyrion with Dany too early, or Dorne not being sandy enough or Oberyn fighting the Mountain with Wu-shu moves or the show daring to put Valyria on screen that didn't look the way they thought it would. You know, mostly bullshit purist stuff.

But the show pushing the boundaries of violence (sexual or otherwise) isn't something they get upset over. Also Elio is not a particularly huge Stannis fan. I've seen him sniff derisively at the "Stannis the Mannis" posters on the board.

Agree to disgaree?

Daznak was absolutely epic, but everything else in this episode was extremely underwhelming and Dorne was just pure shit. The burning of Shireen Baratheon disgusts me more than I can express through words and I particularly hate, that they had Stannis burn his own little daughter for basically no reason.

5.

Obviously the burning of Shireen was a hard pill to swallow but I still don't get how some people are continuing to say that Stannis did it for no reason. Everyone in his camp (including him and his family) were going to starve and die unless he did something about it. They outlined the stakes very clearly at the start of the episode. Ramsay's attack left them without any food and they couldn't march forward any more with the storms bogging them down. Davos says that cutting the supply lines took away the option of even going back to Castle Black. They made sure to include multiple shots of soldiers at the end of their rope and close to freezing to death.

So yeah, it was for a reason. To save everyone so that they could march on. And in the promo for next episode, it confirms that the burning has the desired effect as the road becomes clear for them to march to Winterfell. It's been explained very clearly.

I'd say a nine for now though that may change after another rewatch. It was much more of a piece-mover episode than I thought it would've been, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I was surprised with it being an ep. nine and all. I thought there'd be more climax in Dorne and Braavos and we'd have the falling action in ep. 510 but it looks like they've saved those storylines big moments for last too. So I guess the finale's the gut-punch episode this year. I think those Dorne and Braavos scenes would've probably worked better earlier in the season tbh. But still, they worked quite fine here.

Daznak's and Stan's storyline were standouts though. Very well-done.

Could be. The finale's going to be fucking PACKED.