Dorne?

Please explain what you liked about it besides the fact that it was a new location. The only plot point it made was that Ellaria wants to go to war with Cersei. 

I need to give a certain number of examples now why I like things? I just gave 3.

Couple of my Unsullied friends liked it too.

Yeah I thought Jaime, Bronn, and Doran were good, but they really shouldn't have gotten rid of Arianne. I don't understand D&D's decision making with this storyline unless it was supposed to be a mess on purpose. I mean Indira Varma was great in Season 4, but her character did a 180 this season.

It is a little strange we never had a Trystane / Doran scene, now that I'm thinking about it.  We have no idea about their relationship and only a vague feel for what Trystane is like as a person (clever enough to notice the blood on Bronn's sash, fiery enough to reach for a sword, obedient enough to drink to Tommen's health, romantic enough to win a young princesses' heart, but that's not much to go on).  We don't know if Trystane is ambitious, loyal, sassy, vain, ect.  It would have been good to have a scene to give some insight into their relationship and figure out what Trystane's goals are.  But maybe he'll be dead too soon for that to be important.  

Now that I'm thinking about it, there were parallels between Jaime and Stannis this season. Both Stannis and Jaime were taking big risks with their lives this season - Jaime thought rescuing Myrcella would help him rebuild his family and Stannis thought taking Winterfell would gain momentum for his military comeback.  Early in the season their lowborn underlings kept warning them that their simple plans were unlikely to work out.  Both stubbornly pursued their plans anyway, both failed, both watched their daughters die.  Both daughters were killed by bewitching women that the fathers had trusted too much. And I'm sure that Jaime, like Stannis, is doomed.  

One thing that the Dornish story did help drive home was how utterly f***ed the Lannisters are.  They just have too many angry enemies that are willing to go to extremes to tear the Lannisters apart, and they're sitting ducks without Tywin.  

Doran was the only redeeming part of the horrible shit pile that was show Dorne. The inside garden location was gorgeous, but having Dorne with grassy rolling hills was ridiculous. It's a desert ffs. And the Sandsnakes were quite possibly the worst part of the show to date.

I kinda liked Dorne, too. It wasn't the best arc, wasn't the best action (well, maybe not much meaningful action at all), but I do think some important things came out of it, and I think it had some value. I really liked Doran, and we got a good idea of what kind of a ruler he is. Don't know about Trystane, but as Jaime said, "He seems like a nice young man" - - and his presence in KL will certainly have dramatic repercussions, especially with Mrycella dead (provided there's no antidote on board ship). I thought the sand snakes had much too much screen time, that their characters were written poorly, [and that, admittedly, they were pretty terrible], but perhaps one or more will show up in KL to do a dastardly deed, or perhaps show up in Oldtown, where Sam is headed. I don't know - it was the poorest part of Season 5, I think, but not entirely without value.

This is a great point Nezzer and I think it defines very simply what ended up being the main problem of the Dorne story arc failure for many. 

We can forgive the cheesy fight scenes and the three girls rather bad acting/accents - most of us did every week they were in. We blew it off as a one off because the REAL story of Dorne was coming ... or so we thought. And we waited. And waited.

And then hoping the best was saved for last - we DID get a nice ending scene from Dorne with Jaime bringing Myrcella back which we found out was the entire purpose of the Dorne arc - to off Myrcella by poisoning just when it looked like things were going to go right.

They did not give us anything at all of the original Dorne story. Nothing. They gave us very little of Doran and even less of Trystane and I think that is the real issue at hand. This was one of the choices they made that didn't work. Overall most of their re-writing choices DO work and there are three times as many fabulous storylines, characters, actors and twists to the plot. This one didn't work and we're left feeling cheated of all the great Doran stuff. Honestly, they should have stuck with Arianne's plot and they still could have killed Myrcella in the end of that if they wanted. The sandsnakes was a bad choice.

But at the end of the day, I will pick out some value in it - there was a bit of comedy, beautiful set locations and costumes and Siddig and Varma were great.

Agree with Nezzer and konrad's posts above, really.

Don't agree that Ellaria did a complete 180. It was the logical extension of the underlying message of Oberyn's plot last year. Revenge is an eternal, futile wheel. She had seen Oberyn spend years planning revenge against the Lannisters only for the source of that revenge to end up killing him brutally in front of her. It makes sense for her to continue making that same mistake, only causing more bloodshed and war. Yes she was ant-war in the books but she's a totally different character here.

The mistake was with much of the Sand Snakes, who just ended up being pretty paper-thin. I think they were largely meant to be the levity to complement Ellaria's grief-stricken ire but it didn't add much to the larger story. I didn't hate it like others but it could have been done better IMO.