Man this season is way the fuck all over the place. One scene will be amazing, the next will have me completely "wtf who wrote this?" Or they'll have both in the same scene, like the battle against Martin (the special effects for Alice's magic missiles were terrible, and what the fuck was with Elliot and Margo just sitting behind a rock providing running commentary the whole time? But it definitely got some feels going when Alice is charging up her spell and going niffin to that dramatic music).
I will say this - they lucked the hell out with their casting. This show could so easily have slipped into awfulness if the cast weren't nailing so much of the acting.
Yeah they seem to be pretty weird about how they adapt certain plotlines, compared to the books. I guess because they need to keep multiple POV's running? It still feels like they could have tightened things up a lot, even taking budgetary concerns (hell, they could probably save money by not wasting it on stupid pointless additional sub-plots like "riddle games with Fogg's ex").
In fairness, it is kind of hard to imagine what he'd wish for in his current state. But it is a shame, because Quentin's recovery after Alice's death and his hunt for the magical animal to take him home is extremely poignant in the books, really brilliant stuff even though I didn't really like book 1 the first time I read it.
But in the show we get Quentin bouncing back in a few weeks (which feel like 5 minutes) then off on weird wacky hijinks running around Stoner Forest with Penny. Then he catches the White Lady and he's all grieving again? Hopefully they handle his return to Earth a bit better. But it feels like the show is constantly bouncing around in terms of tone, losing a lot of the emotional resonance the books had and not really gaining much in return other than humor (Penny's line about shooting the White Lady was gold, so was Ember's convo with Martin at the Wellspring).
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