SPOILERS FOR THE SHOW, NO SPOILERS FOR THE BOOKS – if you haven’t read the books, you can still read this . Crossposted from the spoilery edition at All Leather Must Be Boiled.

* That was tough to watch. Who knew? Maybe months of anticipating what would happen in this episode were enough to recreate a week of wondering what would happen in this episode. By that final scene my pulse was racing, and I had that elevator-dropped-out feeling in my stomach I’d grown familiar with from The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Battlestar Galactica, and Lost, shows that at one point or another had me convinced that anyone, literally anyone, might not make it to the end of a given episode. Only this time, I knew, and still got that feeling.

* It was the show’s best scene as filmmaking, certainly. Sweeping camera movements to create a sense of immersion and environment, intelligent sound design that highlighted or dropped this or that element to hyperfocus our attention, terrific performances from Sophie Turner and Maisie Williams and Sean Bean. Even little details, like how Joffrey was framed when he ordered the execution, or the way Ser Ilyn Payne just materialized out of nowhere, slapped on his mask, and brought the sword down, delivered.

* You’re primed to think the big question is “Will Ned sacrifice his honor or die?”, not “Will Ned sacrifice his honor and die?” The misdirection goes well beyond “they’ll never kill the main character…will they?” and into how the whole back half of the season/book is constructed.

* Jeez, the Hound is huge. Did you see him holding Ned on the steps when Ned got beaned by the crowd? He towered over Sean Bean.

* And speaking of sound design, the sounds from Drogo’s tent…woof, that was good stuff. I actually think this was a more frightening way to approach it than the scary shadows of the book. It’s actually more of a challenge to make a tent feel like a mouth into hell in broad daylight, but those horrible bellows and screams were more than enough. I wouldn’t have gone in there.

* I’m glad to see Varys’s motives being revealed and treated as sincere. Even Ned seems to get that. Conleth Hill was especially good in that scene, every bit the practiced liar finally letting his guard down and delivering some real talk.

* Michelle Fairley continues to improve as Catelyn. Her anger and frustration with Walder Frey’s pettiness and her tears of joy upon seeing Robb return from battle were her two most human displays in the whole series. Catelyn’s our main character now, for all intents and purposes, and this episode made me a lot more optimistic about that prospect.

* Tyrion’s sleepover party with Bronn and Shae was a blast. You’ve got to hand it to Jerome Flynn and Sibel Kikelli, who took two characters we barely know, including one we just met, sat them alongside a main character played by a beloved actor, and made it feel like yeah, absolutely these three people would stay up into the wee hours drinking and goofing around together. I’m a softie, so I’m happy anytime characters in fiction about how hard the world is manage to respect and befriend one another.

* Just a lot of fine moments sprinkled throughout the whole episode, actually. Sticking Tyrion on the dolly for that shot as he comes to was inspired, just as discombobulating as you’d imagine it was for Tyrion. Maester Aemon comes out of nowhere to reveal that he’s one of the most important people in the world. Jon’s fellow grunts flip out over his sword like the teenage boys they are, while Rast and his fellow raper sit in the corner glowering. It was a really, really good hour of television, good enough to get me too keyed up to sleep properly.

* I’ve long said it’s a mug’s game for people like me to try to speak for viewers who’ve never read the books, but I do wonder what they made of this episode’s two major battles taking place off-screen. Since I’ve been following the production of the show from day one, I was aware that budget limitations constrained them from going too crazy in the battle department, but I did expect that they’d get at least one in before the season was over, and it stood to reason that Tyrion riding into battle at the front of a horde of screaming tribesmen was going to be the one. Instead he got clocked on the head and slept through the battle. While this was certainly true to the material’s penchant for puncturing the glory balloon and letting all the air seep out, it also felt like what it was — a way to save money. Ditto Robb’s victory in the Whispering Wood, despite it being presented in much the same off-screen way it was in the book. Since the show isn’t wedded to the book’s POV-character structure, it’s show itself to be perfectly capable of showing us what was going on when our POVs were elsewhere. Robb Stark’s direwolf-aided sneak attack on Jaime Lannister would be a logical choice in that regard, you’d think. It’s a testament to the filmmakers that this episode felt as epic and portentous as it did even though both battles were presented as a fait accompli.

* And boy, there’s nothing quite like feeling disappointed about the lack of battle scenes to make you question if you’ve truly internalized A Song of Ice and Fire’s anti-war message as much as you’d thought. I think I’m okay with my desire to see a good battle scene despite my growing (and ASoIaF-aided!) pacifism — after all, it is okay to enjoy things in art you’d never enjoy in real life. Certainly someone as apt to freak out over animal cruelty as I am had to come to grips with that fact if I were to watch the show at all. But more than that — and here I credit Maureen Ryan, who’s been something of a killjoy about the show, for the insight — A Song of Ice and Fire is a series about war, and it’s tough to be about war without showing war. I still think the message gets through thanks to all the other horrible killings we’ve seen, but seasons down the line, things like Septon Meribald’s monologue about broken men are going to have less of an impact if we’ve never seen why men might break. Or maybe I just want some exciting and thrilling carnage. Maybe it’s both.