I don't like to compare shows that are entirely different, but G.O.T is like Breaking Bad was for me. The first season was great, but each of the following seasons (or novels) progressively gets better and better as the story goes on. This episode (and really the entire series) has perfect pacing in the way they present and tell their story.
There were a few characters that were in quite dangerous predicaments last time we saw them. From what I saw last week and previous weeks, I didn't think a particular character was going to make a huge play this early, which was a nice surprise. I love how this show has such attention to detail with minor characters and (seemingly) minor side stories, very early on in the series. The show plants a seed here and then one there, I think nothing will come of it or maybe forget the person, place, old myth, past stories, history etc
. , then boom, old stories and people appear, taking things in an unseen new direction. I kind of saw one or two things (generally) happening this episode, but two of the characters heavily featured in this episode really caught me off guard in the way they reacted to situations they were in. One character has been on a journey for quite a while, after seeing this episode I really feel he might find something another main character acquired in past seasons, very useful to him/her (and perhaps others) in the future. Like many G.O.T episodes, you will laugh, get angry, think wtf is going on, perhaps yell in joy at your TV, possibly at how bad a$$ a particular character is becoming; I believe I did most of these tonight.
This episode was longer than normal, (66 minutes) but it felt like twenty minutes to me while I was watching it. This really set up Season 5 perfectly with tying some things up, making drastic changes to others and but shouldn't torture you with too many cliff hangers. This was a perfect finale, to the best season yet, but with how things went and appear to be going now, I can't see how season 5 won't be even better.
