Everyone is awful, and the writers seem determined to make each week more awful than the last. By this point, I don't care about any of the characters. I don't want any of them to succeed, and I'm also not particularly interested in whatever stomach-churning way the show has devised to make them fail or betray one another. By Episode 6, even Matt Smith has lost his luster. Defenders of the show may claim that such hateful backstabbing is "realistic," but medieval political intrigue has been done better before. This show is built on shock-value and violence alone, without any emotional core for viewers to care about.