JRP's Needlessly Detailed WHEEL OF TIME Prime Series Commentary!

Started by JasonPratt, November 28, 2021, 12:02:23 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

JasonPratt

SO, WILL I -- cough I MEAN YOU -- BE DOING A FAUX ANTICIPATED QUESTION FORMAT FOR THIS SHOW?

No? Probably not. Not at first.  ::) Moving along.

SEASON ONE, EPISODE ONE COMMENTARY
----------------------------------

The first four eps have released (originally going to be the first two eps, on my birthday coincidentally, but the release was delayed a week). I'm typing my commentary one episode at a time, without knowing much of anything how future eps are going yet.

A quick review for anyone not familiar with the books who hasn't watched ep 1 yet: it could be much worse, but might feel a bit janky. Production values are very good, though not always up to cinema level. Acting is decent to great, although some of the minor actors get a little clunky. The story mostly works, and works for me, when it sticks to what Robert Jordan (the deceased author, hereafter RJ) established in the books. I'm okay with a few of the alterations and additions, not so much with others. If you like traditional epic medieval fantasy, this is a good start (other plot locations should be more like Renaissance era).

I personally recommend skipping past the two cold-open segments (featuring a woman gearing up for travel and leaving, and a bunch of red-garbed women on horses chasing two guys), which will clumsily introduce some larger-scale plot coupons. (The "Prime X-ray" sidebar information inadvertently reveals, on occasion, either some serious changes to the TV plot or else spoils revelations to character understanding later in the series.) Just skip ahead to 4:20 -- or if you want an interesting but vague visual spoiler, 4:05. (This half-doesn't make sense to the story, but I'll complain about it later. ;) It looks cool and evocative.) Just take your time with the slow build. If you don't like the characters or characterizations, I'm doubtful if there's any reason to continue into the worldbuilding. (Also, the show has started breaking the worldbuilding from its very first scenes, so don't get your hopes up far on that either.)

Hereafter, I'm going to assume readers have watched Ep 1, like me. I will NOT necessarily assume you've read the books (several times, and chewed over the plot extensively with other people since the mid-90s, like me ;) ). So I'll sometimes put spoiler discussion behind spoiler brackets (and even then I'll try to keep things focused on what's pertinent to Ep 1).

Good? Okay. More-or-less in episode order, with some topical order fused in.

Mountain scenery: looks great (also pretty sure it's CGI based on production photos), but I'm almost positive the Mountains of Mist are supposed to be more like America's Smoky Mountains (rolling super-tall hills 6000 feet max) -- taller than the Welsh Misty Mountains, but not at all like Tolkien's Misty Mountains. Their equivalent should be "The Spine of the World" later in the series, which won't look nearly as different and impressive by contrast now. So, one of several conflicting starts to the series for me. (I'm skipping over the two prologue scenes with more conflicts until later.)

The opening scene, like a lot of scenes in this episode, is not from the book. (Season One starts with a lot of material from The Eye of the World, hereafter TEotW or EotW, book 1 of the Wheel of Time series, hereafter WoT. This series generates lots of acronyms among fans. ;) ) It's mostly plausible, since towns in the Two Rivers area, including Emond's Field (where the action of this episode centers), do all have "Women's Circles" -- not everywhere does, especially larger cities, in the books -- and braiding hair is a coming-of-age visual look for young women in this area. So there's likely to be a ritual, just not mentioned in the book(s). The scene looks pretty great, too. The acting, all from the character Nynaeve, is okay for the setting. More on her TV characterization later. One shot seems to have been an editing glitch, amusingly, where Nynaeve says, if bad things ever start happening, Eg should "feel this braid, and know, we all stood before you." Then someone in production joked, "uh.... none of them are standing, they're all sitting, and except for Nyn they're all behind Eg." So the scene was slightly rewritten for a shot of Nyn saying, "We all stand with you." Which they're about to do (behind her, definitely NOT before her.) But the prior writing/blocking mistake was left in by accident?! It's just unintentionally funny.

Anything else here involves some light spoilers, so...

[spoiler]Pushing a woman ready to bear children, in a low-population area (those 20-ish women are almost all the women in the local village), into the cold, rocky rapids of a mountain stream, at the start of winter, doesn't make much sense, even for the hardened country folk of this area, who in the books have more than usual common sense. So if that seems weird, it's an addition.

So are the remarks about how "to be a woman is to be always alone, and never alone" -- nothing like this is said anywhere in the books. It's pretentious nonsense, and the 2R people especially aren't supposed to be dreamy guff-heads -- they'd mock this dippiness.

Aside from the needless danger of chucking Egwene (hereafter Eg) into the river, where she's supposed to learn to float with the river, the implication being that if she doesn't she'll die (but simply floating with such a river, especially in this season, will kill you, too), I kinnnnd of appreciate what the series writers are going for here, since this will come back thematically in an important way later, particularly to Egwene and to Nynaeve (who's leading the ceremony).

By the way, if you're thinking, huh, this is a surprisingly diverse looking cast of women in a sheltered out-of-the-way backwater... yeah, that makes no sense, and isn't in the story. Populations in "the Westlands" (the large continental area where most of the novels happen) do get around, but there are huge expanses of uninhabited areas surrounding pockets of population (large and small), and one of the key details in the books is that you can learn to tell where various people are from by how they look as well as how they're dressed. The 2R area is supposed to be a highly isolated and almost even inbred area: this is important to the plot because "the blood" of this area "runs strong" and produces such-n-such important results. The writers didn't want to follow the plot here, so I have to assume either these plot ideas will be thrown aside, or reintroduced later verbally as nonsense.

I'm actually okay with the population being mostly rather brown, like a bunch of ethnicities mixed together over a long time of interbreeding. This doesn't seem to be the case in the books, but it does make sense with the background of the area two thousand years ago. My actual problem is that the producers aren't consistent with it. There should be very few ethnic outsiders, such as one of the main characters Rand, whose (late) mother comes from a population of much fairer skin and red hair, far away. But some of the people are straight African black-skinned (not counting the visiting peddler who is not at all black in the books, as far as I recall, and is regarded as being more-or-less one of the local folks despite being native to a kingdom across the border.) Plotwise they shouldn't be there.

But now I'm verging out away from this scene and topic too much, so onto the next topic.[/spoiler]

I just realized, Nynaeve is now "Wisdom of the Two Rivers". The 2R is a region of four towns in the back end of a central kingdom called Andor (roughly English in culture), not the name of her local village which is Emond's Field in the books. I'm kind of okay with this, from a TV writing standpoint, but it makes the area seem smaller than it should be -- which accentuates some other problems I mentioned in the spoiler bracket.

Next scene, introducing Rand al'Thor and his father Tam. Pretty good at getting a bunch of information, some of it vague hints. I don't recall them living actually ON a mountain in the books. This scene is based on the first chapter (aside from a completely different prologue for EotW). I have one minor spoilery problem with it, which will be a pacing issue later, so:

[spoiler]The nervousness of the pair is restricted to just some wolves coming down from the mountains, howling in the distance. They should be more nervous for several reasons, chiefly because they realize they're being followed, maybe, by the black-cloaked rider in the book, and also due to rumors of various things happening in the past months during the winter.

This should give the impression they might be in real danger leaving town to go home, which is how the book runs: they discover the assault on the town later, and I think the show should have followed the same structure with the first attack being at their farm, then ramping up for the attack on the town which would still be unexpected.

While I'm passing by, I did like the assault on the farm, although it's quite abbreviated from (and somewhat weirder in) the book. Tam fights like someone who still has rusty skill, which is a good touch. His sword, however, should be MUCH nicer looking, and shouldn't be a low-rent katana. It should also have its heron-marks on the hilt, for very important plot purposes later, which I can't imagine how the showrunners are going to deal with now!

Moving along: for what I realize were probably production constraints, the setting has been changed from early spring, "Winternight" being the final usual night of winter and "Bel Tine" being the spring festival scheduled for the next day, which should have something like a maypole dance. This is precisely why Eg has braided her hair: she's of age to dance the dance of women looking for husbands! Which makes Rand pleasantly nervous since they're kind of sweet on each other. The show undermines some of this, by setting it now at the start of winter, and substituting a much different festival about death not about new life, though there's something similar in the book and doing so does give an opportunity to talk about reincarnation. But I'm getting off topic again, so...[/spoiler]

This reminds me that I suppose I should talk about the two cold-open pre-credit scenes. I don't like them much, at all, and I strongly suspect they were mandated by the studio in order to keep casual viewers from quitting due to feeling like there's too slow a pace: get some back-plot and a little magic-action in there first! Sigh. The book also has a prologue, from the distant past, which spoils a lot of interesting things quickly, and I also recommend skipping that until readers finish Book 1 (read that like an epilogue). But it's a lot more dramatically and narratively interesting than these throwaways. Spoiler-time discussing the show's two prologues, but I'll still try to minimize it; and just as I recommend you avoid the two cold-opens, avoid this spoiler-discussion by proportion...

[spoiler]In the first cold-open, Moiraine Sedai is dressing for travel, to leave somewhere (the White Tower, in the city of Tar Valon) with her bodyguard (known as a Warder) Lan Mandragoran, while narrating backstory to us. While the basic information isn't wrong, there are problems with it. First, the men she's complaining about, led by the guy nicknamed the Dragon, didn't try to trap "the darkness" out of "the ARROGANCE!" They did so out of desperation, for reasons I won't go into. This turned out to be a mistake, and the anti-God of WoT's story, Sha'itan, more popularly known as the Dark One, struck back against and through their seals to drive the male channelers tragically and murderously insane, including the Dragon -- thus Breaking the world (much moreso than the war against the DO and his minions had already done). The remaining female channelers still know this in the books, especially Moiraine, and while they technically blame the men for breaking the world, they all know it wasn't a moral fault, much less due to male arrogance. This leads into the second cold-open which I'll get to in a minute.

The "what arrogance" declaration is a change by the TV writers, and I don't know yet if they're just flatly changing the backplot for their own reasons; or if they're changing the plot to more ignorance by the current surviving female channelers, a group known as the Aes Sedai ("servants of all", originally a title for all channelers, male and female), to be presumably revealed to them later as the story develops. That would be a surprising addition of incompetence for the Aes Sedai and their organization the White Tower, in a story where they're already going to be tragically incompetent and proud; but it's the more charitable interpretation for what the writers are doing here!

As Moir says in the cold-open, she has recently discovered the Dragon has been reborn, and so she's searching for him. She says she doesn't know if he's still a man or now a woman, which is new to the TV series: there's little to no indication that reborn people switch genders in the book, and definitely not special heroes whether men or women. Moreover, in the books there is no hope whatsoever that the Dragon has been reborn as a women, because there are bunches of prophecies that when he comes again he's going to be a man who breaks the world again in various ways, thanks to going murderously insane, while fighting against the Dark One! Men, as the second cold-open clumsily will show, go crazy when they channel magic. So if the Dragon COULD be reborn as a woman, that would be a major benefit to Team Light! But, perhaps not too surprisingly, the writers don't treat this newly invented possibility as a hopeful factor -- because there's no such hopeful factor in the books, despite the writers having now added the possibility for whatever rationales they have in mind.[/spoiler]

The second pre-title cold-open doesn't come from a scene in the books, as far as I know (unless this guy is meant to be a character named Logain which I doubt slightly), but it represents something that has been happening for three thousand years and is still going on. Anything more than that is a spoiler, so...

[spoiler]The second cold-open has some goofy problems, too. The leader of the women in red, probably someone named Liandrin, declares that men make the One Power filthy by touching it. This is absolutely NOT TRUE -- it's the other way around right now, thanks to the Dark One's counterstroke -- and the Red Ajah group in the books, who have the duty of finding men who can channel and cutting off their access to the Power or else killing them if necessary, KNOW THIS IS NOT TRUE! They do tend to be overzealous at their job, and the group does tend to hate men generally as a result (though not all of them), and they do lean toward evil consequently, but they'd be mocked by their sisters for not having learned better during their intensive schooling and training for many years.

Whether this is a knowing lie by Liandrin, told to someone who couldn't know better (the poor guy going crazy) in front of women who should (the sisters), for whatever reason; or whether the writers are signaling that they're changing the plot of the series A LOT; or whether it's just sloppy writing by the TV writers, I don't know yet.

There's also a problem more normal to film and TV, where people galloping on horseback have trouble catching up to running people on a road, which looks and feels silly. The scene would be more plausible off-road.

The scene ends with Moir and Lan overlooking the incident, and Moir being sure this wasn't the Dragon being whatever'd (unsure if they killed or "gentled" him, though gentling shouldn't hurt that much. To be fair, the Reds in the book are rarely gentle about gentling anyone.) So off they go to the Two Rivers where.... sigh... "there are rumors of four ta'veren". Now, I don't recall whether Moir had specific reasons to go to the 2R area in the book(s) (including a late prequel leading into Book 1), and I won't explain here what ta'veren are. (Later when I'm complaining about breaking the plot in the final scene of the ep!) But there's NO WAY a "rumor" would be this specific about "four" of them, in itself radically unexpected (since it's very rare to find even one of them), without the "rumor" also being more specific about who those (specifically) "four" are supposed to be. Once she gets there, Moir will meander around questioning whether a woman is one of the four, and otherwise focusing on three guys for no apparent reason. In the books, she has a special Talent, given to her by the Wheel of Time (set up by the Creator to keep the DO from ever breaking free and destroying Creation), to detect ta'veren. So once she gets to Emond's Field, she finds the three (not four) tavs very quickly for that reason, and arranges to keep her eye on them.

The TV writers changed this number to four for their own dramatic reasons, perhaps actually being four tavs now instead of three. In itself that isn't necessarily a bad change from the book. But they signaled she'll be looking for four in a super-clumsy way that makes no sense to Moir's investigation. [/spoiler]
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Next, on to the Two Rivers -- or in the books, Emond's Field. Amusingly, the information sidebar on Prime contradicts the TV series correctly, that the 2R is a region of four towns. But the town looks good, and as I said I kind of understand the TV story reasons for simplifying things.

Watching back through it for this commentary, the script DOES mention Bel Tine in passing several times, but nothing looks like a spring-opening festival is coming (especially the maypole for the women to dance around preparing to court husbands) -- because the setting is the start of winter, apparently, not spring (thus fitting the shooting area's foliage better). In the books, it's still winter and people are skeeved about this; Winternight celebrates the definite end of winter.

Mat Cauthon is introduced, and I'm sorry the actor will be replaced (for unknown reasons) in Season Two going forward because he's great! In the books he acts a lot younger of a prankish rogue, for a guy now twenty, which bothers everyone (why won't he grow up!?) He becomes awesome starting early in Book 3, and many fans, myself included, regard him as the best character out of hundreds in the series! Here he's a more adult skeevish, apparently seducing a woman (why is she black, sigh, shouldn't be purely black people in this isolated area) out of her silver bracelet. Or stealing it after seducing her. This comes from the writers again, and would get book-Mat into big trouble very quickly if it happened, which is why he doesn't do such things; by all plot logic, the same should happen with TV Mat, since there's NO WAY that he wouldn't be blamed fast if he simply stole it. He steals pies in the books, not expensive jewelry. So the woman must have given it to him for being a charming lay. But then she's either a visitor or a resident, and either option raises more problems. ...should this be a spoiler tag area? Eh.

Mat's dice are introduced early (this scene isn't in the book at all, but kind of fits). The writers... okay, this is a bit of spoil...

[spoiler]The writers are oddly inconsistent about Mat in this scene. He implies, without the table contradicting him, that he has taken their money at gambling, as usual -- which they only seem amused about, oddly -- and then he loses a dice roll. But doesn't give back their money, even though he seems like he lost their won money back to them on the wager. The others have a few coins sitting out as a stake, but they just swipe it back when he loses. They don't get all the money he supposedly won from them back. "Better luck next time, Mat," says (new black woman) Danya affectionately; she's actually the only person who swipes her stake back, no one else seems to do so, though Rand is unclear -- could be just fidgiting in embarrasment for Mat. But there's no actual gambling going on, and everyone's just casually watching him in amusement. What the hell is even happening? Is he done gambling? -- it sounds like it, but then he rolls and loses. Is he gambling? -- then why aren't the people whose money he just took ("can't be easy to part with all your money") more interested in his final roll?? He wants to gamble again, but they say he has no more money to bet; but neither are they taking his money. Soon afterward, they talk among themselves about how he USUALLY loses all his money at gambling, like he has bad luck. Mat in the book has notoriously great luck, though it goes bad on him in spots, literally for in-story justified plot convenience. This scene makes no sense, and seems like it may be cobbled from different drafts and edits.[/spoiler]

Perrin, also introduced in this scene (he's fine so far in the show, doesn't look quite like described in the book but not importantly wrong -- nowhere near muscular enough and already has a small beard but eh), says they don't want to gamble, when Mat wants to continue, because they're talking instead already. But they weren't, according to what was just said! -- they were gambling and supposedly lost all their money to Mat already! Until, argh, never mind, moving on (see prior spoiler tag for more on this). But then after Perrin says they've been talking already so don't want to gamble, and asks Mat if he's heard what they've been talking about yet, Rand (who supposedly has been talking with Perrin about all this) says "What?" and then Perrin tells both of them. Which makes no sense. It's choppy writing and maybe editing.

Mat mentions that Perrin is newly married, which is not from the books, and I'll have to talk about this under the spoiler tag...

[spoiler]The showrunner, Rafe Judkins, seems to indicate he aged up the characters, although strictly speaking this isn't true: they're around 20 in the books at this time, but act more like 16 or younger. This is an acknowledged plotting problem from the original author, RJ, who needed them to be out of their teens for many plot purposes, but to act young for other purposes. So I'm okay with Perrin being newly married in the series. In principle. She isn't a brand new character, but a very minor character who's his cousin in the books, but might as well be new since she looks Scandanavian and he looks Caribbean African or something like that! But that isn't the problem aside from complaining again about a cosmopolitan mix which wasn't there in the books and shouldn't be there in this plot setting. She's a blacksmith like him. Or rather, the show barely even hints yet that he's a talented young blacksmith, but shows her blacksmithing back home. Technically this is fine, since she isn't going to be around long in the plot after all, but the show is very clumsy about it: her being a blacksmith, too, means nothing in the plot, despite being super-unusual presumably; and she's doing it while pregnant, which seems odd; and Perrin and everyone else is surprised that she's doing it alone back home instead of resting at the inn for the afternoon getting ready for Winternight. But there's never any explanation for this! Maybe something was dropped in editing, but it looks a lot like the writers just wanted to show that women can blacksmith, too, so why not Perrin's new wife, for whom they don't have much planned in the story, and don't really have an excuse for her to be working right now and in this condition, so they just show her to show her to the audience. It's weird and clunky. She doesn't even have many lines for her time onscreen -- literally one two-word line, and a few one-word exclamations -- and I suspect they got a real smith to play her so she'd look and act the part but she wasn't an actress so they didn't want her to speak! More on her lone plot purpose later...[/spoiler]

Eg arrives, receiving cheers from (some of) the Women's Circle who are getting drunk together already. They didn't tell her Dad that she survived and he has been worried about her -- which is clunky. Mr. Al'Vere is a highly important figure in the first part of EotW, being the local mayor, and running the Winespring Inn, where most of the action is centered. He doesn't deliver lines well in the series, so maybe that's why he's shunted off to the sidelines as quickly as possible, when the women insist Eg should come drink with them tonight rather than working for her father.

This does bring up a slightly annoying point: anyone watching this show would be forgiven for thinking women run everything here in the Two Rivers, but in the books that isn't true: there's a Men's Circle (I forget if that's the actual title) as well as a Women's Circle, and they have distinct duties which they don't like each other infringing on. This fits RJ's thematic design of how the continuation and flourishing of humanity and history itself, depends on men and women cooperating together, even if there's often varying levels of tension -- one of the main symbols of his series, a reversed black and white yin-yang without eyes, symbolizes this relationship, and plays strongly into the male/female channeling relationship, too. (Completely missing in Episode One so far, aside from some dead sheep where the symbol doesn't make much sense and no sense at all for its importance and usage in the series.) For whatever reason, the balance attempted by RJ has been shoved aside (like Master Al'Vere in this scene) by the writers to focus only on the importance of the women as women, so far. This will continue throughout the ep in some equally odd ways, including one coming up.

I might as well mention that the TV score, written and delivered late due to the original composer being replaced by Lorne Balfe who most famously wrote the score for Mission Impossible Fallout recently, is.... rather too modern for the setting, particularly with its instrumentation, and especially its electronic instruments! It reminds me a little of the score for the only video-game adaptation of the world of the series so far, which I do like (I listen to it occasionally mixed with some other music from the games Fantasy General and Total Annihilation) but which reaaally doesn't fit. The subtle problem with the score, however, are the constant female choruses and solos in the background: the lack of distinctly male voices breaks the thematic point made by the author originally! But moving along.

By nightime, Eg is serving the guests after all, which isn't a problem in the least, including for the characters. Which makes the women's interjection (against a worried father they didn't bother to reassure about his daughter's safety!) more clumsy and uncomfortable earlier, but whatever.

Moir and Lan arrive, and the setup looks a lot like this is supposed to be their introduction on screen (adding to my theory that the two cold-opens are late additions). Their arrival is staged in a super-threatening way, which makes no sense to their mission: it's purely to spoof the viewers, for viewing effect, but makes characters in the plot more nervous than they should be. Like much else, this doesn't happen in the book -- people are naturally curious about such exotic visitors, when they're only expecting a peddler for his once-a-year visit (who should be there already), but not like they're monsters.

Moir shows off her ring (a gaudy monstrosity in the show, which despite that still doesn't clearly indicate one of the ancient symbols of the Wheel of Time, a snake eating its tail!) This signals to everyone she's an Aes Sedai, which Eg's mom croaks about in terrified respect. That's kind-of in keeping with the book, in a clumsy way: the 2R generally, and Emond's Field specifically, barely even know what kingdom they're supposed to be part of (Andor), and so regard the "witches" of the White Tower as not much better than Darkfriends (or maybe secretly all Dark. Or maybe overtly Dark!) Consequently, Moir and Lan arrive as low-key as possible since scaring the folks would not achieve her purpose of scouting for ta'veren (and for girls to recruit to the White Tower.)

Despite this threatening arrival, Nynaeve alone hops up to demand Lan name himself, clutching her little sheathed knife -- which is unintentionally hilarious, and outside her role as Wisdom (in a town and culture with strict roles). It's probably supposed to be indicative of her first interaction with Lan, but it looks weird. Eg's Dad should be the one welcoming strangers, even problematic ones, to the inn, and warning them not to make trouble if necessary. Eg's Mom, Marin, takes over welcoming the strangers after Moir walks in, and she's the one to announce to the room (after seeing the gaudy ring) that Moir is "Sedai". (Marin's actress isn't great, unfortunately, at least in this show.)

Nynaeve tells the boys that everyone will be happier when Moir has gone (um, thanks Captaine Obvious??) and then says, "Where's Laila?" (Perrin's wife. Who in the Prime sidebar credits has a last name different from him. No doubt taken from the book where they weren't married!) "Probably at the forge," she answers herself, then, "Iron's hard to work alone." So she's rebuking Perrin now? I guess? For his pregnant wife choosing to stay to work the forge alone? -- or for Perrin abandoning her irresponsibly? And she waited until now, if the latter?? It's clunky and weird, shoving Perrin over to the desired plot point. Not at all something from the book. Perrin reveals, soon afterward, that "They say you [his wife] didn't even go to the ceremony." She's acting very troubled in her smithing, but no explanation for why. Perrin says, "I love you," fondling her unborn baby. She replies, her only line, "I know." What the hell is even going on here?? Maybe this will be revealed in a later ep, long after Perrin is gone?! (I have a suspicion based on modern identity politics, that she's supposed to be lesbian and roped into this marriage against her will.)

Honestly, by this point I was starting to think that Rafe, the showrunner, was/is contractually obligated to use as little from the book(s) as feasibly possible while still trying to do the same story with other things made up instead! My opinion didn't change by the end of the ep.

Mat's Mom and Dad turn out to be a very troubled couple of drunks and flakes. This isn't in the books at all: they're well-respected, and Abel Cauthon is reasonably awesome! (The troublemakers tend to be concentrated in three or four notorious families in town.) But I kind of appreciate this change, as it adds some background color to Mat, and not only shows inherited dispositions which will ruin him later if he isn't more careful, but soon also shows he's capable of great caring. Plus if the writers care to do so, Abel can have an arc of growing to be better by the time some important Book 4 and final trilogy material comes around.

Next up, Rand and Egwene "finish up the dishes". Slight spoilers...
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Next up, Rand and Egwene "finish up the dishes". Slight spoilers...

[spoiler]Possibly her parents intended what follows, which is very much not in the books: Rand and Eg are lovers now (if not already). This kinnnnd of makes sense, except that in a close-knit society of the sort shown in the books, the Women's Circle particularly frowns on this sort of thing outside a marriage relation, and (by evidence told in-book!) would drag them both off to be married at once whenever the Circle found out, which would definitely happen sooner or later. This isn't something Eg and Rand should be ignorant of, but isn't reflected at all in what happens or afterward (probably intentionally downplaying the conservativism of the local area, in a clumsily written fashion, for 'modern' audiences who already made the book series a massive bestseller for decades. It kind of ruins RJ's intended balance of their generally conservative mores being tested and adjusted but also sometimes being superior to the immorality often found in the wider world.)

The situation soon becomes compounded with another problem: Wisdoms are not allowed to marry, and Nyn has offered to train Eg to be a Wisdom. The latter is book accurate, but the former is once again definitely not, and has been introduced purely to add new drama between Eg and Rand. (Wisdoms in the book don't always marry, and sometimes have trouble due to their duties and roles, but there's no prohibition. Even Aes Sedai can get married if they want, and if they find a husband willing to put up with all the White Tower stuff! -- which rarely happens.) Rand is at least written to be mature about accepting that Eg will probably go for it, although this puts her actions about starting the lovemaking in a more uncomfortable light since she planned to leave Rand hanging like this! -- she says before she starts with him, that she was "thinking about something Nyn said today" and then doesn't say what until AFTER they make love! If she got pregnant meanwhile, that would seriously mess up her newly added plot constraint, too. This just wasn't thought out well, by either Eg or the writers. That said, the actors act the relevant several scenes well, and it's in good taste.[/spoiler]

The scene with Moir and Lan in the bath is again not in the book (if I recall), but this addition I like since it gets across a lot of information and even character subtly.

The Black Rider shows up in the middle of town (one of RJ's major early nods to Tolkien's Lord of the Rings) in the middle of the night -- which definitely doesn't happen in the book since he and any Aes Sedai and detect each other and he'd be axed by Moir and Lan promptly -- with a weird whistling motif which he himself isn't doing in the story and which has no basis in the book; but which was introduced so that...

[spoiler]...so that Padan Fain's first shot would segue into whistling the same tune a little more tunefully. This is sort of clever, but I hope it's a Padan Fain trait and not for Darkfriends generally.[/spoiler]

Padan Fain arrives, and while his choice of actor doesn't make sense in the story, and he doesn't behave much like Fain's first scenes in the book, I'm looking forward to him in later eps. He'll be probably quite different from the book, but still entertaining, maybe much moreso than in the book! (Fain is one of the least liked important characters, especially since he seemed continually useless in the big picture aside from being a plot-convenient tool to pop up and move things along, and his plot resolution looked kind of pulled out of plot-nowhere. So if he's more entertaining in the show, then great!)

For no clear reason, Fain despite being popular with kids, is changed from the book to be unaccountably unpopular with the people he has rolled into town to sell things to. "Seems like I'm your only customer," Mat says when he tries to do something that even Fain insists makes less than no sense but which Mat is a little desperate about for the sake of his little sisters.

The Prime sidebar again contradicts the show by correctly stating that Bel Tine is a festival for the end of winter, though adding the lantern tradition which is definitely not the same sort of thing from the book.

Eg and Rand have another good scene out in the mountains about their new plotpoint for the TV series, and then Moir arrives at... a pool, being cleaned by Nyn, which is not in the book, to have a conversation not in the book about a plot point not in the book. sigh...

[spoiler]Moiraine is trying to figure out if Nynaeve can be the Dragon Reborn, and learns nope, a little too old. This cave is apparently the literal "Women's Circle", which they have rituals at, not in the book. Nyn is pissed at Aes Sedai in general, because her teacher, the former Wisdom of the 2R (not Emond's Field again, but at least the writers are consistent on this), walked all the way to the White Tower to apply for being an Aes Sedai since (like Eg and Nyn) she could "hear the wind", but the AS were too snooty and turned her down for being a hick. This is WAAAYYYY out of character for the Aes Sedai in the books. On the contrary, one of Moir's duties, like that of any Aes Sedai traveling around, is to scout even backwater areas like the 2R for new recruits and in the book she's overjoyed to find two of them! -- in fact she has to cajole Nyn into going, because Nyn has strong responsibilities of duty. Ultimately Nyn travels along, not really to join the White Tower, but to try to protect the (slightly) younger other four kids from being exploited by Aes Sedai plots and ploys. I have very little idea why this has been changed by the writers. Perhaps it's a side effect of changing Moir's mission to check if one of the girls could be the Dragon Reborn??[/spoiler]

Amazingly, this is the halfway point of the episode (counting credits fore and aft). Perhaps not amazingly (me being me {wry g}), I just passed 5800 words of commentary.

Perhaps more amazingly, I don't have much more commentary! -- or I've already made it. The second half focuses around the Winternight fight, and it's better than I was worried it might be. Spoilers...

[spoiler]The Fade looks good -- doesn't do much, but then he wasn't really in the fight in the books. The Trollocs look and act great for a non-film budget! More blood and guts than I was expecting, but no complaints there, even though I'm not a big gore fan. The Trollocs should have more varieties, but understandably for production and TV progression purposes not yet.

My main three complaints are: first (as already mentioned) the pacing should have started at Rand's house; and two, it doesn't make much sense, even at night, that a Trolloc would sneak that far into town and then throw a large crude axe to subtly poke out of someone's chest in the middle of a dance. That was poorly written.

I don't have a complaint about Perrin going berserk with fear and anger, in killing a Trolloc at the forge, and then accidentally killing his wife when she comes up behind. NOTHING like that happens in the book, but it sets up some thematic tensions with him to play out through the whole series. Admittedly, it was a little on the nose, so to speak, for the axe strike to hit her in the belly, i.e. killing the baby directly, but eh. In the book, the forge is burned by the Trollocs, which is the only building in town so treated, which is evidence presented by Moir that Perrin is ta'veren, along with the farms of Mat's and Rand's families being attacked and burned.

I do have some complaint about the ridiculously literal circle of women surrounding and downing a Trolloc with mostly-primitive local tools. They're the only local people fighting with any organization or effectiveness at all?? This isn't in the book, and it's bizarre. Emond's Field gets whomped hard on this first attack in the book, but naturally they have weapons for hunting and working, and the men aren't incompetent cowards! (Not all of them anyway.) Still, I appreciate that the Trollocs are shown to be serious threats which take normal people real effort to deal with. If they scare you into running, you're doomed.

I'm actually okay with most of the quick explanation Moir gives for hustling the kids out of town quickly as time runs out on the ep {wry g}. Seeing a larger army, around three hundred, approaching from the slopes, is okay -- but I have a small problem with Lan wondering, "How did they get here so quickly?" The real question is how did they get there at all, since -- not explained in the show -- the 2R area is NOWHERE REMOTELY NEAR the northern polar border where Trollocs should be. (A plotpoint sort of borrowed by RJ from the Warhammer fantasy setting.) This is a legitimate mystery to be solved later in the books, but the TV writers put it poorly.

On the other hand, maybe I'm less okay about it after all: it isn't very plausible that an army of 300ish would ignore the town to chase people they can't detect; and so far there's practically no indication that anyone in the group can be detected by the enemies. Granted, the first book plays rather conveniently fast and loose about that, too, but neither do the Emond's Five leave with a small army of Trollocs less than a few hours behind them, heading toward their village. Any such new definite detection powers will be highly plot inconvenient going forward![/spoiler]

So overall, it might sound like I hate the show. I don't -- it has a lot of good material, and a fair amount of promise, in the first ep. But it has some very poor writing choices in the plot structure (along with possibly some editing gaffes due to reshoots/replotting), some of which may even be evident to watchers not already fans of the property, and others which even non-fans might find confusing.

Again, I find it very odd that SO MUCH of the episode doesn't come from the book, aside from the characters and their general relationships and situations. Even the epic Winternight fight doesn't really come from the book -- which is an example of not everything new having to be dubious! (Although seeing Nynaeve yeeted out of the plot toward the end was unintentionally hilarious and definitely NOT in the book.)

And I liked the episode ending with a scene taken largely from book covers for EotW, combining well with Moiraine doing a voiceover of the now-iconic opening which starts the first chapter of each of the books -- so iconic that Peter Jackson borrowed it for starting his adaptation of the Fellowship of the Ring! Viewers might think WoT was borrowing it from LotR (like it borrows several other things in Book 1), but it's really the other way around.

On the other hand... sigh...

[spoiler]...the ending sequence had at least one definitely serious problem. During the 'leavetaking' scene Moir announces that one of those four is the Dragon Reborn. This is way outside the book's plot, where for good reason Moir doesn't talk about this for a lonnnng time -- only that the three guys are ta'veren and so are inadvertently dragging the world's plot around in ways dangerous to themselves and others, so that the Trolloc horde is hunting them. That's problematic enough, but even in the cultural backwater of Emond's Field, deep in the 2R (where there shouldn't be multiple ethnic groups as distinct as blondes and blacks, cough), people still know fragmentary things about the man called the Dragon: how he Broke the World, and will do so again whenever he is reborn. This is shattering news to announce on a whim to any group of people -- even reports of a false Dragon being recently captured disturbs them greatly -- which is why Moir in the book doesn't do so. But here, she mouths it off as a quick goad to get the party moving out of town... and everyone kind of brushes it off in confusion! Mat says, in a flat tone after a pause, "You've... fully lost your mind." Period. There should be a LOT more reaction than that!

There's also a quick problem in that Moir is sure Eg is one of the four ta'veren, when previously she was scoping out whether Nyn could be the Dragon Reborn. How does she know this? In the books she can detect ta'veren by literal plot magic, but there's no indication of this in the show and actually less than no indication or she'd know not to be checking whether Nyn is the Dragon. Yet in the show she already somehow knows to be watching those three young men; and to be watching Eg. She can probably sense Eg and Nyn have channeling capability, as in the book -- that isn't much of a spoiler since the episode almost spells it out directly -- but that isn't the same as being ta'veren! It's a mulchy mess, created no doubt for supposedly better drama as Moir hunts for people she can't otherwise detect, and then just decides these are the ones with no evidence. She doesn't even know that Rand's farm was attacked, nor that Mat's farm was attacked, as in the book! -- partly because Mat no longer lives on a farm, too, with his absolute legend of a dad and mom (not far short of Tam's awesomeness), and partly because their house in town wasn't specially attacked.

A lot of the worldbuilding has been broken in the show already in Episode One.[/spoiler]

More on future eps, as I get around to them someday.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Someday is already here!  :bd: :hide:

This commentary is only half as longish!  :D

SEASON ONE, EPISODE TWO COMMENTARY
----------------------------------

Quick review: I liked it about the same as the first ep, meaning some good parts, some potential, lots of problems. Such as Moiraine's slowly worsening shoulder wound (not in the books, as usual for lots of things in this loose adaptation.) The main problem isn't that it's slowly getting more infected over the next week or two, although that's implausible also -- should've been better sooner, or healing sooner. The more important problem is that SUPPOSEDLY the blade was coated in poison! What a completely useless poison! -- and we know it's supposed to be dangerously useful, because the show already told and showed us this! Or maybe she didn't get poisoned? No, the show repeatedly tells us she did, by people who should have referent knowledge to know for sure! Or maybe it was only a light scratch? Nope, repeatedly shown to be a deep puncture wound! Maybe it serves a plot-important purpose? Nope, all it does is change some things around from the book toward the end of the ep, but in a way that affects no outcome leading to basically the same thing happening as in the book! (I'll provisionally assume that it's really there for the sake of another character early in Episode Three, but more about that in the next commentary when/if that comes true.)

So, for the prologue this episode: after a pretty drone-tracking shot (featuring some CGI mountains which look more appropriate to the area this part of Book 1 takes place in, and which hilariously but from a production standpoint understandably disappear down below tree level ;) )...

...the Children of the Light are introduced, aka the Whitecloaks, and viewers could be excused for thinking these are a group of about twenty wussy clueless dudes out camping in some formal fashion. Because unlike the books, where the Whitecloaks are an elite military organization who do NOT go out into the wilderness dressed in floofy robes... sigh. These are a few guys dressed in floofy robes.

I understand the budget hampering the numbers that should be here (more like 150 troops instead of 15), but instead of being in practical arms and armor with a decorative white cloak over the top (whence their popular nickname), they just look helplessly pompous and ineffectual. (Granted in the books they quickly become relatively ineffectual as the magic-fighting ramps up, but against basic Trolloc and human forces they can still kick ass.)

Supposedly they had a military victory today, but you'd never guess it apart from some dialogue.

I can already tell that the actor Abdul Sallis is going to be a great (though cartoonishly overacting) Eamon Valda throughout (most of) the series, so that's fine! And in this case, unlike the Two Rivers last episode, it makes perfectly good sense to have an ethnically diverse cast for the Children (though less so to have a literal child acting as a servant in this small camp, also not there in the book setting because that's dumb and unnecessary.) They're an international group of kind-of religious mercenaries who join up out of dedication to fighting the Dark One's minions. Spoilers for more discussion...

[spoiler]Despite Valda's actor's quality, the script has him eating a little fried bird with three toothpicks in it, without removing the tootpicks, which I think are supposed to be the legs? and beak?? This is probably meant to suggest he's evil and deranged (true, much moreso than Whitecloaks generally), and maybe badass, but looks silly as hell. He boasts about it. Anyone this obviously crazy and evil would be killed by the Whitecloaks immediately, and Valda in the books acts in public only a little more fanatical than average.

I note immediately that we're back to working with new scenes not at all in the book though in the general setting: Valda's scene with the captive Yellow doesn't happen there. Much less to the Whitecloaks burn any AS at the stake after chopping off their hands. Not that they wouldn't like to try, if they could get away with it, but they know perfectly well that they'd be wiped out of existence shortly afterward. This is overly evil for the sake of TV drama, and breaks the lore. Again. Sigh. Eamon in the books DEFINITELY DOES NOT go around flaunting rings from Aes Sedai he has killed. Partly because he doesn't go around killing AS in the books (not at first anyway), and partly because he'd definitely be targeted and slaughtered for doing so. His immediate boss on the scene is smarter (and somewhat more merciful) than that, too.

Moreover, even though Yellow Ajah, as the predominant healers, wouldn't normally be trained in combat, all AS are trained in self-defensive channeling, and the magically infused oaths they take to reassure other people about their relative safety would not prevent her, much moreso her Warder, from tearing these floofy pomp-asses apart -- or even seriously fighting and damaging an equivalent number of 'real' Whitecloaks from the books! I suppose it's just as well that they don't bother explaining how the miracle of her capture and disposal of her Warder happened: chopping off her hands, much less gagging her, wouldn't chop her from channeling in the books, by the way, just make it a little harder. She should be nuking the place. Maybe Rafe read my fantasy novel, where jotting DOES require semantic percussives and often gestures, and so doing magic without that is weird and unsettling. ;)

For a non-complaint: at first I thought the stake setting wasn't shown in the drone fly-in establishing shot, but on a rewatch the director carefully screened it with some trees: it can be seen if you watch carefully. A good touch for a crappy-written scene. :p[/spoiler]

Despite many problems in this scene (some of them subtle), I like how it's staged, shot, and acted.

The official credits make their first appearance, and they look super great, aside from the loom weaving the threads: it looks good, too, but isn't AT ALL the cosmic imagery from the books. The Wheel of Time weaves ("as the Wheel wills") the Patterns of the Ages. There's sort of a nod to this idea in the seven colors of the Aes Sedai right before the title, but it gets poofed away in dissolution before the title comes up (much less before the image tries to suggest how the Wheel weaves the Age Lace of the Pattern, which to be fair probably seemed hard to represent. Having Aes Sedai be the focus of the intro is... a colorful choice, and maybe correct enough at this point in the show, but smacks of modern identity political focus.) The serpent eating its tail now shows up as something like a wheel spiraling through time. This is...... well, it's what the Ultimate Bad Guy wants to happen, I guess, however self-destructive that might be, but the Dark One and the Wheel are metaphysically distinct: the Wheel is what keeps the DO trapped forever so he can't break free and completely destroy the Creator's creation replacing it with something of his own. (The original official icon for the Wheel illustrates this succinctly.) Like much in the show, it looks great but breaks the lore and/or makes little to no sense.

The party is being chased on horseback by Trollocs (who look better at a distance than in Ep 1), and Lan races to catch up after backscouting to let them know the Trollocs are still hunting them. Moir says they have to go faster. Which.... if they had been going faster, Lan wouldn't have caught up in time to be useful (or at all). It's just a little odd (and as usual not in the books, so far as I recall). DOES LITERALLY EVERY SCENE NEED TO HAVE SOMETHING THAT PICKS AT MY SOOULLL!!??

I should do a light spoiler for the book here, one mentioned in passing by the Prime sidebar but just not showing up in the series so far at all (though vaguely hinted at without commentary from anyone who should know about it, like Moir and Lan)...

[spoiler]In the book(s), various predators and carrion animals... not bats so far as I recall, mostly rats and raven/crows... act as spies for the Dark One and so, in an unclear way, for Fades who thus command Trollocs to go thataway looking for the party. This is why, in the first book, the Trolloc company knows the party has left the area, and why they keep finding the group, plus as shown in the show some Trollocs are good at hunting/tracking. In the show, it's simply Trolloc tracking prowess.[/spoiler]

Since the showrunners didn't have the budget for a town of Taren's Ferry, built around the ferry, they just have the ferry sitting by itself with its small shack nearby. But at least the writers came up with a sort of excuse, referring to unseen walls of the town nearby. Logically they should get inside and rest. Moir replies, for plot speed and production limitation purposes, "Walls won't stop Trollocs." In fact, they do in the book: the Trollocs (or the Fades leading them rather) don't want too many people to know a small army of them is loose this far into the Westlands, because the Andorian army would arrive to destroy them. But I realize something had to be thrown off as a quick justification for the situation.

There are a couple of problems coming up with the escape across the river, so...

[spoiler]The Fade rocks up on his horse (inadvertently making the Trollocs standing around look merely human sized, as in fact the actors are), and gives a shriek with a super distended and toothy mouth, which commercials have usually featured. In the books, Fades (also called Myrddraal, like "murder-all"), are vastly much more human looking, aside from their lack of eyes and corpsey complexion. This is partly for purposes of infiltrating areas a little more easily without immediately raising an alarm. The Fade design in the show looks... impressive, in a way, but that isn't good for its intended purposes in the book.

The ferryman's son is already on his way (to relieve him at night presumably, though why the son isn't living closer by is unexplained), and Moir has to make the choice to destroy the boat, not even leave it on this side of the river in case the ferryman manages to maneuver it back. They act like she's doomed the son to death, but there are three hundred loud, torch-bearing monsters on the riverbank and nearby -- if the son is dumb enough to insist on rushing into that mob, he kind of deserves to die! Which doesn't prevent his elderly dad from jumping in the river to swim back to his absolutely certain doom. i.e. some false drama, not found in the book, hampered further by Moir deciding to let the guy kill himself by swimming into her whirlpool! She could have easily saved him, brought him back to this side of the river, and still sunk the boat, but nope! (In the books this isn't an issue.) Ahem, "drama"! The main purpose, of course, is to show that Moir and Lan can be ruthless when necessary, and to show why lots of people think AS are monsters, too. Which the dad spells out literally in dialogue, in case you don't get it. So a dumb reason has been contrived to make that point, sigh. The kids bring it up later a couple of times.[/spoiler]

The next evening (although it could be morning and the script only remembers to establish it's a whole other evening toward the end of the scene), at a break for the horses and the Emond's Five, who are now the Four because Nynaeve was yeeted out of the plot late last episode, the writers have Mat HEAAAVVILLY lampshade this new plot change by stating literally, and somewhat dully, "Imagine if Nynaeve were here. She'd spend every waking moment disagreeing with the Aes Sedai. She'd make Moiraine's life utter misery." Oh really, like in the plot you changed, snorf?

I'll have to look up the book for details to be sure, but they've set things up now in the show for...

[spoiler]...Nyn's eventual return to be vastly unlikely or even practically impossible. Writing notes as I pause, I'm not looking forward with confidence to how the writers solve this situation they've painted themselves into.[/spoiler]

Egwene asks, "What happens if she's right?" Mat clarifies, "What happens if one of us is the Dragon Reborn, the most powerful channeler that ever lived?" Well, you should all be on your knees praying to the Light it's Egwene then! -- but the writing once again flatly avoids the extra and extra-important details that...

[spoiler]...the Dragon must be reborn as a man, destined thereby to go progressively and murderously insane, breaking the world again in various ways, thanks to the Dark One infecting the male half of the One Power with an inescapable "taint".[/spoiler]

Rand, with the brand new writing (in this new scene though it's somewhat evocative of others in the book), reminds everyone that the Dragon will save the world when he returns, in contrast to breaking it last time. Sounds like a good thing, then, so what's the problem??!

Moiraine walks up and says, "Forget all of those things you've heard about the Dragon." Well, that isn't much. "For he or she will be all of those things, and none of them." Uh.... well, everything of what very little of "all" they were talking about was correct, as she should well know, aside from the Dragon having wings which Mat was joking about. (Except he does in the book, sort of, thanks to a plot point now apparently evicted from the new plot completely!) This is very dippy and just highlights how little has been said about the backstory situation so far, much of it either incorrect to or changed from the books!

Despite my snorfiness (in the next scene, Moir says, "Come," to Eg who has already been following her for fifty yards), the next scene, between Eg and Moir at night, is the best so far this episode, partly because it borrows more from the book than usual, including explaining the Three Oaths. Although the writers, probably inadvertently (??) left out that AS can use the Power as a weapon against any Shadowspawn at any time they want (not only when they, their sisters, or their Warder, are in extreme peril. But I guess that partly explains why she doesn't take the tactical opportunity to thin out the Trolloc herd safely while across the river!) It falters mainly in...

[spoiler]...having to avoid the new plot hole created by Nyn's teacher being refused training by the AS. Hilariously, the Prime "curated comments" sidebar reveals this plothole! -- women with the spark will fall very ill and might easily die if they don't get at least basic training, especially if they are strong in the Force (I mean One Power. ;) No mention is made that the AS go out of their way to find any women who can channel, partly to save them before they run into this risk, and partly to keep their own powerbase up. (So they wouldn't have refused Nyn's teacher.) There's also the problem that Eg calls out Moir for killing the ferryman despite her Oath, which Moir brushes off as the man rushing to his death, technically not using the OP as a weapon against him intentionally. But Eg doesn't retort with "Why couldn't you have saved him and still sunk the boat?!" Egwene has every justification for worrying that Moir will let them die out of sheer inconvenience; Mat calls it correctly and better, refusing to let Moir'(s writers) dodge out of it.[/spoiler]
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

It makes less than no sense for Rand to want to sleep outside, near no fire at all, at the start of winter in the woods, in order "to be alone"; this is done so that the new idea for a dream sequence can happen without everyone else noticing. The dreams are rather more detailed and epic in the book(s) (they go on for a while), so I understand the production constraints, and they do come up with a cleverly awful idea -- but it requires Rand to voluntarily do something that he wouldn't do. And then it turns out not to matter after all because everyone had the same dream (including Eg) with the same aftereffects! I legitimately don't understand this plot change at all. But the scene is otherwise good.

Next up, the plot deviates from the books very far once again by having the whole party run into the small group of Whitecloaks from the prologue. (In the book, it's only Eg and Perrin by themselves who get captured by the Whitecloaks much later after Perrin kills a few with his now-non-existant-axe, understandably pissing them off. He has reasons, and can't quite help himself, but his reasons aren't ones they can appreciate, also understandably.) Moiraine kind of proves that the Oaths don't really work (unlike the books) by stating that she is a lady from a fallen house: House Damodred is far from fallen, and in reality she's almost a princess (though that may now be changed in the TV series to give her a one-line backstory for this newly plotted meeting.) Honestly, there's no reason why the crew has to stop, dismount, and talk to these unarmed and unarmored floofs. This isn't "their land" in the book; they're passing through the area, too, on an unrelated mission of which I don't recall. (To be fair, Lan calls them out on this, but there's no reason for the line to even be there.)

Logain and his plotline are mentioned for the first time, in passing. Unclear if this is in relation to the second cold-open prologue of Ep 1. Moir straight-up lies about many people being hurt at the town they just came from, namely Taren Ferry. Amusingly, Eg calls her out on "lying" in the following scene, but uses examples that Moir can explain as wordplay -- not those two! (Of course Eg wouldn't know about Damodred not being a fallen house, but that may have been changed for the TV series. She would know a bunch of people hadn't been injured at Taren Ferry, though!)

Bornhold drops an amazing plot-flip-flop in this scene which I can't even... {facepalm}

[spoiler]Bornhold is a nice guy in the books, for a Whitecloak, and apparently they wanted to show that here somehow; so he advises the wounded Moiraine to find an Aes Sedai in the town they're going to, Whitebridge, to heal her wound. He's clearly sincere and genuine about this, although as he says the Children avoid the AS when they can. However: he just let Valda (in this episode, not the book) burn one at the stake, after mutilating her, which Valda reminds him of, by clanking the rings of the ones he has slain! Valda doesn't outrank him, and while he can go about his own business -- as he reminds Bornhold in this scene -- Bornhold would not have allowed him to murder an Aes Sedai. Nor would Valda have done so publicly, or even in front of other Whitecloaks (unless they were totally in favor of that, especially their commander). Moreover, however relatively-nice Bornhold is, he would not ever send someone willingly to an Aes Sedai to be healed. This runs against his religious principles, such as they are, and he is very stringent about his religious principles: that's exactly why he's in the Children of the Light. If she said, "yes sir, I'll try," he might be sad she failed a test, perhaps, and remonstrate her that it's better to die from an overly-slow-acting poison than to be helped by the "witches", but that doesn't happen either. It's a very weird and hugely out-of-character way for the writers to try to signal that he's really a good person. Granted, he wouldn't order them burnt at the stake either, at the very least because most nations would be up in arms against the Children, and so would the White Tower in many various deadly ways that wouldn't be stopped by their Oaths. But having just been a party to this in the prologue, there's no way he'd consistently advise her to find one for being the only possible healer for such a wound.

Moreover, in the books there would be no question that Moir was Aes Sedai, since she has a specially "ageless" face typical of and unique to AS -- so hiding her ring with Lan wouldn't help. Only relatively new AS can avoid having the look, which tightens the skin like a special modern facelift/botox treatment! This contrasts with other channelers slowing their age, and living much longer lives by the way: largely unknown to even the AS, the Oaths shorten their lives by a half to a third! Since the production budget of the show couldn't be spent on finding some way to routinely create this effect, I'm okay with it just being ignored for the plot, so not really a problem here. But other things were -- like how Valda is the dumbest Questioner of all time!

The Oaths of the Aes Sedai are VERY publicly well-known, except in culturally isolated areas like the Two Rivers (it makes sense that Eg has only heard a garbled report of them), because it's heavily to the White Tower's favor (as Eg in the show knows well) to convince national leaders and other people that the White Tower isn't a thread to anyone but Shadowspawn unless directly attacked. So even the most basic instruction of a new Hand of the Light, aka "Questioner", would be that Aes Sedai cannot lie thanks to their oaths, although "they can make the truth dance a jig" (as the books put it.) Valda doesn't even need to force Moiraine to admit to being an Aes Sedai verbally, although he could easily force her to constantly evade the question. He only has to demonstrate she won't say her blue cloak is red, and boom she's toast. This never becomes a problem in the book, partly because the Whitecloaks aren't overtly trying to burn "witches" at the stake. The show writers have once again painted themselves into a corner needing a character to carry the Idiot Ball to get out.[/spoiler]

The Manetheren story scene works pretty well, probably because it's borrowed largely from the book, though set very differently and substantially later. (In the book, she tells it back at Emond's Field.)

As the gang skirts up near the ruined city of Shadar Logoth, Lan says "Rest. Tomorrow we'll find a sister who can heal you." What his plan is supposed to be, who knows! -- SL lies as far as possible from other population centers, for damn good reasons, so they shouldn't be less than a day away from Whitebridge.

Two decent scenes follow (despite being not in the books), one between Rand and Eg, and one with Perrin alone finding some, cough, new friends.

The Fade and his troops catch up to within about thirty yards of the party camping at night -- even though Lan is on watch and should have been able to see torches coming -- and that's the end of the story since there's no way Moir can defend herself (thanks to her new plot-wound for the series) and the others need to be awakened aside from Eg (who heard them coming in the wind, although that isn't how listening to the wind works in the book at all. Under the new plot circumstances, Perrin should have been the one to awaken and alert everyone, but whatever.)

The super-evil Fade generously allows them to get up and onto their horses and gives them a very lenient running start, toward the city that Shadowspawn fear (as established briefly a minute ago and very much moreso soon). This is verrrrrry over-convenient plot writing.

Despite my constant whining, Shadar Logoth looks freaking ace! -- and on a TV budget! Aside from great production design, this has been done with very tight narrow shots that nevertheless give clear ideas of the city's scope and ruin. True, the room they camp in isn't like the massive domed area of the book -- AND I DON'T EVEN CARE! :D Sure, being more book accurate would be great, but this is how to do the show on a budget! Most of this material comes largely or completely from the book, and (not-)coincidentally is better than most of the new material (which is almost all the material so far). Lan's story about it is a little over-simplified (Aridhol wasn't the only city who refused to come help Manetheren, and they had many internal problems growing long before then), but I'm okay with it. Mat's quip is pretty good (even though not book-accurate). Rand immediately walks outside after all these warnings, in full view of everyone with no one trying to stop him (not quite in the books), to give the viewers an establishing overview shot of the city. I like the shot(s), but it's set up in a dumb way.

Since Perrin doesn't have a weapon (very much NOT book accurate), Mat gives him a dagger. It's actually a good scene, despite emphasizing that I'm still unclear whether Perrin is (also) a blacksmith, after most of two episodes!

So much complimenting though! Can't I find something to whinge about? Sure...

[spoiler]...they should all die soon, but don't. The city can and would kill them all in the book, except for wards laid down by the non-injured Moiraine before she exhaustedly rests. Mat, who's much more adventurous (and sees all this as a grand opportunity to leave the 2R and see the world, despite the inconveniences so far) convinces the other two they should go treasure hunt the city while no one's watching, outside the wards. The city doesn't attack them at first for a specific reason, once they're outside the wards. Mat doesn't go out alone in the middle of the night (Lan and Moir tell them it'll be safe enough until dark, and to be back by then); and for dang sure Mat doesn't follow a sneaky shadow into a creepy building. Nor does he forget about the sneaky shadow 90 seconds later, to rumage through some trash in a corner. Granted, the budget makes for some constrictions, but this setup is nonsense on SO MANY LEVELS ARGH![/spoiler]

The knife Mat finds looks okay, but isn't book accurate -- it should be curved, and the ruby on it should be the entire pommel! Sure it looks ostentatious and unrealistically gaudy, but that's part of its point. Still, not a plot problem.

The low-budget shadow-creeping effect should be a glowing mist (as even the Prime sidebar describes!), but isn't too bad. The horses don't flee in the book leaving everyone on foot, but doing so makes some sense for being left outside (not in the book, the horses are closer in within the wards, too.) Doing so exposes an amusing plothole, however, because Lan's and Moir's horses have to NOT run and NOT be attacked by the city which was totally willing to kill the horses (being the enemy of all life) earlier! That's why there are no birds or even bugs in the city. Then again, the shadow picks one horse in the middle to kill and not one on either side also, so it's a verrry plot-selective mindless shadow!

As in the book (more or less) the party has to split up outside the city, although due to TV limitations it's clear they shouldn't be as far apart as they are for the plot to happen (not a problem in the book).

Unlike the book, there's a surprise cliffhanger when...

[spoiler]Nynaeve shows up to threaten Lan with a hilariously notched knife. She caught up with them MUCH earlier in the book, NOT after being yanked away by Trollocs for a snack or maybe a gift for their Fade commander -- Fades are usually rapey when they can get it, with the women going insane and/or killing themselves and/or dying from it. For cheap plot drama, the writers have made her return suuuuper-suspicious at the very best, and really quite impossible: she shouldn't have been able to escape the Trollocs; shouldn't have been able to track them this far without catching up, though I suppose she could be following the Trolloc company at a safe distance; shouldn't have been able to keep up with Trollocs and horses fleeing over DAYS; and isn't ta'veren -- even by the standards of this show -- so being exactly where the new plot needs her to be outside Shadar Logoth to find Lan and the TV-injured Moiraine, must be implausible in the extreme.[/spoiler]

So... is Ep 2 an improvement? Well... it isn't worse than Ep 1 overall. About the same on average: looks pretty good usually (aside from the Rofl-cloaks), acting is okay (although Mat's actor has started usually phoning it in ever since his final flat-line flatly delivered line in Ep 1, but even he gets at least one good scene, not one from the book even); the parts of the plot actually FROM the book are good; plenty of lore-breaking nonsense; and Rafe continues to be adverse to actually adapting the material, for no clear reason, with almost every scene brand new! Which is where a lot of the problems come from, coincidentally?

I'll continue to watch as a fan, but I honestly can't tell if I'd give up on the show if this was my first exposure to the story; and mostly I just want to read the vastly superior book again now. sigh.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

SEASON ONE, EPISODE THREE COMMENTARY
----------------------------------
As usual, if you haven't watched the episode, lots of general spoilers ahead...

.
.
.
. and also some carriage returns for readers to look away now before watching it...
.
.
.
.

If you're wondering how those hundreds of Trollocs and one Fade are going to split up, if at all, to hunt whichever groups of the party, and how the new sub-teams are going to deal with this, then you might as well get used to disappointment because poof they don't exist anymore, end of that story. Why? No answer. Not only is there no answer, the show briefly pretends like they may still be out there (only one group expresses some concern about this, namely Rand and Mat, although each keeps forgetting about it) and then no one cares anymore because it isn't plot convenient. It's like someone balefired them not only out of reality but out of past history.

You may be asking yourself how Robert Jordan could have written such a clumsy and cheap story. If so, I will reveal the secret to you behind the spoiler tag...!

[spoiler]...he didn't. He set up a situation where carrion creatures, acting as spies for the Dark One in some vaguely defined ways -- brought up briefly in the show and then forgotten just as quickly, when Rand pulled that bat out of his throat in a dream -- keep tracking the group, allowing Fades to direct companies (or "Fists") of Trollocs to intercept occasionally whenever RJ wanted to juice some action or push along the plot, with the Fists popping into the plot through a secret but actual plotpoint to be revealed later. (That creepy thing with fire for eyes and mouth is tracking them through their dreams, too, along with at least one other villain; and the Fades go into towns occasionally to spy around, since they're a little less alien-looking in the books, plus the Darkfriend network -- the group have been through several towns before Shadar Logoth in the book -- and there's a flying Shadowspawn called a Drakhar which attends some Fists for areal recon. So RJ can lose and find them again plausibly whenever he wants to for the plot. He doesn't need to keep one Fist on their tail constantly and then pretend it doesn't exist.) The current Fist chasing the group up to Shadar Logoth eventually got driven into the city by its Fade, after some more Fists arrived, and they got slaughtered by the evil of the city, the mist called Mashadar, which ironically has a preference for Shadowspawn when it has a choice of meals though it will eat all life. Thus no Fists remain for a while to chase the split groups of the part. The writers have omitted almost all of this, so when they need the Fist to suddenly not be there anymore, hooray it isn't! Rand yells out for the others, but is reminded by Mat that he might attract Trollocs; then Mat wants to go home instead of finding the others, since he figures they'll go home, too, no, but Rand reminds him that the Trollocs were following them and might go back home, too. Mat keeps this in mind almost ten or twelve hours before forgetting it completely and trying to find a way to get back home again without Rand if he can. More on this later.[/spoiler]

There's no point keeping Nyn's return under the spoiler tags, since she's one of the five main characters and will be constantly referenced out through the end of the series (however far it goes). The only question is how are the showrunners going to get her over to the exact portion of wall of Shadar Logoth she needs to be in, for when Lan carries out Moir.

In the book this isn't remotely a problem, because she catches up with the party shortly after they cross the river at Taren Ferry. How? -- by bullying the old ferryman Hightower (whose ferry is sunk by Moir but not in such fatal circumstances) to carry her across in a smaller boat. With her horse, with which she can and does catch up with the party at the first town they come to outside the 2R, named Baerlon. (Where another important heroine to the plot is introduced. And a friendly bookish sasquatch, who will be much more important later. None of this exists in the show, yet and maybe ever.) So Nyn is with everyone during almost everything between Taren Ferry and Shadar Logoth, including in the cursed city, and only sneaks up on Lan to show off her woodskills -- literally to show off to Lan! -- when regrouping outside the city. Which doesn't work, by the way, although he compliments her on getting closer than he expected. Much less does she threaten to kill him. She doesn't even want to kill Moiraine, who isn't so injured either. She heals Moir at one point just to show that Wisdom-work is worthy of study, too, whereupon she learns that she has been doing minor channeling to spice her spices, and should put her skills to work as a Yellow in the Tower organization. None of that happens here, or not yet anyway (though she does heal Moir eventually.)

So let's see if the show can make this plausibly work. First...

[spoiler]...she gets away when the Trolloc who's dragging her by her semi-multi-braided hair, having yanked apart her main braid somehow (sigh) is distracted -- though it's a really good distraction, appropriate for character-building the Trollocs (so to speak). Then she outruns a Trolloc, in the dark woods... over a substantial distance. This makes no sense, but it's a common fantasy trope for plot convenience, so I can't complain about the writers specifically here. (Other than that they wrote themselves into this corner for plot convenience, and now have to convenience themselves out of it again.) By sheer coincidence she arrives at the new-for-the-book Women's Circle cave pool, where despite being able to see in the dark better than humans it can't see her in the pool nearby. To be fair, the writers (or director) fix this soon afterward to pretend like the Trolloc was farther away than the angle he'd need to be at to see her, instead of the angle he was clearly at one shot previously. Sloppy but more workable. After that... well, yeah okay I'm satisfied, it's a well-designed sequence there out, I think!

Marred only a by a Dragon's Fang appearing semi-coincidentally. It makes no sense for the Trollocs to be attached visually to the Dragon's Fang symbol, at least in book terms, but this is the second time the showrunners have done it, so I guess it's going to be a Shadowspawn or Darkfriend sign now in the show, not a sign used to warn against Darkfriends. This lends some weight to the idea that the showrunners don't understand the magic system at all, and/or have decided to drastically alter it. I wish I didn't have to think about such things and instead just enjoy a good scene.[/spoiler]

So, that explained perfectly well how Nyn could be there now, right?

Um... nope. It cuts straight back to the last shot of the prior ep, skipping over all the implausible difficulties in her catching up and finding the party here and now. For damn sure she didn't track them into and out of the cursed city either. "How did you find me?" whispers Lan, echoing the viewer's what the f-ery. Nyn ignores the impossible answers to this question and the writers just go on from there. Good job writers, you solved that problem you painted yourself into by boring a hole straight through it! It's writing magic! {clap  clap} {pause} {clap}

While I kind of appreciate Lan taking responsibility for leaving the 2Rcrew in the city, strictly speaking he didn't.

[spoiler]When he got outside carrying Moir, they had scattered, and there was no way for him to chase after any of them, much less with a wounded barely conscious Moir.[/spoiler]

Still, Lan's impressed with Moir and the scene ends.

Rand and Mat get a decent scene together, which is somewhat like something in the books except with the roles reversed: it feels waaayyyy out of character for Mat being the one to argue in favor of going back home, but here we are. (In the book, the difference is that Rand would like to go home but responsibly argues to soldier on. Mat doesn't want to go home but also doesn't want to get further involved with whatever the hell Moiraine is up to, and so argues they should hie off in another direction and go tour the world while they have a chance (and abilities to pay their way, now that they've had some training from another book character.)

Next scene, Eg and Perrin, again pretty decent or even great! Borrows heavily from at least one scene in the book, which probably explains the quality. {wry g} Perrin's new TV-series knife plays a key part. I wouldn't mind but I have to keep wondering...

[spoiler]...why didn't the writers give Perrin his signature axe? The choice between axe and hammer is a major ongoing theme for him in the books all the way out to the end! Of course, he still gives no indication of being a blacksmith, so having a hammer might be odd. And the writers have made it so he would reject the axe instantly. New viewers may not notice or care, but fans of the book must be as puzzled as I am why they're nerfing Perrin. Also, what happened to his bleeding thumb?? -- he should have asked Eg whether she healed that! Or was this only a production error? So far I can't trust that it wasn't.[/spoiler]

I'm glad to see that the writers are keeping the hints of possibly developing romance between Perrin and Eg from this part of the book. I won't say where those go, although I also don't trust the writers about it.

Back to Lan and Moir and Nyn, and I can't help but chuckle at seeing...

[spoiler]...Nyn tied up VERY THOROUGHLY to a tree. And comfortably but thoroughly gagged. I'll credit the writers for a subtle joke in a plausible way, if that was their intention; she can be very annoying and bossy in the books. The writers have toned that down in the show, and I'm very okay with that. Now she's vaguely pretentious instead! -- less okay with that. I'll accept the trade under protest.[/spoiler]

Lan asks again how she could have gotten there and found them (or more like in the book, "How did you track me?" which is more relevant and plausible in the book since he and the group didn't have a massive headstart across so many obstacles.) Nyn says she doesn't have to answer that. I feel like the writers are trolloc'king us, because they know they have less than no plausible answer. Still, credit to some writer for Nynaeve turning a common tropey phrase around wittily! "It's not a demand, it's a threat."

While the scene is good on its own merits, it has the weak extra plot points grafted in which illustrate dumbness: Moir has had a wound festering in her shoulder for at least a week in the show (more like a month in the book reaching the point, without such a wound of course), and neither she nor Lan seem to have the SLIGHTEST notion of normal health care despite Lan, at least, having tons of battlefield experience, not even counting training as a Warder to keep his AS alive. This is not plausible, and it can't be whiffled away by appeal to Trolloc poison (although they do bring that up again as though it makes sense) because any serious amount of poison in a wound that big would have killed her already without enough treatment to save her from the wound, too. It's just annoying, that the writers wrote themselves into this corner. Not as bad as teasing us about flatly yeeting Nynaeve back into the plot when they felt it was more dramatically convenient, but still distracting.

Short scene with Eg and Per again, this time with a nightmare -- completely new to the show again but reasonably good for being a relevant nightmare. The main problem with the two nightmares so far, is that they have no discernable purpose, whereas in the book they do have several purposes, at least some of which are evident immediately. (They go on serving such purposes throughout the first books, and even sporadically up through the final book!)

Back to Rand and Mat. The show is doing a good job demonstrating that these are very much level 1-type characters unable to do much of anything. Still, that isn't very book accurate either, since in the books even Perrin has some basic woodsman skills -- as well as BEING AN ACCOMPLISHED APPRENTICE BLACKSMITH! {SEETHE} -- and Rand and Mat were raised by very capable woodsmen. All three messed around in the woods at home a lot, together or alone, and Rand probably counts as being a level 2 ranger by the time the book starts. This also largely explains Nyn's woodscraft (being like a level 2 or 3 druid type.) Egwene by contrast is the backwoods equivalent of a city girl, living and playing (and later working) entirely in town in and around her dad's tavern and inn.

Anyway, they stumble on a ramshackle mining town called Breen's Spring, a new setting for unclear reasons (which got exactly one offhanded mention in the book), which is quite hilariously TOO ramshackle as its working windmill has too many holes in its vanes to plausibly work! I've heard or read that the producers found and wanted to use a real mining town, and I'm okay with that in principle, but not when it looks comically un-functional.

In the book, the town (not the inn/tavern) is named "Four Kings", and it's a larger town than any they've yet run across (not smaller than their own hometown as in the show), though still overtly "scruffy" to have such a name. It's supposed to be a T-fork meeting place for merchant caravans on the main highway leading to and from the the Andorian capital, Caemlyn, to the mines of the Mountains of Mist (on the east/west leg), with the southern road leading to the kingdom of Lugard (where the peddler Padan Fain comes from). This explains its relative size in the book, although the town isn't run well at all by its inhabitants. It should have several inns, all painted bilious colors. The one called "Four Kings", which in the show has so little obvious indication of being an inn that the producers decided to call attention to it by distant cheers, should be called "The Dancing Cartman".

Is this a very plot important change? Eh.... maybe not. (I mean aside from the inn/tavern not being decked out advertising as an inn and/or tavern AT ALL which is super-dumb.) In the show it's literally the first town that anyone in the party has reached since by-passing (not even going into) Taren Ferry. In the book, they've already picked up (at home in Emond's Field) and lost again (for now) the main character they're plot-meeting here, and both Rand and Mat have apprenticed to him enough to earn their supper as entertainers. This is Thom Merrilyn, the bard of the group, and a fan favorite.

Will the show butcher his character badly? Make your prediction now!!

Rand finally at last... confirms that Perrin was a blacksmith! This is inadvertently hilarious, because it seems obvious someone on the writing or production staff must have noticed they've given no evidence at all of him being a blacksmith (aside from a vague offhanded comment by Nyn which sure didn't signify it). So when Rand asks if the tavernkeeper (a woman who isn't true in the book -- that's instead a skinny innkeeper who soon convinces the boys never to trust an innkeeper who isn't fat!) has seen "a big man, a blacksmith", I was left thinking immediately, "How the bleep is she supposed to know he's a blacksmith?!? He doesn't look it, and never talks about it! He isn't even a notably 'big man' compared to the other two!"

Thom enters the scene, annnnd... is immediately wrong for not being acrobatic, not having epic curling moustaches, and not having colorful patches fluttering all over the outside of his cloak. He does have them (sown flat, not fluttering) inside, which he has to intentionally flash at the camera once or no one would ever see them (and the camera never once sees them again so he might as well not have them at all), but neither is he clearly flourishing for his audience -- only for the show viewers! His look sounds silly in the book, but it's pretty typical for gleemen (traveling bards) because they can only earn a living by getting attention. Here he's much more like a glum-man: a singing cowboy if that type from old westerns was played by Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven! So, yes, butchered so far in his introduction; but taken as an entirely new interpretation of the character, he looks and acts slightly cool with his introductory shot.

By the way, the episode's title, "A Place of Safety"? -- like the others, it comes from chapter titles in the book. Unlike the others it has nothing at all to do with this scene (broadly speaking) in the book: instead it refers to back home in Emond's Field, where the party hasn't even left yet! (The question of the chapter being whether it's safe to stay there after the Trolloc attack.)

Thus Thom takes a seat on the platform and starts to sing. A song from the books? Nope, entirely new. A cheerful song? Nope a gloomy song of death and sorrow, "the man who can't forget". Can he play his instrument? Sort of picks at it in a very basic manner, barely any skill. What instrument? A modern guitar. It must look like an iPad to the people there! (In the books he has a special harp, as well as a flute.) Does he at least sing well? eh... probably, but he sounds half drunk in slurring his words, or maybe has an odd accent. Sort of sounds like he's talking about "the man who can't forgive" at the end, although that doesn't fit the song's topic, doesn't make the necessary rhyme, and the subtitles say "forget".

Is the crowd at least entertained at this song about how he met Doctor Who once? Hard to say. They're dead silent when he's done, and after he's gone, and the innkeeper (acting as lead barkeep, or maybe vice versa because there's no other staff in this tavern at all, ever, even when she isn't working there but people are inside) calls out, with some wry humor, "Well are you gonna cry or order drinks?!" Everyone cheers HER -- it's explicitly her, all turned toward her clapping and cheering! Annnnnd scene, good job everyone! {clap clap} {pause} {again} {clap}
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Is this bad? Not necessarily in itself. I even appreciate that some writer managed to work a reference to the first book's prologue into the show after all, as a song -- though one that no one should know about, since NOT ONE PERSON ALIVE IN THE STORY thinks the Dragon was sad and miserable when he broke the world. Which is who Thom is singing about. Fans of the book will know, but none of these people would, and it's sheerly impossible that Thom would know: the Dragon wasn't and isn't "a man that I," Thom, "met", literally or figuratively. And clearly the people have no idea who he's singing about. It would be like singing a song to a synagogue about how Hitler was sad and miserable and lonely when he launched World War II and slaughtered the Jews. No one there would possibly recognize that characterization, or know it was true, much less give a single flake of crap if it was true. Thom would be thrown out of town permanently if he survived the mob at his heels! I appreciate the song AS A FAN, because Thom is singing it FOR THE FANS WATCHING THE SHOW -- not for any characters in the tavern, including himself.

That's one big problem. Also, this was supposed to be an adaptation of one of the big fan-favorite characters, Thom Merrilyn. This character verrry vaguely resembles Thom. The actor does a good job, and doubtless is playing as he has been written and directed. But he isn't playing Thom (or any other character I know of, except possibly maybe Jain Farstrider, in accordance with a long-running fan theory I also backed until it was disproven late in the books). Because Thom would never sing sad songs? Nope, he does in the books -- among many other songs. Never about "Lews Therin Telemon, the man called Dragon, who broke the world"? Nope, in the book he sings about him, too! Gleemen, especially of his caliber, aren't only popular entertainers. (Much less people who get up and sing once then sit back down to drink for a few minutes.) They offer a show hours long, filling the tavern, or the eating room of inns, as they travel around the world, for which proprietors pay as well as they can (or can get away with), and serve as the only semi-reliable repository of history for the general population. In technical studies (of which I participate) we'd call gleemen (usually men in the books as it happens) "tradents": key people in society who pass on tradition (often women in real life societies, but not always.) Thom Merrilyn is the WoT series equivalent of Steven Spielberg, if Spielberg was also Freddie Mercury and the entire band of Queen and several other bands rolled together. Even if he's slumming at a bar in nowhere, he's on point and on brand -- he's there for the new experience of traveling somewhere he's never seen, or on the way there, or to visit somewhere he wants to see again, also looking for new material. Which is why in the books he shows up near the first chapter in Emond's Field before the Trolloc raid! (Padan Fain is even kind of pissed that his own rather detailed and attention-grabbing show will be necessarily and unavoidably upstaged by a legitimate gleeman arriving!)

Sure, Thom in the books has his sad and down moments; he's a kick-ass knife fighter who likes to flourish his knives (though far more openly); he even gets drunk and dejected on occasion, because of tragedies in his past -- and no doubt the showrunners think they're being clever by having some of the song echo those tragedies, too. But Thom in the books would not drown his sorrows while on performance! He's too professional, and his reputation means too much to his professional life, to use one of his show opportunities for that! And the writers clearly demonstrate why: the tavernkeeper has to call for a round of drinks to recover from the disaster of his song, and the people all cheer HER! (Someone in production must have realized this was verging far too far off track, because they show a few people thanking and congratulating and paying him some minor pocket change afterward.)

I am four thousand percent baffled why Rafe and his writers have done this. Thom has an arc to work with in the books already! They have no reason at all to rewrite him, much less so drastically!

My brain is dying from the gall of the writers in kicking the fans they're trying to sell this series to, as a bootstrap to get more watchers for the show (and turning it into a full series of many seasons to complete). I'm so astonished I don't think I've even put this under spoiler tags. Therin wept. I'm not even halfway through the episode. Please let it be over soon with a big action sequence of some kind that I don't have to think about much...

Oh, and while anti-Thom here is reasonably cool in his own way, so far, he's also an asshole in the subsequent scene, and flagrantly steals from Mat. Thom is often arrogantly competent and confident in the book, but not like this. It doesn't even make sense in terms of the immediate plot, because a few minutes later Dana warns Mat that he better not try stealing anything in this town unless he wants to be instantly killed by the crowd -- but Thom and an unnamed drifter both FLAGRANTLY steal from Mat and no one gives a hoot! Heck, no one cares if someone is running through the city waving a sword around either. More on that later.

Getting away from that self-destructing scene, another nice one with Eg and Perrin (and his new friends, sort of). My only gripe is that I don't know how Egwene can tell which out of two possible ways several sets of cart tracks are going. (I only counted two distinct tracks, by the way, perhaps maybe three. We'll see if that's how many.)

Back to Rand and Mat with new character Dana the "barmaid" as Rand calls her. This is very out of synch with the books, as barmaids wouldn't be running a tavern or inn; landlords or landladies would be on deck (and a landlord was in the book), even though Mat and Rand often do deal with the hired help, too.

The scene with Rand and Mat (and Dana) is otherwise good. Mat now starts shifting into asshole mode as well, but to be fair this is book accurate (even though the conversation isn't per se). This was also why, although explicable and understandable (eventually), Mat was the character hated by the most readers in the first two books. So yay, now we get to deal with this inevitable problem, on top of others that could have been easily avoided.

Still, even with that, Mat's subsequent scene with Dana swerves (amazingly) back into being pretty good! Nothing from the book (as usual), but if the writers are going to insist on giving us 5 percent of the book and 90-faux percent shaped more or less like the book, then more of this please in the 90 percent? (This is where Dana warns about Mat being straight murdered if he's caught stealing, despite obvious evidence recently to the contrary.)

Speaking of 90-faux percent book-shaped, back to Moir's party, very much not in the book. Hey, Nyn, I've never seen poison like this before either! -- so gentle and slow that it gradually wears down someone stabbed deeply with it, until they collapse after doing many other utterly exhausting things more than a week later! And used on a killer oxman's big-ass spear point, too! Who knew Trollocs could be so subtle?! It's a short scene, establishing more plot to come (I suppose, though I don't know how); but I keep being distracted by this dumb not-in-the-book detail.

Back to Eg and Perrin. The obvious wagon trail they're following (not merely tracks now) leads to what the sidebar calls a featureless plain of grass, a thousand miles wide, with no roads (um, wagon trail very developed like a road), towns, or large bodies of water in it. The CGI shows off a beautiful but strange looking mountain surrounded by a thick forest in this, ahem, 1000 mile wide featureless sea of grass. (Not in the book either way.) Perrin says they won't be able to see far into the thick woods of this grassland, about a half mile distant, maybe three (it looks closer in subsequent shots after they don't move for a minute), so Eg should stay here while he goes ahead, and if it's safe in the woods waaaaaaaaaaay over there, he'll come back to get her. She insists on going, too. Fortunately once they reach the forest, the mountain completely disappears from ahead of them, so never mind. I've been (relatively) happy with their side of the episode up to now, but dammit, show. Why. WHY CAN'T YOU LET ME JUST HAVE THISSSS?!?! (To be fair, the two actors still do a good job.)

So the Tinkers now enter the plot (more or less where they should from the book), and act creepy, and only one of them is sort of garishly dressed. So much less than more than like the book. Again. They also look like real-world gypsies ethnically instead of more like Rand, which is a pretty important plotpoint dropped!

There are at least seven wagons in the camp, but that's actually book accurate (why do I have to thank God for this?), and I can accept that the two or three wagon ruts they followed originally swung between shots onto a well-worn trail for more wagons than that. As par for adaptation by the show, Aram is the least creepy of the Tinkers, relatively -- he still jokes about how they're coming to steal your food and babies. Eg and Per are understandably unsure whether this is a wry joke. Sigh.

Back to Rand and Mat, or Rand and Dana rather: the scene is going along fine and Rand (and Mat) have earned themselves a roof in an actual (store)room. Why Dana has let Mat off an hour ago, when it's getting ready to get dark, and when her most business must be starting for the rest of the night, and she doesn't seem to have any other help nor mentions any, and why would anyone in their right mind call her only "a barkeep"...??? {inhale}

Dana says Rand and Mat can be as loud as they want in the room while they slap and tickle each other (a phrase from the books, but definitely not from such a scene) to work out relationship woes, and that's almost a direct quote and what the hell am I cannot even anymore. There is no reason for her to think they're gay -- they could easily be brothers mad at each other, and men travel in pairs for safety REGULARLY like anyone else in the books (or the medievalish period being represented in the story.) No doubt she's teasing Rand to see if he and/or Mat would be interested in her tonight (she was doing that to Mat earlier, too, without any of this), but this is so cringey and clearly pandering to the slash-fic side of the fanbase. I could put up with it in a better quality show, but here we are.

Lan has ridden, by all appearances, thirty minutes away and back, and found a town or something in the woods, not far from the cursed city of living death. It makes slightly better sense once we find out what, later, but not much.

Mat and Moht the Glum-man have an interesting scene investigating a dead man gibbeted outside town, whom Thom wants to bury for honorable reasons (so far the only Thomish thing he's done aside from sing generally, and quietly flourish some knives, although this scene is once again very much NOT in the book. The gibbetted man they run across in this or the next book is very much alive, and after being rescued he becomes an important plot coupon and secondary protagonist later.) Mat wants a large, rough-cut purply gem the man still has on him for unknowable reasons. (I mean it's unknowable why that gem is on him. Mat's an outright thief in this show, but he does need money to keep trying to get home, unlike the books where he wants to go see the world; and to be fair this guy doesn't need it anymore.) They cut him down and Moht acts like Clint Eastwood (complete with a sphagetti-western guitar strum). The dead guy has red hair, which is the only racial/ethnic characteristic that Moht thinks counts toward identifying where various Westland people come from, which may be just as well because he also looks asian (like Kenshin Himura sort of.) In the books his people look uniformly like very tanned Irish, for very special plot reasons, but get ready for no more of that I guess...

Despite the inexplicable and avowedly valuable gem still on the guy (Moht doesn't claim it's worthless, and he seems experienced enough to know), this is admittedly a good scene. Wish the real Thom was in it, but you have to put up with a lot in this cruel, uncaring world.

Back to Rand and Dana having a good scene, with a slight bit of worldbuilding (unlike the books which drip with worldbuilding, especially the first one this show is supposedly based on.) I'm about half sure the actress mispronounces "Ogier", but I wouldn't even care except for bitterness and spite. Also, despite the scene being good, I have to wonder who's running the bar and catering to the guests. And who they're cheering for when Moht is outside. (Not him, obviously, feh!)

I was almost a little surprised, despite knowing the story, and despite her being a new character trying to throw fans off, when... well, when the writers decide they've made enough sense for one or two minutes and run the plot completely off the rails!

[spoiler]...she pulls a katana from out of apparently nowhere. Well, okay, that was surprising, because she isn't a channeler, and didn't have anywhere to take a sword that size from, and it's a cheap looking katana, even cheaper-looking than Rand's fancy-awesome heron-mark blade that he hasn't even gotten out once in the show although in the book he's had some basic training with it by now though admittedly the show has been too busy for that. In the book, it's a different character, and it's a poisoned dagger which can be better hidden, and which should have been the weapon here. sigh. Oh, wait! She somehow drew Rand's sword! That would be cool except his sword looks so crappy, and it shouldn't, ah hahahahahahahaaa!!

This scene is trash. She doesn't want to kill him, but threatens to do so constantly; she locked him inside, but is waiting for Mat to arrive through her locked door so she can capture him, too, with her borrowed sword. She has Rand at swordpoint, which if she puts that point between a rib (not on the sternum) makes some sense, but then backs way off to pretend to look through an oiled pane window she couldn't possibly see through, to see if Mat's coming, whereupon Rand does nothing against her with his great opportunity except eventually trying to break through the door. She thinks he can't break through an "ironwood" door, that three men bigger than he is could get through, but he doesn't have to break through it, only knock it off its hinges! She acts surprised by this -- the viewer may be supposed to be surprised by it, too, if this is combining two or three incidents from the book -- but in no way tries to stop him from it other than bluffing he couldn't do it. He escapes out into the street instead of into the crowded tavern, where he might have been perfectly safe, especially since she said she had no help and already let her lone server, Mat, off like an hour and a half ago, so that she wouldn't try to kill him in front of other people... but being charitable to the writers, maybe he thought she'd accuse him of mistreating her to the crowd who likes her unless she isn't serving them anything.[/spoiler]

Moht strides off with a low guitar clanging like Clint Eastwood, after a good scene with Mat, apparently leaving the plot again. And we're off to the finale for the ep.

Dana gives a surprisingly good justification for her actions -- though she...

[spoiler]...calls Shaitan the Dark One, which is kind of insulting for a Darkfriend to do. They prefer to call him the Great Lord, though maybe Great Lord of the Dark. Besides, if she really has been sold on the idea of the DO breaking the Wheel and saving everyone thereby, why wouldn't she call him "the Great Lord"? I kind of discount her idea of Ishamael bringing the Dragon to the DO 3000 years ago, because while that would be a huge plot change, Ishamael tries to convince the boys that he has often done that -- though without breaking the wheel somehow which is avowedly the DO's goal in the books, too. (Which is a sign that Ishy is conning the boys, trying to get them to give up without a fight.) Dang, the writers came up with a sympathetic motive for this Darkfriend, which is great, even if they borrowed it somewhat from Ishy himself in the books, but then stumble on her nomenclature! When she sounds like she should be sold on the Great Lord thing more than anyone! Also, she shouldn't be calling Ishy Ishamael, or referring to him much at all. She should be talking about Ba'alzamon, that thing in the dreams with the burnt skin and the eyes and mouth of fire. In the books, he's much more urbane, like Louis Jordan playing Dracula, occasionally sporting the burning inside his head. A very Stephen-Kingish chief villain.[/spoiler]

I seriously thought some blood was going to form a Dragon's Fang again, but somehow it only becomes some trees for the next scene and I feel actual relief despite how kind of dumb that transition was.

And the transition arrives at dumbness, too. Despite my joke earlier, it really does seem like Lan found a camp thirty minutes away from the cursed city -- possibly plausible in this case, although I strenuously doubt the writers will notice it. Why? Because although walking the horses at 1/6th speed gets them there in three hours (per dialogue), it's past daybreak the next morning when they arrive. So they rode off, spent the night soon afterward, then rode another three hours after breakfast? Nope, dialogue from Nyn indicated Moir could only last a few more hours before dying. Such continuity!

At least Logain has arrived in the plot. He looks Logainish, unlike Moht. I approve, but have to worry what the writers will do with him.

Because after three episodes of wildly varying quality, I just can't trust them to write well. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't, sometimes it doesn't matter either way. The Wheel reels as the Wheel rills. The writers piss in our mouths and call it raining, if I may reference their weirdly fetishistic version of that joke from back in episode one. Which reminds me, RJ invented a bunch of clever and vaguely suggestive fantasy curses for his book series, and the writers have chosen to have real cursing occasionally. Because they struggle to use as little of the books as they can feasibly get away with in every regard.

At least the show looks and usually sounds good. But I really don't know if I'm going to continue reviewing. Three eps is enough to form a basis of what to expect by now, and while I do want to complain about it I'd also rather just be doing something more uplifting with my life.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

SO ARE YOU GOING TO FINALLY DO A FAKE ANTICIPATED QUESTION STYLE OF REVIEW FOR THE NEXT THREE EPS?

.......I dunno. Maybe. Sure why not.

WELL DON'T LET YOUR ENTHUSIASM DRIVE YOU MURDEROUSLY INSANE!

....enthusiasms. Enthusiasms. {twirling baseball bat as I stalk around}

WE WILL INFER FROM THIS OPENING THAT THE SHOW HASN'T GOTTEN BETTER.

No. It hasn't gotten worse on average either; it's still the same wide spread of variable quality. It's also still a fanfiction set of alternate stories set in something like the WoT milieu but only as close as they can get to draw a fan audience. Every scene is still either brand new, or only kind of related to something from the books.

HOW INTENTIONAL DO YOU THINK THIS IS?

If you mean how avoidable this could have been, I'm (still!) willing to be fair that the compressed format of needing to trim down a massive amount of material in Book 1 (and a few portions of Book 2) to an eight hour season (minus credits), and then to produce that on a relatively limited television budget -- with one of their key stars quitting so hard for undisclosed reasons that he broke his contract and went dark on communications 75% of the way through the season! -- must necessarily involve hard alterations to adapting the story. I get that, I've always gotten that, I've always allowed for that.

But Eps 4 and especially 5 focus largely on a completely new side-story featuring a completely new character who doesn't even survive episode 5 (which will be evident early in that episode, so this isn't much of a spoiler). Rafe (the series creator, producer, and showrunner) and his writers did this instead of adapting plot from the books.

Sure there's also some plot from the first book, sort of, along the way, featuring characters from the books. But the point is that the writers wasted substantial time in the season on this dead-end side story that they created for their own feelings of being creative or something, instead of adapting the plot.

Moreover, Rafe has now openly acknowledged that he designed the season, and the TV series overall, to be an a very different alternate continuity to the books (a "different turning of the Wheel" in story parlance), which not incidentally is a lie because he has also significantly altered the basic metaphysics of how the world in the series works -- which is NOT something that would change in an earlier or later variation of the same characters in (verrrry roughly) the same story within the same milieu. Other things conceivably could, I grant, but not that.

And Rafe wasn't using that to excuse changes he had to make for time and budget reasons. He was using that to excuse and explain his (team's) creative liberties, such as why practically every scene is new or more-or-less loosely based at best on something from the books.

So he had better be doing a bang-up job on his brand-new material he has decided to take Amazon's money to make INSTEAD OF adapting the millions-selling (thus already massively popular) book series. Because his alterations are simply how he would have written the series instead with access to the same props, characters, and enough of the same situations to legally count as marketing the series as an adaptation for the built-in fan base.

But he isn't doing a bang-up job. His writers are very clumsy at dealing with problems necessarily inherent in making a resource-limited adaptation of the material; and they aren't any better at avoiding creating new problems with their creative changes, much less with solving their newly created problems!

Ep 4 is probably the best of the series so far, simply by being more average in quality, plus providing a sequence not shown in the books which fans (myself included) might be interested in: the capture of a "false Dragon" named Logain, and his attempts to escape capture while the Sisters and their Warders try to get him to the White Tower for trial. Logain is something of a secondary fan-favorite character in the books, and he looks the part sufficiently enough (Eastern combat guru), acted well by Alvaro Morte (heh, last name of "death"!), and the writers even give him good lines without breaking his book characterization even though every single scene with him (also in Ep 5) is one hundred percent new! It's like a miracle of the Light!

Then I realized during the climactic action of Ep 4 that the writers had clumsily invalidated the entire episode for plot convenience so that the episode they wanted to happen could happen. I'll put it behind the spoiler tag in case anyone cares...

[spoiler]So, the episode relies on Logain being stronger than any woman among the local Sisters assigned to hunt him down (fine, that's book accurate), thus requiring that at least two of them keep a shield on him at all times to prevent him from escaping and probably killing them all in the process. For most of the episode I thought that this was book accurate, because I was filling in blanks from the books, even though they weren't stated: Logain is actually stronger than any two or three women, but the Sisters simply form a link among three or even two of them to keep him shielded from drawing magical power to fight them. In the books, RJ (and Sanderson his literary heir who finished out the final trilogy of the books) early and consistently established that when channelers link (which women are a little better at than men, but which by far the best results come from both men and women linking) their sum power is multiplied by at least two, so they are much more powerful linked than channeling together-but-separate. The downside is that only one person can be directing the effects, and no one in the link can be doing much of anything else at the same time. (Which, subtly, means that Team Dark rarely if ever link up because they hate and compete with each other too much!)

So obviously the sisters were linking, with two of them being apparently safe enough although three would be perfectly safe -- book accurate -- except (unlike the books but fine) Logain is cleverly sandbagging them by pretending he can't punch through a link of two women, waiting for his army to attack for the fatal distraction he needs to kick ass in escape, remove some pieces, and prevent too many women from ganging up on him again.

Then the climactic action scene comes along, and he's now fighting three women (more or less led by Moirane). Now, I was surprised that he was winning, with some struggle, but I figured this was just the writers amping up his power for dramatic purposes since it soon wouldn't matter, he would be 'gentled' anyway and permanently severed from reaching the One Power again. Because in book terms, he really shouldn't be able to win against three linked Sisters shielding him, but fine whatever.

Then it turns out, quite explicitly demonstrated in the show, that the Sisters had never been linked in shielding him at all.

Because they can't link now in the show? Oh no, they can link, it's no problem at all: thanks to plot developments, Logain is distracted enough that enough sisters arrive to shield and then gentle him on the spot, by linking together.

They could have been shielding him the whole time, linked, and by all plot evidence even in the new TV show's plot, his escape would never have happened. There is no reason they wouldn't be linking. It's actually EASIER on exhausting their power levels if they did this linked. The show itself demonstrates this.

He simply wouldn't have been able to escape for the writers' new plot purposes if they had just been doing what Robert Jordan had them doing in the book (linking to shield Logain, and eventually gentle him, which is why he doesn't escape even briefly in the book). But the writers wanted him to escape briefly, with some tragic results, and to tease that someone is the Dragon Reborn who isn't in the book series, and so they just broke not only the book series but their own agreed-upon-rules within the bounds of the sheerest common sense. Yay. I said YAY why aren't you cheering their awesome achievements you bigot you![/spoiler]

Rafe's explanation for this change, in effect, is that in an alternate turning of the Wheel of ever-repeating history, the Aes Sedai are suicidally incompetent now so that the plot can plot briefly in the direction he wants for his creative triumph over RJ's writing.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

WOW. THAT SOUNDS AS IGNORANT AS HAVING A CHARACTER WHO COMES FROM A RIVER DELTA IN THE BOOKS, AND WHOSE OCCASIONAL QUIPS OFTEN REFER TO THAT SETTING, NOW BE SHOWN COMING FROM A NARROW MOUNTAIN RIVER FAR INLAND, BUT STILL GIVING THE SAME RIVER-DELTA QUIPS AND SLANG!

Funny you should mention that, O imaginary voice in my head! This happens in Ep 6, by the way. I'm wiling to grant that for budgetary constraints they couldn't film her introduction in an actual river delta area; and hey, I like mountain-river scenery better than delta-river scenery anyway. But then they keep various terms and pithy sayings from the book, as being part of her character without which the fans wouldn't recognize her I suppose (just someone of the same name who has the same job as in the books). It's like the writers live in an ivory tower without even the slightest understanding of the difference between a narrow single-stream mountain river, and the largest multi-channel delta region in the known world.

Hilariously, the Prime 'curated' sidebar information, which sometimes inadvertently cites actual plot against the new inventions of the showrunners, this time was obviously written by someone trying to fix this problem, because they tried to marry the two very different settings together in a bizarre disjointed fashion. But this person also has no idea what a river-delta is -- or else was trolling the showrunners VERY hard (I'd like to believe this) -- because he or she declares that it's "interesting" (as in unusually odd or maybe even ironic) that the largest ocean port city in the known world would be situated on an extensive freshwater river delta. Like this is something that might only happen in a fantasy world!!  #:-) :hide:

Relatedly, in the TV series this character now doesn't come from the largest port city in the known world, nor anywhere nearby it. She comes from an isolated fishing village far upstream in the mountains. Where someone burns down the house of her and her (maimed) father for seeing her being able to channel aptly without a single lick of training (practically impossible in the books to do consciously, at least without TONS of in-story plot help). Thus this unknown person sets fire to their house, less than two hundred yards away, which they don't notice until they tie up at their dock to go home, to find its smoldering ruins, with a purple-painted "dragon's fang" on the door, denouncing them as Darkfriends.

Now, what's reaaaallly 'special' about this revelation, is that this door (and part of its doorframe) is literally the ONLY part of the structure still standing as a structure. So this arsonist not only could see her channeling (when they can't see the weaves she's doing, and the effect is totally subtle and hidden by her dad anyway), and not only torched their house consequently which they didn't even smell or hear sign of much less see; but also either (a) drew the fang to denounce them as Darkfriends then set fire to the place without wondering whether the paint would survive for this purpose; (b) hung around to make sure something would remain to paint the fang on, hoping something would survive the burning; (c) somehow KNEW already that the flimsy door would survive, along with enough of its frame to keep standing, for the fang to be painted on; or (d) was a writer on the show who thought this made sense and anyway serves their emotions of the plot as an inciting incident.  :clap: :hide:


BUT YOU THINK SOME OF THE WRITING IS GOOD?! THE NEW WRITING, NOT JUST DRABS OF RJ'S WAVED AT IN PASSING?!

Yeah, someone has some talent sometimes. The show still looks good, even though these three eps crash hard up against budget restrictions for the season -- so hard that, apparently, deep festering recent cuts on Perrin's back were too expensive to recreate for a scene, so they decide to just shoot the scene as though the other characters can see and talk about them without the camera showing them. Okay, that's clever, fine, but then the camera inadvertently shows enough of the area of his back where the cuts should be, to reveal that it's perfectly healthy! Or maybe the showrunners forgot where the scars were...? But he's lying on the correct side to keep the cuts from touching the bed even accidentally. Maybe they have no idea how festering cuts work, AND also forgot where Perrin had been cut?!? Who even knows. God knows, I don't.


IS ALL THIS BECAUSE NOW TWO CHARACTERS ARE SUPER-GAY FOR EACH OTHER WHEN THEY WEREN'T BEFORE, AND YOU DON'T LIKE LESBIANISM?

Uh, no, I'm sorry one of them won't (apparently?) have an interesting (straight) romance later, but the (straight) romance of the other woman always felt waaaaaaaay forced for plot dramatics by RJ. And in the books, they were "pillow sisters" back when teens in school (at the Tower), so there's prior characterization to work with. Sure as a conservative Christian I don't agree with promoting that behavior, but lots of characters do things I don't agree with in fiction -- just like real life! -- so as long as it contributes usefully and coherently to the plot I don't care. I'm okay with this change, even though I recognize it's pandering to some of the audience, and fits Rafe's stated goals of making the story appropriately more 'woke' for enlightened modern audiences or whatever. I'm seriously okay with it as a plot change per se.

I'm less okay with the vague way in which they set up a magic rendevous area which appears to be pulled out of the butts of the writers for plot convenience, rather than something in the milieu (which would have been super-dangerous to do for this purpose, though it has an established record in the book series for being a good way to meet up and share information secretly). But I'm even willing to accept a plot handwave on this, as long as it doesn't break against established plot later.

See, I can be nice, even about things I don't like!  O:-) It isn't a story problem with (...and this is important...) the story; and the change even adds some character value to events in Ep 6.

Thus my clumsy segue into this topic has been justified. Moving along...


WHAT HAPPENED TO THE UNFORGIVEN SINGING COWBOY? HE SEEMED REASONABLY COOL IN A POTENTIALLY IMPORTANT WAY.

Like in the book, he gets yeeted out of the plot somewhere in Episode 4, if I recall. Or 5. He's only in one more episode, it's hard to remember when because he's in it so little despite being important in the books AND a major fan character, and does so little. Moht the Glum-man is there entirely to set up his character for a (possible) return later, and to convey one piece of information to Rand and Mat that they hadn't learned before, whereupon he's promptly ejected from the plot and left for dead.

WE TAKE IT THIS DOESN'T HAPPEN IN THE BOOKS?

Being ejected in the plot, doing basically the same cool thing, yes. Different (and more expensive to produce) place, but yes. Being useless except for one plot purpose, no. He's supposed to be an important 'uncle' figure for Rand and Mat, to level them up with various training, enough to survive on their own a while without him. That doesn't happen here, so once he fulfills his newly limited plot function, poot he's gone.

BUT NOR FOR GOOD, RIGHT?

[spoiler]Not in the book series, but his character has been so truncated in the TV series that I could imagine the writers leaving open the option of just not including him any farther. To be fair, aside from a pseudo-important bit of foreshadowing involving him and another character -- which I don't even recall whether it appears in Book 1 -- he didn't necessarily have to come back in the book series either.[/spoiler]

So, fare well (or possibly not), Glum-man. Indeed, we hardly knew you.


IS THERE ANY INDICATION IN THE SHOW NOW ABOUT THAT EXTENSIVE IMPORTANCE OF GLEEMEN IN PRESERVING AND SHARING AROUND THE COLLECTED CULTURE OF THE WESTLANDS?

Bleep no. (The unnecessary real-world cursing continues, by the way, to show with some earlier blood and guts, and some shadowed topless nudity, that this could be the new Game of Thrones y'all.)

The closest the show comes to this, is Moiraine citing a gleeman she heard somewhere telling about a five-headed Dragon, as evidence that maybe there will be five Dragons Reborn now, so who even knows what the plot will be like.

SO, A SPECIFIC PROPHECY AT LAST??

No, not at all: it's an offhanded remark aimed at the characters in-story choosing to flatly ignore prophecies of the Dragon, except when the showrunners absolutely need to reference the absolute minimum for plot purposes. But for some reason(s) they aren't even ginning up new prophecies to work into the show so that watchers can chew them over and try to guess ahead of time how they'll be fulfilled -- which was a BIG fan-factor of the books, to keep readers talking (on that new-fangled internet thing in chat groups at the time).

Now again, I want to be fair: I recognize and acknowledge that the detailed worldbuilding of the book's prophecies could easily commit the showrunners to events for which they might not have the eventual time and/or budget. Besides fans of the books would quickly point out to new fans how they'd be likely fulfilled, which would be some serious spoilers -- which granted that's likely to happen anyway, but I can see an argument for why borrow spoilers when you don't have to? Especially if you might not have the logistics to bring them about after all.

But because I do recall the prophecies in the book, I also know they'd commit the showrunners to plot points that they themselves sheerly don't want to do in the story, and so which they aren't going to do.

Thus, and not least because the adaptors demonstrably have the least possible intentions of adapting this book series popular enough to have a lucrative built-in audience, not only the prophecies in content (original or new), but in very principle, shall and must be not only avoided but actively derided by the writers through the characters. So, fare well (or possibly not) WoT prophecies! -- indeed we hardly knew you, either.

WE NOTICE YOU'RE NOT SAYING MUCH ABOUT EPISODE 5...?

Because I already said almost as much as it deserves. The actual plot characters trickle into Tar Valon, their immediate plot-goal for the series so far, and mostly don't run into each other while they wait for each other to arrive, and meanwhile a completely new separate fanfiction side story happens until it runs into a dead end, with no bearing on the real story going forward. Cue episode 6. I mean, it's well acted enough I suppose, and even has some okay writing here and there, but I'm not watching this series because I want to see someone's fan-fiction short story set in the WoT plot somewhere. I'm here for an adaptation of the story, and this ain't it, so that was a waste of time for that purpose. But then, the showrunners are overtly NOT trying to adapt the story of the books, but flatly rewriting them from scratch more-or-less. Well, they have shown their quality in that for a long time before now, so never the hell mind.


ONLY TWO EPS LEFT, SO THAT'S... OKAY? WHAT'S LEFT TO DO NOW THAT THEY'RE AT PLOT CENTRAL?

Go somewhere else for two eps to set up more plot I guess. This is set up out of plot-nowhere, very jankily; and I fully acknowledge that the end of the plot of Book 1 was kind of half-assed, too, and fans have often complained  about it -- but making it even more half-assed, anti-setup, and tacked on for a plot climax, isn't the way to solve that problem!!

I can't really talk about that more until I see how the showrunners resolve it, but the hints they give in Ep 6 don't lend me increased confidence in the face of their efforts so far.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

Destraex

WOW. What a thread. I have 3 friends that have read the wheel of time. They tell me the whole thing has been changed. Most disappointing changes being the relationships and the male swordsman who should apparently have been massive fellows in good armour who would constantly stand vigil and be stern cold buggars. Instead we got tiny samurai orgies. Unfortunately like most fantasy, we got swords that can slash and stab through armour.

I watched the whole first season and not knowing the books could still tell it was just a woke extravaganza with very few people chosen for their acting skills. But more for their outrage skills. Still it was watchable.

Does not hold a candle to the 4k extended LOTR films, of which I did read the books when I was a kid.
"They only asked the Light Brigade to do it once"

JasonPratt

The male swordsman, Lan, doesn't really have armor (supposed to have a color-shifting cloak, sort of like the ones given to the Fellowship by Galadrial in LotR). He's less stoic and badass and competent in the show, for sure. I don't think his character was assassinated as much as others, but the writers take needless and illogical digs at him. I was okay with him showing strong emotion at the funeral of one of his best friends (not something that happens at all in the books), since that was a private ceremony and the book indicates he can get very emotional in private; but I also understand some (not all) of the fan-hate directed at that change, since he won't get to show that later in the series and a huge plot development of the books is Nynaeve being dedicated to slowly softening his heart. That has all been flushed down the toilet now, in the two season finale eps that I haven't reviewed (yet. And probably never will.)

The "ogier" is a different character, and the series nerfs him badly but doesn't assassinate him outright. Aside from potentially killing him off in the final ep, I guess. Rafe swears he's still alive but what hurt him would have inescapably killed him in the books, which he knows fans would expect so it's a cheap fake-out finale death by rewriting how things work in the books again. Rafe says Loial (the ogier) is his favorite character (thus why he's safe, for now, apparently, despite the cheap fake-out death cheating on the plot mechanics from the book.) This is how he treats his favorite character, so blergh.

The didn't have the budget to CGI him up to bigfoot-muppet levels, so they verrrry half-assed it without even using the clever perspective tricks of LotR. To make matters worse, for no clear reason they largely changed his hair, eyebrows, and ears, so that structurally he not only looks almost completely different but highly goofy like a clown.  (And since he can't move fast in his costume, they change the plot so that Ogier can't run or fight well now.) The actor is good, and plays his role as well as the script will let him, but the script yanks away almost everything from him. Again, this is how Rafe his "favorite" {Doctor Evil fingerquotes} character... a favorite secondary character for a lot of the fans, too, which only insults them further. I half expect to hear that Loial's actor also bailed on the show which is why he was provisionally killed off for the season finale in case they couldn't convince someone else to play him next season!

While season 3 has been greenlit already (and season 2), I have trouble believing they're going to go through with season 2. But it will be certainly abandoned by much of the book's fanbase.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!