Dragons and death are a plus; torture and tedium are not. UPDATED with Season 4 episodes. SPOILERS ahead!

“Dark Wings, Dark Words”

Season 3, Episode 2

Directed by: Daniel Minahan

Written by: Vanessa Taylor

Watching Game of Thrones is like drinking wine — even when it's not that good, it still does the trick. That said, the "bad" GoT episodes are the ones that are preoccupied with checking in with all the disparate characters scattered across Westeros and beyond the Narrow Sea, advancing each story barely an inch in the process. When the the show's critics call it a sprawling tangle of too many characters spread far too thin, these are episodes they're talking about.

The worst offender of this lot is the second episode of what was otherwise a sterling season. Over the course of an hour, we keep hopping from Sansa to Joffrey to Cersei to Margaery to Tyrion to Jon to Samwell to Bran to Theon to Robb to Catelyn to Arya to Brienne and Jaime, and there are exactly two mildly compelling scenes between them: Sansa's introduction to the Queen of Thorns (the perfectly cast Diana Rigg), and Catelyn's confession about her feelings toward Jon Snow. (Until they got caught, I found Brienne and Jaime's bantering to be mostly just annoying.)

But neither scene can make up for the grind of tiny setups, especially of my two least favorite GoT story lines ever. The first: the endless mystery of Bran's three-eyed crow and introduction of the obnoxiously cryptic Jojen. The second: the seemingly senseless captivity and torture of Theon. And so it plops with a thud at the bottom of this list.

HBO