The Glass Teat, or 'Television'

Miscellaneous Blather
#821

I watched the first episode of Wheel of Time and it was quite the gut punch. I’ve read the entire series twice and personally think it is the pinnacle of high fantasy, second only to Tolkien, so I had high hopes. Instead I got something that felt a bit like a CW show with mind-boggling changes. I understand that when a book is adapted to film changes need to be made for various reasons, but when showrunners seemingly take the attitude that they can rewrite the story or characters better than the author did, those liberties go beyond adaptation.

These aren’t really spoilers unless you know the books and don’t want to know what’s going on in the first 5 minutes of the show, but right off the bat we learn that Perrin is married, Mat’s parents are the town drunks, and Rand and Egwene are sleeping together (this really, really bothered me, considering their relationship and and puritan innocence of the kids in the book where dancing with a girl is a titillating thought and Mat stealing kisses is downright scandalous).

Then there is the tone of the show, which seems to try and dip its finger into the grimdark pool without going fully in. The books simply aren’t grimdark but the showrunners seem to want to piggyback off the popularity of Game of Thrones. I know it’s just a little thing, but right off the bat we’ve got a shot of Lan getting into a bath with Moiraine and it couldn’t be more obvious that the show is trying too hard to be edgy or dark or something.

This isn’t as bad as Legend of the Seeker but while I was hoping for a Lord of the Rings-level adaptation I’m getting the Hobbit’s dwarf/elf romance side story…

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#822

I have not watched yet, it will probably be next weekend before I can as we are traveling to see family this week, but I have to say that I never thought the naiveté of the kids who left Edmonds Field would play well in a series or movie.

It’s funny that I heard there were changes and that since I had read Eye of the World in 1990, I was not even sure if I would remember what changed…but from your list…I know those are all off.

I don’t always have a problem with getting a new story in the world of the original story.

#823

I don’t have a problem with them fleshing the world out, per se, if it makes sense. In episode 1, they show the Women’s Circle initiation. It wasn’t in the books, but that’s fine. However, when Moiraine tells those that she’s taking with with her that they need to leave ASAP, they all pretty much jump on a horse without blinking an eye. The pacing is off and you wonder why they added new superfluous scenes and then rush through the stuff where character motivation seems a bit important.

#824

It’s interesting, I have not written about Foundation on here yet, as we won’t see the season finale until tonight. But Foundation is -at best- loosely based on Asimov’s universe and with only some minor quibbles about the need for a few sex scenes that I did not think were necessary, we have thoroughly enjoyed this first season.

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#825

Argh…so since I am a purist (and can understand @Mirefox problems with WoT (I have not read it myself)) I can kiss Foundation TV goodbye then? I had my problems with the Expanse series but it was at least watchable (have only seen the first three seasons).

I understand that Foundation has a rather obscure and newbie-unfriendly setting but if that is too much to adapt then they can kiss my hairy ass. F*** 'em cash grabs with a beloved franchise name slapped on!
baby-angry

#826

I don’t have problems with the Expanse. I think it sticks pretty close to the story and characters are consistent.

It would be interesting to hear what people who haven’t read the books think about Wheel of Time, but I’m more interested in a review of the season rather than an episode here or there.

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#827

Foundation. Up to episode 6 now and it seems like this is shitting the bed quite strenuously. There are always problems with sci-fi, especially when it comes to maffs and science and such, in that the content can only be as clever as the writer is, which in this case it seems is profoundly limited. Setting that aside though, it seems counterproductive to me to carry out a massacre of a population when you’re trying to recruit select people from that same population. You could quite easily have murdered the people you were trying to recruit and ruined your own plan.

Not to mention I keep shouting “You’re a scientist, Hari!”, etc at the telly.

#828

It lost me in e3 or so, surprised you’ve stuck with it

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#829

funny, I read Foundation when I was about 14 and quit about half way through the 2nd book. I was not a fan of Asimov. I was hugely into Piers Anthony and Heinlein at the time and Asimov’s writing was boring to me. And yet I enjoyed the Apple series, even with it dummied down.

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#830

I felt the same way about Foundation. I slogged through the first book and that was all I could take. I like other Asimov, particularly his short stories.

#831

I am at a really weird place with Wheel of Tome right now. Objectively, I don’t think it is a very good show. There are pacing issues, effects issues, storytelling issues, etc., but overall reviews are decent. As a big fan of the books there are plenty of things that make me rage internally; stories have been added for no reason and others from the books have been neglected. Seemingly d-tier side characters are given entire episodes and we still don’t focus much on some of the main characters. One character has been bastardized to the point where he might as well be re-named entirely and it baffles me why.

Yet I want more. They drop just enough imagery from the books that I’ve always wanted visualized that I can’t stop watching. This scene here and this scene there are exactly what I’ve always wanted to see and I need more. I want to re-read the series for a third time; I want to listen to the audiobooks again on my daily walks; I want to play a video game that evokes the WoT world…

I can’t think of a series that I’ve ever had such a weird love/hate relationship with.

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#832

Yeah, I was a bit put off by the most recent episode. Still worth watching for me, but it felt less cohesive than I expected, perhaps just because I didn’t expect as much focus as there was on that one character. It made me wonder whether they’d cut more from that episode than usual in order to add in some stuff that the screenwriters hadn’t originally planned on or something.

Anyway, I’m still excited to see more and look forward to it as a family experience, but it’d make me happy if this episode seemed to have an impact on something important that happens later.

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#833

Likewise, I was put off by this last episode, but at the same time if I were to rate the show overall so far, I would give it a positive one.

There was clearly a pacing problem in this episode.

I was surprised they spent so much time on the Stepin story, and have to assume it is because they need to set the stage for the eventual Moraine/Lan/Nynaeve plot line.

The time passage to the White Tower seemed awkward, there was the mention it was about 30 days, but that passage of time did not really come across.

I think there was a whole scene that must have been cut out with Loial and Nynaeve meeting in the gardens of the White Tower.

There is no way the White Cloaks would be right outside Tar Valon like that.

That all said…overall I think the characters are fairly solid to what I remember of them, and even when there are changes, I am ok with them for the most part. I think what I enjoy most is naming characters before they are named in show or predicting what is going to happen, like playing name that tune and showing off for my wife (who did not read the books.) I can do it enough on my foggy memory of books I read a couple decades ago, that this is mostly close enough for me to the source material.

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#834

I’ve seen the white cloak comment a couple places but I’m listening to the audiobooks again and they actually are just outside the city a couple times. I think once you’re off the island it’s fair game.

My problem with Steppin isn’t necessarily that it was done, but that this is an 8 episode season with some pacing issues and I’d be willing to bet that at this point 5 episodes in he’s has more screen time and a bigger story arc than most of the Emmon’s Field characters. Also, much-loved characters from the books like Bayle and Elias seem to have been cut from the show but we have and episode all about checks notes Steppin?

On top of that, I continually get the impression that the show runners have this feeling that their audience isn’t sophisticated or intelligent enough to understand the story or concepts as they were written so they feel it necessary to make up their own stories that serve very little point other than being a big arrow pointing at something that they want to make sure you understand. They can explain why Steppin needed a whole episode and I can counter with a hundred other ways to get the same point across, including how it was already done at the end of the last episode!

And that final scene was so over the top and bad. I can also handle some character changes but the shirt-ripper has been destroyed behind all recognition.

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#835

It has been so long since I read any of the books, and I was not that into them, and I have read so many other fantasy novels since then that I have no idea what was in the books and what wasn’t and am almost certainly better off that way by the sounds of it. I have only the very vaguest ideas of what to expect.

All of that said, I want to like it, but this just isn’t a good series (so far). I’ll watch anything fantasy and have stuck with worse, but this show makes me sort of irritated. Like mad at the show because they clearly are pouring dumptrucks of money into this, and yet it still just kind of fails for me. At least with most of the other bad fantasy I’ve watched, I can sort of root for it in an underdog way because it so obviously has no budget but everyone’s trying their hardest to make a cheap show that is clearly only for geeks like me (us).

This is trying so hard to appeal to the GoT audience and has all the budget it wants…it just doesn’t feel like they are paying any tribute to the material, and I don’t even know the material, if that makes sense. Compare it to Dune, which also added scenes and made some adjustments, but in a very careful, intelligent way that served the material and showed respect for the core fans of both Dune and the genre.

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#836

Part of my problem is exactly what you just said - they are trying to be the next GoT when WoT - though cited as inspiration by George RR Martin - is tonally very different.

For what it’s worth, the episode this coming Friday has been praised by a number of people as pretty awesome. :man_shrugging:

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#837

Just finished The Squid Game. By and large I end up abandoning most TV shows, so this was a very nice surprise as it really hung together without any jump the shark moments. Very dark, obviously, and quite a critique of modern society. There is room for a sequel, but it would stand up just fine without.

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#838

Yellowstone. Does this want to be taken seriously? It seems to have a serious tone, but there are moments that reek of stupidity. A character in the first episode shoots someone in the head to finish him off after a spot of mutual bullet swapping. In the second episode, he shoots the survivor of a house explosion in the head because an ambulance is 45 minutes away. And the authorities shrug it off like it’s normal. “45 minutes for an ambulance? Better off dead squire.”

At this point I’m worried how many people he will shoot in the head and why, in the third episode. Just start doming people if they drop their ice cream or spill some milk or something. What the fuck.

#839

Dexter. A serial killer with a code. Mostly a police/forensics procedural but instead of catching the bad guy each episode Dexter cuts them up into pieces. I’m halfway through the first season and it’s pretty awful all around, particularly the acting. Is this typical 1st season growing pains? Does it get better? This show had like 8 seasons and a new Dexter show just started.

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#840

I was immensely turned off by the acting years ago. The police, especially, seem pretty awful. I only watched the first two seasons, though. The premise was intriguing but wow, the acting was bad.