Spoilers within.

Quick takes: I really like the interplay of Tywin and Arya. Don’t get me wrong, I think Tywin would just as soon kill her as banter with her over spilled wine, but he’s a good foil for her, and she becomes braver around him.

LITTLE BIRD. Indulge my flailing fangirl heart for a moment: I have been waiting YEARS to hear those words, to watch Sandor Clegane’s rescue of Sansa from the King’s Landing mob and for a minute there I thought we were going to get robbed again, that they were going to give that to Tyrion for reasons that would become clear later, but it played out just as it should have. It’s funny about the two of them, that they actually do live out the traditional storyline of noble knight and gentle lady, but in the absolute worst way possible.

And … “I didn’t do it for you.” He’s just such a glorious mess.

Hurrah for Joffrey getting smacked around some more, as well as hit with shitbricks. Well done, peasants!

I really hope we get to see Dorne. For now, though, farewell, Myrcella, you’re well out of this crazy shitfest.

The Cassels are not having a good time of it. I knew that was coming and it was still horribly upsetting.

What I didn’t know was coming, because this isn’t how it went in the books, was the theft of Dany’s dragons (unless it’s been so long since I’ve read A Clash of Kings that I’m forgetting something). I think it’s going to move the story in the same direction it already goes, so I’m not all rageWTF about it, not yet.

So someone, clearly, at some point, needed to have a talk with Theon Greyjoy about trying too hard. About what it looks like when you’re so desperate to prove something to everybody that you’re afraid you can’t prove. About how it just sets off everyboy’s embarrassment squick, watching you begging for the approval that, if you’d just leave yourself alone for a second in your own skin, you might gain anyway. About how the surest way to lose power is to demand it on the basis of DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM, because no, we don’t know who you are, and we don’t care about your daddy issues, and we’re all just trying to survive on turnips and mutton up here in the North so help out in some fashion or get out of the way.

It’s such a hard lesson to learn. Most of us learn it in high school, many at our first jobs. Some of us never learn it. Sometimes on this show you forget that these people are basically still adolescents because they’re so filthy and fucking and killing all the time, and Theon is so young. He’s so young and he’s already done the worst thing he could possibly do, which is to act to prove himself. The minute you grant that you have something to prove is the minute you lose all hope of doing so.

Bran was screaming, and Luwin was appealing to his humanity, and Rodrik was just about over it, and Theon couldn’t hear any of them, because the minute you grant you’ve got something to prove, the fear of failing to prove it will always be louder than anything else you could ever hear.

A.