Good lord, y'all are a bunch of miserable souls if you're disappointed with the season so far.
Riverrun: Tie up loose end with Blackfish escaping 3 seasons ago and ending up in the boat with Gendry. People complained for two seasons that he was forgotten about and then they get mad in "wasting time for no reason" at Riverrun. It gave us clarity into where Jaime is as a character at the moment. We've seen him go through a lot of different stories and emotions, but he's clearly still not ready to turn over a new leaf and shed himself from his reputation. Also, got some good Bronn time and was reminded of Pod's big wiener.
Battle of *******s: Those that are complaining of it being OBVIOUS that the KotV will come in and save the day are only the people who sit on reddit magnifying into a letter and filling in the missing words to read that letter. I get it, everyone on this thread is used to overanalyzing every little thing happening in GoT because you read the books where you have to pay attention to every single little detail, but the show isn't made for the book readers. To the MAJORITY of the audience, they had no clue who Sansa's raven went to (possibly LF was one of a couple of ideas they had at the time, but zero confirmation). Furthermore, they still don't know what side LF is on or if Sansa has decided to forgive him. So yea, to the majority of the show watchers, it would be a surprise to see LF show up at the last second and save the day. If this makes you mad, then maybe you should stop watching the show and just wait for the book to come out.
Arya: I spend as much time as anyone on this thread making up crazy hypotheses, but being upset with the story because your crazy Fight Club theory didn't pan out is pretty immature. Here's the sequence of events now that we know how it all went down:
Day 1 at Noon: Arya talks to Jaqen about who wants to kill Lady Crane and Jaqen says a servant doesn't ask why.
Day 1 at 5 pm: Arya has a last second change of heart and knocks the cup from her hand, saving her. Arya has no idea the Waif was watching her.
Day 1 at 9 pm: Arya gets Needle and finds a place to sleep since she's not going back to the House of B&W. Meanwhile, Waif has already seen Arya changed her mind and reported it to Jaqen. Usually this would probably take a few days, but the Waif had a grudge and was spying on Arya.
Day 2 at 8 am: Arya goes strutting about acting like a nobleman so she can convince a captain to give her passage to Westeros. She has to act like she has money so the Captain will agree. Furthermore, to convince the Captain to leave first thing tomorrow morning, or 36 hours after knocking the cup from Lady Crane's hand. This explains why she wasn't as on guard as everyone wants her to be, because she's convinced she'll be off the continent before Jaqen ever notices she's missing.
Day 2 at 8:30 am: She's leaving the docks and stops for a split second to reminisce about leaving a city she's grown to love. BOOM, surprise attack!
Look, I get people being upset that Arya was being dumb enough that the Waif got the jump on her as she was trying to flee the city. But here's the thing, the Waif is CLEARLY better than her. She's a better assassin in all ways, blending in, fighting, being in the right place, sneak attacks, and ruthlessness. It should be no surprise that the Waif was able to get the jump on Arya, SHE'S IMMENSELY BETTER THAN ARYA. Furthermore, she purposely only stabbed Arya twice so that she would survive the encounter and suffer longer. People being mad that Arya survived are ignoring the fact that the Waif purposely left her alive to make her suffer. Besides, her body has been trained to take a beating. She's been systematically beaten up daily for possibly a year or more. Things that would kill a normal person are survivable by a Navy Seal. What would have been truly unbelievable to me would be the Waif, a highly trained and smart assassin, inexplicably walking into a dark room to fight a fully healthy Arya instead of waiting for a better time to attack.