Folks who don't watch this show, for any number of myriad hypothetical reasons, are missing out.

[Warren DeMontague]

45. This is a great article, really sums up how I felt about the last episode.

Big thanks to our friends upstairs for finding it!

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/-i-game-of-thrones-i-ditches-the-book/275557/

So my initial response to the episode, especially considered in conjunction with the previous one, "Kissed by Fire" (the script of which was delegated to another writer and was extremely faithful to the novel), was: Uh-oh, Benioff and Weiss have started speeding through Martin's material so they have more time to explore their own variations on his theme.

But my second response, which registered seconds after the first, was: Who cares? If Benioff and Weiss can come up with material as strong as this on a regular basis, let them go for it. While a straight page-to-screen translation of Storm of Swords would make for terrific television (it's the best of the novels by a significant margin), in future seasons the showrunners' ability to save Martin from his own excesses will become evermore crucial.