I understand that there are time concerns with a televised series, but I felt like there was a lot in this battle/episode that I missed in comparison to the book.

I've read that George R. R. Martin is a fan of the Chinese historical novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" (I'm a fan also), and to me it seems pretty clear that the Battle of the Blackwater was fairly strongly inspired by the Battle of Red Cliff (Chi Bi) from that book.

Both have a long lead-up to a known naval battle, led by very intelligent strategists (Tyrion in GoT, Zhuge Liang in RoTK) coming up with a strategy that involves clustering/connecting the boats with a chain/chains and then hitting them with fire. The nuances present in the telling of both of these battles in their respective books are great, and although I personally think that the GoT version was partially inspired by RoTK, Martin did a good job of putting his own spin on it and making it his own.

The TV version was still entertaining for me, but I kept on thinking about what was missing that makes the characters (particularly Tyrion) shine even more. It also seemed that everything happens so fast that it would likely be fairly confusing to viewers who haven't read the book also.

Anyone coming from a TV perspective only have a take on that? Or is anyone familiar with RoTK and see the shadows of it come through in Game of Thrones like I do?

You have my Sword!

Also Milkman, it's called money and HBO broke the bank making that episode, they simply didn't have enough money to do it like the book. I have plenty of problems with how the series is and I haven't even read the books. It's still the best fantasy series I've ever seen on TV.