Game of Thrones

[Cranberry]

I believe that is the case.  Tommen is the boy's name and the new actor playing him looks a LOT like the kid that played Joffrey.

edit-but Tommen is too young so Cersi will be in charge again.

Actually Tywin would be in charge. He's the Hand of the King, and unlike with Tyrion she can't really maintain any semblance of real power so long as he's in control.

Cersei was the Queen Regent throughout Joffrey's reign, meaning that she was effectively the monarch until Joffrey's wedding graduated him into adulthood.  This development makes her the Queen Regent again.

But yes, Tywin is still very much the actual power.

The problem is, Queen Regent is not much more but a title in Westeros. She has to really grasp power, and hold on to it, to have real power; something what is never really accomplishable with Tywin as hand. Remember when Ned was still Hand of the King, who was really in charge then? Sure, people believed Robert was, but what did he do other than whoring and hunting around? Without spoilering too much, it will be the same again, just with Tywin as hand.

[Cranberry]

Does anybody else feel like Jaime Lannister is being made into a more sympathetic character?  I'm not sure if losing his hand and his travels with Brienne were meant to actually improve him as a person, but some of us will never forget that he pushed Bran Stark out of a window. 

Well yeah, he is; but this is because he really evolves as a person in the books. He of course has some bad traits also later, but by the end of the 4/5th books I really liked him. It is of course difficult to show such an evolution of a character on screen, but I think they didn't do a bad job.

[Cranberry]

If it makes you feel any better, that guy has no idea what he's talking about. In this even people who have read ahead don't necessarily know what they think they know.

Exactly. Always when you think you know what will happen next, or who did this and that; something completely different and unexpected happens, and it looks that someone other did this and that. It's one of the reason I love this book (and TV) series.

[Cranberry]

I sometimes wonder if Martin created GOT as a satirical middle-aged version of Austria, with all it's incest, rape, lunatics, people in dungeons, c**nts, whores, dicks, etc.

With Pröll being Tywin?

[Cranberry]

Wait, so Daenerys is putting off her conquest of Westeros indefinitely?  Ugh, that storyline just seems like it's going nowhere (though of course it's fairly clear that her story is vital to however this series concludes).

Now you know how the majority of the book readers felt after book 3... It won't get any more interesting until the end of book 5.

[Cranberry]

You're right... It should be about time until she appears.... It would have made a brilliant season start

[Cranberry]

The only problem - when that scene happens, LSH is around for quite a time, since about two days of the RW, which would be about 1-2 episodes (it would have made a great finale of season 3 - her first appearence I mean). It won't make sense when she suddenly appears at the end of season 4, especially since the series can cover things outside's a POV-characters view, which it already did multiple times.

[Cranberry]

Well actually, the thread was always there for discussion up to the latest episodes.
Sorry for you, but it would really be wise to leave this thread until you caught up.

[Cranberry]

Well actually, the thread was always there for discussion up to the latest episodes.
Sorry for you, but it would really be wise to leave this thread until you caught up.

As far as I've seen spoilers are usually marked in white text...

Well, most spoilers in white text are book spoilers, spoilers that are ahead of the show as of now... Most people here don't consider the things that happened in the last two/three episodes spoliers, as the ones who are up-date have already seen them. Once again, I'm sorry for you, as Lumine said, no one wants to encounter spoilers of GoT. I can assure you however that I'll talk of such things only in white text.

They changed the whole story quite a bit for my taste - Pip, Grenn, Thorne... Everyone is dead. Why the f[inks]? That robs us from all the "who is elected Lord Commander storyline".

[Cranberry]

I actually thought it was fairly obvious that Thorne isn't dead as opposed to just wounded.

I must have gotten something wrong, but I could've sworn he died. Well, next time I should look more carefully, before protesting about something that didn't even happen
Has anyone other but me the feeling that the next episode will again be heavily centered on the Wall arc?
Dany's arc is about finished, as is Sansa's, the Bolton arc seems finished too. Tyrion has left something going, Arya has and Bran, too. And of course the whole Wall / Jon / Stannis story. There isn't anything left, right? Maybe LSH, as season finale...?

[Cranberry]

I actually thought it was fairly obvious that Thorne isn't dead as opposed to just wounded.

I must have gotten something wrong, but I could've sworn he died. Well, next time I should look more carefully, before protesting about something that didn't even happen
Has anyone other but me the feeling that the next episode will again be heavily centered on the Wall arc?
Dany's arc is about finished, as is Sansa's, the Bolton arc seems finished too. Tyrion has left something going, Arya has and Bran, too. And of course the whole Wall / Jon / Stannis story. There isn't anything left, right? Maybe LSH, as season finale...?

I doubt it.  I think Stannis probably saves the day pretty quickly and then we end that plot thread right there within the first 7-10 minutes after the opening credits.  The HBO preview confirmed that their will be at least one scene with each of the following combinations: Dany/dragons, Jon/Wildling Redshirts/Mance Rayder, Arya/the Hound, Cersei/Tywin, Cersei/Jaime, and THAT scene (if you've read the book you should know what I mean, I don't want to risk someone getting spoiled about it b/c of the angle that they were looking at their computer ).  Given that the last one surely takes up at least 15 minutes of screen-time and could conceivably take up 20-25 minutes (I'd predict 20 minutes), that is a lot to fit in one episode.  I don't see how they can spend much more than 10 minutes at the wall (if that, it could easily be less).

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about that scene Of course, that will be the main story arc of the episode.