I've struggled to put into words why the show feels 'off' from the books. I really don't care about the heavier focus on Moiraine, writing out some of the gender-essentialism, and I'll even forgive them for floundering around and being unable to really explain the Forsaken or the Power in any way that makes sense. After watching S2, it's not so much the changes as the direction they've pushed the show in. All the changes made it Grim N Gritty, like those bad early 90s comics where Spider-Man lurked in the shadows and said "I become the spider!" or Batman got his back broken and then appointed a psychopath to be his replacement. I finally put my finger on it. It's Game of Thrones. Or the attempt to be another Game of Thrones. Every change in S1 pushed out the more light-hearted stuff. Hopper was gone, Thom was so heavily rewritten he was unrecognizable, the Duopotamians weren't yokels, and the cool sword-forms, the juggling and songs and sequences like the Caemlyn palace were all replaced by Dark & Dour™ material. I wouldn't have minded the Stepin sequence if it had been shorter and less of a divergence, but it took up time that could have been given to Elyas, more Thom, the Play For Your Supper sequence and all the other stuff that got cut. I tried to articulate this more here (non-paywalled link here) for anyone who's interested in hot takes. S2 was better, but other than the Hornsounding and FINALLY seeing Hopper, they seemed more interested in keeping the darker plotlines. I knew that the damane would be faithfully adapted because it's so gut-wrenching, but of course the Selene/Lanfear plot was made Very Adult. Jordan shunted Lan & Moiraine off to the side in Book 2, so I don't blame them for struggling to find stuff for those two to do. But their plots were mostly moping around. I also can see why they struggled with Mat, given that the character was pushed in a darker direction when Barney Harris had to be written out. But if S2 was also meant to cover Book 3, they also cut the ridiculous lucky streak, the fireworks, and a lot of Mat's posturing about being tough. And did we have to cut all the swordfighting? Like every last second of it? Curious whether anyone else felt like this was the main problem.