It had blatant flaws:

Sand Snakes sucked except the sexy one (and even then it was more about the titillation and the Bronn assist)
The Sansa torture-o-thon
Briennes’ aimlessness


But despite all that, even with the misery porn deaths, we ended up in a good place storyline wise. The storyline has moved heaps forward…we literally killed a few storylines off (R.I.P. Stannis). While unfortunately the characters we have to root for is down to pretty much no-one, it’s a leaner meaner show now with one exception…does Dany really need a separate damsel in distress storyline?