Apologies for not getting this out yesterday or earlier — was on the road this weekend. Got home, put a cranky Kick to bed, and immediately got all caught up and DAMMIT SHOW:

Quick takes: I’ve never been invested in Dany and anyone, particularly. Ordinarily I ‘ship anyone and everyone with whatever men, women and/or pets are lying around, but Dany in both the books and the show leaves me a bit cold. The point isn’t Dany finding a boyfriend, anyway, it’s Dany finding herself, so meh to all her various romances, including with Drogo.

Still, when Jorah took his helm off and looked at her, I forgot how to breathe for a minute. I don’t believe she loves him, but I believe completely that he loves her. Iain Glen is a fucking genius.

Not wild about Comic Relief!Sam because hee hee, he’s fat and greasy (though, does soap not exist at the Wall? Can we get one of the dragons to airlift some?) and very much not wild about watching him lose his virginity. If I wanted to watch people being awkward there are like 10,000 shows for that.

Oh, Maester Aemon. I cried like a little kid with a skinned knee when he died in the books and though his death seemed horribly rushed here his entire story is my kryptonite. Think of what meeting Danaerys would have meant to him. He died thinking he was the last one, calling for his brother. And Jon, who he believed in more than anyone, wasn’t even there.

There was lots of outrage over Sansa last week, and I came around to realizing that most of my outrage stemmed from the way the show handled Dany and Drogo’s wedding night, all the way back in the first season, turning what in the books was a lovely and unexpected thing into predictable brutality. That, and women are not interchangeable ciphers, and just generally back the fuck off my Sansa.

Also my Margaery. I really thought she’d hold it together better, but Cersei’s such a jellyfish. Swimming along, everything’s fine, and ZAP, you’re asking a stranger to pee on you.

All my prayers to the seven flying spaghetti monsters were answered in that scene with Olenna Tyrell and the High Sparrow. Chewers of scenery on this show, take note of how it is done.

You can’t go back.

Winter is howling down on them all now, on all the frozen remnants of the Seven Kingdoms. Look how thick the snow lay on the tents quartering Stannis’s soldiers. You could feel how cold they all were. The wildlings are huddled against the other side of the wall, trapped between the Night’s Watch who hate them and the Walkers, who will kill them. You can see their rock, their hard place.

Jon and Tormund ride for Hardhome, and Stannis marches for Winterfell, because there’s no other way out now. Everyone has to come together. Everyone has to go through. Jon will break the Night’s Watch’s endless war with the free folk, and Stannis will shatter his own army (and maybe his own daughter) on his stubbornness, because the road is blocked in every other direction.

People have been saying, on this show, a lot lately, that they have no other choice when there are about a thousand other choices. Cersei didn’t have to lie and manipulate to keep her last son safe. Dany could say screw this crap, I’mma take my dragons and go get the stupid Iron Throne already. Sam could take Gilly and the baby and disappear tomorrow, live out the rest of his life farming sheep or whatever. But Stannis? Jon?

You tell me what choices they have, with the wind blowing down from the Frostfangs, with the snow falling heavy. Jon wants to save as many as he can, and he can’t fight the dead without the living. Stannis wants to save the kingdom, in order to win the throne, and once he’d set off on that road, there was no turning around.

It’s a gift, that desperation. Sometimes.

A.