01:20 – Don’t tell me we’re dawdling over funeral services. This is just what I signed onto an epic fantasy series for – cleaning dishes, funerals, ladies-only coming of age ceremonies, bathing and dancing.

02:51 – Gary Oldman Warder (Gaidin Oldman? ) is the focus of this mourning stuff, but why? Why do they think it is a better choice to have him all mopey instead of psychotically revenge driven and indifferent to his own life? They also changed the death of a gentled man in the description of Owyn’s fate, from giving up the will to live, to having a sudden psychotic break and violently killing himself.

05:47 – The geography in this setting is broken. The Two Rivers is a few days from Tar Valon, apparently, or else Moiraine and Lan have gone insanely far out of their way. Are they really needed to escort a gentled man?

05:49 – Lan calls the White Tower home. No. He has no home. The Borderlands or the Blight are as much a home as he has.

05:54 – Moiraine meanwhile, does not think of the Tower as home, home is her saddle & traveling clothes and “this brooding man at my side” I don’t know, I suppose it’s a way to convey how much a partnership Moiraine has with him, and this medium of adaptation has to have people express their interiority verbally, so we get the tension his relationship with Nynaeve creates in their existing life. Best I can do. Otherwise, way to mix up your characterizations, show.

06:15 – This suggests that Stepin’s issue is something like a feeling of dishonor in failing to give his life for his Aes Sedai (Jordan, could you not have come up with better terminology for some of this stuff? At the least maybe Old Tongue words for bondholder and bonded person, rather than have “warder” mean both the job and the relationship to the sister), not an affliction imposed by the Power.

06:22 – Between the Children taking trophies, and now the importance of delivering a fallen sister’s ring to the Tower, I think a WoT Novice is going to get the impression that the rings are magic, or contain their power or katra or hirac delest or what have you.

07:10 – For the record, children were the exception to Mat’s paranoia with the dagger in EotW, not a particular target of his ire. Especially when the show has gone out of its way to establish Mat as being especially protective of children.

08:04 – This view of Tar Valon, the Tower and Dragonmount is a lot more impressive than others I have previously seen. I still don’t like the design. This was built by the finest power-working humans could still recall after the Breaking, at the heights of the capabilities of the Third Age. Being a proportionately slim tower makes it look more like an impossible feat of engineering. This merely looks like a big building that took a lot of time or resources or mundane effort to construct. It also looks like it could have grown up in stages. The White Tower should be a singular work, like a wonder of the world.

08:42 – I hope they didn’t break their budget on that camel.

09:17 – The diversity and variety of people in Tar Valon might have been more impressive if we hadn’t opened the show in the multi-racial Two Rivers and encountered a multi-racial small mining town, a multi-racial Tinker caravan, a multi-racial force of Whitecloaks and a multi-racial band of Aes Sedai and warders.

09:32 - Rand wants to find Basel Gill’s (or some stupidly named friend of Thom’s) inn in order to freshen up before going to the White Tower. This is why half-bright TV-caliber writers should not change stuff. Rand and Mat came to Caemlyn intending to look for their friends before continuing to Tar Valon. That might mean waiting, if they were the first to arrive, or at the least, they'd need a home base where they can be found. And also to have someone local they can trust via Thom and a way to survive with their scant resources. None of these reasons should apply to coming to Tar Valon. They are at their goal, the White Tower, the one place they know for sure is associate with Moiraine, and where she is likely to come. ITB, they entertained the notion of checking in with Elaida, as Moiraine’s fellow Aes Sedai, until Gill advised against it, due to Thom’s history. Because that’s the most sensible and obvious thing to do. They have no need to stop at an inn when they are practically at their destination.

This can only be a ploy to meet Loial, since he is the only one of the Caemlyn crew I have seen listed as cast for Season 1. If so, that’s ALSO stupid, because an Ogier would not have a problem with angry mobs in Tar Valon! They’d be going to the Tower or its library. (Though, honestly, in hindsight, it doesn’t make much sense why Loial would need shelter at the Queen’s Blessing, when you’d think he’d be welcome at the Palace. Especially the way the long-serving Palace servitor seemed to think the Dragon-freaking-Reborn should go to the Ogier, rather than have them brought to him)

09:47 - If a night at this inn is more expensive than a month at the Winespring Inn, maybe you should go right to the Tower, hmm? I love it when a TV show accidentally doubles down on the stupidity of their forced plot choices. And apparently being a friend of Thom doesn’t cut as much ice on the show as in the book.

Of course, the Winespring might be cheap, because its clientele are greeted by suspicious women with hands on knife hilts.

10:03 - “Better than the road” Mat says, but it looks rather spacious for the sort of cheap flophouse two country boys with few liquid assets should be able to afford.

11:05 - Showing Moiraine, Lan & Nynaeve in the Tower already just keeps making the inn issue seem worse.

11:11 - The Warders’ quarters cannot be the safest place in the Tower, that would be wherever Aes Sedai are. If Aes Sedai are the problem, as Moiraine says next, Warders are no protection! A Warder would not disobey a sister without orders from his own.

12:00 - After that nice little speech putting Tower politics into perspective for Nynaeve, I can’t help but think it undermined Moiraine’s point in making it. Nynaeve wanted to leave the Tower and look around because she does not trust Moiraine, who promises she has eyes and ears watching every gate and will know as soon as the kids enter. Moiraine’s monologue does nothing to address her mistrust. But going on and on about the dangerous intrigue skills of the Aes Sedai suggests that they are just as likely to have people watching, and maybe more. Moiraine has been away. The Tower is not her home as much as her saddle is! So how can she so confidently be assured of her command of the environment and her sources of information?

That we, the viewers, know Rand and Mat are in the city and checked in to an inn at the moment, also can’t help but call Moiraine’s assertions into question.

13:17 - This speech is pretty on-point for Nynaeve, and from Moiraine’s lips, could not be better calculated to piss her off. ITB Moiraine understood this, despite not being nearly as open & sharing as this Moiraine, which is why she only used her insights to jab at Nynaeve and prod her into doing what she wanted.

14:15 - Can we please stop talking about the Way of the Leaf, if you are too dumb to actually argue its morality and principles and reduce Perrin to nitpicking in order to accuse them of hypocrisy?

Also, ITB, the Tinker dogs were menacing in appearance but trained not to bite.

14:20 - How is the Way of the Leaf about accepting the violence that is in all of us? The Way only accepts the harm that befalls a victim of violence, it does not accept violence itself! How does this even fit in with Ila’s “peace is the best revenge on violence” blather?

14:40 - Perrin, the canonically highly observant man, whose contact with the wolves should have started enhancing his senses, needs to be told that they are in sight of the Tower.

16:50 - "Bastards" again. Female-dominated culture. No stigma against illegitimacy. What’s wrong with adjectives used for the Children ITB, like “vile”?

17:20 - Much as I am on board with crapping all over the Tinkers’ pacifism and especially its efficacy, it just feels like the show is being kind of mean-spirited here, which feels like a symptom of trying to be edgy and cool grimly realistic and pragmatic. You shouldn’t have the Tinkers so epically fail in the face of opposition so soon. ITB, leaving them was like leaving behind an idyll, a moving haven. We get that sense again when the Two Rivers men are welcomed into their camp after the Waterwood ambush goes bad on them. Their refusal to accept the shelter and safety of the village is both innocent and sad, because we know Emond’s Field isn’t like those other bad villages that would pick on them, especially with Perrin and friends there, right? But it really does seem like the Tinkers float through the world in a safe bubble. The Whitecloaks can rough them up a bit, but they don’t actually harm them. Bornhald even specifically orders one of his more brutal soldiers not to. And that all means it hurts worse for Perrin to see them in distress when they eventually turn up at Emond’s Field, sans wagons, and Aram’s mom, among others. As it is, seeing the Children slap them around and their utter failure to protect Perrin and Egwene, they can never feel like a safe haven again.

17:50 - Loial talks fast. Actually, I’m glad we’re not having to suffer through Entish diction, but his dialogue feels… hasty.

18:10 - The blonde hair is too distracting. And he feels too small. This does not look like a guy who needs a specially constructed bed to be comfortable. He also sounds very mature. Middle-aged or elderly.

18:27 - Loial’s home borders the Aiel lands. He should not only know the Aiel exclusively through books. If he does only know them from books, he should have been flabbergasted at the sword which Rand drew before so much as saying his name! And for that matter, how would he think a swordsman, drawing a weapon unveiled, is an Aielman?

19:10 - Egwene seemed much less into The Travels of Jain Farstrider than Rand and Perrin. She was not frequently referencing it or seen reading it in her spare time, and did not even notice when Rand named his horse from the book.

20:11 - That was not bad characterization of Loial. The aesthetics could use improvement, but that’s more of a personal taste issue.

21:10 - They’re throwing crap on Aes Sedai. In Tar Valon. ITB Tar Valon folk would never chuck stuff, even at a false Dragon, if there was a chance of disrespecting an Aes Sedai just by accident.

I do find it amusing that the Aes Sedai got a new cage for the procession and are faking guarding him as if he can still channel, even if it means getting pelted with fruit, all for appearances sake.

21:33 - Or IS he gentled? If he was, how does Logain see what Rand (and I suppose, Mat, if we are still going with the pretense that it could be either of them) is?

22:43 - Mat’s accent and hirsute state make him seem like an early 1960s rock singer, but in his late 60s/70s, drugged-out, eastern-mysticism-appropriating, experimental phase.

23:22 - As I was commenting on the parade, above, part of me was thinking “Stop being so nitpicky, Cannoli, Liandrin and Alanna are probably subtly protecting themselves with air-umbrellas” and I refrained from mentioning it because if a book reader tried to argue the case with me, I could argue that the show has not sufficiently established this was a thing they can do. But it seems they were NOT doing that! They were letting themselves get pelted with ordure just to maintain the façade of shielding a gentled man.

Even I, it turns out, am giving the show too much credit.

23:24 - This white nightshirt-looking thing has me thinking there is going to be something like suttee in Stepin’s future.

23:40 - Every time a TV writer has a character offer unsolicited irrelevant details about his father, that writer should lose a body part.

24:10 - The death of Stepin’s hated father affected him the way the breaking of his Warder bond is actually supposed to.

24:32 - Alcohol is much more of a social lubricant on the show. ITB, it’s only soldiers and low-class men who go drinking together. There is a reason why Nynaeve and many other women and classy dudes look down on it as a pastime. Aes Sedai certainly don’t bond with people over drinks.

25:24 - Here it is again. A TV character cannot have a heartfelt moment returned. The script always has to duck away from emotion or sincerity by mocking its efforts in that direction. The script is treating viewers like Rand was treating people when Cadsuane diagnosed him as needing to get back to being human.

26:03 - I don’t know what to make of Stepin’s snap-back at Lan. Coming in light of the fact that ITB, Lan does lose Moiraine and marry her replacement the day he catches up to her, I can’t tell if it’s supposed to be an in-joke or metatextual criticism, or what.

And real Lan does not do the stereotypical guy thing of offering practical solutions to emotional problems. He either directly addresses your issue if he thinks it’s called for or keeps his mouth shut.

26:48 - I feel like statues to Warders would not be a thing. Maybe Lan’s habitual self-abnegation has affected my perception of them as a whole, but I get more of a vibe of them taking pride in being the anonymous shadows of their Aes Sedai, serving without glory or recognition by any but their comrades in arms. You don’t make larger-than-life statues of guys whose uniform makes them literally fade into the background. I mean, who remembers the warders of such legendary sisters as Caraighan or Rashima or Cadsuane?

26:58 - Over the edge, or into the firepit?

27:31 - Okay, what even is this tradition? If the dead Aes Sedai’s rings not taken as trophies by their killers, are all melted into this ever-heated pot thing, why is it the warders and only the warders in attendance? Why is the Amyrlin not leading the ceremony? Where are all her sisters? Lan and Ihvon and Maksim are just some dudes who happened to be there when she died, and all the others present not even that. What about all the women she lived and worked with for decades or centuries? Best friends? Family? No matter what Stepin is to her, there should be Aes Sedai at least somewhat closer to her than all those nameless Warders. What about with the Reds?

28:02 - Really! This is like Moiraine is comforting Lan over Kerene’s death! This all makes no sense!

28:45 - This is all very unnecessarily rapey. This is completely not the kind of thing that should exist in the world of WoT. This is like a patriarchal world where a militant dissident group of women were allowed to humiliate and violate a random young male of the elite class. It would never be tolerated!

31:00 - This is waaay too much One Power literacy for the Children of the Light. And it still does not explain how they manage to effect the capture of sisters. Yes, they have become overly reliant on gestures, but nowhere are Aes Sedai ever impeded by limitations on their range of motion.

31:12 - The whole portrayal of the Children of the Light comes across as a fan who really, really, really hates them and has decided to make them as despicable as he can imagine with their creepy bathing thing and the torture devices. Because readers project their own issues. They see a group of men who oppose actions only done by women and they start projecting all sorts of real-world misogyny on them, when there is no indication in the books that the Children are any more sexist than anyone else, and considerably less so than the Aes Sedai (the closest we get is their sins of the father lasting longer than sins of the mother scripture). These readers self-identify with the coolest and most powerful group in the story and project resentment and envy on those who oppose them.

Every single way in which the world of WoT is worse than reality is entirely 100% due to the existence of channelers. The Children have a point! That’s the thing about, WoT, everyone has a legitimate and defensible perspective, outside of the Shadow, which in turn, highlights that their differences are much less important than the fact that they are NOT serving the Shadow and should be working together, should be trying to find common ground.

In the specific case of the Children, while Jordan clearly disapproved of their conduct, stating that he explicitly based them on historical organizations that claimed a monopoly on truth, he DID, in fact, base them on actual groups of humans, that large numbers of well-meaning, decent human beings belonged to. That’s why they are redeemable. That’s why there are numerous parallels and reflections of the White Tower worked into the Children of the Light. They are the flip-side of the fallen institution the White Tower has become. Name a sin of the Children and the Aes Sedai commit its opposite or counterpart when they do not do the same thing themselves.

For example, Thom presents us with our first impression of the Children with his warning to Nynaeve in Baerlon, but the next time he lectures on the subject, to Aviendha in Ebou Dar, six books later, he is shown making statements the readers know to be factually wrong, that Jaichim Carridin could never be subject to his organization’s scrutiny, when Niall threatened him with that in Book 3. And we have also seen the extent to which most Aes Sedai, and the White Tower, officially, is in denial about the Black Ajah.

The show is swapping out a well-meaning organization that has fallen from its noble goals and aspirations that can be redeemed in time to contribute to the Last Battle, for over-the-top cartoonish antagonists. Their vague attempt at over-compensating with OoC Nice Bornhald a couple episodes ago doesn’t help any.

31:48 - This is out-of-character nonsense, because screenwriters only know one way to portray strength or courage: threats of violence. Egwene did that exactly zero times when captive of the Children, because she’s not that big of an idiot, and because any victim knows that’s a good way to be victimized worse.

33:36 - Leaving them alone makes no sense from a tactical standpoint. It would especially give a channeler the opportunity to work some barely-functional weave with the minimal use of her hands she still has, to effect an escape, unobserved. Valda is acting not out of any sensible motivations from his point of view, but in a way that suits the writers, to further the plot.

34:22 - Why randomly change sheepstongue to goatstongue?

34:55 - Book Nynaeve would not miss that Stepin is trying to get a lethal dose of sleeping meds.

35:50 - Please, please, please do not flex your brilliant creative writing chops have someone come up and offer unsolicited backstory on the warder statues.

36:10 - Fuck.

36:20 - Why, for the love of the Light, would Liandrin describe Warders as having “bonded themselves to my sisters”? She knows that’s not how it works! Why would a man-hating Red credit them with such agency?

And how can those statues represent “the tens of thousands of men who (were Warders)” if they are almost as old as the Tower itself? They represent Warders who had not been born when they were carved?

36:54 - “Men still control much of this world.” So either Judkins & company totally misread the setting of the books, or else they decided to change one of the things that made WoT unique and different from so much other generic fantasy.

Why don’t you show us how “men still control much of this world” instead of showing women holding exclusive access to a particular source of power and then making them look super incompetent for not actually being able to leverage that into equality, if not domination.

37:05 - So they want to have their cake and eat it too. Powerful women, in control and ruling in their own right, but they’re also rebels pushing back against the patriarchy that seeks to hold them down.

And persimmons are harvested in the fall. They are very bitter until they ripen and mature. They would not be “coming into season” in the spring. Unless the festival in episode 1 was actually a variant of Samhain, as I jokingly suggested back then…

38:02 - From Liandrin showing Nynaeve the library, to Loial announcing he is allowed on the Tower grounds (so why stay at the so-expensive inn? ) and found Nynaeve there. No need to show us Loial discerning this was Rand’s friend, or persuading Nynaeve that he knew where Rand was, or hell, Nynaeve’s reaction to meeting an Ogier. Nah, we needed that airtime for Warder bullshit rituals. So much of this abomination reeks of arrogant fan fixes, why not perform an actual minor improvement by showing Loial and Nynaeve interacting together, which the books didn’t?

And I am calling bullshit on Loial’s explanation that he identified Nynaeve as a Two Rivers woman by her braid, because she’s the only one with that kind of braid whom we see! Everyone else has these little single pigtails, while Nynaeve practically has a mass of tentacles as we saw in the finale last week.

38:43 - If we were going to have dagger-afflicted Mat reunite with Nynaeve in this same episode, why did we need Moiraine to articulate Nynaeve’s character struggles, when Mat canonically did so in this encounter ITB?

39:15 - Okay, at least there’s a reason for Rand avoiding the Tower, now. But it’s only because of the other stupidity of the channeling head fake, and why then did he come into Tar Valon and hang out with Mat on a balcony watching an Aes Sedai parade (which Moiraine, Lan & Nynaeve skipped out on because the plot needed them to not find the boys yet)?

39:33 - This inn looks a lot like a castle inside.

40:33 - Why is a show that clearly sees itself as being so much better a feminist work than Jordan’s writing, refusing to use Doral Barran’s canonical name?

40:56 - Egwene is just like so awessumm! When she was like, ten, she had like, this super deadly disease, and she never cried and refused her pain meds! Isn’t she the greatest? Egwene has, like, a SUPER willpower. Ohmuhgawd, slay queen!

45:02 - This should be a Perrin thing, but they made it all about Egwene. Her pep talk is framed as inspiring him and at best the manifestation of his power is merely a distraction for Egwene to strike the decisive blow.

47:00 - However crap the writing, I like how the actress playing Liandrin is trying to sell it.

47:28 - Nynaeve, the libertarian avatar of WoT, has “a certain force of will she cannot hide. A sense that the world would be better if everyone obeyed the rules.” A. that’s shit grammar. B. “(Nynaeve) did not care much for rules…other people rarely saw the situation as clearly as she, and thus made stupid rules.” Nynaeve has a long list of things of which she does not approve, but she never tries to ram them down anyone’s throat. She disapproves of drunkenness, but also of Maseema closing taverns. She disapproves of premarital sex, but travels with Rand & Min who are clearly cohabitating, without a word of judgment or rebuke. She dislikes Moiraine but doesn’t like the idea of Rand bossing her around. She encourages the Kin to stand up for themselves, even when personally inconvenient. If she comes across as bossy, it’s because she believes in people and encourages them to be what she sees as their best selves. Not to follow rules. Not even her rules. If there is a single “chaotic good” character in WoT, it is Nynaeve. Mat (highly organized military commander and strict disciplinarian) is a paragon of law and order next to her.

47:58 - Stepin is a screenwriting trope magnet. Now we have the thing where a character is engaged in some pointless little activity and when someone comes up behind him, he launches into an anecdote about the meaning of this thing he is doing, in such a way that critics who like to congratulate themselves on their analysis chops can see ties to a theme of the episode or character arc.

48:13 - I guess that Old Tongue gibberish prayer last episode is intended to scare any casual viewers away from the Old Tongue dictionary resources, so they don’t realize that Ishamael means “betrayer of hope”, not “father of lies.” Which, by the way, is the Dark One.

48:29 - Member of an organization which knows the Forsaken for merely human channelers asks if Lan still believes in them, like they are spirits or demons.

This praying to the Forsaken does not even make any sense.

49:20 - The fact that releasing the bond is an obscure bit of esoterica that Moiraine knows and a Green does not is beyond belief. Why would anyone bond a Warder, or at least so many sisters on screen, if there was no way to get out of it? ITB, it is commonly known, for the very specific and explicit purpose of protecting a Warder from just what Stepin is going through! In fact, it’s the only Tower-approved use of that technique. According to Jordan, releasing a Warder who really wants to quit is a thing, but is thought to reflect badly on the sister who bonded him in the first place, when he was clearly unsuited or unable to follow through on the commitment.

50:20 - Graceful, serene, smooth, utterly ladylike Moiraine Damodred, lying in bed with her boots on.

50:45 - They seem to be switching out Liandrin for Elaida. Which, on the one hand, makes me wonder if she’s actually a Darkfriend, and on the other, I suspect that she is, and they are, again, overegging the pudding by making Siuan’s rival even more heinous, as with the Whitecloaks. Not enough that the opposition has to be in the wrong, they have to be eeeevil, too.

50:56 - I remain fairly certain they are playing up Siuan’s supposed enmity toward Moiraine to build to the shocking reveal that they are friends, confidantes, and probably, given the sector of fandom they are clearly pandering to here, lovers and soulmates.

51:50 - Can’t tell what that picture is supposed to be. Leaning real hard into the Battle of Winterfell lighting style. This is the freaking White Tower! It looks more gray from the outside, you’d think they could at least make it bright inside, to convey the power and superiority of the Aes Sedai. And let us see better.

52:01 - Ah, Stepin’s drugging Lan, so he can’t stop Stepin from killing himself.

52:09 - Warders can’t feel their bondholder’s other Warders. If they do, Elayne basically involuntarily bonded Birgitte and Rand to each other. She would not have done that, especially in the context of Rand’s revelation about Alanna. What I suspect is thoughtless polyamory pandering.

52:22 - Yep. Warder bonds are sexual by default. And when you bring up this stuff in an episode that highlights the Reds’ refusal to bond Warders, it leans even harder on their anti-male thing. Stepin’s never been homosexual, but Alanna’s just going to rewrite his sexuality because she and Moiraine decided it would be best for him. His attitude is that of someone who is resigned to something he has no say in. The weird thing is, it fits with my prediction of his fate, which in turn makes the whole bonding issue creepy, with Stepin killing himself to avoid this mental enslavement and/or rape, which is, first of all, not in keeping with the open-minded posture the show is taking with regard to sexual fluidity and secondly, a weird thing to do when you consider the relationship of bonds and romantic partners for the main characters. Especially when the showrunner has expressly stated Rand’s relationship(s) is a subject of particular interest to him. Not to mention, it undercuts his suffering from the loss of his bonded sister, if you add in a more tangible reason for suicide. This makes it less about his loss of Kerene and more about avoiding Alanna.

53:22 - Stepin acknowledges Lan’s toughness with a smile as Lan drinking the tea Stepin made replaces him in the focus.

54:35 - Lan twigs to Stepin’s suicidal inclinations by the absence of a knife from the …rack?... on the mantel. Rather than, oh, only every shot of him in this episode?

55:56 - Good thing their mission just happened to bring Lan into contact with his good buddy Stepin right before his tragic loss so they could have this important time together. Or, you know, not. And instead stick with the storyline that sold 90 million copies. I forget – are book readers known for being easier to please and less critical than television viewers? Because that might explain why you ditch the storyline that satisfied so many readers they went out and bought more books, and instead go with a bunch of trope-laden, formulaic, episodic, invented scenes and stories that TV has been doing to death.

56:24 - We have a female (or trans) warder, I believe, behind Lan! This is sooo worth losing the actual story for!

56:33 - Oh, never mind, there are Aes Sedai here too.

56:57 - The fuck even is this bullshit?

57:09 - I’m back with non-cismale Warder, since the feminine-looking person with the updo and earrings is doing the chest-pound thing that all the men and none of the known Aes Sedai in the room are.

57:25 - Lan barely showed any sign of weeping for Moiraine, his companion and partner for twenty years, while suffering the effects of a severed bond. But he’s breaking down over Stepin NobodyCares. And Stepin gets a bigger funeral than an Aes Sedai. Where everyone wears funeral vestments. These ceremonies make no sense in any context other than “Let’s have a sad Lan episode.”

We had fan favorite tragic backstory Lan ITB with only one exposition monologue and a brief, understated conversation. We did not need 1/8 of the first volume of an epic fantasy adventure devoted primarily to building up a sad fate for an invented best friend to become fascinated with al’Lan Mandragoran, Last Lord of the Seven Towers. That guy is easily recognizable as someone who is the seed of a dozen myths and a hundred legends. There are no legends inspired by the tough guy who was sometimes stoic and sometimes pratfall-prone, whose friend died of maybe grief and maybe to escape mind-rape slavery. And we know it’s sad because the person doing the thing to Lan that made Stepin kill himself is staring damp-eyed at him!

I feel like book Lan would have only raged at the system and institutions which drove Stepin into this corner, or else, if that’s not the narrative they are trying to tell, stoically accepted his friend’s desire not to go on without his bondholder. That is, after all, a huge thing for Lan, that his life is just a tool to be used against the Shadow and death is lighter than a feather etc etc. He would have been dead already if Moiraine had not bonded him and cannot imagine living without her and has to be compelled not to follow her into the grave.

57:44 - The more subdued and distant expressions of Ihvon and Maksim suggest they really wanted to bone Stepin and are more sorry about missing their chance. At least Maksim seems to know where on the body the human heart is located. Lan is punching his shoulder.

57:55 - This shot tells me two things. 1. They have not put back Stepin’s suicide knife on the rack where it belongs. And 2. Nynaeve is really sad and either worried or confused. I lean toward worried, because she blithely handed over the drugs that Stepin used to keep Lan from preventing his suicide. The gentling of Nynaeve continues. There is a lot of lip service paid to her strength of will and her Healing abilities, but after her authority was nerfed away in the village and her agency was dragged off by the braid. Her demonstration of tracking skills was played for laughs at Lan’s expense, her essential character as a consummate healer was tainted by her leveraging her skills to get her way and now her moment of heroism is done away with as Perrin and Egwene escape without outside help, she is passively brought together with her friend by Loial, off-screen, she leaves a sick Mat in the inn while she dispenses herbs in the Tower and attends Warder ceremonies, and she got bamboozled by a premeditated suicide.

58:01 - Moiraine is lightly tapping her collarbone. This amuses me.

Looking back at my first time-stamp, I had no idea what I was getting into. Something like 20% of the episode on three funeral/memorial/burial scenes that do NOTHING to advance the plot and tell us nothing about the Emond's Field main characters and at BEST, vaguely serviced Lan as a 'tragic hero with an unbearable burden of sorrow' type, which misses the mark wildly.

Seriously, why not just write your own fantasy show and culture without paying Harriet Rigney to use the names her husband came up with? The elements they appear to be keeping from the story are sufficiently generic you could change the names and no one could sue.

We have an episode centered on Dana the Darkfriend and one about the Warder of a sister who died off the page in New Spring. And got more characterization from a description of her living quarters than we got on the screen. And all this comes at the expense of the future savior of the world. Baalzamon has yet to have a single line of dialogue. We don't get Elyas, or Elaida or the Trakand family this season, Thom has a bit part in two episodes, but we can have Dana and Stepin as the prominent guest stars. Padan Fain was last seen ducking behind his wagon during the Trolloc attack, and I'm sure WoTNovices have forgotten about him.

Anecdotally, Jeff Bezos wanted Amazon to make the "next Game of Thrones." You know what Game of Thrones did to become wildly successful? Adhered as closely as possible within the limitations of adaptation to a different format and budgetary constraints plus the writers' limited comprehension of the themes, setting and characters allowed for the first three seasons. We did not have a good third to half of an episode devoted to the sad backstory of Desmond the Guard.

Burn this choss to the Pit of Doom.