I’d gotten behind on the current season of Game of Thrones last week as the friends who provide me with my HBO fix were out of town doing the wine tour in Columbia valley. But thankfully I was able to get back up to speed yesterday. As I’ve said before since I am currently up to speed on A Song of Fire and Ice up to A Dance With Dragons I already know what is going to happen in this season to the point that I could probably skip numerous episodes without any harm but as I’ve mentioned in past posts, it’s not what happens in an episode it’s how it happens. So I find myself more interested on what the writers and director chose to emphasize and how they organize plot points. Giving certain things more importance then they have in the books.

Without providing too many spoilers, the two best examples are first: Theon‘s subplot. In the books he disappears until A Dance of Dragons, crippled, maimed and brainwashed by Ramsay Bolton. In the show we are being shown how this goes about presumably I suppose to keep the character in the viewers’ mind rather than having him disappear for as much as three seasons.

Second they have fleshed out the role on Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns, quite a bit. This one though is self explanatory. Only an idiot would waste Diana Rigg in a cameo when they could have her for the whole season.

All and all I am increasingly drawn in to season three. If i have any complaint it’s that there are so many plot points going on it is hard to focus on any one of them. But I’m comfortably certain this shall be corrected when I watch them all together when the they come out on DVD.

And besides, I can’t complain too much when it has things like this in it:

followed up by a rock and roll version in the credits.