The 70 minute "Battle of the Bastards" episode was astounding. Actually two battles -- one with dragon goodness that neatly ties up about 30 side stories across the sea and the big showdown between Ramsey Bolton and Jon Snow. The bodies quite literally piled up and we cleared a few names off the cast list, and set up to clear a few more next time.
A bit of clumsiness amidst all the gore and dragons, though. You can see the writers moving all the chess pieces into place. Everyone who had their B Stories are getting the hurry-up-and-get-in-position treatment. With many of them, that means that they have to step out of character. Arya's suddenly in a hurry to go home, they dropped the Dorne storyline completely, Cersei's gone from tactical genius to bringing the hammer down, they're cramming Starks together (or eliminating them with little thought), the Hound's actions make no sense at all.
But, oh well. Get in place for the mother of all battles.
