3 minutes ago, sierramekate said:

that perhaps some more bonding happened between those three off screen.

OK. Thom chooses between Rand and Matt due to a lot of important stuff off-screen. That's a get-out-of-logic card.

1 minute ago, TheDreadReader said:

The same goes for thinking that one of them can channel.  Just as it goes for him making a connection between the dead Aiel and Rand. 

You haven't said what was inaccurate. Why a connection between Rand and Aiel? Red hair? Unless you meant to say Matt and the Aiel, since he showed up at the body twice. The connection is that Matt wants some funding, as he did in Two Rivers to buy lanterns. That, BTW, was even before he had the Dagger.

So the chain of your reasoning is: Thom feels that there is something special. Special means channeling. One or both of Matt and Rand can channel. Since Matt's horse rears once, tada, it's Matt. Doesn't do it for me.

Thom doesn't say "We have to keep Rand away from the AS," meaning Thom has already ruled out Rand as the channeler. Thom is not ambiguous. His reasoning and observations point him to Matt as the channeler and not Rand. The is not motivated by events, imho, for Thom. Rather it is the writers desire to muddy the ID of the DR.

1 minute ago, Ralph said:

What is the last image in the episode stills attached to ep4? Looks like Egwene clutched by some monster? 

Isn't that Balzamon? An incarnation of the Dark One, or a top minion.

Just now, TheDreadReader said:

 What Thom does here is basically erect a large neon sign that says "There's something significant here, pay attention." 

That is correct. But what he lands on as "significant" is not motivated by his interactions with Matt. The motivation is the writer's desire to muddy the waters on the DR, since they have laid significant groundwork that he is a great channeler. If Matt can not channel, how can he be the DR? 

1 hour ago, Elder_Haman said:

Horrible as an actor or as a character?

As a character. Great as an actor. In her own way, she is like the Children. Rigidly inflexible in her beliefs, and wrong.

1 hour ago, Ploodie said:

Seeing her struggle over wanting to gentle Logain

I saw no struggle. She wanted to gentle Logain at the beginning, middle, and end. She may have even relaxed her shield with Kerene, so that Logain could escape, and then she could implement her plan to gentle him.

3 hours ago, Agitel said:

Characters can be in error and make incorrect judgments within the story. Thom's seen one case of it. It affected him personally. He has presumably not read any textbooks about the signs. He's relating to his personal experience. Entirely believable.

I went through all the interactions between Thom and Matt in detail (see above). Characters can be mistaken, yes. But their mistakes have to be motivated. There is no overlap between the Owyn story and Thom's experiences with Matt, except that a horse rears while they're in the beginning of a confrontation at the farm (more details above).  Matt never channels in Thom's experience, and everything else is inadequate for Thom's conclusion that he does. That may be "entirely believable" to you and others, but it doesn't reach the plausibility threshold for me. The Owyn speech was jarring. As I also detailed, I understand the motivation of the Amazon writers, not of Thom. And BTW, I am a supporter of this Amazon series and writers thus far. I will, however, not hesitate to call them out, when they go astray. For example, after episode 1, the jarring concept was the gender neutral DR. The writers cleaned that up for me in a subsequent episode. This one with Thom is minor, but can't be cleaned up, sadly.

14 minutes ago, Kalessin said:

I would love to see an adaption of David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, and ER Eddison's The Worm Ouroboros and the other Zimiamvia novels Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate.

I'm one of the few (probably) who has read the Eddison books you list, and I liked them, but can't imagine them being adapted. My memory is that they didn't have much plot or characters, mostly imagery through poetry. Maybe a French anime in the realm of "Fantastic Planet."

29 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

I think you're overcomplicating things.

Matt interacts with Thom four times in the town. First when he loses his money. Second when he goes to the Aiel body. Third when he returns to the Aiel body. Fourth when he escapes the DF. Nothing in these interactions shows any similarity to a male channeler. Next they ride horses to the farm. At the farm Matt's horse momentarily rears, but immediately calms. By coincidence there are three armed people surrounding the party at that time with arrows drawn. Nothing there in my mind.

Next the story of Owyn, 

"I knew another lad the same way." What same way?

"Spent half his life getting into trouble." How would he know about Matt's life, and how is that different than many teens?

"Then one day he went sour." How does that apply to Matt in the time Thom knew him?

"Animals had their hair up whenever he passed." Matt just rode a horse from the town to the farm uneventfully, and yes the horse momentarily reared when they arrived, but immediately calmed.

"Nobody could figure out what happened until he threw a rock without using his hands." That is the key, and what did Matt do that was comparable? Nothing.

"Matt's got all the signs lad."  This is a completely unjustified conclusion on Thom's part. Notice that nothing is said about physical illness.

Thom doesn't have free will, BTW. He says whatever the Amazon writers tell him to say. For some reason they are not satisfied with the reason in the Book that Thom helped Matt and Rand. That was because they were being followed by dark forces, not because he thought Matt was channeling. In fact, it is Rand who is channeling (or capable thereof) in both the Book and Amazon. I think the writers want to continue the confusion as to who is the DR, and they use this clumsy, unjustified way, because the audience has been trained to think the DR is a channeler. If Matt is not a channeler, he can't be the DR, so Thom has to think that Matt might be a channeler, albeit, for hokey "reasons." At least with this discussion, I can fathom the reason that the Amazon writers went in this direction. 

5 minutes ago, Deadsy said:

It may be that in the TV show, the major symptoms are nausea and having animals scared of you which is happening with Mat and which at least one of happened with Owyn.

Who are the male channelers shown in Amazon? Logain and "Young Man." Neither of them show those symptoms. I will listen again to whether Owyn scared animals, and was physically ill. But his main clues to channeling were throwing a rock without his hands and being mad. Matt scaring a horse was underplayed since he rode the horse between the town and the farm without any difficulty, and he was certainly not mad, until after the scene in question. Look, for some reason, the Amazon writers wanted Thom to think Matt was a channeler. I don't even know why. But, they didn't do an adequate job, for me, to believe that Thom had any reason to think so. Thom could think Matt was a rogue, or needed guidance, or was a hale fellow well met or under the weather--but that he was a channeler? Naah. (And, although this is not important, that's not in the Book.) 

2 minutes ago, ManetherenTaveren said:

Yeah, that's 10 books, not 13 as you mentioned above (which confused me). I've read them all, although "The One Tree" and "The Runes of the Earth" are forgettable. Overall decent tale.

OK, I just tore up my math license.

1 minute ago, ManetherenTaveren said:

I'm gazing at my bookshelf and I only see 10 Covenant titles. If you can find another trilogy, let me and Donaldson know! ? 

The first trilogy ends with "The Power That Preserves"

The second with "White Gold Wielder"

The third tetraology is: "The Runes of The Earth," "Fatal Revenant," "Against All Things Ending," and "The Last Dark."

Hope this means you have more to read! By the time they make the film, computers will cost a nickel, so if only some billionaire likes a "leprosy-afflicted, half-handed, ring-bearing protagonist" we are good.

9 minutes ago, DaddyFinn said:

Mat's behaviour has changed. He's feeling sick. Horses are afraid of him. Plenty of reasons for Thom to be suspicious.

People get sick, a horse can rear once, and Thom and Matt haven't been together long enough for any noticeable evolution. Heck, I know he has the Dagger, and I didn't notice anything until he reached the farm. Even then, nothing about those issues imply that he was channeling, which is the reason Thom told the story about Owyn and warned about the AS.

12 minutes ago, Jaysen Gore said:

I think the biggest cost problems is still completely CGI characters.

We shall see (literally).

1 minute ago, Pandemonium said:

Taim became a darkfriend at some point, and they certainly chased Rand. 

er...Rand was the Dragon Reborn. What other male channeler was chased by darkfriends in the book? Now in Amazon, the Forsaken whispered in Logain's ears.?

Matt did not throw a rock without his hands. Matt did not cut his own throat or exhibit other signs of madness. There is nothing he did that should make Thom suspect he was a channeler. However, it was cornvenient for the show writers to move the story in that way. It's just is a logical flaw.

4 minutes ago, Pandemonium said:

Matt was displaying odd behavior already and mood swings and getting sick.  However, I think the darkfriend chasing them really put Matt on Thoms radar

Again (being chased by darkfriends), is not a thing that male channelers suffered. The key to that whole scene is that Thom (mistakenly) thought Matt was a channeler. None of the reasons, including yours, given above, is cornvincing.

4 minutes ago, Pandemonium said:

you are still on the forsaken speaking to logain?  they don't have that power in the books.  

You're still clinging to "they don't do that in the books"?

1 minute ago, Jaysen Gore said:

Or. think of it this way - Harry Potter had 6 times the budget PER MINUTE than WoT does. So I don't expect the production quality to compare. And if you do, you're going to be very disappointed with WoT.

Not sure that's the right metric. CGI probably went down in cost/wows a factor of 10 since HP. As long as they get the actors right, and who knew three 10 year olds would be great, WoT can aspire to the same quality.

Gormenghast

This was a trilogy by Mervyn Peake, adapted into a pretty good TV series with Christopher Lee, Stephen Fry, (veterans of LoTR/Hobbit), Celia Imre, Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter) among others in a great cast. The interesting thing about the books is that the first two books (covered in the TV series) were straightforward but Gothic fantasy. The last book veered off into psychedelia and never saw the light of TV day.

1 minute ago, CaddySedai said:

I considered the books to be literary trash.

Harsh.

JKR has also gone off track as person, but say lavie.

Ok, at the risk of social suicide, Harry Potter. I thought the movies (and books) were great. There is something which started as YA and morphed into something different. Not to mention, how the books single-handly turned a generation into readers. The comment by ArrylT above applies to the first two movies, where literal adaption of the books resulted in a YA classification. Later movies starting with and especially "Prisoner of Azkaban" directed by Alphonso Cuaron, really took off into adult territory. As the books and movies got darker that started to match the real world and leave YA.  That was about 20 hours of programming, as we are counting.

3 minutes ago, Guire said:

Yea way to dark. 

Right. It's a shame because it actually resonates with the "real world" more than most. Hope you like it, again!

Here's one we may never see: Thomas Covenant, The Unbeliever, by Stephan R. Donaldson.

These are a very dark, interesting trilogy of trilogies, with the last trilogy containing 4 books. The total of 13 books, all reasonably tome-ish beats RJ, but loses to the RJ/BS collaboration.

The "hero" is the face you see, when you look up anti-hero in the dictionary. The worlds are amazing, with incredibly inventive rules and inhabitants. WoT proves that it's possible to start (let's see the finish) such an ambitious task with the CGI advances and the billionaire money available now. But the tone of Thomas Covenant, may put off the money people, until all hope is lost.

1 minute ago, WhiteVeils said:

He doesn't want Mat to be turned over to the Aes Sedai lest they gentle him.

Ok, that make sense in terms of "keep him away from the Aes Sedai," if he were a channeler.  But Thom, a gleeman of the world,  interprets the situation incorrectly, not knowing about the Dagger, and without Matt showing any evidence of using the Power. He didn't throw a rock "with no hands." Matt had the Dagger before he met Thom and there were no significant differences between their interactions that day. Furthermore, men channeling, a la Owyn, do not have symptoms like Matt's reaction to the Dagger. I may not be remembering, but do male channelers scare animals, and even if so, Matt's horse was spooked once, but let him ride the rest of the time. Is physical deterioration a sign of channeling? The first male channeler was outrunning Aes Sedai on horseback, and Logain looked pretty buff. 

1 minute ago, Guire said:

I think the women comment referred strictly to Aes Sedai

There were no Aes Sedai in the vicinity. You mean keep them away from the women if they get to Tar Valon?