Board Thread:TV Show Discussion/@comment-1600847-20150615133347/@comment-5014364-20150616192939

Thinking on it with a day to pass, my thoughts on adapting Season 5 in general are updated in that it was a huge mistake to try to adapt two novels as a single TV season - IF they chose that, if production issues forced their hand I sympathize.

As I've said before, Cersei or Tyrion were condensed but not bad.

The two "bad" things were:
 * 1 - Condensing so much of the Stannis/Bolton storyarc.
 * 2 - Stunningly bad condensations to a barely present Dorne subplot. Time that would have been better spent revisiting old plotlines at Riverrun or something.

Now the Dorne stuff can probably be "fixed" by just making them better next season. If they really killed Myrcella I'm baffled - I'm shocked at how illogical it seemed, with Trystane on the boat and all - but I hold off judgement on that specific element because we don't know if Myrcella dies in the next novel.

But lines like "You want a good girl but you need the bad pussy!" -- okay maybe Tyene was being over the top on purpose, but still: all major reviewers I've seen thought the Dorne stuff, specifically the Sand Snakes was rushed (the idea of sending Jaime to Dorne was good, Doran was great, but those moments were few). You can just tell Dorne was the bottom of the barrel in time and resources.

But the one that angers me more is just how much of Stannis's storyline got cut out.

Heck, I'd even accept cutting out ALL Northern lords.

The thing I think didn't work was, for a storyline already suffering for time reasons...pushing up book six material. Killing Shireen isn't a problem in and of itself - it's the context of "why would he resort to this now?" Even against the White Walkers you can see how a man in desperation would resort to anything.

But I think they wanted to kill Shireen now just for a shocking season finale, even though as a result it means half of Stannis's army abandon him, and the resulting battle..."went beyond tragic, and into farce". People were laughing at how outnumbered he was. It makes the Boltons look invincible.

It rushed Stannis's already rushed storyline beyond book five material...and into book six? WHY? Look maybe stuff is happening next episode we don't know about.

But - as TV Tropes' writeup pointed out - it made the whole Battle of Ice anti-climactic to an absurd degree.

I was really feeling down about this ending, the Stannis stuff so badly rushed. Dorne rushing to kill Myrcella did no favors either.

I mean, questioning whether to even stay with the show after this. But as I insist to all: next season won't be as condensed, and they're even going to actually do the Iron Islands/Riverlands subplots that got omitted before.

I just realized the show has had bad storylines before and I nearly left it over things then: The Robb/Talisa/Catelyn abomination in Season 2 was disheartening, but they've recovered from that before.

Heck, if Benioff and Weiss just once say "our hands were tied, we wanted two seasons for all of this, but the actor contract negotiations made that impossible"....I will shrug all of this off, SHRUG it off, as an unfortunate problem beyond anyone's control.

I was annoyed at changing circumstances of For the Watch from Ramsay Bolton to just "Wildlings", but that's really more the Bolton storyline's fault.

I used to think it was random, but thinking on it, I think the TV show reason was that they heard Stannis was defeated, meaning the Boltons were in full control of the North, meaning that Stannis wouldn't defend Jon and also that the Boltons would be turning their attention against the last known surviving male of the Stark bloodline sooner or later. And that maybe they didn't have someone outright state that because it would have spoiled the surprise -- i.e. if we get Thorne say next season "He was already letting wildlings in, and the Boltons would have attacked us with him in charge."

Overall, though, it's the extreme truncation of Stannis and Dorne which were deeply upsetting.