S01.E05: Blood Calls Blood

[Wouter]

2 hours ago, silverstream said:

The way I took it, Rand's not taking him there because of Thom's story - he believes Mat has either already started channeling or is about to, so taking him to the Aes Sedai would be as good as killing him; this way, at least he's still got a chance. And Nynaeve saw what they do with men who channel when the Aes Sedai stilled Logain and is already suspicious of them, so I've no problem thinking she'll probably try to heal him herself first (especially since she's already quite convinced of her own abilities and just got proof that she's probably better at it than the women in the tower).

This is the reason given in the show: Rand and Matt think Matt can channel, and they are afraid of what the Aes Sedai (not merely Moiraine, but also the Liandrin types) would do if they show up with what they think are clear signs that Matt can channel.

Nynaeve also mistrusts the Aes Sedai.

Edited December 5, 2021 by Wouter

[DoctorAtomic]

To be fair to Rand, he's all 'hey, Mat, you can talk to me' and kind of hovering over him. Rand saw Mat with *a* dagger just before the Fade reared its head and they hoofed it out there immediately. I don't think Rand really has had a peaceful second to reflect on anything at this point. 

[calvinshobbes]

On 12/3/2021 at 4:09 PM, DearEvette said:

Breakbone fever sounds incredibly painful and horrific. 

 

doesn’t this story imply that Nynaeve is older than the others 4 from the Two Rivers? I mean it is also implied  she is older (than the other 4) because she is a wisdom but the story she told says she was an apprentice when Egwene was young and suffered the fever. To me, that eliminate Nynaeve since she is too old to be the dragon reborn. 

[DearEvette]

I am ok with how they are handling Rand's ignorance of the dagger so far.

There is no reason for Rand to think that a dagger he got a brief glimpse of is working some evil mojo on his friend.  It was established that Mat steals, gambles, and sells all sorts of stuff.  Rand is probably used to seeing Mat with all sorts of strange objects and unless they had seen something like that before -- an inanimate object of parasitic evil, it isn't something you are going to necessarily think of right out the box.

They ran from their home after a horrific moster attack after seeing friends ripped apart, beaten and eaten, was chased by said monsters, had to run from an evil shadow city, got split up from their friends, was menaced at knife point by a barmaid and told them a whole network of evil people were after them, witnessed the aftermath of an entire family getting slaughtered, was on the road for a month probably not eating as well as they could and getting shelter in barns or under bridges of just on the cold ground if no shelter was available. And finally they watch as the sisters bring in Logain, the 'False Dragon' who has obviously been 'gentled' by them.

That is a lot that happened in a one month period and it would be traumatic for anyone.  Maybe to Rand, Mat is just not handling it as well as Rand is or Mat was way more affected by the murdered family -- eaten up with guilt because he still thinks he did it.  Also for us the change to Mat is immediately noticeable (after a one month jump) to but Rand it would have been gradual.  Also they were told one of them was possibly the Dragon.  If they believe they can both channel then it has to be going through their mind that only one of them can be The Dragon, so that means the other one has to be another false Dragon. They have learned enough about the Aes Sedai to know they would not suffer a false Dragon to live freely.  And seeing Logain brought that home.  Mat asking Rand to make sure that didn't happen to him makes me understand why they are not beating feet to the Tower.  They don't know any of the sisters except Moiraine and even her they don't trust all that well.

[Lady Jane]

36 minutes ago, calvinshobbes said:

doesn’t this story imply that Nynaeve is older than the others 4 from the Two Rivers? I mean it is also implied  she is older (than the other 4) because she is a wisdom but the story she told says she was an apprentice when Egwene was young and suffered the fever. To me, that eliminate Nynaeve since she is too old to be the dragon reborn. 

In the first episode, Moiraine asked Nynaeve how old she was (Moiraine was trying to see if she was the right age, and Nynaeve interpreted it as Moiraine questioning if she was old enough to be a Wisdom. There was a mention somewhere that Nynaeve was 25-26. The others are all 20. I think Moiraine still entertains the idea that Nynaeve might be the Dragon because prophecies are not necessarily exact about stuff like that.

Here's a good example of them "telling" instead of "showing"-- we only know how tough Egwene is because of that story Nynaeve told. In this world, it would be easy to show Egwene's immense internal strength rather than just have Nynaeve describe it in another scene. Heck, her with Valda was plenty of "seeing" how strong Egwene is. But I'm irritated that they just told us rather than developing the character. She's also one where I feel like her in-show personality has been rather on the shy/quiet & hesitant side, so hearing that she's such a badass really rang hollow for me.

[Chicago Redshirt]

How was it that Valda was able to capture and kill so many Aes Sedai without (presumably) magic of his own? I could see him being able to catch one or two unawares, but he had like a half-dozen rings from them. 

[Ottis]

11 hours ago, DearEvette said:

That is a lot that happened in a one month period and it would be traumatic for anyone.  Maybe to Rand, Mat is just not handling it as well as Rand is or Mat was way more affected by the murdered family -- eaten up with guilt because he still thinks he did it.

I actually think it is inertia, and a little bit of subconscious fear on Rand's part of what might happen if he drew attention to Mat. Maybe they will be split up, or Mat will be assumed to be evil and need to be constrained. Rand would rather have his friend near him and weirdly sick then do something that could break them apart. It's also easier. At least until Mat is so sick, or does something so bad, that Rand can no longer take no action.

Thanks to those that pointed out Rand looks like Anakin. That's why I have instinctively not liked this Rand, and he doesn't seem like an innocent village boy to me. 

[Anduin]

2 minutes ago, Ottis said:

Thanks to those that pointed out Rand looks like Anakin. That's why I have instinctively not liked this Rand, and he doesn't seem like an innocent village boy to me. 

Naah, it's all right. The red hair reminds me more of Archie Andrews than anyone else.

But on the subject of Anakin Skywalker, that might be where Mat's story is going. Or where George Lucas got the idea. What if the chosen one went bad? I gather that Brandon Sanderson did something similar in Mistborn, but while I respect and am jealous of his output and such, I just can't get into his books.

[DoctorAtomic]

The Aes aren't omnipotent, though many think they are, as we have seen. I could buy Valda picked them off one by one. Or just overwhelmed them with numbers. We have seen Moiraine severely injured. You could conceivable hide on a ridge and then just shoot some arrows down. 

[iMonrey]

Quote

I really wish the show had given me a chance to care about Stepin and Kerene before it structured a whole episode around their deaths. As it was, it just left me (1) feeling nothing and (2) keenly aware that I was feeling nothing. 

Yeah, this. I felt like the episode spent too much time on a character I didn't know and had no emotional investment in. Stepin was a Warder for a minor character that was killed off in one episode, and then he was killed off in the next. Perhaps both played a more significant role in the book (haven't read it) but here their deaths had no emotional punch whatsoever. And they took a lot of screen time away from the characters I've been following so far. It just seemed like an unnecessary subplot and a waste of time. The fact that they cast someone like Peter Franzen for a two-episode role makes me think the character was originally meant to be more important and his screen time ended up getting cut down. (He played King Harald Finehair on Vikings.)

[Danny Franks]

The Karene/Steppin storyline was really all about Moiraine and Lan, for me. Lan, particularly. We got to see that Lan cares about his fellow warders, that they have a bond and sense of comradeship and that they are perhaps drawn from places of desperation and had nothing else to live for, prior to becoming warders.

We also saw Moiraine and Lan constantly aware that what Steppin was going through was what they would go through, should one of them die. That last scene, where Moiraine was radiating with shared grief as Lan vented his emotions (and her emotions too, I guess) was so well done, even if the chest-baring thing felt a bit corny (though I feel like I've seen that as a gesture of great emotion in some Asian cultures before).

I think it did a good job of letting us know what the stakes are, for these two and for other Aes Sedai and Warder combos. The next time one is killed, we'll know exactly what it means and what is likely to happen to the other half of the bond.

[DoctorAtomic]

It also implies that for these super sorcerers and their amped up bodyguards, that they can be actually killed. It's a good early death that ups the stakes of the show and establishes some boundaries to the story. 

[DearEvette]

52 minutes ago, Danny Franks said:

I think it did a good job of letting us know what the stakes are, for these two and for other Aes Sedai and Warder combos. The next time one is killed, we'll know exactly what it means and what is likely to happen to the other half of the bond.

Yeah, I saw it more as an effective show vs. tell. This was a nice way to demonstrate it, with all the asides to Lan/Moraine as extra flavor.  

They could have done something pedantic like have Lan and Moiraine give some laborious explanation of it to Nynaeve.  But instead with Karene/Stepin we get to see early on how important and symbiotic the bond is.  I think the time spent with the Aes Sedai, getting to know the warders and their brotherhood, and the necessity of a death or two among the Aes Sedai in order for the Logain plot to work, i think it made a lot of  narrative sense to include that part here and to show what the bond entails.  Highlights the importance and seriousness of it and sets it up for future plot points if/when needed.

I admit I wasn't moved by Karene's death because yeah we barely knew her, but I was moved by Stepin's grief and by associations Lan's grief for what his friend was going through and what he would probably face sooner rather than later. 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

5 hours ago, DoctorAtomic said:

The Aes aren't omnipotent, though many think they are, as we have seen. I could buy Valda picked them off one by one. Or just overwhelmed them with numbers. We have seen Moiraine severely injured. You could conceivable hide on a ridge and then just shoot some arrows down. 

I get that they are not omnipotent, but given

1, P & E managed to despite having no training and starting from a compromised position (bound and wounded in Perrin's case) STILL managed to take out the entire platoon of Whitecloaks with minimal effort 

2. Moraine and Lan managed to mess up an entire bunch of Trollocs, who are way stronger than ordinary humans and Moraine's specialty isn't even in fighting

I don't get it.

Maybe that's just a sign of P&E being that much more powerful than the average Aes, given their status as potential Dragons-reborn.

Or maybe that just means that Valda used stealth or other tactics to weaken the Aes he killed before.

Which leads to a separate question that hasn't been explained in the show. We've been told basically that the Aes Sedai are running the show. How is it that Valda has been killing Aes Sedai as blatantly as he appears to have done without (as far as we know) facing consequences? Like wouldn't at some point the Aes Sedai come looking for the (say) half-dozen of their members he has killed and found out that he'd done it? 

[silverstream]

24 minutes ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

Maybe that's just a sign of P&E being that much more powerful than the average Aes, given their status as potential Dragons-reborn.

Or maybe that just means that Valda used stealth or other tactics to weaken the Aes he killed before.

I reckon it's also that most Aes Sedai don't specialise in using the One Power for fighting; Moraine and Lan have been travelling for years, so they're probably used to defending themselves, and a lot of the AS we saw fighting last episode where of the Green Ajah, who specialise in that sort of thing. There are probably Aes Sedai specialising in, say, healing or research who don't have any experience using the One Power for anything but their chosen fields and might be pretty easy to overwhelm/trick once their warders have been taken out of the equation. Considering the bond between Aes Sedai and warder, it's probably also a tactic to kill the warder and then quickly deal with the warder's Aes Sedai while she's still experiencing the backlash of that.

Though I would guess Valda got hold of most of the AS he caught through trickery - mainly because it seems like something people would remark on/be more wary of if there were regularly open battle between the White Cloaks and the AS.

Edited December 6, 2021 by silverstream

[DoctorAtomic]

I have no use for Valda et al., but they're there, so I have to roll with it. I can buy that he can stealth them out or snipe them, and then chop off their hands. He's got 6, but that could have been over 10 years or something. He could offer them tea and put poison in it. 

Or, like it was said, you get to the warder, there's going to be some shock to the Aes, so you can take advantage of the confusion. 

 

[Tachi Rocinante]

14 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

I get that they are not omnipotent, but given

1, P & E managed to despite having no training and starting from a compromised position (bound and wounded in Perrin's case) STILL managed to take out the entire platoon of Whitecloaks with minimal effort 

Well, they did get a LOT of help from a pack of direwolves, but I see your point.

[AnimeMania]

On 12/6/2021 at 5:04 PM, Chicago Redshirt said:

1, P & E managed to despite having no training and starting from a compromised position (bound and wounded in Perrin's case) STILL managed to take out the entire platoon of Whitecloaks with minimal effort 

The fighting Whitecloaks went in one direction and the inquisitor Whitecloaks headed south. The inquisitor Whitecloaks almost lost the fight against people who won't even fight back. Inquisitor Whitecloaks seemed more at home as the spa, wardrobe and makeup Whitecloaks. 

Edited December 13, 2021 by AnimeMania

[Chicago Redshirt]

5 hours ago, AnimeMania said:

The fighting Whitecloaks went in one direction and the inquisitor Whitecloaks headed south. The inquisitor Whitecloaks almost lost the fight against people who won't even fight back. Inquisitor Whitecloaks seemed more at home as the spa, wardrobe and makeup Whitecloaks. 

If we're saying that the Whitecloaks Valda was with seem wimpy, that goes to my original question. How did they manage to overpower a half-dozen Aes Sedai, who are presumably in a better position to defend themselves than E & P were after they had been captured. 

[Danny Franks]

6 hours ago, Chicago Redshirt said:

If we're saying that the Whitecloaks Valda was with seem wimpy, that goes to my original question. How did they manage to overpower a half-dozen Aes Sedai, who are presumably in a better position to defend themselves than E & P were after they had been captured. 

When we saw Valda burn an Aes Sedai, he was still with the military branch of the White Cloaks, commanded by grey beard guy, so they may have done the capturing. Or the Questioners may have developed a way of capturing Aes Sedai themselves, which doesn't involve direct violence.

Valda's general unconcern with actually being channelled at is weird. I don't think he really believed Egwene was Aes Sedai, but when he saw that she did seem to be building towards channelling, he wasn't worried at all. Does he really believe the Light will protect him from witches?

[MissLucas]

5 hours ago, Danny Franks said:

Valda's general unconcern with actually being channelled at is weird. I don't think he really believed Egwene was Aes Sedai, but when he saw that she did seem to be building towards channelling, he wasn't worried at all. Does he really believe the Light will protect him from witches?

Given his collection of rings he is not wrong 🤷‍♂️

[AnimeMania]

 

[rab01]

On 12/5/2021 at 9:19 PM, Lady Jane said:

Here's a good example of them "telling" instead of "showing"-- we only know how tough Egwene is because of that story Nynaeve told. In this world, it would be easy to show Egwene's immense internal strength rather than just have Nynaeve describe it in another scene. Heck, her with Valda was plenty of "seeing" how strong Egwene is. But I'm irritated that they just told us rather than developing the character. She's also one where I feel like her in-show personality has been rather on the shy/quiet & hesitant side, so hearing that she's such a badass really rang hollow for me.

I blame the actress for that.  The dialogue and plot as written fit an Egwene who is more confident, strong, and determined than any of the guys.  It's the actress' choices in her reaction shots and voice that so often read as timid little girl.  (Just picture the actress playing Nynaeve saying and doing the things that Egwene has done ...)