Wheel of Time Episode 3 analysis:

Note: pretty big spoilers for Episode 3 follow

D&D Theme for this episode: Don’t split the party. It’s confusing, hard to DM, and nobody gets a good story.

More ways that trollocs are a bad candidate for violent minions of the dark:

— When a fellow trolloc is wounded, they will drop everything, literally, including a perfectly edible unsullied human Wisdom, to eat a fellow trolloc’s entrails. I mean, having an army that encourages self-cannibalism is just a terrible liability.

— Trollocs apparently have terrible vision. We are given a shot of Trolloc-Cam™, which, given that we never see a deliberate first-person view from anybody else, is clearly an homage to the Doom movie starring the Rock. In this revealing insight into what it means to live as a trolloc, we learn that, unlike actual cows, who have a tremendously wide field of view, due to their role as, you know, prey, Trollocs apparently have hyperfocused forward-looking vision that gets dark and fuzzy around the edges. Hiring a faux-bovine murderous horde that can’t see their own elbows is just terrible Dark Lording, I tell you.

But maybe there’s just no other option:

— Apparently ravenous wolves aren’t a good backup evil horde, because just like Trollocs, they corner the Chosen Ones, and then, you know, just top moving and let them go. Unlike the trollocs, however, where there was always an excuse for the heavily-torched horde for stopping, in this case, the wolves were just like, nah, and nobody even tried to explain it.

Fun thing #2 – Times when the show was unintentionally a metaphor for itself:

— Metaphor #1: A sort of Czech Kenny Rogers gleeman gets up on stage in the bar, spends an inordinate amount of time preparing to play during extra-close camera shots, then gives a confusing and snarly performance that is like a verse and a half. Then he leaves, having played a set consisting of one song, and asks for money, which makes him just the laziest gig band ever. Here’s the metaphor part – his audience greets this overwrought performance with stunned silence and zero applause. Mining town dive bar patrons, you are me watching this show.

— Metaphor #2: Moiraine literally slept through the entire episode, not unlike some of its viewers

Speaking of this mining town:

— This is the kind of town where, when a stranger walks up, everyone gives them a five-second disgruntled stare. This happens a lot in fantasy movies, but I have only experienced it in real life when trying to order at a Taco Bell right before closing.

— This is apparently also the kind of town where half the people mine all day, and the other half day-drink and listen to melodramatic songs without applauding.

— The Chosen Douches are told, more or less verbatim, “If you steal, you will be run through our penal system, which consists of putting you in a cage, and afterward, shooting you with arrows.” (I know that is the sequence because the arrows stuck out of the bars). Just before this revelation, Czech Kenny has stolen money from Mat (AKA Douche #2), admits it to an audience of day drinkers, and is nonetheless not put in a cage and shot with arrows. Later on, Mat steals, twice, and he too is not cage-arrowed. That’s some bullshit.

— Also, putting somebody in a cage and then shooting them with arrows is redundant and a waste of both effort and arrows. Either penal solution will do nicely. Just pick one. And for the love of god, in a town with zero economy other than homicidal barmaiding or hard labor, take the valuable stuff off your ciminals either before or after cage-arrowing them.

— The Dark One’s plan apparently consists of hiring enough lovelorn barmaids with needlessly reinforced inn room doors, ensuring they receive intense A-level training in sword fighting, and then… leaving them as barmaids. Here’s a thought. If you have a massively lethal barmaid, just have her attack the Chosen Ones immediately, injure them, and tie them up. Do not go through an extended sequence of wood chopping, flirting, and drink service before doing this. Another idea: Use said massively lethal barmaids instead of Trollocs. At least it is likely that the barmaids can swim.

— Apparently, we are going to meet a race of violent gingers who are only violent when wearing black face bandanas and at no other times. Kind of a Westlands version of the Crips, but with a kerchief-related off switch. I would imagine this society gets very confusing whenever it gets dusty out.

Weird thing – The part with confusing physical geography:

— All of the Chosen Ones and their escorts leave the shattered city being slo-mo chased by creeping death mold.

— These escorts are the same ones who previously wanted only to find and escort the CO’s, and now are inexplicably quite content to have left them behind. Perhaps they know that whatever chases the CO’s will stop just before eviscerating them, because the water is deep, because my friend’s entrails look tasty, because I need a new torch, or just because.

— Physical geography observation: The way into the shattered city was a dense forest, like, with ferns and shit.

— Physical geography conundrum #1: One pair of Chosen Ones (the ones who thought riding a log to safety was a good idea) inexplicably emerges like an hour later onto a heavily weathered seacost-looking-place full of freeze-thaw weathered white boulders.

— Physical geography conundrum #2: Another pair of Chosen Ones (the ones who thought cliffdiving to safety in full heavy clothing was a good idea) end up like an hour later somehow in Siberia in autumn on a grassy plain, one that nonetheless has massive flint stones exposed at the surface.

— Physical geography conundrum #3: The escorts (the ones who just rode horses out of the city) end up like an hour later in a sort of forest/meadow biome.

— This last part is where we learn that bare-butt warrior guy feels all of Moiraine’s pain. This is asserted despite the fact that she’s been stabbed and poisoned by trollocs and is near death, and he’s just peachy and hasn’t even grimaced once. He leaves the Aes Sedai he is sworn to defend and maybe in love with LYING UNCONSCIOUS BY A TREE IN TROLLOC- AND WOLF-INFESTED WOODS while he goes and watches somebody pick flowers. Then the Wisdom tells him “this is going to hurt,” and it, like, totally doesn’t hurt. Not at all. And it’s over super quick. She’s like the opposite of the nurse who gives you shots, who says “just a quick little poke” and MOTHERF*$&ER that stuff hurts. Also, the Wisdom fled the trolloc horde, but apparently brought an entire home chemistry kit with her from her Fortress Of Solitude glowing geyser cave. Sure.

— In the Siberian autumn biome, where the wolves just give up, is a random band of benevolent jolly gypsies, who nonetheless surround their guests threateningly, demand answers to mysterious questions, and then tell them the answers. This is just obnoxious, and totally not how inquiry-based pedagogy works. And one of them totally looks like Sideshow Bob and I just couldn’t stop seeing that the whole time and thinking he had a tattoo that said DIE PERRIN, DIE.

As for ranking the Chosen ones, they all were kind of equally weaselly this time, which was disappointing. Mat, my main man from episodes #1 and #2, turned lazy and whiny, because I guess Rand is contagious or something. Rand wasn’t as bad, but I think that’s just because he couldn’t keep the Whine dial set at 11 the whole time. But his blue shirt was still totally annoying, as was his banter with the homicidal barmaid. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Chosen One with less game than he had, and yet homicidal barmaid was throwing herself at him.

We’re off until the next episode drops. This episode was actually marginally better than the first two, although I had to laugh when the Chosen Ones who had left Two Rivers following a cryptic person to the east and then ditched her finished the episode following a different cryptic person to the east. They must just station eastward-facing cryptic people all over the area here, like some kind of Aes Sedai WPA program.