I actually liked this episode quite a bit; maybe the strongest of the season (which could make it the strongest of the last 2; 7 was pretty weak).

I liked the character beats, I like where they're settling in. There was nothing inexplicable about any decisions here apart from Dany just being a god-awful pilot. Tyrion, Varys, Jon, Sansa, Arya, the Hound and even Jaime all did things that I would call completely within character.

Euron suddenly having fucking guided Typhoon Missiles on the decks is a little wonky. I mean it took 3 weeks for Qyburn to equip the whole of Kings Landing and its fleet with SAM batteries. I kinda feel like maybe they've done a little too much in the name of evening the odds for Cersei here (and that all of the "man, Tyrion is an idiot" machinations of the last couple seasons have been with an eye on leveling things up a bit, which is frustrating).

But the dialogue was once again pretty good and I think GoT is just better at interpersonal dynamics and political intrigue than it is as the magic stuff. So in that regard, the disappointment of Ep3 shouldn't be surprising, nor does the summary disposition of the Night King really seem all that frustrating anymore.
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My main irritation is that the dragons have basically disappeared as a factor. I'm sure that we're going to get Dracaris the Burninator next week... but damn. Rhaegal went out like a bitch, and it sucked, especially since that was Jon's dragon.
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To be fair, it doesn't really happen when one side has complete air superiority. You know the map here - you know Storms End and Kings Landing are essentially Kansas City and St. Louis - having a goddamn dragon and not doing basic reconnaissance is pretty silly stuff.

You could have her go out scouting, see the slew of ships/scorpions, dodge a few arrows and return back saying "oh shit - Plan B; they've got air cover..." and not force yet another storytelling device through raw stupidity.

I'm not sure how you get Missandei captured at that point but they're writers, they can figure something out.

Again, that was my only real big complaint about this episode though. There was a lot of 'old school' GoT here with one big tactical/logical fuckup that was obviously just a mechanism to write out another dragon and try to put some stakes in the fight to come.
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I mainly want to know how Dany's crew had any idea Missandei was captured at all. Wouldn't they have assumed she was dead along with all the other redshirts?
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Yeah, that's an annoyance that exists because there's simply no time left.

What you want is this last season extrapolated over two seasons.

Old GoT would have an entire episode or two highlighting the Missandei capture.

That seems to be what you, and others expect. There's just no time left for that anymore so we get left with off timing/sequencing.
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Martin did a truly spectacular job with Cersei in that regard.

When I re-read the books, I realized that you can literally read the cheese slipping off her cracker. She has some POV chapters in Feast and I think Dance and in those you can get in her mind. Martin does an amazing job of making it seem reasonable to her in her own head while making those 'reasonable' justifications look relatively batshit to outside observers. He makes her paranoia shine through as well.

Martin uses the POV structure to do a really nice job of demonstrating someones descent into the maelstrom and that's not an avenue available to the showrunners here.
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I believe Cersei wanted them to know and so she sent a raven or something to like effect. Cersei's after psychological warfare in much the same way Ramsay was; waiting for emotion to force a mistake.

She wanted Dany to know she had Missandei and wanted to get her hopes up, only to dash them. She wants that Jon Snow blind charge into an entire cavalry division.

I don't have any issue with that at all - perfectly true to character from pretty much all parties.
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Right, but these are things we have to assume based on how it's worked in the show's history.

DaFace knows this. He just wants to see it fleshed out. Like i said, in the past, they'd spend an entire episode or more on Missandei's capture.

We don't have that luxury anymore.
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And let's also not forget that earlier episodes were criticized for being ponderous. WTF do I need to see Dany reading a raven's scroll for?

Like you said - we're 90% sure of what went down there. Frankly, by being 90% sure we can assume we're 100% sure because if it were the other 10% we'd have been shown it.

We're damn near 100 hours of show time into this thing at this point - when it comes to ministerial shit like cleaning latrines and getting messages, I neither need nor want to be hit over the head with it anymore.
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Do we really know how much time has passed in the show's world?

It's been so hard to tell for the last two seasons. When they had 10 episodes, it was easier to fit in some kind of sense of travel duration, etc. You can't do that with what they've been given and it's really throwing everything off.
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She was in a skiff.

BTW - I don't disagree. I'm just not upset at the show. I'm upset with GRRM. At this point I will fully accept the show ending for what it is.
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It was Varys and Tyrion's best episode and dialogue since Season (3, 4)?
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Oh, and although I dislike the handling of the dragons' demises so far, I'm still enjoying the show. It's generally when I log in to the message boards that I start disliking episodes. This board, though, is downright complimentary of the show compared to another board I'm on, which has about 90% of the board just completely trashing each and every aspect of every episode. I've basically stopped reading that board.
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Sansa totally played Tyrion. I mean, what did he think was going to happen when he told Varys of Jon's true identity? Yeah, this crazy bitch has been threatening to kill me for a year now, I think I'll stick with her now that somebody decent and sane has a better claim to the throne?
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Here's something you just wanna yell at the screen, though - and this is coming from someone that's hated Dany from her introduction (she's even worse as book Dany).

Varys, Tyron - maybe she's not actually the Mad Queen. Maybe she's just pissed off because she keeps listening to you fucking guys and you keep getting her allies and dragons killed. Maybe the master of whisperers and spy chief inside Kings Landing should've known that they had a bunch of goddamn missiles on the walls. Maybe the guy that came up with "lets divide our forces and sail through where the iron fleet already ambushed us once" could've come up with a viable overall defense of your troop carriers.

Maybe she's mad because the one person that seems to have given her any advice worth a shit just got her head chopped off when her hand, once again, couldn't convince his sister to come in out of the rain.

Her advisers have failed her miserably, she's not terribly pleased about any of this and those same advisers reaction is "well clearly she's just crazy...."

Huh? Isn't this like fucking your wife's sister and then calling her irrational for getting upset when she finds out?
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