How did the show hold up for you?

[EmreY]

1 hour ago, Deviations said:

Why couldn't they just recast and quickly keep shooting?  No one has provided a solid answer for that question.  They had to have had many of the actors that originally auditioned for the part in mind that would have been available.

 

As I understand it, they went into lockdown immediately afterwards, and there was no opportunity to recast for the last two episodes.  Also, casting might not be instantaneous and even if it is, the new actor might not be immediately available, etc etc.

 

There might also have been an element of keeping the two actors chronologically separate.  Some (most?) people might have been OK with it, but as I'm one of those who groaned out loud "It's turned into a soap opera" when Vader announced Luke's parentage, I might have been really turned off.

Edited February 18, 2022 by EmreY

[Deviations]

3 hours ago, EmreY said:

As I understand it, they went into lockdown immediately afterwards, and there was no opportunity to recast for the last two episodes.  Also, casting might not be instantaneous and even if it is, the new actor might not be immediately available, etc etc.

 

There might also have been an element of keeping the two actors chronologically separate.  Some (most?) people might have been OK with it, but as I'm one of those who groaned out loud "It's turned into a soap opera" when Vader announced Luke's parentage, I might have been really turned off.

I can somewhat understand the second argument but that's giving them credit I personally don't think they've earned.  Granted, I'm not impartial.

 

The first is weak tea.  Very weak tea.  Change everyone's story instead of quickly responding to an issue?  You can't do that in the real world.  Imagine Steve Jobs telling his shareholders that they dumbed down the original iPhone because they lost an engineer on the design team and want to launch the phone on time even if it didn't have the touch screen or the various aftermarket apps.

[aburuq]

I have definitely not kept up with the vast amount of discussion about the show on this forum, but from the bit I read in the past few months, I don't think I've come across the following sentiment: 
Personally, I don't mind a lot of the changes in events and how the plot is moving forward, I think a lot of it seems good or acceptable as an adaptation etc, particularly needing to condense things etc. What bothered me the most was one really central emotional thread that seems to really betray the spirit of the first 3 books and really weakens the power of the story: how much utter terror and dread there is about the Dragon in the books, which is really just not there in the show.
I just re-read the first 3 books after having left the series at book 11 in 2006. And one of the most striking things about it is just how incredibly resistant Rand (as well as the others) are to being the Dragon. So much so that even after he defeats Ba'alzaman the first time and knows he can channel, he is horrified by the ability to channel but it doesn't even occur to him to think that he's the dragon. Moiraine doesn't even try to suggest it until that meeting along with Siuane, and he is beyond shocked, it is unthinkable. Even after he proclaims himself the dragon after Toman Head he's still in denial, doesn't believe it. Doesn't want anything to do with the idea, etc. 
Whereas in the show literally the first thing Moiraine tells them when the Trollocs come: "one of you is the dragon. Come on let's go" and they're like, ehh ok if you say so. And then they're a bit dismissive of the idea, but also kinda taking it seriously.

The only interview I have ever heard of RJ makes this point essential to why he even wrote it -- the idea of trying to realistically depict how some country bumpkin being told "you're the savior and destroyer of the world" would react. I feel that is the weakest part of the show so far. I hope they can rectify it somewhat in what follows.

[EmreY]

12 hours ago, Deviations said:

Imagine Steve Jobs telling his shareholders that they dumbed down the original iPhone because they lost an engineer on the design team and want to launch the phone on time even if it didn't have the touch screen or the various aftermarket apps.

 

If I imagine Steve Jobs being faced with the prospect of the immediate departure of a fifth of his leading engineers, I can certainly see a delay in the works.

 

But you can delay the launch of a phone, or a film, but not a TV series.

[Raal Gurniss]

9 hours ago, EmreY said:

 

If I imagine Steve Jobs being faced with the prospect of the immediate departure of a fifth of his leading engineers, I can certainly see a delay in the works.

 

But you can delay the launch of a phone, or a film, but not a TV series.

Well…..Unless there were 5x as many of readily available standby replacements whose only difference is that they look and sound slightly different…I mean if you are making that comparison fairs fair.

 

They could have bit the bullet and just replaced him, they are anyway.

[EmreY]

1 hour ago, Raal Gurniss said:

Well…..Unless there were 5x as many of readily available standby replacements whose only difference is that they look and sound slightly different…I mean if you are making that comparison fairs fair.

 

They could have bit the bullet and just replaced him, they are anyway.

 

It's the "5x as many readily available standby replacements" that I have a slight issue with.  Are so many qualified engineers truly available?  To be fair.

[Andra]

11 hours ago, EmreY said:

 

If I imagine Steve Jobs being faced with the prospect of the immediate departure of a fifth of his leading engineers, I can certainly see a delay in the works.

 

But you can delay the launch of a phone, or a film, but not a TV series.

Of course you can delay the launch of a TV series.

This one had already been delayed before any of the stuff with Barney Harris happened.  There's no reason they couldn't have taken a little longer to accommodate his departure without the equivalent of "dumbing down the iPhone."

Which is kind of the point.

[EmreY]

1 minute ago, Andra said:

Of course you can delay the launch of a TV series.

This one had already been delayed before any of the stuff with Barney Harris happened.  There's no reason they couldn't have taken a little longer to accommodate his departure without the equivalent of "dumbing down the iPhone."

Which is kind of the point.

 

There'a a difference between a delay for general circumstances beyond your control - a worldwide epidemic - and one which involves one actor.

 

No, it is your point of view, it is not the point.

[Andra]

19 minutes ago, EmreY said:

 

There'a a difference between a delay for general circumstances beyond your control - a worldwide epidemic - and one which involves one actor.

 

No, it is your point of view, it is not the point.

No, there really isn't a difference.  It's a production delay.  They happen.  And just because it involved a single actor doesn't mean it wasn't beyond their control.  As literally every person defending the last two episodes says.

 

And it really is the point.  They had plenty of opportunity to fix his departure.  Even delaying a short time to reshoot some scenes with a similar-looking actor (who had already been announced before the first episodes launched) would have been possible.  They chose to "dumb down the iPhone" instead.

 

This isn't traditional broadcast TV where all the networks premier their new seasons in the same week.  It isn't even premium cable, where airtime is purchased beforehand. 

 

It's streaming.

The release schedule was up to Amazon and no one else.

 

 

 

They may not have wanted to delay it further.  They may not have wanted to face the additional expense of reshoots.  But they could have.  It was their choice to do what they did and not those things.  Not anyone else's.

 

Which is the point.

Edited February 19, 2022 by Andra

[Raal Gurniss]

1 hour ago, EmreY said:

 

It's the "5x as many readily available standby replacements" that I have a slight issue with.  Are so many qualified engineers truly available?  To be fair.

….When the comparison is getting a replacement actor…5x is nothing though is it? How many possible acting replacements do you think readily exist? 1? 5? 10,000? 

[EmreY]

12 hours ago, Andra said:

No, there really isn't a difference.  It's a production delay.  They happen.  And just because it involved a single actor doesn't mean it wasn't beyond their control.  As literally every person defending the last two episodes says.

 

And it really is the point.  They had plenty of opportunity to fix his departure.  Even delaying a short time to reshoot some scenes with a similar-looking actor (who had already been announced before the first episodes launched) would have been possible.  They chose to "dumb down the iPhone" instead.

 

This isn't traditional broadcast TV where all the networks premier their new seasons in the same week.  It isn't even premium cable, where airtime is purchased beforehand. 

 

It's streaming.

The release schedule was up to Amazon and no one else.

 

 

 

They may not have wanted to delay it further.  They may not have wanted to face the additional expense of reshoots.  But they could have.  It was their choice to do what they did and not those things.  Not anyone else's.

 

Which is the point.

 

This basically boils down to I'm right, you're wrong.

 

I'll provide a shorter response: I'm right and you're wrong. ? 

 

11 hours ago, Raal Gurniss said:

….When the comparison is getting a replacement actor…5x is nothing though is it? How many possible acting replacements do you think readily exist? 1? 5? 10,000? 

 

You ignore and deflect, and provide no answer.  The question was one-fifth of all engineers at Apple.  How many do you think exist that are willing to jump in at a moment's notice, 500,000?

[EmreY]

12 hours ago, Andra said:

No, there really isn't a difference.  It's a production delay.  They happen.  And just because it involved a single actor doesn't mean it wasn't beyond their control.  As literally every person defending the last two episodes says.

 

And it really is the point.  They had plenty of opportunity to fix his departure.  Even delaying a short time to reshoot some scenes with a similar-looking actor (who had already been announced before the first episodes launched) would have been possible.  They chose to "dumb down the iPhone" instead.

 

This isn't traditional broadcast TV where all the networks premier their new seasons in the same week.  It isn't even premium cable, where airtime is purchased beforehand. 

 

It's streaming.

The release schedule was up to Amazon and no one else.

 

 

 

They may not have wanted to delay it further.  They may not have wanted to face the additional expense of reshoots.  But they could have.  It was their choice to do what they did and not those things.  Not anyone else's.

 

Which is the point.

 

This basically boils down to I'm right, you're wrong, and if I repeat myself enough then perhaps he'll go away.

 

I'll provide a shorter response: I'm right and you're wrong and I'm not going away. ? 

 

11 hours ago, Raal Gurniss said:

….When the comparison is getting a replacement actor…5x is nothing though is it? How many possible acting replacements do you think readily exist? 1? 5? 10,000? 

 

You ignore and deflect, and provide no answer.  The question was one-fifth of all engineers at Apple.  How many do you think exist that are willing to jump in at a moment's notice, 500,000?

[Raal Gurniss]

1 hour ago, EmreY said:

 

This basically boils down to I'm right, you're wrong.

 

I'll provide a shorter response: I'm right and you're wrong. ? 

 

 

You ignore and deflect, and provide no answer.  The question was one-fifth of all engineers at Apple.  How many do you think exist that are willing to jump in at a moment's notice, 500,000?

Ermm no….You made a comparison of a replacing one actor with replacing an equal percentage of Apple engineers….

 

To which I said it was only fair to balance out the figures so that each would reflect the other!

 

And yes, there probably is 500k engineers willing to jump at joining Apple at a moment’s notice…..And that figure is still a fraction of the number that would take the acting job….

[EmreY]

I could rebut this yet again, but I'll end up crossing a line I'm not willing, and this argument has become circular.  But no, I don't agree.

Edited February 20, 2022 by EmreY

[Requiem]

Just because there are plenty of willing actors to take the part doesn't mean that any of them are right for the part or the production. Casting the right person for a major production for what is hopefully the next 7 years is not something to be done lightly.

 

Under normal circumstances this sort of search can take months to get right. There is nothing worse than having to recast and actor and than realising because you have rushed the decision you have made a bad call and need to recast again.

 

This isn't something that can be done simply and certainly not under the time pressure they were under.

[VooDooNut]

I tried to wrap my head around the through-line of this discussion, but I admit I'm a bit lost.

 

(especially with all the talk of apple engineers lol)

 

If the argument being made by @Andra et. al. boils down to: Rafe&Co. should have done more/better to adapt to a cast change, then I would add that I assume Rafe&Co. made the best decision they saw fit given any and all circumstances at play. Was their decision/execution of this fix the best for some/all viewers? That's for the individual audience member to decide. I found their fix to be interesting and insightful (a great opportunity to see how a production can recover from such a wound), but also I'm sad we couldn't keep Barney. Ultimately, I'm holding my final judgement until we see Mat in season 2. What I'll push back on, however, is the suggestion that Rafe&Co. tried to burn down their own show by recklessly fumbling an actor-swap. 

 

Hopefully my response is somewhat related to the discussion. Effective execution of an actor-swap or not, I have to believe they tried their best.

Edited February 20, 2022 by VooDooNut
removed quote, didn't need to quote anyone

[Andra]

20 hours ago, EmreY said:

This basically boils down to I'm right, you're wrong.

 

I'll provide a shorter response: I'm right and you're wrong. ? 

No, it boils down to me explaining my point, and addressing every one of yours.  Then you refusing to even acknowledge seeing the explanation.

 

20 hours ago, EmreY said:

You ignore and deflect, and provide no answer.  The question was one-fifth of all engineers at Apple.  How many do you think exist that are willing to jump in at a moment's notice, 500,000?

No, the question was never about one-fifth of all engineers at Apple.

It was about one-fifth of the Two Rivers characters in WoT.  And a replacement drawn from all the actors possible.  Neither of which had a damn thing to do with your ridiculous "500,000" number.

Edited February 21, 2022 by Andra

[Andra]

12 hours ago, Requiem said:

Just because there are plenty of willing actors to take the part doesn't mean that any of them are right for the part or the production. Casting the right person for a major production for what is hopefully the next 7 years is not something to be done lightly.

 

Under normal circumstances this sort of search can take months to get right. There is nothing worse than having to recast and actor and than realising because you have rushed the decision you have made a bad call and need to recast again.

 

This isn't something that can be done simply and certainly not under the time pressure they were under.

While that is all true, it's also completely beside the point.

Since his replacement had already been found, and was announced months before the first episode aired, much less before the seventh and eighth episodes.

[Andra]

12 hours ago, VooDooNut said:

I tried to wrap my head around the through-line of this discussion, but I admit I'm a bit lost.

 

(especially with all the talk of apple engineers lol)

 

If the argument being made by @Andra et. al. boils down to: Rafe&Co. should have done more/better to adapt to a cast change, then I would add that I assume Rafe&Co. made the best decision they saw fit given any and all circumstances at play. Was their decision/execution of this fix the best for some/all viewers? That's for the individual audience member to decide. I found their fix to be interesting and insightful (a great opportunity to see how a production can recover from such a wound), but also I'm sad we couldn't keep Barney. Ultimately, I'm holding my final judgement until we see Mat in season 2. What I'll push back on, however, is the suggestion that Rafe&Co. tried to burn down their own show by recklessly fumbling an actor-swap. 

 

Hopefully my response is somewhat related to the discussion. Effective execution of an actor-swap or not, I have to believe they tried their best.

I would modify that statement to: Rafe&Co. could have done better, and that nothing materially prevented them from doing so.

 

They weren't forced to make the specific decisions they did.  They chose to make them, for whatever reasons they felt were important.  Those reasons could have been a desire to avoid the additional expense, or to avoid additional delays, or to avoid the headaches, or any number of things.  But none of them made a different decision impossible.

 

Defending their decisions by claiming they had no choice is simply false.

[Requiem]

5 hours ago, Andra said:

While that is all true, it's also completely beside the point.

Since his replacement had already been found, and was announced months before the first episode aired, much less before the seventh and eighth episodes.

Why does when his replacement was announced or its relation to the season beginning or its last episodes airing have any relevance to replacing a major role on the show?

 

We know that after the Covid disruptions they filmed the last parts of the series in April and May 2021 and that filming of the second season began in late July 2021. Assuming they knew a month before filming starts that Barney wasn't returning means they took between 3 and 4 months to cast his replacement which seems perfectly reasonable time period to me.

 

They then announced the recasting in September well after the filming for season two had begun.

 

This is a large production with a lot of money behind it. These decisions are not taken lightly and are never made quickly.

[notpropaganda73]

Like many of the criticisms of the show, I find this a strange focus. The amount that goes in to a TV production... Actor timetables, location access, the costs involved with all of this - I don't really think it's an easy fix. I think we can criticise how they handled Barney Harris leaving in terms of what they came up with for the final 2 episodes story wise, but I don't think going through the casting process and getting a new actor in for the last 2 episodes would really have been an option on the table. 

 

I also really doubt that this was a Rafe decision. The studio will have wanted WoT out before the LotR show, I'm pretty sure. They would have told them to come up with a way to do the final episodes without Mat and reset for S2. 

[VooDooNut]

8 hours ago, Andra said:

I would modify that statement to: Rafe&Co. could have done better, and that nothing materially prevented them from doing so.

 

They weren't forced to make the specific decisions they did.  They chose to make them, for whatever reasons they felt were important.  Those reasons could have been a desire to avoid the additional expense, or to avoid additional delays, or to avoid the headaches, or any number of things.  But none of them made a different decision impossible.

 

Defending their decisions by claiming they had no choice is simply false.

I did not make the argument that Rafe&Co. had no choice.

 

I agree that Rafe&Co. (and how others have mentioned, higher-ups above even the production team's purview) had many options for how to handle the actor swap. They had many choices. They could have replaced Mat with a sock puppet, for example. But my argument was, and still is, that I believe they chose the best course of action they saw fit given the situation (and we will never know the full extent of the factors at play here). I'm trusting in Rafe&Co.'s artistic integrity that they did what they thought was best. It doesn't mean I'm 100% happy with the outcome, but I accept it. I will have more to say when we see Mat in season 2.

[Deviations]

On 2/19/2022 at 2:19 AM, EmreY said:

 

If I imagine Steve Jobs being faced with the prospect of the immediate departure of a fifth of his leading engineers, I can certainly see a delay in the works.

 

But you can delay the launch of a phone, or a film, but not a TV series.

This was ONE actor.  One guy to come in and read some lines in front of a camera.  Not 30 engineers with proprietary knowledge.  Yes you can delay a TV series.  They do it all the time.  They delay blockbuster movies as well (Top Gun) most recently.

[Requiem]

10 minutes ago, Deviations said:

This was ONE actor.  One guy to come in and read some lines in front of a camera.  Not 30 engineers with proprietary knowledge.  Yes you can delay a TV series.  They do it all the time.  They delay blockbuster movies as well (Top Gun) most recently.

Yes you can delay a tv series just not indefinitely Covid already pushed the series back by about a year, if you want to do something requiring the commitment of a cast and crew for multiple years there comes a point where you either have to can the entire thing and move on or just put it out into the wild regardless of the issues.

This is not just any actor, this is one of the main characters of what is hopefully a long running series that they are having to recast, they can't just hire Joe Bloggs from down the road to come in and do some lines, they have to find someone who fits the role and is willing to contract themselves to this production for several years. Onboarding a new cast member is awkward and time consuming at the best of times, during a global pandemic much more so, and is much easier and cheaper to do in the pre production for the second series.

[Deviations]

2 hours ago, Requiem said:

This is not just any actor, this is one of the main characters of what is hopefully a long running series that they are having to recast, they can't just hire Joe Bloggs from down the road to come in and do some lines, they have to find someone who fits the role and is willing to contract themselves to this production for several years.

I wonder how many people originally auditioned for Mat?  Tons.

 

I wonder if they had a hard time choosing between final candidates?  My guess is that they had a few in the end with people on the casting team each having their favorites.  So let's say there were three near the end.  Outside of Pike, none of these actors are in high demand.  There is a good chance one of the others could have been available, and they most likely would have given their left nut for the role.  I know I'm in the minority on the first actor (Barney) as I didn't care for him.  I couldn't understand anything he mumbled.