It sure looked like rape, though cast and crew alike deny that was their intent. And rather infamously, Jaime and Cersei Lannister … well, it’s never been firmly established what happens between them. Bush Iraq War pep rally that makes sense in retrospect, but at the time it lacked the context required to properly make the point. There’s a lot to talk about with this one - unfortunately, most of the conversation involves saying “ugh.” Daenerys gives a speech to the people of Slaver’s Bay that sounds like something out of a George W. “ Breaker of Chains” (Season 4, Episode 3) Will Theon Greyjoy keep control of Winterfell? Will Jon Snow and his boring-ass commander Qhorin Halfhand escape the clutches of the wildlings? Will Tyrion Lannister repel the invasion of King’s Landing by Stannis Baratheon? WHERE ARE MY DRAGONS? The answers to these questions and more are … not in this episode, which is a pure placeholder before the Battle of the Blackwater.ħ1. “ The Prince of Winterfell” (Season 2, Episode 8) The second episode of season five busies itself politicking with Cersei and Dany or setting up Sansa and Arya Stark’s creepy new status quos with Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish and Jaqen H’ghar. “ The House of Black and White” (Season 5, Episode 2)Ĭongrats to Jon Snow, newly elected Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch! Everyone else is shit out of luck. Whether the individual episodes are cold as ice or hot as dragon fire, Game of Thrones aimed higher, hit harder, and took more visual, emotional, and thematic risks than anything else on television.ħ3. In the end, the big picture’s clear enough. The show really packs a wallop in the showstoppers it rolls out in each season’s penultimate episode (give or take a week), any episode where estranged friends or family reconnect, and of course in the season finales. Early season “Where are they now?” catch-ups and mid-season “We need to fill out an hour before next week’s gigantic massacre” installments also have their work cut out for them. Open up your third eye and you’ll start to recognize certain patterns: The presence of a stinker story line (see the Sand Snakes, “Where are my dragons?”) can cost an episode dearly.
#Top 20 games of 2016 full#
Below you’ll find a full list of all 73 episodes of Game of Thrones, ranked in ascending order of quality. So, for one last time, I’ve strapped on my maester’s chain and done my best to figure it all out, once and for all.
![top 20 games of 2016 top 20 games of 2016](https://www.gamepressure.com/i/h/4/354797207.jpg)
Is an early episode that establishes the down-to-earth setting superior to a later one that injects high-fantasy magic and mayhem? Does a mid-season placeholder episode fare better than a fast-moving one that includes a real clunker of a scene? Are episode-long battles better than intimate character portraits, and if so, which episode-long battle is best? How do the blockbusters of the shortened last two seasons measure up to the slower pace of what came before? Is Shocking Death A more of a mindblower than Shocking Death B? (Or C, or D, or E?) “ The Sopranos in Middle-earth,” remember? From those beginnings sprouted a pop-culture phenomenon - and the most ambitious, expensive, divisive, and popular show in HBO history.Īll of which makes ranking the show’s episodes a proposition as tricky as taming a dragon. Game over! Now that we’ve finally learned the fate of Westeros and all of its surviving inhabitants, it’s kind of funny to recall that, once upon a time, this was a comparatively cozy little show about two rival families jockeying for power.
![top 20 games of 2016 top 20 games of 2016](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U4N0RzxNR_8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Photo-Illustration: Maya Robinson/Vulture and Photos by HBO