Three episodes are being excreted released at the outset, and I have not heard of the season being longer this year. I can’t tell if this is a desperation move or one of supreme confidence.
00:07 I should not need to watch the “Previously On” segment of a Wheel of Time adaptation, because I know the story forward and backward. That I feel the need for a refresher shows just how little the two versions have in common.
00:35 Ah, yes. The lie that before Moiraine Lan had nothing to live or die for. In fact, he had way too much to live and die for and they were placing mutually exclusive demands on him. Accepting Moiraine’s bond was Lan’s way to get clear of it all.
And did this scene of the four young people and Lan and Moiraine standing in a circle ever happen? Edit from the future: Sort of. Different angle.
01:08 NOSEWART! It’s ba-ack!
03:50 Is that manhole cover thing supposed to be another Seal on the Dark One’s prison? If they are just parked immovably in various locations, why hasn’t the Tower found them in 3000 years and done something to protect them? Watcher of the Seals, hello?
Also, I am not invested at all in that kid’s fate. She’s clearly here for dramatic purposes.
03:57 That Trolloc jumping against the door was so fake looking even I noticed it.
04:22 This is how they do the Darkfriend Social? Also, Ba’alzamon’s line delivery is utterly flat. It sounds more ike he’s incanting a ritual than speaking to people.
04:50 So this child, on seeing a monster, runs into the house, and instead of approaching her mother directly, hides under the table and attempts to engage her mother from down there? What child acts like that? Why would she be trying to hide under a table instead of going to actual adults for refuge? Until the man, heretofore still unidentified on this show, ducked under to look at her, I was wondering if she was even real, given the lack of attention she received. I mean, a door opening during a Darkfriend meeting is not something anyone just ignores, and this child is sapient, not a toddler whose behavior can be dismissed.
I can see nothing good for the man’s engaging with the kid. With Ba’alzamon, there was this otherworldly quality to him that made his occasional attention to details scary. But for the most part, he was above it all. I don’t see how doing anything with this kid helps his characterization.
04:54 Why is the child even at this sort of meeting? What is the point of attending an anonymous meeting in a veil, and bringing your daughter?
05:19 That was awfully hasty exposition. And Father of Lies is a name for the Dark One. It was only ever directed at Ishamael, the Betrayer of Hope, in the mistaken belief that he was the Dark One.
05:21 Yay? Fain is here?
06:57 What did that add to the story or to Ishamael’s characterization?
08:20 I guess we are supposed to recall how easily she warmed the bath in the pilot episode?
10:02 I hope they are going to clarify whether Moiraine is stilled or just shielded. And what the status is of her bond with Lan, since those two conditions would have radically different effects on him.
10:57 And now we’re going to ruin Verin! Oh boy! Verin would mumble something apologetic designed to reinforce the image of her as someone so lost in thought she was unaware of how much noise she would be making.
11:24 An Aes Sedai would never pump another sister’s warder for information about her. She would especially not be doing so to find out what the sister herself was refusing to share.
All of this might seem unnecessary, given the departures from the books, but these details are part of what makes the Aes Sedai and Warders what they are. You can’t dispense with all sorts of inconvenient details and still expect the picture to hold up.
12:29 So Bayle Domon works for Moiraine, Moiraine is an asshole to Lan, and the scene is being written by someone who has only had Illianer diction vaguely described to him, because this is not how Bayle talks.
12:40 This had better have some purpose in the show’s narrative other than making the dumbest fans of both media seal clap at a couple of familiar names.
It should go without saying that Moiraine cannot be stilled, otherwise, she wouldn’t be hanging around other Aes Sedai, not that the show has established Verin as one, much less the lounging woman whom I cannot imagine acting less like an Aes Sedai.
13:28 I fucking hate this show.
This says everything about their priorities. And it’s not telling a good story, much less Wheel of Time.
First of all, ITB, the Aes Sedai are very image conscious and discreet. They would not be leaving doors open for novices to wander through, and would have especially taken precautions not to be seen by a subordinate in the middle of a Warder sandwich. This is a through-line of the series, that sexuality affects how people perceive you, not in the sense of slut-shaming, but it creates a degree of familiarity, of false intimacy. It’s part of the tradeoff between knowledge and image. You can’t control how you are perceived if you let people in too close, or know too much about you. Awareness of your sex life is one of those things that degrades your image in others’ eyes, not because it’s icky or shameful, but because it is so very personal and humanizing to an excessive degree. You close the bedroom door for the same reason that you close the bathroom door.
This only makes Alanna cool in the eyes of adolescent viewers and writers. It will ruin her image in the eyes of Egwene and furthermore, when the issue of trusting Alanna comes up, if ever, this is going to complicate it, because it’s an additional factor that could weigh on Egwene’s judgement in no good way.
15:00 Nynaeve might not like anything about the Tower and Aes Sedai, but she gets how things work. Egwene is explaining their novitiate as if it is some unique phenomenon to them, instead of absolutely what anyone raised in a world where everyone does real work for a living would understand as an apprenticeship.
Also, Egwene was the one who was always complaining and impatient with the speed of her teaching and being diverted to things that did not advance her. Egwene was the one who was always looking for a shortcut, and would be looking to ask the Amyrlin to hurry things along. Nynaeve would not have wanted a favor from the Amyrlin, even if she somehow did not understand the purpose of a training regimen.
16:53 That bit could almost work, since Egwene has seen first hand the advantage of minimizing the need to move your hands when working the Power.
On the other hand, backtalking an Aes Sedai, or deviating from her channeling instructions in the slightest are among the greatest offenses a novice can commit. Not because this is a peculiarity of the White Tower, but because they are handling forces that once Broke the World, which are dangerous to use carelessly.
And you can’t channel with your eyes closed, because you need to see to weave the threads, per the books. Why have the magic system if you’re going to change things that make no sense to change?
17:01 Any real Aes Sedai would have had Nynaeve pouring that cup down her own throat unfiltered for a remark like this. Hopefully they will salvage this scene by having Alanna send them both to Sheriam at the end of the lesson.
18:10 This is very heavy-handed, but bears some slight resemblance to Nynaeve’s actual problem with channeling – her fear of the strength of the Power.
I can’t decide if it would be good or not to have Nynaeve blow off the lesson by defiantly chugging the glass of dirty water and storming out. Probably would need context to figure whether or not it develops her resistance or simply her immaturity. And I don’t think the writers, to the extent that they are book-fans, understand the issues the characters have with embracing their powers, and do, in fact, think they are being stupid or babies for balking.
18:41 Predictability in all the worst ways.
And while writing this, I am wondering how such clear Aes Sedai fan-girls as the writers of this show are can portray them as so incompetent and running a training program with such poor discipline, when it occurred to me that they might believe this is an improvement, because punishment is icky and regressive.
Needless to say, since the first season made it abundantly clear how little they understand Nynaeve or how few shits they can be bothered o give about her, it’s hardly a surprise that they’re getting her wrong here. Nynaeve is stubborn, but not stubbornly resistant to learning or knowledge. Her stubbornness is that she refuses to give up. She does not give up trying to break her block, even when she thinks her efforts are hopeless. Hell, her block comes from her utter refusal to surrender to the Power. She never balks at lessons, she never stops trying. Yes, she hates the Tower and resents the Aes Sedai, but she would not be in it, fucking around with kitchen chores, if she had no interest or desire in learning what they had to teach.
Nynaeve also always tries to get along with people and deal with them as equals, up to the point where she thinks they are being stupid or obstructive, and giving lessons to students in no way qualifies. When she balks or argues with someone above her, it’s because she thinks they are doing something wrong, or on behalf of someone she perceives as being in need or wronged. She objected to the severity of White Tower training when she believed Egwene was going to be subjected to it. She drops her complaint when told that it’s the Accepted, not the novices who go through what Siuan put her through on the boat. All of her arguments with Moiraine are about the welfare of the other Two Rivers kids or the people who ended up as collateral damage from the presence of Two Rivers folk. She is not a contrarian, nor does she nitpick or hairsplit. She is always about the spirt and not the letter of a law, agreement or relationship.
I can’t tell if the writers hate her, or if they think this is empowering, but they are consistently portraying her as an immature asshole.
19:04 Red-haired, tilted eyed Sheriam is being played by a white-haired woman with normal eyes. I realize both her signature appearance traits are hard to find in the same actress, but if you’re going with round eyes, you can cast a ginger and if you are going with white hair, you can cast an oriental woman.
20:07The Jaw That Walks (and calls itself Liandrin) has good points and everything said in this scene is both accurate and conveys pertinent information so far. I just thought I would point that out before the inevitable screwup.
20:31 Her hair is even less braidy than ever.
21:54 So we’re not even going to address Loial being stabbed by the Shadar Logoth dagger and being alive and well?
22:40 They are really just snatching random names out of the books. Watch Hill is a village in the Two Rivers, which the fellowship passed on their way out. And meanwhile it looks like they are going to be making Uno into a bragging clown whom no one takes seriously, instead of the archetypal professional soldier and quintessential badass non-com.
Maybe Loial’s ironic mockery is the evil of the dagger belatedly manifesting in him. It’s certainly not a character trait from the books.
23:34 He’s acting like he’s blind. Knowing what I know, I think we’re supposed to notice Elyas’ eyes. I feel like they also wanted us to be surprised that Elyas is the sniffer, not Hurin. But why should we care that it’s Elyas? What on earth should make me think I am going to see the book character?
24:28 That looked like the girl Ishamael was messing with. But if she is the sole survivor of the massacre, why did she believe her mother was in the meeting?
25:09 It looks like they are trying to stick to the essential moments of the Hunt story. They established the Black Hawk of Shienar, which was visible at the Darkfriend meeting, and we got a hint that Ingtar is sensitive about hearing such men condemned, while seeing the sigil on a corpse might lull us into thinking the guy at the meeting is dead. Or Maseema might be presented as the obvious suspect later on, to set up the surprise reveal. Of course, Rand is not with them, so we don’t have any sort of relationship with him and Ingtar developing yet, which is going to undermine that reveal.
Also, Elyas is played by the actor who plays Clem, the father of, and origin of the family name for, the title character of the Star Wars show called, hilariously in this context, Andor.
25:29 The Sea Folk do be the best in the game, and Moiraine do no have an interest in that, because it do be the heartstone she does want.
Bayle’s dialogue is not hard to get right. And if they got his speech patterns right, it might distract some of us from the content.
26:33 So much of the dialogue is sheer sophistry. Lan says that he misses the awareness of Moiraine that came with the bond, that before it was like a constant narration, and now there is silence, to which either Tomas or Jaem replies Lan does not seem like a man who is afraid of a little silence. The look Daniel Henney is giving him at this timestamp seems to me to be full of the contempt that response deserves. Dumb Old Warder is talking about literal silence, whereas Lan is talking about being isolated from his partner and the defining figure in his life. They do this all the time, deliberately misunderstanding which meaning or connotation of a word is applicable in order to contradict the other people in the dialogue. It’s a stupid and shallow person’s idea of what is clever.
26:48 “She wants me to leave” “You can.” Again! Lan is not looking for permission. He is explaining their emotional estrangement.
26:55 That dark haired Aes Sedai leering at Lan was supposed to be Adeleas.
27:16 The only thing we know about Jaem’s relationship with Lan (even though this is Verin’s Warder, they have basically inserted Verin into Vandene’s place in the story, so until I hear different, I am calling him Jaem) is that he took his cue from Lan, having been out of the proper Warder game for a while, rusticating with Vandene and her sister, and now, with a real Warder in the house, he went back to practicing with his sword and taking his combat duties more seriously. He was not blowing Lan off like a nuisance, much less volunteering to be the unofficial Warder stand-in for a second sister beyond the one to whom he is actually bonded.
28:49 What even is Moiraine going to do with a broken chunk of cuendillar? Why is the negotiation all about the extra pittance for the poem? Domon does not seem to be doing a good job of selling her on the value of the actual intel he has, and the attitude here is that it’s just an extra with the cuendillar being the real prize.
Also, the negotiations are dumb. He asks for five marks, Moiraine says she could buy a top tier horse with that (skipping the stupidity of her saying “racehorse”, because that’s still a local niche activity and not yet the sport of kings at this stage of societal development. Or maybe it is a big deal in this world, but A. they haven’t established that, and B. I doubt it, considering what a horse race would probably cost a TV budget. HBO had to cancel a show about horse racing by one of their best writers with an actual movie star, after one season because of the expenses of the premise) anyway, Moiraine notes that five marks is a lot of money and he immediately goes down to one mark. That’s not how you negotiate or how you dialogue. His next line should have been ”this poem is worth it.” I will give this exchange props only for establishing some relative values of money in this world, and a broken chunk of cuendillar being worth ten times the price of an expensive horse is appropriate.
29:23 This is bullshit. A. It is canon that the Sea Folk are far better than the Aes Sedai at bargaining and negotiating. B. It’s also a good way to lose your network of informants, by dealing with them in bad faith. Good luck ever getting Domon to bring you anything again. Best case scenario, he spreads the word of how an Aes Sedai cheated him (something the Tower takes pains not to let happen ITB), worse scenario, he specifically names Moiraine, which gets the Tower pissed at her and lowers her rep among others she might want to deal with. Even worse, he turns to her rivals in the Tower, and pretty soon, Liandrin is getting all the interesting stuff. None of this, except for the parenthetical aside is based on book lore, this is common sense for dealing with people, and based on what has been established, for lack of a better word, by the show to date. This sort of gamesmanship is what you do against outsiders, not people in your own employ, or with whom you want an ongoing relationship.
This could be used for character work, perhaps to suggest that Moiraine is acting petty and lashing out to feel powerful after losing her ability to channel, or it could set up plot points down the road, such as a difficulty the Wondergirls might have to overcome when dealing with Domon themselves. But what I suspect actually is going on in the writers’ brains is nothing more than the need to have Moiraine being a girlboss.
At some point, the writers are going to have to fish or cut bait on whether or not the Aes Sedai are so powerful they can do whatever they want without getting called on it, or if they are just another organization of women, disdained and discriminated against by the Patriarchy.
Finally, C. When did Domon ever insult her or the Aes Sedai in this whole conversation? All he did was list the troubles she was causing him. By coming overland to visit her (wherever they are - it’s awfully Mediterranean-looking for the Borderlands, which is where Moiraine was holed up doing research in the home of Adeleas, a Brown and an aging Warder, ITB) and then dropping the price of his poem when she noted he was asking a lot, he actually appears to be extremely accommodating to her.
30:15 It sounds like, and the captions say, she tells Domon “to stay to the shadows” when he protests that the Spray is a riverboat, but “shallows” would actually make sense.
30:31 All of this is an improvement in Moiraine’s character, so I guess she was just being petty when she shorted him, and the writers know it.
And why was this scene cut around Egwene’s chores montage, during which, she encounters a naked Alanna, followed by a lesson in the kitchen, in which Alanna is fully dressed, with her hair styled, and then a faculty conference with Alanna present, having discussed the lesson, all of which means quite a lot of time has passed. We also popped in on Perrin meeting Elyas, and Lan and Jaem/Tomas in the garden. Only the third makes sense as an interlude from the conversation between Moiraine and Domon.
30:51 More bullshit. The Tower would not let a novice do this. A Warder would not do this without the permission of his Aes Sedai. Nynaeve would not do this.
31:25 Oh, get bent, not-Owein. There has been plenty of interaction between Nynaeve and Aes Sedai, especially Alanna, with no indication that the Aes Sedai on the show require an ITB level of respect.
31:33 Nynaeve pivoting from ‘Alanna’s a real piece of ___’ to ‘Alanna’s fine, it’s the fault of the Tower that she is at odds with her’ is more bullshit, making her look like sycophant or insincere, or simply out of control who will insult a person who does not deserve it to her loved ones ’ faces.
31:54 That sounds like shitty training. Warders are not an organization or military body. They are joined only by having in common a personal relationship with an Aes Sedai. The only standard for being worthy to be a Warder is if you are accepted as one by an Aes Sedai. Note that this is exactly how the Asha’man warders and Birgitte are treated by other Warders. There is no need to test a candidate’s commitment, because all that matters is if he is acceptable to the sister who would bond him.
32:44 Nynaeve has zero doubts ITB about why she came to the Tower. Her reasons for persisting in her studies evolve over the series, or more precisely, revert to her fundamental vocation, but she never had any question about what she wanted out of it or why she was there.
Why is Show!Nynaeve even bothering if she doesn’t know?
33:02 That was funny. I hope for the writers’ sake, it was intentional.
But it does speak to the problem of letting someone see you in a compromised position.
33:10 Transposing her book characterization onto her NC-17 show persona, that deep breath was Egwene thinking “I am going to be Aes Sedai, even if I have to go down on a sister or get spit-roasted by a couple of bi warders.”
33:45 What exactly is Egwene talking about here?
33:52 Also not exactly sure what Alanna is talking about.
34:04 This is exactly the problem. They are completely selling out Alanna as a serious character for this rather adolescent joke. And all other things aside, this is a completely inappropriate conversation to be having with a subordinate, especially one over whom your organization assumes a parental role and reduces to juvenile status. It also raises the rather creepy possibility that Alanna left the door open just to show off.
Also, Egwene asking about the Power, and Alanna replying about her sex life, beyond illustrating why it degrades the Aes Sedai to ever allow that to be seen, is completely undermined by the fact that Egwene clearly had the earlier sexual encounter on her mind when knocking on the door. So it’s also not unreasonable for Alanna to assume that’s what she is talking about (it does not, however, ameliorate Alanna’s choice to answer the question she thinks Egwene is asking. The appropriate ITB response to what Egwene asked, assuming she was actually asking about threesomes, is “That is none of your concern, child, and will not be for many years to come. Put such things out of your head and focus on your studies and chores, or the day when you may indulge yourself will be all the longer in coming.” Edit from the future: Rimshot!
34:31 The problem Egwene articulated was trying to use TWO WEAVES. Telling her to focus on two instead of a hundred is NOT addressing the issue! The writers or Alanna are complete morons, whose brains are so sex-addled they can’t express coherent thoughts.
What is much more likely is that the writers were ALL ABOUT their threesome thing and Egwene’s request for clarification was only written to bring it up again. Three of five scenes in the White Tower this episode have made an unnecessary point of bringing up Alanna’s menage a trois.
35:29 Let me guess. The outcome of this confrontation is going to have Nynaeve looking bad, but when Liandrin leaves, she will perfectly filter the water.
35:35 Liandrin is “keeping tabs” on Nynaeve. It’s an idiom that started in America, in bars, when patrons would have a running bill, rather than paying for each drink as they got it. Keeping tabs referred to keeping track of their purchases. So it totally makes sense as an expression in a preindustrial fantasy setting.
35:40 I do not believe the Warders have taught Nynaeve more in the last 5 months than all the Aes Sedai combined. It’s possible they are referring to the moral lessons, such as their admonition to figure out why she’s there, but that speaks more to Nynaeve’s shortcomings, with the implication that only the Warders are dumbing their lessons down enough to reach her, or else that she’s a lot more receptive to lessons spoken by a man with a sword, than the people who actually know what she’s trying to learn.
It should go without saying at this point that Nynaeve absolutely would not have that issue. She is unabashedly sexist and would strongly doubt that men had anything of a moral nature to teach her. She also would not value sword training over the Power. If nothing else, she was present at two different conflicts in which hand to hand combat proved greatly inferior to the One Power. They seem to be basing her entire characterization in the show from a single throwaway line when she was seasick, missing Lan after he made a surprise romantic gesture out of nowhere, and frustrated with her failures when the other Aes Sedai had attempted to teach her, and also confirmed her worst suspicions by trying to pry information from the girls. One line, which in no way was sincere, and on which she never followed up for the rest of her character arc.
35:54 Liandrin’s expressed attitude that weapons and combat are beneath a woman is the implicit attitude of their culture, but the show is treating it as something else by having her express it in such a condescending manner, especially in the context of her getting every statement she has ever made about men precisely backwards.
36:31 This is not a bad way to teach the lesson, if I was convinced that the writers mean it sincerely, when they are the ones promoting Warders and hand to hand combat in such an idealized fashion, and putting it in the mouth of Liandrin. There is also a degree of tension in the scene, since the prior scene with Liandrin has revealed that she has killed students in training and is unrepentant.
However, Nynaeve of all people should not need this lesson, since she witnessed the exact same thing with the rescue attempt on Logain, where we also saw a Warder almost ruin everything by attacking him with a weapon, and not only fail but endanger everyone else.
37:06 Does the show forget that Liandrin herself showed Nynaeve the statues built to memorialize the Warders, last season? Or that the Tower held a much elaborate and ceremonial funeral for Steppin than for his Aes Sedai Kerene? Are we supposed to get that she is breaking the Three Oaths with these incorrect statements, or do they forget the rules?
38:34 I don’t know where they are going with Liandrin’s dismissal of the White Tower teaching about the proper way to channel. Since when does she, or any Red, not share in the beliefs of the White Tower? If this is supposed to be a Darkfriend thing, the Black Ajah feels the same way. There is no Dark Side of saidar that you will become susceptible to when you channel in anger.
I also wonder now if she’s actually going to filter the water or smash the glasses. So many cliches to choose from!
Edit from the future: LOL. Swing and a miss.
38:56 Is there a purpose to giving them burial shrouds in direct contrast to the ITB Shienaran practice of burying bodies naked? Also, what are the odds the writers are going to forget and have someone pray for the last embrace of the mother to welcome them home, after wrapping them in shrouds to ward them from the mother’s last embrace?
39:05 Why are all the graves on this show as shallow as the characterization?
39:22 You basically ARE leaving the corpse for the vultures, in a grave that shallow.
39:27 Ingtar is in charge because he is a noble and Uno is a commoner. At best, this could be a classist statement of only nobles having a proper sense of decency, but what I think is going on is the writers shitting on Uno’s conventionally masculine persona.
39:39 A woman opened the gates to Fal Dara. We saw it. They gave a proper password and she let Fain & friends in, and Fain personally stole the Horn, which these guys are supposed to be pursuing.
40:04 “Folk in the Two Rivers were so kind to Padan Fain.” We have seen zero examples of this in the books or show. Perrin ITB actually laughed at the notion of Fain developing a crush on a local woman, because it was certain to be unrequited.
42:04 It is now dark, and Moiraine is still holding the page Domon gave her, and has not even put down the envelope it came in. How did she light all those candles while still holding them?
43:06 Pike and Henney are doing a good job acting the emotions they are feeling, but the writing is letting them down. We have no idea what is driving Moiraine, the show has not even clarified the nature of her channeling issue and the implication is that the bond has been lost, with, again, no clarification of the difference between what Lan is going through and what Steppin suffered.
44:25 So what is the passage of time here? Egwene and Nynaeve have been in the Tower for five months. The gang spent a month and a few more days traveling from Emond’s Field the day after Bel Tine (since they seem to have conflated Winternight with Bel Tine, which is the following day). That’s a total of six months, unless Egwene and Nynaeve spent another six months farting around before coming to the Tower. And just in case there is any confusion about the festival, Egwene is preparing one of those lanterns they used in the festival in Emond’s Field. On top of all that, Perrin and Ingtar must then have been chasing Fain for almost a year, or at the last, more than five months!
46:22 That’s awfully nice of Liandrin to read the letter to Mat. I can’t possibly see the point.
<b46:35> Oh, she’s censoring the mentions of him. Except why would he believe that, since it means she has to always refuse to give him any of the letters?
46:57 He looks like the villain from The Equalizer 3. And he hasn’t touched the dagger for six months. He left home, found the dagger, traveled with Rand and Thom for a few days, then jumped ahead a month to Tar Valon, where the dagger was taken from him after a couple of days. And that was six months ago, but we’ve come back around to Bel Tine. That means that about five months passed between the pilot episode and the one that jumped ahead to the White Tower. Why did they feel the need to inform us at the beginning of episode 5 of a month’s passage, but not of the five months that took place over episodes 2-4?
47:07 Mat making a distinction that he is not a threat to Liandrin or her Red sisters or Moiraine is reinforcing this subtle idea in the show that the Red Ajah are somehow apart and distinct from the Aes Sedai in general, instead of being just one group among seven. To whatever extent that has some basis, it’s not anything a non-initiate would know. Like Sanderson, they are giving the characters knowledge and perspectives they should not have. What a person knew and what his perspective on issues was, was critical character information in the original story. It was the whole POINT of the miscommunication theme! Sanderson and Judkins seem utterly incapable of comprehending this, much less servicing it in their depictions of the characters.
47:47ITB, wedding rings are a weird obscure custom Nynaeve heard about somewhere. On the show, they are a Two Rivers practice. Because it makes total sense that a fantasy world would have the same default customs as we do.
48:00 Will some show apologist please tell me exactly what character development happened with Perrin, what did he see or hear that would make him decide to remove his wedding ring and send it along with his prayers for the dead? How or why has he moved on? In what way has he moved on? Are we done hearing about his bullshit fridged wife?
48:19 Guess not, since it was symbolically unbalancing his prayers, so the only solution was to put the ring on again.
48:33 Why do we go from Mat weeping in captivity to Perrin doing the Bel Tine thing for his wife, to Mat picking up a lamp, to the girls crying about Rand? One of those shots does not make sense. Edit from the future: So he’s doing a Shawshank. But why intersperse the bare bones shots of him doing so with his friends’ mourning? Are they trying to say that Mat mourns by digging an escape tunnel?
49:29 Our bold feminist show has Perrin mourning both his wife and his presumed dead friend, but the girls are only mourning Rand, and not their friend Layla. I’d have to go back and watch the kitchen scene, but otherwise, I think Egwene & Nynaeve basically fail the Bechdel test for this episode.
49:33 Who could this shadowy figure be? Did they expect us to forget that they made it clear that Rand was still alive at the end of last season?
49:44 If we were stupid enough to forget that, we’d probably have trouble recognizing him with the new haircut.
50:05 So the influences for Lan are Aragorn, a samurai, and Carson the Butler from Dowton Abbey. Got it.
51:05 Why DOES Verin allow Adeleas to live in her house? Either she is not remotely the Verin of the books, in which case why do we give a shit that this character is Verin instead of Vandene, or she is very, very stupid.
And that exchange was extremely obnoxious, being both yet another gratuitous put-down, and insensitive to the person they are trying to counsel to move past his suffering.
51:42 They are talking like she is severed, in which case, they would emphatically not be calling her ‘Moiraine Sedai.’ But let me guess – they are “fixing” this aspect of the White Tower culture.
52:31 I would say that Lan should not need this lecture, being all about his duty, regardless of his bonded condition. But now I wonder if they are doing this so he will have learned and be able to accept being Nynaeve’s warder even without the bond, since it takes them several months and about six books to get one after they get together.
52:49 Yes, commenting on the incongruity, based almost entirely on book-demonstrated qualities, since he is hardly silent on the show, is such good characterization, and never mind that Tomas himself made a point of silence being associated with Lan in their last conversation!
Conversation 1: I don’t see how you, of all people, have a problem with silence.
Conversation 2: You should be silent for once.
54:13 Don’t worry, Lan. You’ll find her easily. Remember, she has a tell!
55:19That Myrddraal took a long time to teleport. 24 seconds. You could have walked that same distance faster.
55:42 Bullshit. No way a Fade goes down that easily. OTOH, why, exactly, are we supposed to care about Myrddraal on this show? What have they done to establish them as more dangerous than a Trolloc? From what has been on the screen, you might easily come to the conclusion that they are sort of recon specialist troops, good at sneaking and spotting, but not as dangerous in a fight as an actual Trolloc. Note that in the Darkfriend social ITB, Ba’alzamon was attended by Myrddraal, whereas on the show, there are only Trollocs waiting outside. Early in Book 2, Aes Sedai spoke of Myrddraal as the ones whose opinions and point of view dominated the efforts of the Shadow, whereas here in Season 2, Sinbad the Forsaken urges his morality pet child to consider the Trollocs’ perspective, as part of his effort to seduce her to the Shadow.
56:20 First of all, dual-wielding swords is Hollywood bullshit. Second of all, adopting an unfamiliar fighting style in the middle of a fight is a good way to trip yourself up. No matter how extensively trained Lan is, he has exclusively been fighting with a single blade, and even if he graduated with honors from dual-wielding school, he’s not going to be as capable as with his usual fighting style. Thirdly, two swords neither increases your combat power, nor better enables you to fight multiple enemies. You can still only look in one direction. Fourth, any WoT character and especially a Borderlander and most especially Lan, would never take up a weapon of the Shadow if they had any other option, like a solid twig, available.
56:28 Might help if we could have seen any of this.
57:06 They are both dead by now from multiple and serious cuts from Myrddraal blades. If Myrddraal were actually any sort of elite and threatening adversary. Like they are ITB.
57:32 I really, really hope Moiraine is not going to overcome stilling by sheer desperate willpower.
58:48 Every tedious word of dialogue in a Lan scene was pointless, since he was right in the end.
58:57 Liars!
58:59 Do I want to see this preview? I have not watched any for season 2 so far.
What the heck.
59:00 Okay, what the actual heck? We saw that shot already.
1:01:24 Meh. Just a nonsensical montage with no context. Later.
I'm going on with the next two, so they should be up in a few hours. Thanks for suffering with me.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*
