[Harry Lime]

Episode 7 : Looking good, but something is nagging me.

First off, I enjoyed the continued humanization of the characters. There is definitely a concentration on Lan, Moraine and Nynaeve, and the actors are doing very well on building them into believable people. The rest of the cast look really pained all of the time. I'm left hoping for something more dynamic, but all of them are hitting the exact same note.

The plot chugs along, and it leaves me hopeful that exposition dumps are going to be lessened in the second season. The prelogue was cool, with the Aiel War, but I'm not sure if the big reveal landed when the soldier took his helmet off and it was a de-aged Tam al'Thor. We didn't spend enough time with the older Tam for that to be readily apparent. Still, like most things in the series, it drove home some important points, such as the skill of an Aiel warrior and the animosity between factions on the show. A baby born on Dragonmount should come up in dialogue later.

What bugs me is kind of a problem that they made themselves in casting. Since every country is a mish-mash of races (I get it that races are supposed to be a non-issue) each time that they meet a new group of people it doesn't have the impact of a self contained culture. They were desperately trying to avoid the main cast all being white people, but in the end they whitewashed the entire continent.

I would have preferred that all of the Two Rivers folk were Indian, all of the Borderlanders different specific Asian countries, Andor could be England and Tear France, all of the coastal countries African. Aiel would have to be Irish by design, but that's happening anyway. It would make the world look huge, because in a pre-industrial world travel would create more insular groups.

Rand would stick out like a sore thumb though, and there wouldn't exactly be a mystery.

That's probably nit-picking, but that's also the nature of watching a show like this!