3:00 We are this deep into a Wheel of Time episode, and I am stunned to report that the dialogue is not stupid, there are no ridiculous visual effects, and no canon rape so far. What a promising beginning. I am looking forward to the rest of this episode.

3:30 Okay, I should not be complaining because this IS canon, but a book saying someone is getting undressed is not the same as making a real person, i.e. Zoe Robbins, get undressed.

3:58 So she’s not actually getting naked. What is the point of taking off the dress in the first place? There was symbolism about being naked, which is lost when you strip her down to her undergarments. If she does not need to be bare ass naked, why bother taking off the dress in the first place? Just have her change into an Accepted dress when she comes out of the third one, you can work the symbolic cleansing into the undressing part.

This feels entirely like they did not understand the work they are adapting at all.

5:46 I thought Nynaeve was brought to the Two Rivers as a baby by the Old Wisdom They Never Bothered To Name. Since when does she have a dad?

Book!Nynaeve had a father who raised her and taught her to hunt and track. But that’s a whole other story that has no relevance to this one unless you are a white supremacist or something.

6:18 I guess Nynaeve’s test is going to be that she can use her badass Warder swordswomanship to defend her “father” but the arch will appear.

I wonder if the lesson there is to leave behind hand-to-hand combat, or to put men out of her mind.

6:58 Of course Nynaeve’s mother was a badass archer (who needs to shoot from point blank range – do they realize bows are not pistols? ).

7:12 Okay, what’s the plan here? Trick the pursuers into thinking that the people they just saw run into the house are not in there?

7:38 Actually, I remember now, this is where she learned that stupid, mistranslated prayer – her parents hid her in a cellar during an attack on their village, so the conflict is actually in the first season, where we were told both this version of events and that she was brought to Emond’s Field as a baby and raised by the Old Wisdom They Never Bothered To Name.

8:00 Is the temptation to forget your real life and remain in the fake world supposed to be the chance to die pointlessly, or worse? Without stipulating that in Current Day Media no one is more effective in combat than minority girls, she can’t actually make a difference here. There is a reason that in every test we are shown of the White Tower, the participants are adults in every alt scenario.

8:48 Okay, that’s a bit of a dick move. It was a chalice, not a bucket, in the books.

9:24 Won’t that undercut any peril Nynaeve encounters in there, to know that even if she gets a lethal wound, it’s possible she’ll come out unscathed?

10:59 I like the recurrence of the crimsonthorn in the scenarios. This is also very close to her ITB second test (the first one could not be plausibly adapted, since it related to an incident that was cut).

15:54 I’ve actually wondered what would happen if a candidate came out of the last arch and refused to complete the ceremony. Would they actually be put out of the Tower or is it just that you can’t refuse until you have gone through the third arch?

17:27 That’s an extraordinary change. I can’t wait to see what they have in mind that they think is so much better than Nynaeve’s struggles as an initiate of the White Tower.

17:42 Fuck, this IS the test, isn’t it? Nynaeve’s happiest of happy places is one where she is with Lan and free of the White Tower forever and Egwene is going to be fine (note the lack of Elayne, who was hanging out with Egwene while this was going on, but whom Nynaeve has never met and does not know exists), so she is free to do her thing, and then the arch.

17:56 I keep forgetting they’ve already boned on this show.

18:43 Is all that bullshit fighting with Moiraine just there to make the audience believe Lan would not feel any compunction against going away with Nynaeve?

19:13 To paraphrase Jay Landsman as Lt. Mello on “The Wire”: ‘…this is clever. I mean, it isn’t clever if you went to college or, I don’t know, your mothers actually stopped drinking for a minute while they was pregnant. But for the Wheel of Time writing staff, this is clever.’

25:44 I bet they are so proud of themselves for being so daring as to off a recurring character.

25:53 If Suroth is going to finally speak, it should be for something important or significant, not to reiterate what has already been said, and what has just been graphically emphasized by a brutal execution. This is only fitting from a Doylist standpoint, as the end of a scene. It does not make sense from a Watsonian perspective, because the characters are not leaving the scene, they are going to still be here as the Seanchan go on with the ceremony.

27:47 Logain being allowed to use a metal spoon, for his own safety doesn’t make a lot of sense on a show that just last episode featured a guy digging through a stone wall with a spoon.

28:40 Confirmed what I only speculated back when they showed the incident to which Logain is referring. That Logain was not laughing randomly, but at something he saw about Rand, as in the books. In the books, Logain could see Rand’s ta’veren nature. It’s possible that he might have retained this talent somehow, that it is, like Dreamwalking or Min’s thing, not necessarily connected to the Power. But the show has gone the extra step of stupidity, by showing that he was sensing Rand’s ability to channel. They might have been able to wriggle their way out of it with a bullshit excuse or redefinition of not-clarified rules, but they actually went all the way.

See, the problem here is, unlike in the books, where Logain retained the ability to channel and was being guarded and visibly watched for precisely that reason, at the time when he spotted Rand, on the show he was already gentled! By the implied rules of the Power, his ta’veren spotting ability should not have been functioning, but his ability to sense a channeler should absolutely not exist at all. Setalle Anan, for instance, could not sense the ability in Nynaeve and Elayne.

31:19 Lanfear knows an awful lot about the current practices of the world.

31:27 I got the impression that she would have had trouble identifying Ghealdan at all, unless she had some specific interest in it.

31:45 She’s actually a business owner? She has been awfully busy since she got free. She actually set up and operated a shop in Cairhien on the off-chance Rand would go there, of all places?

32:10 Nope. Nynaeve. Never a nickname. Nicknames are familiar and diminutive and thus only applied to men, or are adopted by women who hate their birth names.

33:37 An Aes Sedai must be tough and not let grief bring her down, she must learn to cope with people dying on her. Okay. Oh, and Sheriam gives Egwene a bereavement day! :facepalm: Those two attitudes do not mesh.

34:05 Okay, fine! I tried to be your friend, but if that’s how you want to play, I’ll just go steal your boyfriend, get knocked up with twins and leave you to take responsibility for my retarded brother!

34:19 Suddenly, Egwene’s weeping was interrupted the a scraping chunk sound of a stone being pushed out of the wall, with Mat, Min and a half a dozen other White Tower prisoners crawling through the aperture into the room.

34:58 I honestly think I like this performance better than Barney Harris’.

35:04 She’s saying all this to draw Mat into making a disrespectful comment, so she can hammer him with the news that it’s Nynaeve.

35:58 The Accepted test is the greatest challenge a woman can face in the Tower? Not the test for full sisterhood? Not an actual Aes Sedai career?

36:67 I was actually surprised she did not end the speech with the name “Rafe Judkins.”

37:16 Are they NOT going to ever reveal that Liandrin is a Darkfriend, and thus, regardless of her Red Ajah issues, knows Mat is somewhat important for entirely different reasons, namely, that her homicidal bosses have an interest in him and she really shouldn’t be letting him run loose…

39:21 I suppose it’s futile to point out just how amazingly tolerant this iteration of Liandrin is, and how Egwene should be envying hemorrhoid patients their ease in sitting after the consequences of her words and attitude toward an Aes Sedai in this scene alone. That being said, I kind of like her more than any other Aes Sedai I’ve seen so far. I’d say she’s a closer match to Tarna than any of Book!Liandrin’s traits.

40:25 Is that Lindsey Duncan!? First Ray Stevenson in the latest Star Wars crap show and now Servilia, from “Rome”!

42:20 It’s always hilarious when socialistic propaganda demonstrates the ignorance of the writers when it comes to economic and social matters. A disproportionate number of the Hunters for the Horn in the books were noble or claimed to be, because you need money to fund your search, to outfit yourself for the quest and to live off of while you are not doing anything productive. The cost of sponsoring a significant number of poor people on an undertaking like this would be comparable to the cost of a war, which was one of the financial disasters that afflicted kings in the medieval and subsequent periods. Furthermore, the sort of people who would embark on something like the Hunt would be fit and healthy folk in their prime. These were the type of people that kings and nobles did not want to get rid of, and in history, actually passed laws prohibiting them from leaving their lands, because they wanted to keep the labor market low. Nobles had rents and taxes that were set by charters and contracts and holy oaths. They could not raise their taxes and rents to cover their expenses, such as the rising cost of labor due to thousands of healthy young people heading off to foreign parts on legendary quests. If a real life queen was looking to relieve herself of the burden of feeding and supporting a mass of migrant poor, she’d be foisting the expense onto the nobles somehow.

43:53 Logain says Rand must be desperate because he’s back so soon. Dude. He’s asking for help controlling the One Power! Who would NOT be desperate in that circumstance? Would it be too much to ask the writers to recall the context in which they have characters say this kind of line.

47:02 Min’s sitting there with an expression on her face like “I could hear everything through that dresser. Took you long enough to let me out.” With that in mind, however, why could she not push it aside and escape herself once she could hear Mat leaving? Also, if they are leaving the hole open, A. what did they do with the blocks they took out and B. now someone in one room can clearly hear noises from the other room, and you might not be able to keep silent when someone is coming in to talk to Mat or Min. What if she was sleeping and unaware of a need for caution and woke up noisily while Liandrin was just standing in Mat’s room?

47:54 I knew this would happen! The writers have already forgotten about the very young sisters Mat has back home, for whom he is the sole means of reliable support, as opposed to the adolescent girls who are close to adulthood in the books. Mat in the books doesn’t worry much because his very competent and reliable parents are taking care of them and they in turn are old enough to take care of themselves if the worst happens. But on the show, they are little kids with a drunk mother and neglectful father, and much of the responsibility for their care devolves on to Mat. They even made a point that he wanted to get home ASAP to take care of them!

But after five months in a comfortable cell, Mat has no motivation anymore.

51:12 I could talk about how wrong this is compared to the established details of the setting, but you know what? The dumber portions of the fandom, to whom this show definitely caters, have trouble grasping the issues Perrin’s connection to the wolves raises with his sense of identity and his hold on his values. As with Mat, they want him to embrace his abilities and be a badass. Regardless of the truth of the matter, at least if Perrin has a reason to believe that embracing the wolf stuff will give Ishamael a hold on him, it should be very comprehensible why he would now be reluctant to dive into wolfbrotherhood.

53:14 What on earth kind of hold could Moiraine have on Min that requires going along with whatever plan of Liandrin’s is going on here? And how could Min and Mat possibly help with whatever she has on Liandrin? And what was the plan if Mat had decided to work on the bricks under his bed?

Also, what exactly is the status of Mat with regard to the Tower? Is Liandrin allowed to just keep someone in a cell with no oversight? If the Tower authorities agree he should be locked up, how can Liandrin allow him to escape and arrange for him not to meet anyone in the corridors, all in aid of concealing whatever Moiraine can blackmail her with? What is the interest of the Tower as a whole here, either in letting sisters use the place as a private prison, or in letting them pull these shenanigans?

57:19 Okay, Elayne is smart, but this is an uncanny amount of knowledge for her to have and infer about someone she has never laid eyes on.

57:55 Book!Nynaeve’s fantasy world was one where she didn’t have to work, I would just like to point out.

58:43 A person who knows Lan and Nynaeve very well was unaware there was a blademaster in the Two Rivers? Or do the show writers not realize that Lan is, in fact, a blademaster, despite his family sword lacking the heron mark?

1:03:03 This test makes no sense. The scenario turned really, really unappealing before she was given the chance to leave. Now this happened in the ITB scenarios, but they went bad in a way that the subject of the test felt like they could fix but they had to turn their backs on loved ones in need of their help in order to return through the arch.

In her first test, Nynaeve’s choices had deteriorated to staying to face the bandits in a world where her parents were dead. Even the second, where they did a better job of emphasizing the personal betrayal of abandoning Tam in his suffering, it was still an awful situation, where an epidemic was hurting the village and there was nothing she could do. She came out demanding the Tower go to the aid of the Two Rivers, so the implication is that there was no temptation to stay at all, and Nynaeve felt in the moment that returning through the arch was her best chance of helping her people. And now she is in a world where her friends & husband are dead, Egwene is facing a serious threat, and as with the second scenario, believes she can help by going through the arch and taking her daughter to safety!

If these scenarios were supposed to tempt Nynaeve to stay, the first one should have been one where her parents are looking for Nynaeve or refusing to go without her, even though the bandits are closing in on the house, and they don’t hear her calling that she’s okay and they have to run, and finally she has to go through the arch, believing her parents are in danger out of love for her. The second one, her channeling should work on her first patient, and everyone should get excited and relieved at their imminent deliverance, and they’re all begging her to hurry up and Heal everyone, and that’s when the arch appears. Then in the third, the kid runs away, with Trollocs chasing, Lan and the guys are wounded, and everyone needs her help, but arch.

1:03:09 At least they did not have Egwene save Nynaeve from yet another certain death, three episodes after the last time she did so with a feat of channeling beyond her capabilities.

And can we just marvel at the fact of the Aes Sedai prematurely calling off the Accepted test with no way of knowing what is actually going on, and whoops, the arches simply had not opened for their candidate yet? Clearly they did not know this was possible, but is the show ever going to address why Nynaeve’s test had such aberrant timing? This is not even like her book test, where she missed the arch the first time, but somehow channeled herself another way out. The arch just aborted before it ever formed and came back after several years. Also, in the normal course of events, all the Aes Sedai are going to assume Egwene and Elayne activated the Arches.

1:03:22 Also, this is really fucked up. These are not some fake memories implanted of a life with a family, this was a whole alternate reality she lived through for years with a kid. She was not tantalized with a convincing lie, she was actually made to live through it and honestly, never really given a choice about accepting or rejecting it, it was just yanked away from her.

This is a hilarious introduction of Nynaeve and Elayne, and it would be equally hilariously in character for Elayne to dot the I’s and cross the T’s by dumping a bucket on her and reciting the words.

Now, recalling that the Amyrlin is supposed to show up when the new Accepted comes out of the third arch, I wonder if they did it this way because Sophie Okonedo was unavailable?

1:03:53 Liars!

So, what actually happened in that episode that matters? One extended and elongated Accepted test. A fake jailbreak from the Tower and a real one via wolves, and now I am thinking they might have cast a black guy as Elyas and focused on Perrin while ignoring the Shienaran captives, in order to have the so-satisfying imagery of a black guy freeing another one from chains. Rand, after spending all of last episode getting in to see Logain, spent this one getting a bottle of wine to bribe him, for no real return that I can see. And Lanfear probably tricked him into burning down her home as part of her genius plan to get him on her side. We are three eighths of the way through the season, and I have no idea what the arcs are for it.