I agree in part, and wish they would have done something like that. They could have done it with a scene where Perrin discusses killing Leila with Elyas. But if we skip the fridging, it would still fall short of the self-loathing that Perrin falls into based on the Ravens scene, so they would have to devote serious time to some other terrible thing Perrin did or contemplated doing.

That... is one reading, I guess? Another massive internal dialogue theme in TEOTW is Rand's struggling over the Winternight revelation that Tam is not his biological father. I can't recall a single time he even mentions this to another character, but it's a huge part of the story for him.

He just did. The Ravens chapter is foundational to Perrin's character in the books.

Mat's home was definitely a hovel, everything else about Emond's Field seemed well within the image I had from the books. Anyway, my comment was primarily in response to the "everything is too clean" complaints, so if that's not you then no need to make it so.

I absolutely thought the same thing. The increasing griminess would be another way to show the Dark One's touch on the world, to make it feel like the world is falling apart and the situation is becoming more and more hopeless.

I think "flush with money" is an absurd hyperbole, but it's true that Rafe did not come into this role with a lot of experience. He's a big book fan who worked himself into a position in the industry where he could pitch his dream project, and he may have over-reached professionally. Hardly unusual. They also lost a lot of money on things they invested in - like the location they booked to be the Blight - for the end of S1 and couldn't use due to COVID. That hit a lot of other shows hard too, but maybe it was a bit more out of balance for WOT.

I've only listened to her read the prologue, but she does a great job of it. I'm not really one for audiobooks at all, but clearly she put in a ton of work for her performance. Which was likely a part of her being an Executive Producer for the show, who definitely worked closely with the show's writing team at many points.

I think they clearly wanted to avoid the comparison to LOTR (and the map intro of GOT for similar reasons), but I think it would have been a great choice. These things have become tropes because they work, audiences expect something like that and it helps them settle into a show, to help it feel real. I was in no way turned off by the way the show started (Moiraine's voiceover, Liandrin gentling a man, Egwene's Women's Circle ceremony), but I do think epic background exposition would have been better for those first 5-10 minutes.