Episode One | Episode Two | Episode Three | Episode Four | Episode Six | Episode Seven | Episode Eight |
Once more into the fray! Well, actually twice. My husband asked me to take a night off and hang out with him watching some TV, so we watched episodes five and six (and an episode of Hawkeye). I’m giving each episode its own post, so if any of my many, many (hardly any) readers is also still catching up they don’t have to worry about show spoilers here.
Episode five had less world building, but many emotional moments.
I find I have less outrage. I think it’s sinking in that this is it’s own thing. A different spinning of the Wheel as I heard another friend put it. Or I’m just worn out now. I do still experience disappointments.
My as I watched comments are below the spoiler warning. I try not to spoil major plot and character stuff from the books, but if you really don’t want to know, stop reading now. And I do comment on general world type stuff.
In the books the burial ceremony and the prayer spoken is specifically a Shienaran custom. At least it’s actually in the books, which is not true of many of the rituals and observances in the show. And I do get there isn’t time for dozens of cultures of dozens of worlds. It’s a moving scene.
“One month later.” I’m not that troubled by this. Sometimes travel storylines in books can go on too long. (I’m looking at you Plains of Passage. I do not need to know what happens every inch of a journey.)
While I’m fine with them compressing the travel, I was hoping to see Caemlyn, and figured this would be the episode if it happened. I guess it’s not happening.
The makeup effects for Mat are excellent, he looks haunted and creepy.
Dragonmount should be the only mountain on a plain. It’s supposed to look out of place, it’s not a natural mountain. I get they probably filmed somewhere that is mountainous, but that’s what digital effects are for. As is clear from even the brief dialog in this episode, this is a plot point.
That is not at all how I pictured the Tower. It’s squat, not soaring and graceful looking. It’s like the disappointment of meeting someone in person who put up an idealized photo on their dating site profile.
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash.
I imagine I’m not the only reader who is kind of annoyed because they’re not supposed to be in the White Tower yet. I assume it’s partly getting the Logain stuff on screen at this point as well as getting more about the politicly and issues of the Aes Sedai?
The city of Tar Valon, the bridges, and the general environment look pretty cool though. It’s a bit dirtier and worn than I expected of the shining white city, but it’s hard to visually convey both great age and extreme cleanliness.
You get free welcome snacks when you enter the city?
Nynaeve’s attitude is completely on book.
In the book chronology I’m not sure the Whitecloaks would hang out this close to Tar Valon at this point, but current events as described in episode six show things are a bit accelerated here.
Loial! Great voice! But no ears/ear tufts. :-< The ears are crucial to the expressiveness and not-humanness of the Ogier. We can buy moving cat ear headbands in the real world, couldn’t they have adapted something from that? I mean I know baby Yoda coolness is off the budget here, but c’mon!
My cat Korben agrees that ears are expressive.
Loial doesn’t seem nearly tall enough, either. I suspect they didn’t want to fiddle with (or couldn’t afford) the kind of tricks the LotR movies used to create size disparities.
The Travels of Jain Farstrider!
The jeering crowds throwing things at the procession of the False Dragon are pretty brave, what if you hit an Aes Sedai?
That is some epic bed-head Mat.
Oh, someone did hit an Aes Sedai in the procession. Someone clocked Liandrin with a radish. Really surprised she didn’t retaliate. (The Three Oaths prevent Aes Sedai from killing someone with the Power, though don’t prevent exacting a little revenge for mis-aimed radishes.)
It’s kind of interesting to get more Warders eye views of things. I don’t think we got as much of that in the books as we do in episodes four and five in a way.
That’s one heck of a brazier.
Maybe locating the super brazier where grieving Warders toss in the rings of their lost Aes Sedai on a balcony with no railings is a bad plan.
This show has managed to make the Questioners as or even more repellent than in the books.
Liandrin says “Men still hold much of the power in this world”, so I guess the female centric view we’ve been getting in the show isn’t entirely accurate.
Liandrin trying to seem like she’s a friendly nice person is creepy AF.
You wolves are such good boys! (I mean plotwise, but also, they do look like dogs, not wolves. I can’t really fault the production for that. I’m like practically never happy with CGI wolves or wolf people, and this is probably safer than real wolves.)
Tar Valon at night looks terrific.
Every Aes Sedai thinks you should follow her rules.
World building!
Which includes random rituals being added to the world. I would never thought you could find something to add to Jordan’s sprawling world. But this show found it – rituals.
If I understood the dialog correctly, the method for releasing the Warder bond is not known in this world. It is known in the books.
If we aren’t going to Caemlyn or meeting Elaida, is Liandrin going to stand in for her in the story and assume the position Elaida eventually has?
Dawn breaking over Tar Valon looks super cool.
More non-book rituals.
This is a very emotive version of Lan. He’s been more emotive overall for the past few episodes, but this is more than smiling a little more! Non-emotive is maybe not so good for visual narratives, I guess.
Bird with a Brush 