You can say whatever you will about Game of Thrones (and I think I have).  But this much is hard to dispute – event television doesn’t get any bigger.  Both on-screen and off, GoT has achieved a ponderous bulk that sometimes makes it difficult to see the charms that made the material so successful in the first place.  Yet though I admit it was with a mix of anticipation and dread, I can’t deny I that I waited for the premiere of the series’ final season with a great sense of excitement.  The rush is like no other TV show can provide.

What’s new this time was a bit of exhaustion in the mix, more than I’ve ever felt with a Game of Thrones premiere.  I’m kind of ready for it to be over to be honest.  I had my share of problems with Season 7 to be sure, but it will struck me as having benefitted from fully unpinning from George R.R. Martin’s parent story, whereas Season 6 was mired in an ugly limbo – half-in, half-out.  At this point I think I’ve emotionally moved on from the books and I’m ready to face whatever half-assed resolution Benioff and Weiss cobble together for the TV series.  They know Martin’s ending, this we know – whether they’ll use a variation on it we have no idea.  But I ask this: does it matter?  Does anyone in full possession of their senses have real optimism that Martin will ever finish A Song of Ice and Fire at all?

No, I’m viewing this season as not just the ending of a version totally separate from the novels, but as the only ending we’ll ever get (and if we do get a canon book ending, that’s a bonus).  And as is so often the case with Game of Thrones these days, I’m quite torn in how to react to “Winterfell”.  On the one hand I found myself loving this premiere for the same reason many will likely pan it – it wasn’t a bloated patchwork of blockbuster action scenes spread out across continents in impossible time increments.  It was small, intimate and personal.  That’s always been Game of Thrones’ best side, and it still is.  The problem is, with only six episodes to go and the first of them being what “Winterfell” was, how in blazes are Benioff and Weiss going to resolve everything that still needs resolving?

I’ve struggled over six seasons with how best to cover this series, and I’ve never really found a format that I was happy with.  I think the problem is, it depends on the episode.  And with this episode, I think simply commenting on some key moments might be best.

• The whole Jon/Sansa/Arya thing feels very forced to me, just as it always has.  I don’t think either Jon or Sansa are completely in the wrong here, but it’s frustrating to see this continue episode after episode.  What will happen when Sansa finds out the truth is anyone’s guess.
• At least Jon and Arya – who were always closer than any two Stark siblings – got to have a suitably warm reunion.  It’s just going to sting that much more when Arya betrays him.
• “Reunions” was definitely a theme of this episode.  The fact is, there were so many this week that would have been centerpiece moments if this weren’t the endgame that exhaustion sets in, to a certain extent.  Tyrion and Sansa probably isn’t one a lot of people gave much thought to, but it’s a pretty big one.  Sansa managed both to apologize to Tyrion (which was only right) and to mock him for believing Cersei’s promise to send her army.  Not that she was wrong to do so, of course.
• More big reunions lost in the flood of everything-ness – The Hound and Arya, and Arya and Gendry.  I loved the little smile Sandor gave when he acknowledged what an “icy little bitch” his old charge was.
• The whole thing with Bronn, the hookers and the crossbow – as much as I love Bronn – felt totally tacked on and irrelevant.  As if B & W just had to find a way to get T & A into the episode.  Also, every scene with Cersei and Euron ground on forever.
• Theon is a lot better at rescuing Ayla than she was at rescuing him.
• The big set piece, the dragon riding – it was fine, I suppose.  If Jon didn’t already suspect the truth you’d think that would have been the nudge he needed.  I’m still not feeling those two as a couple at all.
• Varys as usual makes the most of the least dialogue – that line about respect was rather on-point.
• It hurt to hear Bran tell Sam that he was more a brother to Jon than bran was, but it’s true.  I ache at seeing what Bran has been reduced to as a character, sitting and staring at people and saying ominous things.
• As usual, John Bradley makes Sam one of the most relatable and genuine parts of the story.  The way he took the news about his father and (especially) brother’s death was a fantastic bit of acting, but it also set up what was for me the most important scene in the episode.
• That, of course, was what immediately followed Sam’s encounter with Bran – when he swallows his grief, goes down into the crypts and tells Jon the truth.  And the key moment of the entire episode is Sam’s question to Jon – “Would she do the same?”  Would Jon have roasted his family alive for not bending the knee – and will Daenerys do what Jon did, give up a crown to save the world of the living?  This is the elephant in the room for me, and Jon’s blindness to it is his greatest character flaw – the question of whether Dany is fit to sit on the Iron Throne is, even at its most charitable, an open one.  For Jon this really is about saving the world – for Dany, I believe it’s mostly about ruling it at any cost.
• I was certainly pleased to see Tormund and Beric (two of my favorites in this entire cast) had survived the fall of The Wall – though of course we got no explanation as to how.  We even got a reunion with Dolorous Edd, though the tidings from Deepwood Motte were ill at best (especially for little lord Umber).
• The most fascinating reunion in an episode full of them – and the most cutting callback in an episode full of them – came with a wear Jaime riding into Winterfell and seeing none other than Bran waiting for him.  That’s the “old friend” Bran told Sam he was waiting for, of course – and this is a conversation I’m more than anxious to hear play out next week.

All in all, “Winterfell” did what premiere episodes of Game of Thrones have almost always done – set the table rather than serve the feast.  What makes that surprising is that it was 1/6th of the final season, but I’m still glad of it.  I like Game of Thrones better when it goes deep than wide, and when it focuses on characters talking to each other than looking at green screens.  A lot of what happened this week were events that were literally being built up to for the entire length of the series, but for the most part the biggest moments worked.  The trouble is, for Season 8 of GoT I think this was the easy part, the Ruy Lopez opening.  The problem is Stockfish is sitting across the table from Benioff and Weiss, and the tough moves are all still to come.