Q. There are a lot of mediocre shows out there. Why care about this one, CapnZapp?
A. Because I wanted
this one to be good.
I consider myself the perfect audience for mature adult fantasy. There are exceedingly few such shows even attempted.
This is why I need to vent my frustration by discussing how the show could have been sooo much better:
1. Cut Ciri's weak-ass story out entirely. Accept you don't have any compelling material until she meets up with the Witcher.
2. Start off with three monster slaying episodes, establishing the Witcher, his horse and his Bard - in that order of importance
3. Don't introduce a beautiful princess only to kill her off immediately. Replace Yennifer with Renfri as the B story marauding, murdering and naughty word her away across the Continent. Then have her meet up with the Witcher in episode three, say. This makes her death much more impactful, and it establishes the Witcher as not giving a naughty word, especially if he's seen with the prostitute the next episode.
4. Don't introduce a frickin sorceress in such a minimal offhand manner. Talking about Triss Merigold here, in the Striga episode.
5. Yennifer gets introduced by crossing paths with the Witcher, probably in episode five. Hold off on her backstory until we have reason to care. Reshoot the bath/lovemaking scenes between Chalotra and Cavill to be actually passionate.
6. Focus on them continuously crossing paths in several episodes in a row, where both of them slowly realize they're more than a random hook-up to each other. THEN have them fall out with each other, making their pain much more earned.
7. End the season by introducing this magical girl bound to the Witcher somehow. Since the interesting part is getting them together, I'm okay with the getting there to be minimized.
8. With only eight episodes, a much stronger emphasis on the monster of the week, means the back end needs to focus on Yennifer's backstory.
9. It's okay to not even cast Ciri until season two. Which would probably be for the best, since there's no place for an underage helpless girl in this world. And nobody wants a repeat of the Sansa clusterfuck where BW unwisely gave the rape story to Sansa. If you're going to be a heroine, as I'm sure Ciri is meant to be, let her be much more in control of her story when we finally meet her!
She doesn't need to have any strong powers. She just needs to be allowed intelligent decisions, instead of being shunted from one random place to another with zero agency, like how the show did it.
10. Finally, if you have a mandate to make your show mature fleshy and adult, don't think having anonymous nude extras lounge about in the out-of-focus background does the trick. The show did this not once but twice. That makes your show come across as weirdly chaste, almost as if the show runner doesn't believe in nudity as something actually sexual.
Don't get me wrong, having the very first episode feature nubile nekkid wimmin was an effective answer to whether the show would embrace or reject the uncensored source material. Just saying it can't and shouldn't replace sensuality between characters that matter. Also: there was no reason to make the illusion so obviously visual only. That scene would have been more effective if one of the servants gave the wizard a pitcher of water, say, or traced her finger over Geralt's muscles, as he walked by.
(Post continuously edited not to lose my progress
Edit: Complete! Thank you for reading.)
