Wheel of Time (Amazon)

I don't know why I'm still watching this show to be honest, but I thought season 3 episode 4 was very good. Not the most amazing episode of television ever, but the positives of that episode really highlights what is going wrong in the other episodes:

1. Proper set up and payoff - we know in general terms what could happen in Rhuidean, but other things could happen as well, so we have context for when we see it play out, and it feels satisfying when it is resolved, as opposed to just being told something would happen then it happens. I predict the last episode of this series will be "I have to go to Tear and get the sword. I'm in Tear and there is the sword. Fight. I now have the sword" and then dramatic swell of music and drone zoom out.
2. Important events take place on screen as opposed to just being told about it in boring clunky dialogue (although I do accept that this is very much in keeping with RJ's later books). The very first scene of episode 5 has characters telling us that there was a rift between the Aiel and the Shaido. But why would anyone actually want to see that play out on screen when it can be told to you in monotone?
3. Magic is used sparingly and isn't an easy fix for everything.
4. Prophecies are not literal and predictions of the future are not certain.
5. Stakes - there is genuine peril in the sense that the main characters may fail or may die, unlike the other episodes where they keep getting mortally wounded and then are alive the next episode (sometimes with a magic explanation, sometimes not). You watch this episode and think that Rand might fail or go mad etc. It's a long time since there was any real feeling that Rand is at risk of madness. 2 episodes later Perrin gets stabbed in the guts and there is no one to heal him but you know he will survive.
6. World building/history of the world - this is the first episode where the history of the world had any real meaning or context. It's the first time that, for me anyway, there has been any real sense of the breaking of the world or context for different groups of people etc.
7. Clear film making - it isn't murky black visuals that you have to strain to see nor jumbled sound design where it's hard to hear what people are saying. I had to turn it off and sit in a quiet room for a bit when I realised that Tanchico was basically Harry Enfield's Scousers with veils.
8. Good acting - for the first time, the actors seem to be playing the parts they are given rather than just woodenly reading the scripts.
9. Focus and pacing -there is only one main thing happening this episode and they really give it time to breathe, allowing the viewer to take in and absorb the secondary details. We aren't suddenly cutting to characters who get right into a complex conversation before we get a chance to remember who they are and what they're up to etc.
10. Plot progression - this episode draws on what has happened in previous episodes and hints at what will happen in future episodes, as opposed to being disjointed, seemingly random events.

After watching this I thought it might be possible to watch the show in anything other than morbid curiosity as to how bad it would get. Sadly, the next two episodes went back to type. It's hard to even hate watch this show, because other than this one episode it's just bland, confusing and unengaging.