It’s time, the Wheel of Time, wait, that’s a bad joke. But it is time for a show that I’ve been waiting on for a long time to come out. The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan. You can learn some about the characters and series here. And it is a series I’ve been excited for, so when Amazon dropped 3 episodes on Amazon Prime, it was time to watch them. Now, I am doing an episode by episode recap and I still need to watch the third. But I think one episode at a time will be good and of course we start with Leavetaking.

A little bit of groundwork on how this is going to work, I am going to talk about stuff generally, plot, what worked, what didn’t work and some final thoughts. Then I am going to jump into spoilers. I will say that this is a show that I’m enjoying. It’s not perfect to completely true to the book, but that is okay, it’s worked well for television thus far.

Leavetaking

Things in Emond’s Field are not great this year, it’s been a tough winter, but winter ends when Bel Tine comes around. Rand and his father, Tam, come into town to bring mead and drinks for the celebration. They aren’t the only exciting things coming for Bel Tine. Moiraine Sedai and her warder Lan, and along with them a peddler, Paden Fain. Everyone is ready for a night of celebration when creatures of the dark one attack Emond’s Field.

Moiraine and Lan manage to drive back the Trollocks, but are not able to save everyone in the town. They have an idea as to why the Trollocks and dark ones might be attacking, but that requires that some of the Emond’s Field young adults need to go with them. This includes, Rand, Perrin Aybara, Mat Cauthon, and Egwene Al’Vere.

What Didn’t Work

This is an interesting episode, and I’ll talk about a few more thigns that didn’t work in the spoiler section, because somewhat by necessity they needed to change a bit of it because of how long the book series is. They can’t do everything in this series that the books do. On the flip side, some of the changes were a little bit rough.

All the main kids are older, and I won’t say that didn’t work, but they made some interesting choices with the level of relationship with Rand and Egwene and an interesting choice with Perrin. I can get both of them, though, the one with Rand and Egwene gave it more of a Game of Thrones feel, and I know it’s a fantasy book series so it’s going to get compared to Game of Thrones, but Wheel of Time should not be Game of Thrones, and while I don’t think it’ll try completely, they will give nods to that style I’m sure.

I do think they rushed some of the story. Now, I get that they are doing a 9 episode season which I’m guessing is all of the first book. But this is Amazon. 12 episodes and the pacing would have been amazing. 15 episodes and it probably would have been perfect. This is an epic fantasy series, don’t rush it too much. To go back to Game of Thrones, we know what happened when they rushed the end. I think just a few more episodes could have made this first episode better.

What Did Work

First off, the tone of the show is very good. Emond’s Field felt like Emond’s Field. The Aes Sedai feel like Aes Sedai from what we see of them. They set-up some important things early on for how the magic of Aes Sedai works and how the male side is tainted.

But to go along with the tone, the casting on this is amazing. I am not going to list off everyone because, well, everyone is great from Tam, Rand, Mat, Egwene, Perrin, Lan, Moiraine, and Paden Fain. Honestly, all the main cast are good. I think that we didn’t see enough of Nyneave to know if that casting is great, but the rest of them are very good. And I think as we get to see more of Nyneave her character will be more interesting. I don’t think I can overstate this enough, the casting might be the best I’ve seen for a show period.

Leave Taking Final Thoughts

I have some issues with this episode. Now, I don’t have major issues with this episode because it sets the right tone, it sets up the world well, and there is clear strength in the casting. My issues come from the pacing. This episode felt rushed. They packed too much into it, they packed some extra things into it, and it just wasn’t needed at times.

That said, this is going to be different from the books. Any adaptation of any book is going to be different because it’s a different person interpreting it than the writer or the reader. So this has the right feel and the right actors, if they can keep close enough to the story line it is going to be very good.

Overall, this is a series, and honestly most series are this way, give yourself three episodes with it. This first one sets the town correctly, but isn’t amazing. The second one I liked better, but I’ll talk about it tomorrow.

Have you watched the show, what do you think of it? Is it one you’ll continue watching the new episodes when they come out?

SPOILERS

Now, let’s get into a few small gripes, why they don’t matter that much, or maybe why they didn’t work for me. Spoiler, obviously ahead, let me repeat that, spoilers, obviously, ahead.

In the show they age the main characters up. This is not actually a big deal to me. However, they use it to make one interesting choice and one heavy handed choice. With Rand and Egwene hooking up, that felt too Game of Thrones, granted the characters are older, but it’s a bit odd to add into the story. Does it add drama, yes, is that drama really needed, no.

The second thing was Perrin being married. Again, this makes sense if they are older, and if any of them were to be married it’d 100% be Perrin. He’s the most responsible of the three boys. And I get what they did, I just don’t like it. Perrin killing his wife rushes along the storyline of how Perrin doesn’t like his axe. He wants to throw it away because he doesn’t like killing. He gets talked out of it and is told to throw it away if he ever doesn’t hate it and if he is ever not hesitant to use it. Him killing his wife is just too heavy handed for my taste.

And finally this isn’t a negative or a positive at this point, but Thom Merrlin isn’t in the story yet. He’s one of my favorite characters from the books. He is there in the books for Bel Tine and the Trollock attacks. And he joins with the group for a reason, now I’m sure that reason will still exist, I’m just going to be curious to see how they tie it in. The attack at Bel Tine was a good kicking off point for their friendship.

With the exception of the Perrin thing, the rest are nitpicks. I think that Egwene and Rand thing is fine. I get it, it’s a bit of Game of Thrones and a bit of them being older. The Perrin one is what stands out to me as I wish they had more time to build it out or taken that time. Though, it’s Perrin, so it’s harder to explain since a lot of it was in his head.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.
Support us on Patreon here.