This season has been awesome so far. I think it's shaping up to be the most unique one yet. Not being bound so tightly to existing material, basically going off of more background info from the books and some broad ideas about where GRRM's taking the plot (the reveal about the COTF creating the others was addressed pretty plainly here, but I can already imagine like five or more pages explaining why in detail TWOW). While it's still a lot of exposition, it's so much fun and there's so much going on in every scene. Can't wait to see how the rest of this pans out.

While I think D&D episodes are good and well-written, I think Bryan Cogman really gets this world and these characters. The way Meera talked to Hodor in the cave was hilarious. And their conversation included food porn. How often does the show ever include food porn?

Also the ending shook some tears out of me. Hodor, you brave, beautiful bastard. He was petrified by the vision of his own horrible death. Which he always knew was inevitable, because of his undying loyalty to the Starks. Nice parallel to Jojen there. Now the White Walkers simply must die.

I know, I mostly mention the stuff in the Children's cave near the end, but that's just because that's the freshest stuff on my mind. Everything else was just as great: Sansa being a boss, the war council at Castle Black, the beginning of Edd's lord commanding, Varys and Tyrion meeting Kinvara (wow), finally examining Stannis' downfall in more ways than just "he lost" and "yeah but how", Arya's FM training and history lessons, I even liked the incredibly crude play (could have done without the closeup of fake Joffrey's warty weiner, though; Butters won't be happy).

And now I have to gush about the Kingsmoot and Euron. The show definitely exaggerates the Greyjoys/Ironborn, but it's such an apt exaggeration; they get what makes them so cool and awesome with the epic speeches and the rugged outfits and everyone talking shit... then they freaking drown the guy they named king. Immediately. So on the hand, there's the implication that Euron is, like, unkillable (doubtful, but certainly not impossible), or it could be that he only recovered from that by sheer fucking luck and could have just as easily died a senseless death right there and everyone else would just assume he wasn't worthy (most likely, since the Ironborn as a culture is pretty damn stupid). It could be either one, and it would make sense. I loved that they played it that way.