Game Of Thrones sets the table for its final conflict, but forgets to clear the coffee cup

Look, we’ve all been there: You’ve just staged a feature-length battle sequence, purportedly the longest ever put on screen, and you’re a little wiped out. You want to take a breather, but there’s just no time: There’s another war on the horizon, and you’re running out of real estate. So maybe you fast track the long-simmering culmination of a fan-favorite ’ship, and then pull an abrupt about face before the episode ends. Maybe you have a character sum up years of trauma in words that seem to diminish the years of trauma she’s faced. Maybe, in the midst of shooting the big, drunken party that outdoes your previous, big, drunken party, you leave some anachronistic garbage in the frame. These things happen, and they all happen in the fourth episode of Game Of Thrones’ final season, “The Last Of The Starks,” which A.V. Club senior writer Katie Rife and TV editor Erik Adams break down in this installment of Winter Is Here.

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