Hardhome was okay, if taking a creepy horror scene and turning it into one where heroism is defined by a killcount is what you're going for, but the battle of the bastards was utter crap. We get violations of physics, like a charging horseman flying in the opposite direction to his momentum at a tap from Jon's sword, mounds of corpses forming on a flat battlefield, and a cavalry charge into a formation surrounding their allies, that crushed the formation without wiping out said allies. We get violations of any military sense, where the Boltons' feudal levy are crack, disciplined infantry capable of marching & holding complex formations. The battle itself tosses all sorts of things out the window, with things people say before and after it, having no relation whatsoever to what takes place. Jon & Davos were planning to dig trenches to hold off the Bolton cavalry, but there are no trenches on the field. They are terrified of the Bolton cavalry, but they are the first ones to go down and it's the Bolton infantry who almost beat them. And all the commanders were extremely dumb, from Jon's solo charge, to Ramsey having archery capable of picking off a single, sprinting Stark but instead sending troops to close within range of Jon's sword, to Davos leading the archers on a charge before they even get down to shooting. And the really stupid part about the whole thing was Sansa refusing to mention Littlefinger and the Knights of the Vale are on their way. There was no Watsonian reason for this - they established in other meetings that Jon and the other leaders were very receptive to anything Sansa had to say, except all she would say was "Don't do what Ramsey wants" and "I don't know anything about military stuff." Also, somehow, the Vale army either got past the impenetrable stronghold of Moat Cailin or sailed to the North, landed on the coast and marched halfway across the country without ANYONE finding out they were coming. But there was a surprise. That's the important thing. And then there's the way Jon beats Ramsey he holds up a shield and Ramsey obligingly shoots several arrows into it, I guess hoping to wear it away, like he's playing Space Invaders, rather than shoot Jon's legs or something.

And then the episode ends with Sansa torturing a man to death, in the house of her father, who, in the very first scene in which we were introduced to the Starks, gave a lecture on taking responsibility for executions and making them quick and clean. It would be one thing if they were deliberately rejecting that, but instead, they make a big thing about the Stark banners being hung, like we're supposed to care about the Starkness of the whole thing, while having people do...not Stark things. And for all the bullshit feminist pandering on the show, they have Jon acclaimed King, while standing RIGHT NEXT TO Ned Stark's legal heir, his own sister, who brought the necessary troops to win the battle, which he almost lost with his idiotic charge and subordinates abandoning all planning!

Not seeing the good news.