Bryan Gregory

Watching this show requires you to have read the books to have any emotional connection to the characters, but not recently enough that you remember specific plot points. Some of the casting is astoundingly good... Nynaeve, Moiraine, and Padan Fain stand out because their actors are quite good as well. Min, Rand, Matt, and Perrin are also solid. Hard to tell about Egwene until things progress with the seanchan. Where is Verrin? Forsaken? Despite the great casting and good to great acting, the script is all exposition and action, there is zero attention paid to character development. 95% of dialogue is explaining something to the viewer, which is just wasting such rich source material. Feels like the show runners can't see the forest for the trees. Loial was terrible, but not because of the actor. In such an expensive show it's criminal to turn Ogier into something that wouldn't pass first look on a Henson set in 1986. The writing for him was atrocious, as was his introduction and everything else about him. He was one of the coolest characters in the series and every second he was on screen was wasted. Squandered. Similarly, the "wolves" are pitiful in show trying to cap GoT watchers. Visual effects are ok in general, but it's hard to understand where all the money went. The spell weaving is a glaring whiff. Set and wardrobe design are fine, Moiraine's get up is the only one that's really great so far. Tar Valon is pretty if repetitive. Some of the plot changes are confusing and seem to add very little to the story or characters. Events that had significant effect on the characters in the books have been omitted, and those two things are frustrating when paired. Why has Lan not even mentioned Rand's sword?! The show should be 12 episodes. There is far too much ground to cover in 10 episodes, let alone 8. There will never be time to develop the constantly growing list of characters or the increasing complexity of the story lines. I will watch season 2 at some point because I loved the source material, but I won't be hesitant to pull the plug if the show runners keep skimming the stuff that made the books as great as they were.