I am curious as to why you would think that.

I don't count the after-interviews. If you didn't put it on the screen, you've failed in your job as motion picture producers, you don't get to explain it afterwards. But I got the friendship thing from their initial depiction in a physically familiar context. I didn't even realize that was supposed to be Alicent at first, since the only mention of friendly relations between them was the public good face they put on at Alicent's wedding.

There is also the question of whether it is murder if the action is taken to save another's life. Possibly on the part of the maester, if he was telling what he thought was a necessary lie to get past the king's dithering, but from Viserys' perspective, he was told that saving Aemma was not an option, so he made the choice to save the baby.

On a personal note, I don't believe there is one right answer to the save the mother/save the baby dilemma, so long as the solution is not to directly murder one to save the other. Perform a procedure with the direct intent of fixing a problem endangering the life of one, that will likely or even certainly kill the other - fine (e.g. an ectopic pregnancy). Kill the one to make saving the other more convenient or easy, nope. At the very least, in Aemma's case, she should have had the final say, not Viserys. Morally speaking, not necessarily according to Westeros' often fucked up practices.

I alluded to as much in the OP at the 8:52 & 9:22 time stamps.

Also, one minute, Viserys is anointing her as heir and the next, marrying a young and presumably fertile woman who could produce male replacements. The one gesture she gets from her father is one he is revoking for his own self-indulgence (even if one subscribes to the implication that he simply married Alicent for companionship and to end the attempts to induce him to wed another, rather than lust or a desire for more children).
The tradition speaks mostly of brother to sister. The only other avuncular pairing known, that of Rhaenys' parents, was between a couple with a single digit age difference. There was never an adult-child power dynamic between Jocelyn & Aemon as there is between Daemon and Rhaenyra.

Absolutely. Kind of the corollary to Chris Rock's "I ain't saying it's right...but I understand." I understand what she is feeling and sympathize with that position, even if I utterly reject her chosen method of acting out. What I like is that the show is not trying to make her out to be a heroine or these decisions as a sign of strength, but rather is putting her selfishness on the screen as a consistent character trait. She is someone who does not set out to be villain or have, for example, Cersei's solipsistic identification of her personal gratification with the right thing to do, but she still is acting to gratify herself first without thinking of the effect of her actions. As we see in the prior episode, during the courtship scene, how without any malice on her part, she provokes a fight that leaves a man dead and adds another chapter to an infamous feud between two powerful families, not only engendering bad feelings toward herself, her family and their regime, but also disrupting the peace of the realm.

Yes.

I would call that her arc for this episode, making the decision to move forward from this mentality, to actively begin maneuvering for her family's betterment. This is what Martin was referring to when he quotes Faulkner about "the human heart at war with itself". The war is decided for Alicent in this episode, upon coming to believe that Rhaenyra has manipulated her affections and tricked her, she has begun to see her husband as the enabler in this. Last episode, he was sexually imposing on her and then persecuting her friend, so even though he turned out to be right, the bad feelings are still there, and rather than run to his aid when he shows weakness upon his return, she lets his maladies become a source of repulsion rather than an inspiration for empathy. So she rejects continuing in the thankless task of trying to keep together her made-family of husband, son and step-daughter, where both husband and step-daughter have not been receptive to her efforts and even victimized her. Instead, she falls back on her birth family, because from a certain point of view, her father has not let her down. She might not like his actions, but he made a case about the good of the realm, and by their society's standards, throwing her at the king is to her benefit, whatever her personal feelings about the situation. So we see her wearing a color significant to House Hightower, timing her entrance to show up her husband, publicly greeting her uncle, the Lord of Hightower, etc. She might have been invited to the feast as Viserys' wife, but she's acting as Hobart's niece & Otto's daughter.

Complete with a WoT-style misunderstanding. Bear in mind, Larys' version was not true in facts, although the essential point of Rhaenyra's inappropriate sexual activity was not, and she got lucky when she turned to Cole for confirmation when he was feeling used, rejected and guilty.

Eh, I think he gets some stuff right. He's more of a literary device than a character, sort of necessary given the narrative conceit, because only an unreliable and sensationalist Watsonian author would reveal the true things Mushroom claims. At least some of Rhaenyra's breakup with Cole is drawn from Mushroom's version of the inciting incident.

I would actually call him a device of Martin.

Mushroom appears to have actually existed and wrote a book. I don't think he's supposed to be an in-universe fake source for slanders. I think they might instead choose to include the worst bits of Mushroom's writings regardless of their belief in their veracity, in order to present the worst picture, or present him as the source of things with which they disagree, so they can refute his sensationalist account as obviously nonsense, while ignoring/discrediting more grounded claims that contradict their narrative, by lumping them in with Mushroom's hyperbole. As in "Oh, you believe that Rhaenyra did X? Well, that comes from Mushroom. Stop reading that type of bullshit and stick to serious histories, or better yet, leave it to real scholars..." even if other reputable sources also make the same claim.