Ironically, the show seems more shackled by the story in the books than ever, despite everyone expecting the opposite to happen once they moved past Martin's writing. There's no way they'd spend this much time on repeating storylines and stalling character development if it weren't to match the pacing somewhat in the yet unreleased book. And when you factor in that the showrunners themselves are devoid of any real storytelling talent you get this mess. The plotting is pretty predictable at this rate.
Next episode we'll get some boring Jorah bullshit (how is this asshole still alive?), probably a bit of scheming on the Iron Islands, Benjen Stark will hunt bunnies and say something about what it feels like to be dead while Bran wargs back in time to unveil the most obvious plot twist in the history of the ASoIaF universe, and Jon will find out about Sansa's decision to turn away the knights of the Vale without telling him and it'll create some boring drama between them for absolutely no reason. Rickon Stark will still be chained up in the dungeon and won't get much of either screentime or talking lines, which might be for the better anyway because no one who's watching has a clue about what he's supposed to look like anymore, or why they should even care. Daenarys will say something about fire and chains. Davos Seaworth will hand out advice he's unqualified to give and people will believe him because he has a beard. And then the episode will end with a peripheral character's death for some shock value. (Rickon Stark, we hardly knew ye.)
