Game Of Thrones Season 7: 10 Ups And 2 Downs From 'Stormborn'

2. The Painted Table

While they did hopefully clean it first (after it was last used as a place for Melisandre and Stannis to conceive a shadow), the scene around the Painted Table of Dragonstone was an excellent one, and felt much more like the show of old.

As the show gets bigger, so too do the battle sequences, and the political manoeuvrings that helped make the show so gripping have fallen by the wayside a little bit. This, as we see various plays scheming and making cases for different plans, is much more like it used to be.

At the heart of all of this is Tyrion Lannister. The show largely wasted him in Season 6, and he didn't get a line in the first episode this year, but he's back to something approaching his best here. He knows Westeros better than most, and is a brilliant tactician (as we'll see more of next week with the attack on Casterly Rock that he orchestrates), and it's great that he gets to put that to use here, and more-so just has something important to do. It's also good to see the show not just ignore the tension between him and Ellaria, after she killed his niece, but find a way of addressing it while keeping them on the same side.

It also gave us a scene between Daenerys and Lady Olenna, which was another to take delight in. Like Tyrion and Varys, Olenna is one of the show's great talkers (and advisors), and Diana Rigg brings so much wit to the show it's always a pleasure to watch her offer counsel and make cutting remarks.