[There was a video here]

Warning: Gore above.

Well, that's more like it. A week after the talkiest, least exciting and flat-out worst Game of Thrones episode ever came the bloodbath that was last night's episode. Beheading, disembowelment, manic shaking of an amputated leg, throat-slicing, a fucking blow dart...this was just a symphony of nihilism. If the show can keep up the pace set in this episode (not just with the violence but with actual character progression like that of Theon Greyjoy's insane takeover of Winterfell), it'll make the mostly inert first half of its second season well worth it. Like the Heinz ketchup that the blood spilled on the show does not look like, perhaps it is true that good things come to those who wait.

(Bonus points for having Downton Abbey's Rose Leslie show up as wildling intent on vag-slapping Jon Snow into submission. How secretarial of you, Gwen! Now, if we could only watch Mrs. Pattmore get hanged, drawn and quartered, this show would be perfect.)

As far as dickage went, there was a near-rape of Sansa and the wildling Osha swung her boobs around. Eh. As far as Dinklage went, Tyrion had a few good lines ("We've had vicious kings, and we've had idiot kings, but I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot") and he got to slap Joffrey again (which resulted in another good line: "And now I've struck a king. Did my hand fall from my wrist?"), but he was the same non-entity he's been for the past few episodes. It's just as well because it's not like he could compete with the real -age of the week: carnage.