I'm going to take a page out of Arkangels' book and say 'Shit was bad, son'. I agree with everything Ryll said in his initial post on this episode. The show had already straining my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point for a while and it was mostly gone by the time episode 11 rolled around but this Yui arc dragged it outside and shot it in the head with both barrels for me.

Similar to Ryll, I continue to watch the show despite thinking it is of poor quality because 1) as I am now completely broken of the mindset that this story is 'happening' I can now enjoy the metastory of 'some guy wrote this glorified fanfiction called Sword Art Online and lots of people think its awesome but I disagree'. 2) It's fun to be a part of such a controversial event/discussion and I don't think another dozen 25 min slices of my life are too much to give up to keep being a part of it and 3) the animation and world have enough potential to be interesting that I can let my imagination write a better story in my head while the main characters aren't completely stealing the focus with their Mr. and Mrs. Marty Sue shenanigans.

To offer a new? critique for the SAO defense league, I find that the show continues suffer from the way it tries, but fails, to blend its traditional fantasy elements (the medieval heroic setting) and its sci-fi/tech elements (the 'it's all just a high tech game' setting). They are both executed rather typically but they just aren't meshing properly with one another. For example, why should children in the game be behaving all that differently than the teenagers and adults in the game. They have been there the same 2 years as everyone else and could have learned the game, leveled up, and maybe even fought on the front lines just as well as anyone else, perhaps more as they should have an even easier time adapting to their new reality than older folks with more strong ties to 'reality'. Innocence can be crushed out of kids quite handily under pressure, just ask any former child soldier. But instead we have a scene with a 'nun' caring for an orphanage full of plucky kids with no real power who need the heroes to save them and their orphanage from big brutes who are bullying them. It's a textbook scenario pulled straight out of any fantasy setting but sitting smack dab in the middle of a sci-fi tech setting where it requires significantly more suspension of disbelief, unfortunately no effort was made to smooth over the rough edges of the transition and the whole narrative suffers for it.

To beat the dead horse some more, Accel World handles the fusion of these elements far better, though I am by no means calling it perfect either.