It was awesome they included the Loras/Gregor joust. I was hoping for that and they delivered. Gregor is a beast! Definitely looked his size this time around. Can't wait for more of his action later on.

Arya and the Dragons! That was so cool, that grill was HUGE! Was it Belarion? I don't know if GRRM intends for Dany to actually assault Westeros while riding her dragons, but if so.....damn! Also in this scene, I believe from my reads I figured one of the talkers to be Varys, but I don't recall if Illyrio was for sure known as the 2nd. Either way that was a pretty cool revelation to me, and makes so much sense.

The Eyrie. Pretty sweet place. Not at all how I pictured it, but I liked it. I thought the sky-cell was pretty sweet as well, though I pictured it much smaller, which would have been more imposing I think. Roll the wrong way in your sleep and......

I thoughy Lysa and Robert were near spot on. Robert doesn't look quite as sickly as I imagined, but he's good enough. She was bat-crazy though, which should only get better.

A little put-off by the Renly/Loras scene. I guess with TV they had to make that rather blatant...or maybe for future story, but that scene was 100% NOT in the book right? They could have kept things more subtle like the books and still made the point I think.

Full frontal hard-on? That caused a shudder. The female viewers probably loved it, but it caught me off-guard to say the least. Gotta be edgy I guess...it is HBO. I do think they are doing a good job setting up the Theon storyline however, it won't seemed forced later on. I figure Theon will move near the top of "hated" characters come the time.

Ned and Jaime. Good scene overall. Jaime's dispatching of Jory was pretty sweet, but the one thing which sticks with me is that Jaime was fighting with 2-hands nearly the entire time, and he didn't seem cocky while fighting Ned. He's basically a 1-handed blademaster in the books, which of course means everything to his future storyline, so not sure why they overlooked this and have him fighting 2-handed with a larger sword. In fact, they've done very little to set up Jaime as the supreme blademaster that he's supposed to be, and that has me worried a little.

I can't recall if the Cersi/Robert scene is from the books (I don't recall it as so) but nonetheless I thought it was wonderful.

I loved the Varys/Littlefinger encounter, and I've loved every small council scene so far, with this one being the best. Varys is actually such a perfect casting. I could never quite picture him in my mind while reading, but I think they've nailed it for the show. His mannerisms are spot on.

And again, the title sequence was a brilliant choice. It keeps the map fresh for non-readers, keeps them up to date with locations, and it just wonderfully crafted.