That's my point. The showrunners didn't know what GRRM was planning to do with the Dorne plot in Book 6-7 (or even when those books were coming out), so they had to establish and maintain all the major Dornish characters through Season 5 just in case the upcoming novels did something amazing with them.

Yeah. . . Killing Jon Snow makes sense as a "Step One" only if "Step Two" is disbanding the Night's Watch and getting the hell out of Dodge. . .which, objectively, would definitely seem to be the smart move.

Ok, you're right. That pun sucked.

And how the heck did they do that? Jaime's ship was anchored about 100 yards offshore from the Red Keep itself, so it's hard to imagine a second seafaring vessel sneaking up on them without horns being sounded and longships being launched to intercept them.

He might have joined the Brotherhood Without Banners. . . if they're going to introduce Lady Stoneheart, having him there would kill two birds with one. . .stone.

Poor bugger. . . . so WHERE IS THE GODDAMN BLACKFISH???

Good question. . . my guess is that he's still being held at the Twins, most likely living a somewhat comfortable existence with his wife. Walder Frey might now be the Lord Paramount of the Trident, but the way he got that gig pretty much guarantees that he'll be unable to unify the Riverlands without a Tully spouse…

Ha! Well, with any luck, all three of them will perish offscreen. I'd root for Cersei to capture Trystane's assassins and hand them to Qyburn for. . . . well, no point in asking Qyburn what for, but it's sure to have an amusing payoff towards the end of the season.

Ugh. True. . . the next time I have to suffer through some plodding, implausible sequence involving the Sand Snakes, I'll try to remember just how much worse it can get.

Nope. Also, am I the only one who keeps having to remind themselves that Ellaria Sand is not Shae?

Plus, it would spare a character who was just becoming interesting while killing off a Sand Snake. Win-win, in my book. . .

What would have been really awesome is if we saw the shot of her drinking the vial. . .and then bleeding from her eyes and coughing up blood anyway, basically exactly the same thing that was happening to Myrcella on the boat.

If we're going to have random characters, show up and murder the Boltons, I'd have preferred a band of Wildlings led by Tormund Giantsbane.

Yep, but she had a vial of the antidote for that poison ready to go. We see her drink it right before the close.

It's possible. . . the southeasternmost corner of Essos is Asshai and the Shadow. If the world is shaped in some odd way, like some kind of Moebius strip, then potentially what's southeast of even that . . is the uttermost northwest, which is to say the Land of Always Winter, which is the northernmost part of the…

"I am still not sure that Roose and Ramsay can sustain a story of their own, if I’m being fully honest,"

Or better still, they should have died onscreen in a mirror image of the scene with Doran: they die, while he explains why they're too stupid to be allowed to live.

Fair enough; but in that case, they should have found a way to spare Oberyn. His death wasn't necessary to prompt the Sand Snakes to kill Doran; his imprisonment by the Lannisters would have had the same effect, and we could have been treated to any number of amusing exchanges between him and Varys, him and Cersei,…

I think the show's writers kept the Dorne storyline open because they weren't sure what GRRM was planning to do with it in Books 6-7. With the delay of Book 6, they're now officially free to do whatever they want with that plotline, and what they want to do with it (and have probably wanted to do for quite some time)…

Ok, fair enough. . . but if the goal was to create gratuitous violence at the expense of a maddening plothole, they could have at least created better violence.