Do you like exposition? Then guess what you’ll like? This episode of FSN? How’d you know?!!!?!
I honestly don’t get it. We’ve had two double-length episodes, so we’re effectively on episode five. The series has had more than enough time to tell us everything we need to know about the world. And yet the vast, vast majority of this episode was spent on talking heads discussing the finer points of the holy grail war. I want to devote this post to the characterization or the nature of the battles or something, but I can’t because this would be a four-sentence post if I did.
There’s some obvious organizational issues complicating the problem; we started with Rin and Shirou talking about the holy grail war in Shirou’s house, then we moved on to Rin, Shirou, and Kotomine talking about the holy grail war at the church. If you pay attention to the conversations, you realize a significant amount of time could be saved by combining them. After all, they’re both about the same subject.
The best I could really say is that the nature of the exposition makes it slightly more interesting. If you don’t kill the enemy masters, then the grail won’t fully materialize. Cool. But exposition is exposition, no matter what. You can talk all you want about how awesome magic is, but if I don’t see it being applied, I’m bored.
In the mean time, Rin was acting way cuter than I would have liked during this episode. Episode 0 built her up to be some sort of badass mage, and then we get the moe-friendly cuddly girl who blushes when the author insert main character says she’s his type. Anyone want to tell me what she likes about him? Have they been bonding off-screen?
Oh, and since this was a normal-length episode, we don’t actually get to see the battle this episode. I guess that means I’ll have something to look forward to at the beginning of the next episode, which presumably means the latter half of that episode will be covered in exposition.
Mo[r]e Anime 
I’d just like to point out that Rin’s embarrassed reaction is consistent with episode 0. Archer easily flustered her with compliments in the prologue too.
Otherwise, it does just feel like they were majorly padding so as to be able to stick a whole fight into the next episode.
To be honest, episode 0 gave me the impression that Rin had romantic feelings for Archer. Perhaps anime’s just got me thinking that every female character is attracted to every male character. Well, the FSN VN does have sex scenes, so you know…
The most important thing in this episode, was probably the question: why should Shirou Emiya even bother about participating in this absurd war he didn’t sign up for? Otherwise, I’d imagine the audience would complain that they don’t know the motivations of the main character for fighting – although theoretically, an implicit answer to this question could have potentially served the same purpose. But if the writer wanted to address this question explicitly, this format and time as basically probably the best.
Kirei Kotomine’s manipulation of Emiya Shirou into fighting the war was the best scene of this episode for me, and Fate/Zero made it even more delicious. And the arrival of Illya ontop of Berserker likely indicates the beginning of the war proper.
Shirou’s motivation may have been important, but it’s a cliche, even outside the realm of anime. As a result, it’s not very interesting to watch. I could forgive that moment if it wasn’t surrounded by exposition, but it was.
Similar deal with Kotomine’s manipulation. It was more interesting than the rest of the episode, but it felt like something that’s building up to a pay-off later. I’m just concerned about all the exposition I’ll have to watch before that pay-off.