“Where ‘Battle of the Bastards’ stumbled by offering simplistic resolutions to complicated problems, ‘The Winds of Winter’ soars by reveling in the dark ambiguities of Westeros’ violent brutality.”
“The episode provides plenty of darkness, but what it also provides is a sense of understanding.”
“Game of Thrones has long thrived on the ambiguous moralities and complex psychologies of its anti-heroes, but ‘Battle of the Bastards’ pushes its current season towards culminating in a jarringly tidy climax.”
“It’s the denial, the lack of judgement and the lack of consequences that run so rampant in the city which make the episode’s climax so powerful.”
“With most of the series’ major villains now in play, if not all, it’s only a matter of time before Annville becomes the ‘Monster Swamp’ Root so fears.”
“After the emotional revelation of the origin of Hodor’s name, HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ has been in a bit of an awkward place.”
“It’s clear from the early stages of ‘Preacher’ that Rogen, Goldberg and Catlin are going to be taking a deliberate pace with the material.”
“One can only hope that Game of Thrones has exhausted its season quotient of character reappearances ostensibly designed to catch us some degree of off-guard, but perhaps future cold opens are coming.”
“After the twin climaxes of last week’s Hodor reveal and Daenerys’ enflamed emergence in the preceding episode, it was only natural for HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ to need a bit of a breather.”
“Jon Snow may be the one who comes back to life, but it’s the women of Westeros who are increasingly shaping the direction of Season Six.”
“And just like that, things are looking up for Season Six.”
“Will the execution weigh on Jon as he experiences life beyond the Night’s Watch?”
“As good as Game of Thrones can be at revealing shades of grey in ostensibly irredeemable characters, the show is equally adept (if not more so) at making its villains as detestable as can be.”
“There’s a lot of expository detail, and little development in the singular arcs beyond the exposition.”
“Season 5 of HBO’s ‘Girls’ is now done, and so it is time to bestow upon it ‘one of the all-time best seasons of TV’ accolades.”
“Vinyl’s sense of music history is surface-level and haphazard, and, most damning, it has yet to fully reveal why it needs to exist (over the course of 11 entire hours).”
“This is the first time in what seems like quite a while that I’ll actively be looking forward to the next season at the end of the current one.”
“‘Rock and Roll Queen’, the ninth and penultimate episode of Season One, is largely a gathering together of ongoing plot threads and weaving them into a runway on which the entire season will land next week, and that’s fine.”
“It’s hard to tell from the show what exactly Alexander and Karaszewski believe about Simpson’s guilt, but that doesn’t keep them from being any less interested in him as a human being.”
“Girls is so fucking good this year.”