Episode 5 of The Wheel of Time, Blood Calls Blood, is a really good episode, and most of these episodes have been really good. I keep hearing a lot of people criticizing the fact that the show seems to be veering off from the books. I never expected to watch the show and feel like I was watching a word for word iteration of the book. I wouldn’t want that. I’ve already kind of got that in my head.

This week Perrin and Egwene run into a familiar face, Child Valda of the Children of the Light. Mat and Rand see some strange ones. And Moiraine and Lan mourn their losses. That’s three storylines, and the one everybody’s arguing about is the first one you see.

Why We Care About Stepin

The episode begins with Stepin, who is Kerene Sedai’s warder, carrying her to the place where she’s going to be buried, with everybody standing around. I’ve seen more than one person online criticize it. Why do we care about this? There are so many bigger events, so why are they getting rid of all this stuff from the books and doing this other thing?

Nine times out of ten, when you have to take something and translate it, you have to go to the show with an intent. Robert Jordan wrote The Wheel of Time with massive amounts of information. There’s the Companion, which is something like 1,400 pages long and is nothing but his notes. I recently got it. Excellent, excellent read. It’s like an encyclopedia for everything in The Wheel of Time. He had an intent behind the things he was laying down.

Sure, you could do the first four seasons just based on what happens in book one. Who would ever want to watch that show? Give me a nice tight season one based on The Eye of the World and I’m down. I’m in. My viewpoint has always been that as we go through the series, you’re getting the gist of the story, boiled down to its best intent.

The director on this one is Salli Richardson-Whitfield, and it’s funny, she’s an actress who used to be on a TV show called Eureka. I had no clue. She’s a really great director.

So allow me to tell you, fan, how to understand creativity. You love the stuff you love because the people who made it presented certain things the way they presented them. The story of Stepin has nothing to do with the current story we’re watching in The Wheel of Time. Nothing. Absolutely nothing, I guarantee you, other than it gives us an opportunity to establish some things having to do with Lan and what’s going to come.

For me, the story they’re telling isn’t so much about Stepin and Kerene Sedai. It’s the relationship between warders and Aes Sedai, and that’s going to play a huge part in what’s coming. A couple of quick predictions. Before the end of the series we’re going to get Moiraine Sedai sacrificing herself against the Dark One, or something along those lines, or a Darkfriend even. We’re definitely going to get Nynaeve joining the Tower. These are the bits and pieces they’re laying the groundwork for. Lan is our representation of what goes on between warders and Aes Sedai, and in this episode he’s what’s called a grief bearer.

Perrin, Egwene, and the Groundwork Nobody Laid

On the other side you’ve got Perrin and Egwene facing Child Valda. The Children of the Light attack the Tuatha’an, the Tinkers if you will, and ultimately take Perrin and Egwene captive. Then Valda proceeds to torture Perrin.

While he’s doing that, Egwene comes face to face with the fact that she knows she can channel, because Moiraine helped reveal that to her. But what does that even mean? Child Valda is making a couple of assumptions. He’s assuming Egwene is an Aes Sedai, and he’s assuming Perrin is her warder. Not a far cry from what could possibly be true. I can see why he’d make that leap. He makes the statement that the Light doesn’t do anything by coincidence, and that’s why they’ve encountered him twice.

That whole scenario really begins to open the gates for Perrin’s ultimate transformation. I will say this: if you haven’t read the books, you’re kind of lost, and that’s a shortcoming of the series. I have a feeling the producers are trying to tell the story they’re trying to tell, and the problem is they’re grabbing information and grabbing pieces and they’re not laying enough groundwork.

We’ve spent so much time dealing with Perrin’s bellyaching over a wife who shouldn’t exist. I say shouldn’t exist because she wasn’t in the book. She’s a completely original character for the series, and I don’t know why she was invented, because we’re missing out completely on his evolution. So instead we get this scene where Perrin suddenly has gold eyes showing up. What does that even mean? We’ve had no groundwork laid that this is coming, or that anything remotely like this is happening, so it comes as somewhat of a surprise. They can say, oh, we conjectured it, because there were wolves in the past and they didn’t attack him. It’s lazy writing, people.

Call it a shortcoming of the show, whatever. Either way, I’m still here for it. I’m enjoying it.

Mat, Rand, and Loial

Then you get Mat and Rand, who arrive in Caemlyn. There’s a brief interchange where Mat sees Logain being brought into the city, and Logain apparently laughs. I guess crazy knows crazy, or as they say, blood calls blood. I don’t know if that’s in Logain’s head or Mat’s head. I don’t necessarily know that the full-on laugh actually happens. I think it’s one of those things where we’re seeing inside somebody’s head, and I think it might be Mat’s.

Rand, while he’s looking around through some stuff, encounters a book: the Karaethon Cycle. (Corinthian leather, no.) That’s their version of prophecies, specifically the ones having to do with the Dragon Reborn. The Karaethon Cycle is noted many, many times throughout the book series, and I’m really looking forward to seeing more of those references. In the books a chapter, or sometimes the book itself, will open with a quote from the Karaethon Cycle, and sometimes it has to do with what’s going on. Later on they introduce a group called the Seanchan, another people from across the ocean, and they have a lot of Karaethon Cycle type quotes in their sections. I’m excited to see how the show is going to handle some of that.

While he finds this, he happens to meet Loial, who is an Ogier. The Ogier are a much larger race. My best friend Jason had an issue with Loial. He said he looks a little small, he thought he was going to be bigger. Loial is always described in the books as being smaller than most Ogier, so I won’t pass judgment on his height and size until I see how they represent the other Ogier. He’s very cool. They always describe him as having big sausage fingers, which he totally does.

And he talks very slow, because as anybody who’s a big fan knows, the Ogier are very slow and purposeful. They almost remind you of the tree people, Treebeard and the rest, from The Lord of the Rings. Anything worth doing is worth talking about, and worth thinking long and hard about, and preparing for. Rand’s the one going, I’ve got to go, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do the other, and Loial’s answer is that you are always in such a rush. It’s really fun how he talks. I love the whole characterization.

There’s a weird part where, out of nowhere, Loial shows up at the place where Rand’s staying and says, hey, by the way, I found your friend, and here’s Nynaeve. I remember thinking, wait a minute, did I miss a scene somewhere? It wasn’t bad. I would’ve liked to have seen a little more of Thom, considering Thom’s the one who points them toward Caemlyn, and specifically that one inn. Either way, it’s not too shabby. I kind of enjoyed it.

The Game of Houses

The episode had a lot of parallels going on. You see fun stuff between Liandrin and Moiraine, this cat and mouse game they’re playing. Moiraine is from, I believe, either Ghealdan or Cairhien. I can’t remember exactly, and I think it might be Cairhien. Wherever it is, she’s from some place that’s familiar with what they call the Game of Houses. She’s very good at playing chess, that whole thing of moving parts and pieces around, and it’s a fun exploration of where the character is ultimately going.

The Funeral

I loved the entire funeral scene at the end, after Stepin commits suicide and Lan finds him and they give Lan the task of mourning. This was very special for me.

In the extra, the look inside the episode, Daniel Henney talks about how Lan is not emotional. Lan is like talking to a brick wall. So for him to have to show emotion, the only place he could go was a place of wanting to just shout and scream. And it never turns into that corny movie scream, the “no” up into the air.

As he’s screaming, you find out what this whole ceremony is based on. There is the griever, and everyone gives their grief, emotionally speaking, to the griever. Lan is the griever in this instance. They all start thudding their chests, boom, boom, boom, and you can almost see it, almost like a shock. It’s so loud. It’s so strong.

I’m watching with my wife, and you see Moiraine, and Moiraine just has tears streaming down her face. I told my wife, you realize that through their bond she sees and feels everything he’s feeling. She feels what he can’t express. That makes the moment all the more genuine for me, because she can’t hold back what he’s really feeling.

Seeing Lan have to deal with almost the confusion of it, how do I handle these emotions, I was super impressed.

The Verdict

The Wheel of Time Episode 5, Blood Calls Blood, is a 7 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

I don’t know if it was a 10 out of 10, but a 7 out of 10. I liked the episode. It establishes some really neat things. I enjoy the story they’re telling. As someone who’s been in the film industry, I understand where they’re going, and as someone who’s a fan of the books, I’m enjoying the heck out of the series.

There’s a lot of negative stuff online. I wouldn’t believe the hype. Always be your own judge about those things.

If Blood Calls Blood landed differently for you, or you think I’m wrong about Perrin’s gold eyes coming out of nowhere, tell me why. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.