After the thrills and tragedy of last week's episode of Game of Thrones, it's not a huge surprise that this week's episode dialed the excitement factor down a few notches. But it wasn't bad or boring, necessarily—in fact, my biggest annoyance with "Blood of My Blood" (an episode title that, I think, means plasma?) comes from the fact that the map in the opening credits no longer reflects where the story takes place. Like, at all. The unhelpful map showed us Winterfell, the Wall, and Meereen, but unless I fell asleep during the scene where Sansa Skypes her two husbands, Ramsay and Tyrion, these credits are big fat liars. (Not depicted in the credits? Oh, just a few unimportant places like Horn Hill, the Twins, and anywhere north of the Wall. Get on the ball, opening-credits-makers!)

Cartographic laments aside, some reasonably good stuff (and a few frustrations) this week. Onward for spills and spoils!

North of the Wall, not far from last week's showdown, Meera drags Bran until she can drag no further. Unfortunately wights beset them on all sides within minutes, and Bran's no help—he's downloading the Genesis Device, or the Tesseract, or something. The glimpses we get into his visions are pretty interesting, though, and we get the show's first-ever look at the Mad King, Aerys Targaryen, who turned "Burn them all!" into a hilarious national catchphrase, kind of like Nixon did with "Sock it to me!"
THE GOOD: A not-very-mysterious figure saves Bran and Meera's bacon from the undead army with a pretty cool weapon—a fireball on a chain. Important question: If that fireball works so well against the wights, would Fireball-brand cinnamon whiskey work just as well?
THE BAD: Dang, Bran's visions are expensive. I guess it's not too surprising that a lot of them were just recycled footage from the Battle of Hardhome.
THE HUH?: Wildfire is obviously going to play a much bigger part in this story than just the Battle of Blackwater. Could Aerys have known about the White Walkers and have been stockpiling a defense against them? More importantly, is wildfire as delicious as Fireball?

Down at Horn Hill, Sam gives dear, stupid Gilly a horticulture lesson. "You're a nervous talker," she tells him. Better than being a nervous pee-er, I always say. Urgh, this scene contains some pretty bad fan-wink dialogue, if you ask me, because it will soon be revealed that Sam gets very nervous later in this episode, but doesn't say a damn thing to his unrealistically nasty father, Randyll Tarly. Something about this entire Horn Hill sequence rings untrue. How can this exceedingly pleasant place, with the exceedingly pleasant lady that is Sam's mom and the other two exceedingly pleasant Tarly children, be run by such a jerkface? Is there an ugly underbelly to Horn Hill that we haven't seen yet? Everyone, even the dozens of mute servants, seems so doggone nice.
THE GOOD: Fashion parade! Gilly wears a dress! Samwell sticks to his quilted Night's Watch finest, which at this point looks pretty smelly.
THE BAD: Oh, poor, dumb Gilly. She had one thing to do during dinner and that was not tell Sam's dad she's a wildling. Sam, meanwhile, gets very excited about that second helping of bread. That must be some damn tasty bread. Horn Hill's baking skills are off the chain.
THE HUH?: For a priceless heirloom, Heartsbane is not very well protected. Also, I have trouble remembering these types of things—does Samwell know that Valyrian steel kills White Walkers? He must.

In Braavos, Arya gets bitten by the theater bug. While this unnamed play is no Hamilton, at least it contains a recreation of Joffrey's death, which must be nice for Arya to see. And she falls head over heels for Lady Crane after watching the actress do some serious overacting. I am glad this Arya storyline finally has some forward momentum, but honestly, how can anyone be seduced away from a school of supercool faceless assassins of death, in favor of a bawdy community-theater company that specializes in speaking in verse and fart jokes? Every aspiring young actor hears this at some point in their life, so I'll just volunteer right now: Arya, you're throwing away your future. Also, that mean waif girl wants to rip your face off.
THE GOOD: Hey, she's got Needle again! All she needs is a direwolf and we're right back to where we were in Season One.
THE BAD: Ugh, theater people are the worst. Is Arya going to rewrite their awful, rhyming, farting script in order to frame her dead dad as the hero? Also, Tyrion Lannister gets a pretty raw deal in this version of events. How does this play that Arya's seen three times end, anyway? With Tommen on the throne and Tyrion on the run? Seems like a bit of a cliffhanger... oh kind of like every single episode of this TV show. How meta!
THE HUH?: How can this theater company afford cutting-edge fart-sound technology but be forced to use a cardboard cutout for its prop goblet?

In King's Landing, we're promised some real excitement as the Tyrell army enters the city. Turns out, Mace Tyrell is actually pretty good at giving rousing wartime speeches! Who would have guessed? We get the promise of a fantastic-seeming showdown between Jaime and the High Sparrow—including a horse that can climb stairs—but just as things get heated and the music swells... the Sparrow sucks all the air out of the scene by bringing out his weirdly dangerous religion's newest recruit: King Tommen.
THE GOOD: While I'm disappointed we didn't get a battle and the Faith Militant didn't get their comeuppance, I suppose I'm glad that none of the horses were harmed. Yay, horses!
THE BAD: Still, what a letdown. Let's prolong this annoying and repetitive conflict for a few more episodes, shall we? I understand that the show has something Very Important To Say about the dangers of putting religion and government into the same basket of power, but no part of this particular plot development makes sense to me. Because Tommen's on board, Margaery's sins are forgiven completely? This cuckoo-bananas-nutzoid religion's rules are—dare I say it—some arbitrary bullshit. Mace, you summed it up perfectly: "What just happened?"
THE HUH?: Despite this turn of events, Lady Oleanna's fan game remains surprisingly on point.

We return to the Twins, where we see Walder Frey for the first time in a couple of seasons, and wow, he has not improved with age. This is the danger the show can sometimes fall into, in which there are so many plot strands that some of them must be laid to rest out of necessity, but when we pick them back up, it's hard to remember where we were. Anyway, it seems as though Walder Frey really doesn't want to let go of Riverrun, which he apparently got as a result of the Red Wedding, so he brings Edmure Tully (keeping track of all these Tullys and Tarlys and Tyrells and Targaryens is exhausting) out of prison mothballs and sends him to, I think, confront his uncle, the Blackfish. Does that sound right?
THE GOOD: Walder Frey is one of the show's most disgusting, despicable characters. It's about time we see him get what's coming to him.
THE BAD: We also get a dopey scene between Jaime and Cersei, which suggests that Jaime and the Lannister/Baratheon army are going to converge on Riverrun at the same time as Frey's crew. "We're the only two people in the world," Cersei mumbles to her brotherlover, further evidence that these two have the emotional maturity of a pair of 15-year-olds.
THE HUH?: With all signs of conflict pointing to Riverrun and the Blackfish, it's a bit frustrating that these huge plot points revolve around what have been otherwise peripheral characters and places thus far. The scope of this show can occasionally bite itself on its own ass.

A quick pitstop north of the Wall reveals that—surprise!—Uncle Benjen is the man with the cinnamon whiskey. What's more, Benjen seems to know a lot about the three-eyed raven and Bran's situation.
THE GOOD: It's good to have Benjen back on board, and how super-convenient that he was right there waiting for them in their darkest hour of need! Bran and Meera, you have the scriptwriting team to thank.
THE BAD: I'm still a little confused about what happened to Benjen and how this dragonglass thing works. Also, how does Benjen know so much? Is he an honorary three-eyed raven? Maybe a two-and-a-half-eyed raven?
THE HUH?: So, are the Children of the Forest all dead? And seriously, they can only be a couple miles away from the White Walkers and Hodor's final resting place. How did they escape an army that requires no rest? It's best not to dwell on these things.

The show's grand finale is, against all dragon-y odds, a bit underwhelming, taking place in an undisclosed canyon about seven days' ride from Meereen. Daenerys and Daario discuss how they'll need a thousand ships to take Westeros, and lucky for them, I know a Greyjoy who's building a fleet of those exact proportions. Common sense suggests they'll team up with Yara and Theon to take on Uncle Euron and steal his ships. But before these plans can go any further, Dani's dragon-sense starts tingling and she rides a short way away from the army. To take a quick lady-tinkle? NO, TO CLIMB ON THE BACK OF A GIGANTIC DRAGON AND INSPIRE FEAR AND DEVOTION IN HER HORDE OF DOTHRAKI DEATHRIDERS, YOU NUMBNUTS.
THE GOOD: Always good to see dragons in this week's production budget.
THE BAD: This scene was kind of... pointless. Her followers were already fully committed to her after she burned that church in Vaes Dothrak, so this was just showboating.
THE HUH?: When they're flying hundreds of feet in the sky, they can look pretty damn majestic, but otherwise? The dragons on this show are some ugly-ass creatures. Don't burn me.

FINAL SUMMATION: Another truly mixed bag in this episode, as we watch and wait for important developments to get their time at bat. It's been pointed out that no one died in this episode (unless you count the immolation of a few wights and the skinning of a rabbit, not to mention a tasty chunk of week-old venison), and I know this is going to make me sound like a monster, but wasn't it kind of disappointing? I guess I'm most irritated by the whole High Sparrow/Faith Militant plot line. It's dumb and it's already made its point nine times over. Let's move on already! I am looking forward to where Daenerys is going, and the conflict at Riverrun sounds promising. Meanwhile, Bran and Benjen have lots to talk about. Let's hope the script gives them enough real estate to do so.