My experience with GoT puts the author's dialogue well ahead of anything a TV hack writer might choose to put in the characters' mouths. Tyrion and Theon referring to themselves as "your baby boy" to two of the most hard-ass fathers in the series, springs immediately to mind.

See, I am completely tone-deaf on all that stuff. I'd say it's pretty much the same with book writing. I only feel capable of commenting on other writers' takes on GRRM & RJ, because the extensive samples I have of the real authors' work that allows me to say "I don't know what's wrong with this, but it's not the same as the author I like, whose material is the only reason I'm reading/watching this hackery."

I guess "Legend of the Seeker", "Game of Thrones" and even "The Hobbit" have trained me to have a much lower bar for TV adaptations. I would hasten to add that I don't even like Goodkind's writing, probably preferring Sanderson's prose, and finding many of the same dialogue issues. But "Legend of the Seeker" still made him seem better by comparison.

IDK, I never really put much into LTT's characterization, and I thought the interpretation of Ishamael as smug might have been valid. When you're reading the scene, the knowledge that this guy is apparently a spokesman for a pure Evil entity made his villainy clear. The way I imagined Ishamael talking to LTT was that of a sincere believer who expected to finally find a receptive audience, or at least someone he could finally approach with confidence that he had been proven right. Without the black-and-white statement of who was good and bad in that scene, such a performance might have confused the audience into thinking Zane's character was a good guy trying to talk some sense into a crazy friend. Playing him as a smug douchebag, I thought, made him seem like most contemporary portrayals of demonic tempters, or manifestations of Satan, who try to get the signature on the evil parchment.

I understand the director died.

See, I have absolutely no knowledge or insight into this stuff, so I can't even imagine a better way to do this stuff.
Indeed. Although, I heard somewhere that animation is as expensive as live action special effects. I think it was an online discussion of an inferior adaptation of another genre work, where someone asked the original author if an animated series would be better, and he said that it had been discussed and it would have been just as expensive as the proper special effects.
I did notice that. But my impression of Sanderson's interpretation of LTT was something of a weenie as well. Since the only real description of his personality was Moghedian's throwaway line in tGS, I get the feeling Sanderson might have taken the "piety and goodness" bit too literally.
Well, that sounds cool as all get out. Thanks for the mental equivalent of a cock-tease!

Yeah. Damnit. "Why brought ye us from bondage?/Our 'loved Egyptian night?"