The Night Lands is an episode that has a lot of great stuff, but also more than just a few disappointing aspects that mitigated my general view on it. Most of all, they decided to focus on sex even more than usual, especially increasing the incestuous content to an unsurpassed high. The inbreeding parts don't get really explicit, but just the mentioning of it, together with the baby-slaughtering in the previous episode, leads me to believe that this season of Game of Thrones is going to be a lot more unsuitable for children than before. That's not to say that I disliked seeing Carice van Houten nude, I'm solely questioning its necessity, especially since that particular scene wasn't even included in the novels. Anyway, as long as you don't watch it with your kids, the episode is still really nice entertainment.
First of all, we have scenes with Arya again and they are some of the funniest moments the show has had up to that point. The conversation between her and Gendry, bastard son of the late King Robert, was absolutely natural and uplifting and definitely one of the most enjoyable scenes in The Night Lands, whose best part was undoubtedly Peter Dinklage's Tyrion who was present in two scenes and nailed it each time. The first one, him having dinner with Janos Slynt, the Commander of the City Watch, is hilarious and so well acted; the second one is another debate between him and Cersei that made me laugh my arse off (to stay in Game of Thrones British English) while also giving important background information. Another very good part of this episode was Littlefinger solacing Ros, which soon turned out to be a bit more than that and showed off Littlefinger's attitude so perfectly well. What happened when Theon Greyjoy visited his family is one of the incest facets the episode has to offer while actually being very entertaining and interesting since it gives us a lot of character insight.
So much for the good parts about The Night Lands; the not bad, but not really good scenes were basically everything I didn't mention in the previous paragraph. Dragonstone, the freshly introduced new setting, already got a bit boring in this episode, however, if you haven't read the source material, it will definitely help you to understand all the new characters better. The attribute 'boring' can also be given to the scenes across the Narrow Sea where Daenerys and her khalasar of some two dozen people and most of them women are planning to attack the rest of Westeros. I'm utterly convinced that this plan will work.
While not boring, the Night's Watch scenes were unappealing to me right from the start as unfunny fart jokes were made, while Kit Harrington did a really fine acting job and proved that he can be just a tiny bit amusing as well. The Night Lands ended in a scene with him that is bringing up the question: Is every Game of Thrones episode now going to end with a baby being killed?
My conclusion: I did enjoy this episode, yet I found it to be one of the weakest episodes of the show yet. There were too much things happening that I didn't like and if it weren't for the numerous and circumstantial sex scenes, this would've easily been the most boring Game of Thrones episode yet. Keep in mind that my rating always augments a bit because of the show's visuals that never fail to impress me.
First of all, we have scenes with Arya again and they are some of the funniest moments the show has had up to that point. The conversation between her and Gendry, bastard son of the late King Robert, was absolutely natural and uplifting and definitely one of the most enjoyable scenes in The Night Lands, whose best part was undoubtedly Peter Dinklage's Tyrion who was present in two scenes and nailed it each time. The first one, him having dinner with Janos Slynt, the Commander of the City Watch, is hilarious and so well acted; the second one is another debate between him and Cersei that made me laugh my arse off (to stay in Game of Thrones British English) while also giving important background information. Another very good part of this episode was Littlefinger solacing Ros, which soon turned out to be a bit more than that and showed off Littlefinger's attitude so perfectly well. What happened when Theon Greyjoy visited his family is one of the incest facets the episode has to offer while actually being very entertaining and interesting since it gives us a lot of character insight.
So much for the good parts about The Night Lands; the not bad, but not really good scenes were basically everything I didn't mention in the previous paragraph. Dragonstone, the freshly introduced new setting, already got a bit boring in this episode, however, if you haven't read the source material, it will definitely help you to understand all the new characters better. The attribute 'boring' can also be given to the scenes across the Narrow Sea where Daenerys and her khalasar of some two dozen people and most of them women are planning to attack the rest of Westeros. I'm utterly convinced that this plan will work.
While not boring, the Night's Watch scenes were unappealing to me right from the start as unfunny fart jokes were made, while Kit Harrington did a really fine acting job and proved that he can be just a tiny bit amusing as well. The Night Lands ended in a scene with him that is bringing up the question: Is every Game of Thrones episode now going to end with a baby being killed?
My conclusion: I did enjoy this episode, yet I found it to be one of the weakest episodes of the show yet. There were too much things happening that I didn't like and if it weren't for the numerous and circumstantial sex scenes, this would've easily been the most boring Game of Thrones episode yet. Keep in mind that my rating always augments a bit because of the show's visuals that never fail to impress me.