They took the plots of entire novels and made them the adventure of the day for single episodes. Richard's discovery of his sister, his being taken to the Palace of the Prophets to be trained as a wizard, and Nicci kidnapping him by making a link with Kahlan that caused Kahlan to feel what she did - each of these was a book-long quest/plot and each one was reduced to a single episode. As for the main story, I doubt a thinly-veiled communist foe would fly on even a second-tier network series.