He wrote this one, so he's responsible for the compromising of the characters which take place within. For instance, the scene with Joffrey deserting the field, as shown here (and for a series that errs on the "tell" side so often, they pick some odd scenes to "show" that were not in the book), feels like a cheap confirmation of him as an overt coward on top of all his other faults. If anything Joffrey would be too dumb to realize the danger, rather than weasel out with excuses as he does in this episode.

The scene between Sansa & the Hound was a bit watered down, though. The interpretation of the scene in the book that I took was that he had come there to rape and kill or kidnap her, having lost everything else, including his place in society, leaving him unbound by any further restraints. Ultimately, he is swayed by her innocence and her genuine compassion, realizing that her fear of him is borne of that innocence, and not the elitism or contempt he so despises in her class.

This just makes her look like an idiot for turning down help escaping and a possibly valuable defector to the Stark cause. In the books it was a direct contrast with Cersei's advice to make people fear her and use the weapon between her legs, as Sansa rallies the panicking women when Cersei no longer intimidates them and then averts foul play through kindness rather than seduction. I suppose a bit of that comes through in the episode, but it comes across more as a pointless childish moral stance, of Sansa simply refusing to take advantage of him.

This kind of weakening or maybe dumbing down of the characterization for cheap mass consumption of a TV audience, by the author of the original version, himself, suggests the GRRMlins might have a point about him being a sell-out.

On the whole though, this was a surprisingly good episode for one that exclusively portrayed a single aspect of the story, and probably the only episode of the show so far to be set in one geographic location. I'm guessing the special FX and extras took the budget through the roof, which is ironic, making this the opppsite of a bottle episode.

The music was interesting too. The tune of the hymn is almost exactly the way I pictured it when reading the books, and the Rains of Castamere was perfect. Its use over the credits was well done too, giving alert viewers a chance to pick up on the way it might be used next year.