The Wheel of TIme Season 1 Episode 1, 2, 3 Discussion Thread

[Joaquim]

Does anyone know why Moiraine has to do a dance sequence in order to weave?

Where did you think your db goes?

[Ashlee]

On my second watch and I have to say, things work better the second time through. It is still fast going, it the story beats are all there.

I feel bad for those who are disappointed or underwhelmed. I wish it had met your expectations or made you as excited as it made me.

[Ashlee]

Does anyone know why Moiraine has to do a dance sequence in order to weave?

Where did you think your db goes?

Looking back, it seems to be more of the camera angles than her “dancing.” Most of her gestures are like throwing things (which is pretty book canon).

[Benito]

I felt like I was watching LARPers for a lot of it, even though there were some legitimately good moments. Everything is like 80% there but the 20% is important.

Not sure why Perrin was spamming k female instead of k dark. Meanwhile Rand spam loots Tam and refuses to return even after he respawns. Been there, buddy. Name and shame.

Trollocs were running around ungrouped during raid. That looked bad and of course they lost that way.

Classic Tower move to gank with a massive channie group and use a weave as cheap as quake.

[Kryyg]

Her channel "disassemble Lego Winespring Inn" was excessive.

[Jestin]

On my second watch and I have to say, things work better the second time through. It is still fast going, it the story beats are all there.

I feel bad for those who are disappointed or underwhelmed. I wish it had met your expectations or made you as excited as it made me.

I'm having trouble watching it even the first time around which I never thought I would say. Very low chance there's going to be a second viewing for me

[Kyr]

Very mixed for me but overall good. So many small issues that just add up, then several large ones. Funny enough, the disassemble lego Winespring Inn scene was one of the biggest cringeworthy scenes for me - and there were several. What the actual firetruck? Who thought that was a good idea and how did they make it through production without cast and crew walking off set? We literally laughed out loud at it. Sanderson's review/input made a lot of sense in that theyre clearly aiming at "edgy" and its annoying.

Swordplay was also pretty cringeworthy at times and whoever said that somehow the orcs from LotR were better 20 yrs ago is spot on. I thought the exact same thing. Fking Mat changes piss me off; make him having a rough family life is annoying enough, making him a petty, lying thief is just stupid.

Seemed like they were trying to do too many things at once so didnt quite nail most of them and just completely botched some. Game of Thrones v2.0 it is not - agreed. It does seem to get better though and hopefully the season taken as a whole will fit together better.

[Dinuc]

Fking Mat changes piss me off; make him having a rough family life is annoying enough, making him a petty, lying thief is just stupid.

I wonder if non-book readers will even pick up that his personality changed after picking up the dagger.

[Katherine]

Although I spent a lot of time critiquing the story, its still great that the books finally made it to the screen in some form that does not involve a guy talking to Billy Zane for 10 minutes.

I am somewhat underwhelmed by the screenwriting, but I will keep watching the show. To be honest, very few adaptations from epics series ever do justice to the original texts so a screenplay that is not as good as the books probably surprised exactly no one.

- Casting was ok. I give it a B- but maybe that grade will improve in the upcoming shows. The best casting decision goes to trolloc #7. Definitely sold me with the eating of people and the horns and stuff.

- I like the casting of Lan. Not tall enough, but still fits my mental picture of him. I always thought the perception of Lan was mostly mental rather than purely based on his physical characteristics. I have that same feeling for all warders actually. To paraphrase the books, its like death follows their every step. Obviously not literal. Lan can appear taller, more severe and deadly, simply by casting someone with severe eyes and an easy way of walking.

- Thom is cast well, but his character is a waste. The fact that he's actually a gleeman by trade is not coming across very well. The impression I got was that Thom was a vagrant rogue of some kind with a gift for song. I mean, my 10 year old son can play the basic open chords that he played in the only song he played in the show so far and can probably sing better, too. Even for a simple gleeman, I expected more. Is Thom a simple gleeman though? Anyways, he was depressing and boring. Maybe he was just playing to his audience in a gritty run-down mining town. Who knows. But that's not how he should've been introduced to the viewers. Even for the screenplay, Thom should have entered the picture during Bel Tine like he did during the books. Thom's role in EoTW's early chapters is to bridge the gap between the prologue and the "current day" with his story telling. That is a discontinuity problem this series has.

-The screenplay lacks depth and context, which is not surprising coming from me, since I steep my toes in lore. It has to cut a lot of that when adapted to the screen, but some of the lore is left in to keep the plot understandable and perhaps to throw red meat to superfans, but its just not enough for my liking. The explanation of the One Power is basically non-existent and what the show does provide us is confusing, incorrect/misleading. The show is trying hard to ride the success of GoT, but its just not the same kind of world. GoT is dark fantasy--everybody sucks sort of thing. WoT is more in the thematic vein of classical Tolkien fantasy.

- Not a fan of leaving the prologue out. This sets up some very important backstory which, when left out, makes the Dragon Reborn into a shallow, uninteresting cheap gimmick rather than something with importance attached to it. Maybe the info in the prologue will be woven into the screen play as the story unfolds. The WOT takes place not just in a vast world, but also across the vastness of time. The show did a poor job framing that context.

- The show skipped over Baerlon. So by the time Rand and Matt mention it later in the show, the audience who has never read the book is thinking "what's a Baylun?" and then they spend the next ten minutes rewinding to see if they missed a scene during the last kitchen run. I can understand cutting Baerlon out for pacing, but its in Baerlon where Rand meets Min for the first time. Min is a fan favorite character and, without spoiling why, she introduces the crucial theme of "destiny vs free will".

- So the writers are going to introduce the Aiel as being a corpse riddled with arrows hanging without dignity from a gibbet outside some dung hole backwater in Andor? That is idiotic. At least they threw us fans a bone as to which clan the Aiel belonged to. Those of us that read the books probably guessed what the Aiel was doing there, but still, its a pretty *bleeping* *bleep* way to introduce the noble Aiel in my opinion.

[Itesh]

It's in the books, although I don't recall where, that although you don't need to gesture to channel, if that's the way you learn a weave it's a very hard habit to break.

Aiel Wise Ones don't gesture and it'll be interesting to see how that plays out in the series.