The Dwarven storyline is probably the most successfully executed in the show, although not without its limitations.

Setting: Khazad-dum stands alongside Numenor as a masterpiece of production design. There are awesome little details everywhere you look. Although it’s well-sung, I don’t care for “Hymn to the Rocks” either as music or as world-building: it feels too animistic for the mindset of the dwarves seen in the source material. In Tolkien’s works, Durin the Deathless is believed to reincarnate as the later Durins, but Durin III in ROP speaks of a more cyberpunk or Dune-inspired concept of dwarven royal memories being transmitted from one king to another.

Durin III: like Adar, he’s played by an actor famous for other stuff, and like Adar I found the performance kind of overhyped – solid, capable, but not “I could listen to this dude read the phonebook in character” levels of fascinating. The character benefits from the fact that the audience knows he’s right about the Balrog, and suffers from bad writing in the scene where he breaks with his son.

Durin IV: he’s great fun in the comedy scenes, but annoying in the dramatic ones, always Little-Mermaiding around, fretting about his friends on the surface when his first responsibilities lie with the people he has been chosen to rule.

Disa: By far the best interpretation of a dwarf character in the show: warm and loyal, but also with the creativity and pride Tolkien’s dwarves show. I’m a little annoyed by the decision later on to turn around and present one of only two(1) happily married women on the show as Lady MacBeth of Moria, but the actress sells the changeover nicely. And no, I do not give a toss about her not having a beard – Tolkien was of two minds about whether female dwarves grew them or not, and any dogmatism on the subject comes, like a lot of other misconceptions, from the PJ movies.

-Balrog/Mithril: I think showing the balrog objectively (as opposed to, say, in a vision of Durin III’s) is a mistake, and the mining subplot is overly repetitive.

-And no, I’m not going to talk about Elrond here, but in the post about Elves.

(1)The other being Nori’s stepmother