Full spoilers follow for Primal Season 3, Episode 3, “Feast of Flesh,” which is available on Adult Swim now and debuts on HBO Max on January 26.

The thing about Primal Season 3 so far is that it’s doing a slow burn, really taking its time getting zombie Spear to where he’s almost certainly going – to find his family, or at the very least to find out what happened to his family. So if you’re down with a contemplative eight or nine minutes featuring a thinking zombie playing with a flying cricket-esque bug, then you’re in luck. But if that’s not your cup of tea, well… don’t worry, because the slow burns have also been sure to include plenty of goopy, head-smashing violence as well, and you get that in the last 10 minutes of “Feast of Flesh.”

But come on, the extended opening sequence this week which finds Spear happening upon a beautiful turquoise and violet cricket is something to behold. For the most part, Primal has left behind the dinosaurs so far this season, but creator Genndy Tartakovsky and his team have given us plenty of more “modern,” I suppose, animal life, like the lions, antelope type critters and birds from last week. And here the gentle animation of this little insect just munching out on a leaf while Spear watches it in amazement is, well, amazing.

Of course, Spear keeps getting those flashes to his past, which have become clear at this point to be of Fang, his old dino friend. But what is it in this cricket that has him so fascinated? Is it the bug’s color scheme, which partially matches Fang’s? Is it the memory of a wild beast fending for itself in the forest? Or does he feel an aching, a longing for the friendship he once had with such a creature?

The score by Tyler Bates and Joanne Higginbottom this week highlights the more whimsical nature of Spear’s frolicking with the cricket, whether he’s chasing it through the brush, finding that it’s landed on his arm and is staring directly at him, or realizing that it’s crawling onto his head (brain). By the time he saves the bug from being eaten by a reptile, we’re fully invested in this thing – and its connection to Spear. It’s a cute little guy, as is the entire segment, and it all serves to create a bond between the two… or at least we the viewer form a bond between Spear and the cricket in our minds. And certainly Spear feels it as well… Does the cricket, though? It’s hard to say.

As mentioned, the second half of “Feat of Flesh” does become more of an action-palooza, as Spear finds himself captured by – let’s face it – some hateful little flesh-eating monsters. They’re small, but there’s a ton of them, and by the time Spear awakens after being knocked unconscious (which apparently is a thing that can happen to a zombie of his variety), he’s been strung up upside down and had all the flesh eaten off of his right hand and half his arm. He’s also surrounded by the dangling skeletons of these creatures’ past victims.

Not surprisingly, his savior arrives in the form of his cricket friend. It’s funny how the insect first shows up unseen, doing its chirping thing; anyone who’s had a cricket get into their house knows how the flesh-eaters must feel in that moment. But soon enough the cricket takes to annoying the little mutants as it buzzes around them, giving Spear the chance to escape from his trap.

At this point, Primal could have gone one of two ways. Spear and the cricket defeat the mutants together and escape the cave, or the cricket gets smooshed and Spear takes his revenge. I gasped when the latter happened, even if I should’ve known it was inevitable. The look on Spear’s face when he sees his dead friend, and the animation of the thing in its death throes as its little legs twitch for their final time, is heartbreaking. Dammit, Primal made me fall in love with a bug.

This review contains full spoilers for this week’s episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Titled “Hard Salt Beef,” this week’s episode begins with Dunk’s quest to find a noble lord who can vouch for his dead master, the hilariously well-endowed Ser Arlan of Pennytree, so that he can participate in the Ashford tourney. The problem? No one remembers Ser Arlan.

Even after Dunk succeeds in finding someone who does – Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen (Bertie Carvel), a Targaryen who is actually a nice guy?! – it’s not until he sees the knights of the Great Houses clash at the tourney (which has big NASCAR and WWE vibes) that Dunk realizes he’s romanticized Ser Arlan, admitting to his squire Egg: “Do great knights live in the hedges and die by the side of a muddy road?”

The thrust of this episode is Dunk’s growing disenchantment with knighthood. The knights he’s encountered so far at Ashford have mostly been entitled and abusive jerks, not the chivalrous warriors of legend. At first the prospect of a member of the Small Folk like Dunk rising above his station seems possible, especially after meeting Ser Donnel of Duskendale; surely, if the son of a crabber can become a great knight, then why not Dunk? After Egg reveals that Ser Donnel isn’t some working class hero but a member of a prosperous and powerful merchant family, it’s the beginning of the end of Dunk’s pipe dream. “What chance do I have, truly?”

The knights’ casual dismissal of Ser Arlan isn’t just about them brushing off the deeds of a hedge knight, but a rejection of the values Dunk believes a knight should stand for. This gap between the ideal and the reality of knighthood appears to be putting Dunk on a collision course with the very men whose ranks he seeks to join. In the end, Dunk is so upset that none of the knights (except Baelor) remembered his mentor and father figure – he calls himself Ser Arlan’s “legacy” – that he vows to use the Ashford tourney to “show them what his hand has wrought.” If he can’t join ’em, he’ll beat ’em…or so he hopes.

The knights aren’t the only people Dunk encounters in this episode who are nasty to him, with everyone from a stable boy to Lady Gwin demeaning him (“You’re big and stupid!”). People have called Dunk dumb his whole life, as he recalls to Egg, but, well, he is a big dope. That’s part of Dunk’s charm; he’s simple yet sweet, and is especially good to horses. He has a kind heart, and credits Ser Arlan with raising him to know what’s right.

As he peels back the layers of his seemingly simple-minded hero, Peter Claffey continues to impress as the lovable doofus Dunk, while Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg smartly plays his cards close to the vest as a squire who behaves like he has something to hide. Their banter is among the highlights of this episode, particularly Egg’s response to Dunk’s observation that he’s always been called stupid. It was also sweet to see how Egg helped Dunk when he was struggling to articulate what sigil he wants the puppeteer Tanselle to paint on his shield.

Speaking of Egg, it’s curious how fast he hightailed it back to camp once he spotted the Targaryens riding into town, not to mention that he knows more about knights and the Great Houses of Westeros than a kid his age probably should…