GoT S5 E2 "The House of Black & White"

In "The House of Black and White", Arya arrives in Braavos. Pod and Brienne run into trouble on the road. Cersei fears for her daughter’s safety in Dorne as Ellaria Sand seeks revenge for Oberyn’s death. Stannis tempts Jon.

Pretty good episode, they have started deviating from the book storyline wise and combining characters, but that is to be expected, especially with GRRM taking fricking forever to finish the books. I loved the Wall scenes, especially Sam twisting the knife on Janos Slynt, I've been waiting for Jon to be elected Lord Commander for 2 seasons, it is one of my favorite parts of the book, next week should be another one of those moments. I love Jaqen H’ghar being back, he's just awesome, Drogon looked badass.

Last week, Game of Thrones scored the highest ratings of its lifespan with “The Wars to Come,” the show’s fifth season premiere. With the second episode, “The House of Black and White,” things have taken a dip. While the premiere was watched by around 8 million people, “Black and White” pulled in only 6.8 million, managing a rating of 3.6 among adults 18-49.

Of course, the numbers for “Black and White” are still tremendous, and were more than enough to make Game of Thrones the most successful cable show this past Sunday. Coverage of the NBA playoffs came in second, with The Real Housewives of Atlanta taking the bronze. Fun fact: three of the spots in the top 10 were taken up by reruns of The Big Bang Theory on TBS. There’s just no stopping that show.

On the broadcast side of things, “The House of Black and White” had to fight against the American Country Music Awards, which posted huge numbers over on CBS this year.

Generally speaking, it’s normal for things to level off after the premiere. The second episode always sees a drop in ratings, although this is the biggest drop yet. It’s unknown whether the widespread leak of the first four episodes is partially to blame for that dip, but it’ll be interesting to see if the numbers jump back up come episode 5. Even so, “Black and White” got higher ratings than any other second episode of any season of the show, so I’d say HBO can mark this down in the “win” column.

Promo pics for ep 5x02:

Game of Thrones: On Location in Croatia (HBO)


Game of Thrones Season 5: Episode #2 - Dorne & the Water Gardens Featurette (HBO)

That Water Gardens Location is incredibly beautiful ... just wow ...

Yea, they filmed the scenes in Spain, it looked like I imagined from the book