For sure, they should've had more than this one scene - that starts with having more episodes, but obviously, yeah, there's a bunch of stuff they could've cut to make room in the episodes they had.

True.

More realistic than this extended plan with so many holes relying on her holding her own against two guys for a longer period, yeah.

As so often on TV or in movies, sadly...

So out of curiosity, what point exactly are you making with all the Arabic names? Yes, I noticed the actor playing Ishamael is Middle Eastern.

Otherwise, I agree, we definitely needed more dream scenes - and the one that we did have needed to be better.

Interesting. Yeah, good point, that way at least their idea would've had some more use.

One of the more memorable Ishamael/Moridin scenes in the book series, for me, is the one where he's talking about the Fisher King and that chess/go/etc. like game in which one can win by converting one's opponent king piece, or something along those lines. It's surely not the first time that the topic comes up, but somehow, at least as I recall it, the first time I started to realize that turning him is the main plan, not just a sideshow, and that most of the other Forsaken are just distractions. But in the show, I guess we'll take what we can get. I liked that they put that here, but as you said above, without following up on it until episode eight, surely most people would've forgotten all about it. Besides, since the series established little or nothing about who the Dark One is, what he really wants, and doesn't even include any Forsaken other than Ishamael, that realization carries little weight anyway.

Fair. I guess I mean that Rand in the show has a certain kind of innocence about him, which he needs to lose along the way - kinda goes with the part about feeling more like a modern teenager than a quasi-medieval farmer, who might be ignorant about plenty of things but probably more realistic overall.

Well, you don't think they're done with Thom, do you? Though yes, they could've done a better job with the Myrddraal for sure.

You would of course think that the book handled it fine. Wasn't expecting you to agree on the need for this. But since you mention it, yeah, I thought the joking about the sexual implications of Stepin becoming one of Alanna's warders was in pretty poor taste, too.

Certainly. With better choices made on the overall structure of the season and the major changes to the book plot, they'd also have ended up doing better on the small stuff. Some of those choices, notably the eight episodes rather than ten or even more, were apparently imposed on Judkins and the writers from their management - and I've heard theories, which seem plausible, that the last two episodes would have been not quite as bad if Covid hadn't thrown up a bunch of additional obstacles (like the actor playing Mat not returning after the Covid-imposed break in filming after episode six, hence the forced rewrite of his storyline).

Of course, when reviewing the series it doesn't really matter whether a given issue is finally Judkins' responsibility or that of his bosses or just force majeure, but I guess I like to take mitigating factors into account, especially since they suggest that they might do better in future seasons with fewer such restrictions. Somewhat better - this show is never going to become really great television...

Agreed. Brandon Sanderson made much the same point in his comments about the first episode - that the Perrin fridging thing was not only an offensive and lazy cliche, but that it really required a long, complex emotional journey for him afterwards to process that, which it was never very likely that the writers would bother to give him, and indeed they haven't. And yeah, Mat's relationship with his family is likely to fall along the wayside in the same way.

I'm not sure, despite the actor's age, that GoT meant to age Robb that much? Bump him up to 18 maybe, but not 'in his 20s' surely? Though from what I recall, I didn't much like GoT's take on that whole thing, either.

Fair enough.