The Wheel of Time: The Wheel Weaves as Jeff Bezos Wills (Book Spoilers)

[Arakasi]

For me I’d rank the episodes as:

#1: 4,7. Both high quality episodes with cool moments and little weak parts.

#2: 3,6. Both focused episodes high quality but not as good.

#3: 1,8 Both flawed episodes that had really strong points mixed with some weaker points 

#4: 2,5. Five was probably a better episode but it also spent 20 minutes on time that should have been given to the main characters. Two was just kinda unremarkable in every way.

I think this was fairly true with the fans in the watch along that had episode 8 second best in the weaker group of episodes (1-3 + 8) I can see people liking this better than episode 1.  In absolute ranking I’m not sure if it was fifth or sixth. I’d need to go back and watch episode 1 again to say for sure.

[SpaceChampion]

Paaren Disen is located in Manetheren it seems.

[IFR]

29 minutes ago, Ran said:

I was going to say you exactly echoed something I said in an earlier post, but I removed it before submitting it to try and soften my criticism.  But yes, I found it simply insulting to the intelligence of viewers to come up with this "tell" nonsense. It makes zero sense, and was done solely as another subordination of Lan to Nynaeve.

She literally womansplained his job to him.

Anyway, I have a few final complaints I want to get out of my system before I retire from the show and the conversation regarding it.

Ishamael's end game philosophy was given to the Darkfriend in episode 3. Rand's epiphany that helped him avoid the path of world destruction was given to Logain. Egwene and Nynaeve already have essentially established themselves as legends among channelers.

What exactly is this show building towards? Even Dumai's Well, if the show actually does that, will come off as non-event. So a bunch of male challengers took down several thousand Aiel? Big deal. We saw five untrained women annihilate an army of 15000 Trollocs. It's one thing to see the Dragon Reborn - who should be feared among the world, with the aid of the Eye of the World - do it, but only a few episodes ago Egwene could barely channel, and Nynaeve had her channeling through emotional moments, and they demolished the forces of the Dark One. Why, the Dark One is a barely a concern, considering how little it takes to defeat him.

The finely tuned rules of the One Power have been reduced to anime magic, where anyone who is in a desparate strait can deus ex machina themselves out of it.

And death is hardly a threat any more because there have been so many fake outs already.

It seems like this season ensured that the high points of the books series, if they choose to go there, will be reduced in their impact.

But I guess that is the end for me.

Good luck, everyone! I may pop back occasionally to see what's going on, but I think for the most part that's it for me.

[Arakasi]

Fair points but on the matter of death Jordan was rather kind with his characters. The main characters basically never lost or died til the last battle and then that was even fairly muted. Makes me wonder if Sanderson was more willing to kill characters than Jordan. Book five ofc had the biggest death reversal ever. 
 

I do agree that sense of power progression is skewed. They seem afraid to let the good guys develop slowly in the power even if they’re letting Perrin and Mat develop slowly. I wish they would have slowed things down or played up the wilder aspects of what the young channellers are doing that they need to control what they’re doing. They do seem to be a bit too powerful for this early on. I wonder if that’s fear on the show writers of being too slow or some push from Amazon for more wtf moments.

[Slurktan]

28 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

Paaren Disen is located in Manetheren it seems.

That's actually really cool

[SpaceChampion]

52 minutes ago, Trebla said:

Not making Lews Therin the Tamrylin Seat was...odd. Only thing I can think of was that they needed to show that he was really breaking the rules by taking the One Hundred companions to Shayol Ghul (I almost typed Mount Doom  ) without the Amyrilin Seat's blessing.

It might have been at this point in the War, that LTT was deposed as Tamrylin, and Latra replaced him in a vote by the women standing together.

I'm not happy with anyone knowing the Dark One's counterstroke in advance.  That's rather silly.

57 minutes ago, Trebla said:

How Mat got to Fal Dara is anyone's guess.

Wasn't Fal Dara.  He looked up and saw the White Tower.

[IFR]

I guess I'm having my fake retirement already.

Wanted to drop this interview with Rafe Judkins, which I think will add a lot to future discussions.

Interview here.

OK, now I'm really peacing out.

[Ran]

34 minutes ago, SpaceChampion said:

It might have been at this point in the War, that LTT was deposed as Tamrylin, and Latra replaced him in a vote by the women standing together.

What war? There's no evidence that any kind of war is going on in the flashback, and looking back on transcripts of all episodes there's no references to a war. The closest we get is a reference to the Forsaken who traded their souls for eternal life, without any context, and just LTT and "the forces of Light" striking at the Dark One... but nothing about the context of why, i.e. a war which the Light was about to lose. Did the city outside LTT's window look like a place that was at war?

If they wanted to convey that the situation was a desperate one, they could have done that in dialogue easily enough, and in the VFX. But there's literally nothing but two people chatting in a nursery, with one of them wanting to take a huge risk to end the DO's influence where (to viewers) the DO's influence at the end of the AoL seems non-existent. 

[jurble]

41 minutes ago, IFR said:

I guess I'm having my fake retirement already.

Wanted to drop this interview with Rafe Judkins, which I think will add a lot to future discussions.

Interview here.

OK, now I'm really peacing out.

Seems to be that Moiraine is actually stilled :O.  Unless he's just playing along with the Interviewer's interpretation.  He's surprisingly open that they did it just to create a plot for Lan and Moiraine since the actor and actress have top billing.  One of the realities of television, I suppose.

Edit: Maybe upgrading Latra to Tamyrlin does have the advantage of explaining why Egwene, whom many presume to be her reincarnation, would be ta'veren?  Not that Mat or Perrin had any previously famous lives that we were aware of, though.

[Argonath Diver]

I think the show is corny and doesn't make very much sense. Seems pretty faithful in that regard to the very corny and nonsensical Eye of the World. Alas, just like the book series, although I enjoy it in theory, I relatively little interest in continuing. I think in my 20s I got to the book that everyone agrees is the worst - the 11th? I can't recall. I never read Sanderson's completion, nor do I have any interest to. I will probably watch this show until Amazon finishes it, or maybe not. Just a big "Meh?" from me. I had a blast with books two through, what, seven-ish over the years, so I still think the show can have some really fun moments despite my negative reaction to the first season.

That said, my coworker I mentioned upthread absolutely loves it. I have divulged little bits and pieces of what's to come, and he is already crafting his own theories mid-shift and coming back to fish for more gossip about what happened and what will. Dude says he hasn't read a book in thirty years, and gaped when I had brought in the first novel for him just in case. Just for him, I hope the show continues to be a hit. 

Oh, on an off-hand note, good gracious golly is the show's version of Min attractive. I'm a career bartender already, and her demeanor and charm was a delight amidst an episode I was generally Harumphing at. Funny that, as she was my favorite character as a teenager as well.

[Ran]

29 minutes ago, jurble said:

Seems to be that Moiraine is actually stilled :O.  Unless he's just playing along with the Interviewer's interpretation.

The latter is my take.

That said, I guess I can see it as an economy of storytelling thing. We'll see.

[SpaceChampion]

Rand was walking east from the Eye at the end, so I think it's likely he's going directly to the Aiel Waste to find out more about his people.  They might be reversing the order of the books, and putting off the Stone of Tear and Callandor to season 3.

[Gertrude]

The whole thing about Latra being the Tamyrlin to me read as a script choice to efficiently give a name to these people at the end of the scene - they get formal, use their names and titles. Lews had to be the Dragon (or Dragon Reborn, I guess, whatever) so Tamerlyn goes to Latra. The rest of it, I dunno. It seems like it wouldn't have complicated to talk about the war, but if they reeeaaally wanted that shot out of the window for the before and after, then maybe they didn't think they should have been talking of war.

Also, does anyone think perhaps Lews Therin's child was an easter egg from the Winter Dragon? Lews Jr? (I know LTT was a family man and yada yada but I still couldn't help but think LEWS JR when the baby came into shot.)

[Ran]

Just realized... how did Lan get past Tarwin's Gap and the huge trolloc army to continue on into the Blight?

I guess they were laying the groundwork for this in episode 7 when he teleported out of the dinner scene to stand behind Nynaeve as she was turning away from having watched him through a window.

ETA: Another thing I have to gripe about is Tarwin's Gap and the tactical disaster of it all. Why didn't he take his sister and the women out there to just blow away that army piecemeal? Why have all those vulnerable windows and arrow loops all the way down there rather than just having a solid wall with people on the very top shooting arrows and throwing rocks and so on down on them? The only reason the trollocs were any danger was that they broke through the arrow slits into the interior of the fortress, after all...

And lets not even get into Amalisa and the women standing out in the open rather than being up on the walls of Fal Dara to do their blasting.

It was also too damned dark, no doubt for CG reasons, but felt like they took more lessons from S8 of Game of Thrones.

Last but not least, while Jordan indulged in having huge armies moving around, as a veteran and student of military history he paid some actual attention to strategy and tactics and even logistics, so seeing this show just make a complete hash of it must have had him rolling in his grave. 

[Darryk]

Weird changes that have me scratching my head.

The opening completely threw me off.  As @Ran mentioned above, in the books you get the sense the war was almost lost, and Lews Therin made a last ditch effort to save the world by sealing the Dark One's prison, not knowing that the Dark One's counterstroke would taint the male half of the Source.

Here, there's none of that urgency. It doesn't feel like there's a war going on at all. And how would she know the Dark One could taint the source? The fact no one knew that could happen is why it was so shocking when male channelers suddenly started going mad and killing people.

And she refers to Lews Therin as the Dragon Reborn, rather than just The Dragon? That completely mangles the lore. 

Why make these changes to the story? The story was fine how it was. It was the dialogue and plotting that needed to be improved from the books.

I mean at least with David Benioff and Dan Weiss it took until the second season of GoT for the power to go their heads and weird changes to start being made. 

Anyway, I think the actor playing Rand did a great job this episode; he may have the presence to carry this role after all. And Ishamael is well cast, although what was he wearing? It looked like he'd come from a wedding or something.

 

[Arakasi]

I think on the matter of Amelisa and the girls that was gone over last page with Gertrude and Karradin. It was a suicide mission to buy time for the evacuation of Fal Dara. It was after all just an accepted and some novices I don’t think they were expecting to actually do much rather than stall for some time. But of course they didn’t know the power of Nynaeve and Egwene. In case something went wrong with the power probably don’t want them in the middle of the place you’re trying to defend.

[Ran]

5 minutes ago, Arakasi said:

I think on the matter of Amelisa and the girls that was gone over last page with Gertrude and Karradin. It was a suicide mission to buy time for the evacuation of Fal Dara.

No it wasn't. The city was already evacuated of foreigners.

Quote

Keep the gates open another hour to allow foreigners to leave, but every Shienaran woman or child stays to fight for our city.

That was late in the day. By the time it's dark, we have two separate shots looking past the city towards Tarwin's Gap, and there's no sign of the refugees (who looked like the last were already trickling out when Amalisa gave her order to leave the gates open one more hour).

So at this point, Fal Dara is devoid of anyone but Shienaran defenders prepared to defend the city that has never fallen until their death. Had the channelers been on the walls, they could have destroyed the trollocs with ease, at leisure, rather than having to burn out because of the huge wave of them coming at them out in the open.

[UnplayableChar]

Here's a fun thing for you to ponder: how did five channelers who weren't even full Aes Sedai destroy with ease the Trolloc army that was supposed to destroy Sheinar, while like ten full sisters and their warders struggled against about 20 of Logain's LARPers in the woods?

[Ran]

3 minutes ago, UnplayableChar said:

Here's a fun thing for you to ponder: how did five channelers who weren't even full Aes Sedai destroy with ease the Trolloc army that was supposed to destroy Sheinar, while like ten full sisters and their warders struggled against about 20 of Logain's LARPers in the woods?

"The Aes Sedai kinda forgot about linking."

 

[Gertrude]

But Agelmar and Amalisa weren't just talking about holding strong for Fal Dara or even Sheinar, they were talking about holding for the world. If they could buy minutes here, then that's minutes that people to the south have that they wouldn't have otherwise. That's minutes that the evacuees have before they begin to be chased down.

And Amalisa knew that the horn was still being recovered. She was also giving them time. And I feel like the burn out was something that was gonna happen one way or the other, because Amalisa just wasn't prepared for that much voltage. She was high as a kite on that crack.

You didn't like it, fine. There were things I didn't like either. Some of it just feels like reaching for things to pull apart that don't really matter one way or the other.