Actually, the remainder of the flashback was handled quite well. I was getting bored to tears with it in the last episode but I actually (gasp) enjoyed that aspect in this episode. But, yeah, the second half was drawing out a lot of things as much as possible, from Hokage (yet again) to Naruto being antagonized for nearly ten minutes straight.

It's not bad, none of the series is, but there's just so much that could be cut out. They can maintain enough for suspense and still get rid of ~5 minutes an episode on average. And yeah, it wouldn't be AS suspenseful, but it'd be pretty close considering the time alteration. Series is overall good, it's just when it kinda drags a little the first time there's not a lot of incentive to be going back. When it gets R1ed (eventually), I'll just be picking up the volumes with my favorite fights, whereas if I felt it was a little better paced I would have considered the whole thing.