WoT Season 2 Episode 5: Damane

[Rhaze]

 Not that I care and Rand didnt discover it until later in the books, but there is the cheat to open a gateway close enough to see and that allows you to instantly learn the area.

[Vartija]

Definitely a bounceback episode after a lacklustre (at least for me) fourth ep. Highlight for me was probably the Ishy/Lanfear dream conversation. Perrin's scenes were also surprisingly good. 

 

There were small stuff here and there that kind of irritated me when it comes to the logic of the characters' actions but not enough to ruin the entertainment value. I think the weakest part was Nyn & Elaine sneaking into Falme and how they were "captured" there. Nynaeve's outburst of "come on, we've got to find out..." was just poorly scripted or directed.

 

A little hesitant about Moiraine advising Rand to get closer to Lanfear in the dream world when iirc that was one of Moiraine's biggest fears in the book. I mean, in the beginning of the episode it was vital to get him away from her but now he should hook up with her again, in the dream world where he has even less control than in the waking world. Just seems a tad too risky for my liking but will probably make for good tv. 

 

And yes, I did notice Liandrin using horses in the Ways. I guess you can explain it that Loial just cared more for horses' safety and wouldn't risk them in the Ways, but probably it's just storytelling convenience.    

[Rhaze]

1 hour ago, SinisterDeath said:

Having just got through that section of the book not to long ago (again), I never took Avi to be shy. 

I took her as someone who didn't want to be forced into a relationship with a man because a bunch of old crones decided it was her duty to.

 

 

 I dont remember her being shy at all nor did I think she was a virgin, but quite possibly could have been. She never hesitated to drop her clothes. She had an issue with RAND specifically because she saw through the arcs that she was going to end up with him and didnt want to be forced into being with someone.

[Jaysen Gore]

Oh, and my working premise for Liandrin getting the girls out of the tower - Darkfriend stablehand, with a sister taking already punished girls out to the farm to be further punished (ala book Else Grinwell) to deal with the gate, and some tied off shields (novices not being False Dragons) to deal with the power.

 

Liandrin then unwove the shields as she went back into the gate, and hilarity ensues.

[Scarloc99]

2 hours ago, Rhaze said:

 Not that I care and Rand didnt discover it until later in the books, but there is the cheat to open a gateway close enough to see and that allows you to instantly learn the area.

another thing the Foresaken don't know. 

[king of nowhere]

4 hours ago, SinisterDeath said:

Having just got through that section of the book not to long ago (again), I never took Avi to be shy. 

I took her as someone who didn't want to be forced into a relationship with a man because a bunch of old crones decided it was her duty to.

 

3 hours ago, Rhaze said:

 I dont remember her being shy at all nor did I think she was a virgin, but quite possibly could have been. She never hesitated to drop her clothes. She had an issue with RAND specifically because she saw through the arcs that she was going to end up with him and didnt want to be forced into being with someone.

iirc, she mentions rand being her first in the book. and she's never shown interest in any other man.

considering many maidens hit heavily on men, the fact that aviendha does not do that makes her shy for far dareis mai standard. none of her dealings with rand factored in my assessment

 

as for nudity and disrobing, that's no cultural taboo for aiel. And i can bring you plenty of real world comparisons, because in finland people routinely take saunas naked, even mixed sexes groups, and you can find plenty of people who are generally shy/introverted but have no issued disrobing in front of a bunch of strangers. it doesn't mean anything.

[Chivalry]

4 hours ago, nsmallw said:

I was suprised that Loial didn't acknowledge Egwene when she was brought before the Seanchan..at least a gasp of surprise from him... I hope in ep 6 he gets a moment to speak to her unwatched or some contact. 

I was waiting for the same...

[Cipher]

14 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

How good could the wondergirls be in breaking shields? Seems like they also spent a lot of time unconscious

Logain have any practice at it?

[DaddyFinn]

4 minutes ago, Cipher said:

Logain have any practice at it?

Seemed like he did. Plenty of time to test it during captivity

[Cipher]

5 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Seemed like he did. Plenty of time to test it during captivity

Nah. Bad writing. Don’t know why people make excuses for it.

 

Way easier for multiple AS to keep one shield on Logain than 1 AS to keep 3 on the wonder girls.  No reason to have stupid sequence of Liandrin knocking them out.

[Ralph]

43 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

While I can't remember quotes from the book explicitly mentioning full sex, I got the general implication that maidens are quite carefree with their sexuality in general.

 

yes very clear often in the books. remember Melindhra and Mat. 

[Scarloc99]

2 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

Seemed like he did. Plenty of time to test it during captivity

In the books Rand does the same thing, probing the shield over an extended amount of time, trying to find the gaps between weaves. Plus we have no idea if Logain also had someones voice in his head, the soul of a different powerful Aes Sedai, just not LTT. 

Edited September 18, 2023 by Scarloc99

[Cipher]

3 minutes ago, Scarloc99 said:

In the books Rand does the same thing, probing the shield over an extended amount of time, trying to find the gaps between weaves. Plus we have no idea if Logain also had someones voice in his head, the soul of a different powerful Aes Sedai, just not LTT. 

Rand is Ta’Veran, the Dragon Reborn, and he did it when the AS holding him got attacked.  No excuses for those bad writers…..take your contrived gruel and like it.

[Scarloc99]

18 minutes ago, king of nowhere said:

it does change it. aviendha fought a dozen soldiers while unarmed and won, with minimal help from perrin. shaiel fought five soldiers and died in the process. It shows the difficulties of pregnancy, without it shaiel would have won without many troubles. 😁

besides, they are aiel. they can. they are basically the offspring of chuck norris with the duracell bunny. You can't apply the limitations of actual humans to aiel, because they are aiel.

I mean Shaiel was fighting while actually giving birth, I am not a women, and I have never been around child birth first hand but I am pretty sure that the middle of contractions and 10cm dialiated is not condusive to being able to keep the forms going 🙂 so it is pretty impressive that she killed 5 soldiers lol. 

[Cipher]

2 minutes ago, Scarloc99 said:

I mean Shaiel was fighting while actually giving birth, I am not a women, and I have never been around child birth first hand but I am pretty sure that the middle of contractions and 10cm dialiated is not condusive to being able to keep the forms going 🙂 so it is pretty impressive that she killed 5 soldiers lol. 

I don’t think the writers have ever been around a 7-9 months pregnant woman.

[Scarloc99]

7 minutes ago, Cipher said:

Rand is Ta’Veran, the Dragon Reborn, and he did it when the AS holding him got attacked.  No excuses for those bad writers…..take your contrived gruel and like it.

Rand spent days inspecting the weave and identified the how and the where and that it would need a moment of weakness, he didnt just magically break out when the attack happened, he spent every moment in that box working at the weave and asking LTT for help. 

[Scarloc99]

9 hours ago, DaddyFinn said:

Avi is supposed to be the fair, shy, virgin Maiden that saves herself to Rand /s

I disagree here, Avi was not shy, or fair for that matter, what Avi was was determined that she would always be a maiden, she refused to even consider the idea of putting her spears down for anything, including a man, and so had kept away from all men because she was so determined. We see that in how determined she is not to be a wise women at the start. A hard set decision to never put herself in a position of risk of losing the spears, for even a short period (remember Maidens spend there pregnancy effectively no longer being maidens), does not equate to shy and inexperianced, in fact we see when she finally caves and gives into her destiny she very much takes control of the situation and seems to know exactly what she is doing.  

[SinisterDeath]

Again, this topic is about Episode 5: Damane.

 

Not sex education or who has to get the the last word in on that topic. 

[king of nowhere]

Speaking of the whole aviendha business, i liked valda. "The more questions i ask, the more answers i get" is a great villain-defining moment. I can't say if he truly believes that it's the right way to fight the shadow, or if he does not care; and i can't say which is more scary.

 

I liked the fight; the common mistake movies make is having the mooks attack one at a time while the others just dance around; here, just like in the shaiel scene, the aiel keeps jumping around to avoid being cornered. It's enough to keep suspension of disbelief, at least. I don't think even the greatest martial artist would stand much chances against many opponents with sword and armor, but that's the kind of mildly superhuman feats you expect from aiel

 

Bornhald jr was also well introduced. In the books he didn't have anything special distinguishing him from other whitecloaks; here he's the one who took pity of a prisoner. His reason for hating aybara is also a lot more substantial than "he was roughly in the same geographical area my father was killed, he must be responsible somehow". At the same time, perrin saved him; now both of them have reason to hate and mistrust the other, but both also have proof that the other is a decent, caring person. There's good potential there

Edited September 19, 2023 by king of nowhere

[Scarloc99]

I will say the Bornhold intro was brilliant, for the longest tie I thought they where introducing Lord Luc early.

There is a great quote, Jackie Chan was asked "if someone came at you with a knife what would you do" his response is, run away. Martial Arts are great in choreographed sections, but in reality someone with a knife only needs ot get a lucky stab once and the martial arts expert is in a pretty bad way. 

[Mirefox]

2 hours ago, Scarloc99 said:

I will say the Bornhold intro was brilliant, for the longest tie I thought they where introducing Lord Luc early.

There is a great quote, Jackie Chan was asked "if someone came at you with a knife what would you do" his response is, run away. Martial Arts are great in choreographed sections, but in reality someone with a knife only needs ot get a lucky stab once and the martial arts expert is in a pretty bad way. 

Yes!  Thank you.  I asked a couple days ago if anyone thought it was Luc at first and nobody answered so I thought I was just the crazy one, lol.

 

I also thought he might be Galad for half a second when we first glimpsed the white.

[Gypsum]

On 9/18/2023 at 12:04 PM, Scarloc99 said:

mean Loial might have simply meant that Horses will get scared and run off if Machin Shin comes afte them, or Machin Shin just kills horses really quickly because it can't "play with their fears" (unless it is just putting the thought of a glue factory in a horses mind). Liandrin probably doesn't care if she risks the horses dying while on her way vs travelling with several unconscious tied up people. 

 

Have you been around many horses? Put a tarp where one shouldn't be, and you're playing with their fears. But they'd be outta there in seconds at the first inkling of Machin Shin. No doubt about that.

 

More seriously, I don't think RJ knew horses, either. I laughed at all the passages in the books where they walked straight through gateways, or straight into the Ways, or didn't bolt into next week at the sight of a Myddraal (my gelding panics when umbrellas walk towards him). It's not like people spent hours practicing Ways-loading before they had to use them under desperate circumstances.

 

I liked episode 5. Good TV, which is all I want out of it. I expect it to take diversions from the books because it has to condense a lot and make enough sense out of it all for non-book readers to follow.

 

The only think I didn't like was Moiraine killing the horse. Come on, Moiraine. There had to be a better way to solve your problem.

[Windigo]

On 9/17/2023 at 6:29 PM, Agitel said:

He was not happy with episode five. In particular, he is really put off by the whole Rand/Selene arc. I think the showrunners need to be wary about losing that read-thr-series-once crowd.

Could it also be generational, I introduced the books to my kids, they are more accepting of the more mature relationships of Rand/Egewene Rand/Selene .. where they bother me more in how it changes the characters and their motivations.  I was already an adult when I read the books and still perceive the 3 EF as "children" (less so Nynaeve). Also it makes a creepy relationship with Selene/Lanfare 1000's of years old with teenager Rand.  

 

[Rhaze]

On 9/18/2023 at 4:53 PM, Scarloc99 said:

In the books Rand does the same thing, probing the shield over an extended amount of time, trying to find the gaps between weaves. Plus we have no idea if Logain also had someones voice in his head, the soul of a different powerful Aes Sedai, just not LTT. 

wrong quote, sorry.

Edited September 20, 2023 by Rhaze

[Mailman]

5 hours ago, Gypsum said:

 

Have you been around many horses? Put a tarp where one shouldn't be, and you're playing with their fears. But they'd be outta there in seconds at the first inkling of Machin Shin. No doubt about that.

 

More seriously, I don't think RJ knew horses, either. I laughed at all the passages in the books where they walked straight through gateways, or straight into the Ways, or didn't bolt into next week at the sight of a Myddraal (my gelding panics when umbrellas walk towards him). It's not like people spent hours practicing Ways-loading before they had to use them under desperate circumstances.

 

I liked episode 5. Good TV, which is all I want out of it. I expect it to take diversions from the books because it has to condense a lot and make enough sense out of it all for non-book readers to follow.

 

The only think I didn't like was Moiraine killing the horse. Come on, Moiraine. There had to be a better way to solve your problem.

Taking the horse would have helped them as they could rotated horses to keep them more fresh.