Game of Thrones was at its best and worst with this week’s episode

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“If the cracks in Game of Thrones’ post-books storytelling were starting to show last week,” says Rob Bricken, “they’ve now erupted into to actual fault lines. Last night’s episode was sometimes baffling, and occasionally outright sloppy on a storytelling level, as characters made countless questionable decisions—and yet the show continues to astonish with such incredibly epic, fantastic moments that it almost didn’t matter. Almost.” PLUS: Could GoT go the way of Lost?, the Jon-Daenerys storyline is so weak, how the zombie polar bear was made, does it matter that the timeline makes no sense?, and GoT isn’t good anymore because there aren’t any stakes.