Our long national geek nightmare is over!  Game of Thrones has returned for 10 weeks of fantasy awesomeness and this is the second installment in our lively talk-backs and reviews of each episode.  A warning, and the only one before we dive in, this column is specifically for people watching the show live week-by-week so if you don’t want spoilers, don’t continue.

The last image from last week was the first image from this week’s episode as the fallout landed hard post-Purple Wedding.  Tyrion has been imprisoned for the murder and faces trial before a decidedly biased jury in two weeks.  Sansa has fled King’s Landing after several years of seriously unpleasant stay only to find herself under the thumb of Little Finger (punny) who we see for the first time this season headed north for the Vale and Sansa’s craaaaaaazy Aunt Lysa.  The capital is in even more turmoil than normal.  Prince Tommen will take his brother’s throne, and all that was before the orgy.

Back to that in a second but the third episode of season four of Game of Thrones felt a bit like the season opener in that we’ve had one of the biggest events in the show’s history go down and, once again, we’re re-establishing how everyone stands in light of it.  This episode flew by and I couldn’t believe when they finally reached Mereen and there were only a few minutes left in the episode.

Those last minutes were, to me, the highlight of the episode.  Dany’s developing quite a knack for playing to large audiences.  We had a duel.  A literal pissing contest.  Then an extremely unsubtle message delivered to the slaves and masters of Mereen via trebuchets.  Valyrian should be a real language.  It’s the best invented language since Klingon.

In other subplots, wildling raids south of the wall have Castle Black scrambling to deal with both Torren and Ygritte’s raiders (Ygritte seems to have some serious break-up anger issues) and the mutineers at Craster’s Keep who could give away their true vulnerabilities to Mance Rayder.

The Arya and The Hound Road Show continued to be a highlight of the episode as a visit with a random farmer gave a good chance to show the fundamental character of both participants.

So…..um……which sexy time scene was more uncomfortable to watch?  Dornish orgy or incest by a corpse.  Not a sentence I ever thought I would type….yow.  Only in Westeros.

I almost feel let down by how fast this episode flew by, but that’s the difference in watching week-to-week.  You can’t move the story on at your pace; you have to move at the mercy of the showrunners.  Next week’s episode is entitled “Oathkeeper”, which is the name of the sword Jamie gave to Brienne and it looks like, from the preview, that things will continue to get worse for Tyrion and the situation in Mereen will come to a head.

What did you think of this week’s episode?  What about Margarey?  Is there anything short of walking on the shards of a broken mirror on Friday the 13th holding a gaggle of black cats more unlucky than marrying Margarey Tyrell?
8.75/10.0