To be fair, Tigraine was someone with the willpower and determination to march into the Waste because of an Aes Sedai prophecy that if she didn't join the Aiel the world was doomed. Then persisted in actually 3-5 years of training to become Far Dareis Mai before ending up married to Janduin, and then some more years past, and it was in the 3rd year of the Aiel War that she ended up pregnant. So a little under a decade of Aeil experience. Galad was roughly 8-10 years older than Rand as I recall.
Also, throw in Andoran royal upbringing, and the Andoran royal house tends to strawberry blondes, so there's that potential slide to light redheads (okay, thats a potential grope).
As to the storytelling aspect of the fight, what they wanted to bring out was the style of the Aiel 'dance of the spears' and how 'ninja-tastic' Aiel should be considered in the future. There aren't many purely practical ways to highlight that without being a little cinematic OTT. Plus, it was serving as a cold open to an episode. So you don't really have any buildup or character background to it, you just get dropped into that and next minute the opening credits are rolling and we're back to the "present" part of the story. Everything the audience is meant to feel purely comes about from the setting and the physical action, no dialogue. So everything has to be a pure snapshot to hook the majority audience, then it ties in to later in the episode with Rand's flashback to Tam's fever talk, and Min's talk of her first viewing.
I think that's one of the aspects that WoT struggles with. They seem to have tried that thing where a scene on it's own has a certain impact, but it actually ties in to a scene later in the episode. Or the next one over. Until you have it all there, it doesn't quite work standalone or has a slightly odd feel. Which makes the whole show have a certain feel of hm, choppiness?