Game of Thrones, "Old Gods and the New"

I hung out at Griffin's last night and got caught up on Game of Thrones.  LOVE IT.  Arya & Tywin together are gold, I absolutely adore their dynamic. I want to squee at his obvious respect and the beginnings of affection for her, but having just finished the first book (which helps me keep the backstory straight) I know he is a monster in his way, and killed the Targaryen children.  So yeah, he's still a monster, but even a monster can have nuance. Charles Dance is THE MAN, though, he owns the stage every time he steps into it.  And the little girl playing Arya is a fucking rock star, she is killing all of her scenes.  Great, great stuff.

OMG, Sansa's scene!  In the hallway!  With the rioting peasants!  So, so intense--I was literally clutching my head watching it. Very upsetting.  It was awesome seeing Joffrey getting clowned with cow pies, though.

I fucking ADORE Jaquen,the guy who's killing 3 men for Arya.  I just love the way he speaks ("a man needs a name..."), and his look and his exquisite highlights.  (As Lori and I joked, it's always great when you can schedule your highlights right before you get captured and thrown into a cage for several weeks.)

Tonks
naked! My eyes!  I knew from the start that she was sucking up to Theon for a reason.  She seemed too solid to betray Bran like that.  As soon as Rodrik goaded Theon into doing the job himself (as Ned Stark would have done), I said to Griffin "he's gonna botch the job."  And he did.  Read about the botched execution of Mary Queen of Scots--that one also took several blows.

I adore this comment on TWoP:

We really need a spin-off set in Harrenhal. It would mainly consist of Tywin bonding with Arya over how incompetent everyone else is, and a man killing people in amusing ways. (Tywin's annoyed expression when Amory Loch falls down dead is priceless).I imagine by the end Arya is his chief general and very confused about how she got there. In case that would be too awesome to put on TV, we could intersperse it with Theon finding new and exciting ways to be a complete fuckup.

I am completely bored with everything to do with The Wall and beyond (I don't want to see beautiful people swathed in furs and bulky clothes, I want to see them looking pretty, preferably naked). But I did like Jon's protracted flirtation with the red-haired wildling.  She played him like a fiddle.