The plot played out in this episode was exciting as ones before. But I can't help but wonder, with the level of success achieved by the TV series, why not make more episodes and fill in more of the actual story? Because from series 1, clearly the TV series was just a taster of the entire story told by the big books. A lot of names and events barely got a mention in a dialogue. That itself has been great for the first series where you were not 100% sure how it is going to go. Except now we are and there's really no need to skim. People are ready to watch another 15 series of this.
However, this episode has slowed things down, but not in ways I wished. No longer we see clever cut scenes where viewers were expected to workout what happened from what has been cut. People were just walking slowly and talking about things of no importance.
And while George R.R. Martin clearly has absorbed political and militant wisdom of every culture in the entire world before creating his own, he (and the TV script wrights) lacks experience of fighting for his own life and it shows up in this howler:
In the "big fight" between Oberyn and the Mountain, Oberyn out-skilled his opponent and whittled him down to demand "a confession", but in his delays he give his opponent an opportunity to turn the fight around. That is a mistake no seasoned warrior can make as making such a mistake prevents you from becoming a seasoned warrior, probably even in your first "season". You want to talk to your opponent when he's down like Dragonballs Z or American wrestling, fine. That are ways to do that but this is not it. A simple way would be to disable all his limbs first. Then you wouldn't have, well, let him kill you.
However, this episode has slowed things down, but not in ways I wished. No longer we see clever cut scenes where viewers were expected to workout what happened from what has been cut. People were just walking slowly and talking about things of no importance.
And while George R.R. Martin clearly has absorbed political and militant wisdom of every culture in the entire world before creating his own, he (and the TV script wrights) lacks experience of fighting for his own life and it shows up in this howler:
In the "big fight" between Oberyn and the Mountain, Oberyn out-skilled his opponent and whittled him down to demand "a confession", but in his delays he give his opponent an opportunity to turn the fight around. That is a mistake no seasoned warrior can make as making such a mistake prevents you from becoming a seasoned warrior, probably even in your first "season". You want to talk to your opponent when he's down like Dragonballs Z or American wrestling, fine. That are ways to do that but this is not it. A simple way would be to disable all his limbs first. Then you wouldn't have, well, let him kill you.