Last week’s season-best episode of Game of Thrones ended on one hell of a cliffhanger. Jaime Lannister charged toward Daenerys in a desperate Hail Mary at the end of a disastrous battle. Just as Daenerys’ dragon bellowed fire at him, Bronn knocked Jaime out of the way and into a lake. The final shot saw Jaime reaching helplessly for the surface as he sank deeper and deeper underwater.

What Would a Good Game of Thrones Ending Look Like? As the show crescendoes to its big, crowd-pleasing moments, it's losing something at the same time.

Wow! How did Jaime survive sinking to the bottom of a deep lake, clad in heavy armor and a golden hand? It seemed impossible, right? We find out the deeply underwhelming answer at the beginning of this week’s episode, when Bronn drags him onto the shore before he drowns. And how did Bronn manage to do that? Uh… don’t think too hard about it, because Game of Thrones clearly didn’t. So why end last week with the implication that Jaime was doomed at all? Because it made good television, I guess.

In microcosm, this is the problem with tonight’s episode—and, to an extent, Game of Thrones’ seventh season in general. On a show this big and complicated, there’s always a tradeoff between doing what makes sense and doing what’s exciting. Series creator George R.R. Martin himself seems to have been paralyzed by this problem; after briefly contemplating a five-year time jump to get his characters where he wanted them without all that messy business of growing and traveling, he decided the whole thing was unworkably knotty and abandoned it. This problem coincided with the lengthy delays that have greeted each of his subsequent A Song of Ice and Fire novels. If Martin has slowed down, it's because he's interested in so many little details, which grow more complicated and far-reaching with every chapter he writes. Take it from Martin himself:

I guess there is an element of fantasy readers that don’t want to see that. I find that fascinating. Seeing someone like Dany actually trying to deal with the vestments of being a queen and [dealing with] factions and guilds and the economy. They burnt all the fields [in Meereen]. They’ve got nothing to import anymore. They’re not getting any money. I find this stuff interesting. And fortunately, enough of my readers who love the books do as well.

Game of Thrones’ solution to the same problem Martin is describing seems to be: Ehhh, who gives a shit? And that philosophy has led to an undeniably rousing and action-packed Season Seven, in which characters who have been separated for the entire series have suddenly come face-to-face. Hey, Gendry is back! And he and Jon are buddies now! This rules! I’m a fan of this show, and I’m certainly not immune to fist-pumping at all the moments that are clearly designed to make me pump my fist. And with just seven episodes instead of the usual 10, I understand the impulse to skip over anything that doesn't seem absolutely essential to the series' endgame.

But the granular details that might sounds boring on paper—geography, travel, diplomacy, and training—are actually a big part of what made Game of Thrones interesting in the first place, and I've begun to miss them. There’s a reason that every episode opens with a sweeping pan over a map that includes key locations like King’s Landing and Dragonstone. By reminding the audience that King’s Landing and Dragonstone are actually very close together, Game of Thrones actually tells us a lot without resorting to a bunch of hammy exposition. We can appreciate Daenerys’ restraint in withholding the full force of her power, and sympathize with how infuriating it must be to be so close to the Iron Throne without claiming it. And we can understand the pressure bearing down on Cersei, and marvel at the insanely arrogant way she shrugs off Jaime’s warning that they can’t possibly win this war.