Anything I can do to actually SEE the next episode?

I see everything very clearly on my home theater system, which does not have a huge screen. I think the problem is your hardware. It might help to play with adjusting the Gamma curves on your laptop’s screen, also the brightness and contrast settings. Good luck.

I just ran your link on my iPhone 8 without even rotating the screen, and could see everything.
Here’s a tip: never watch video in a completely dark room. Ideally, have some light shining behind your video display, making a kind of halo behind it. The iris shuts down in a completely dark room, and we lose the ability to discern fine details. Think about it: there’s actually quite a lot of low-level lighting in a movie theater, for this reason.

Yeah, that contrast sucks. I don't like the HBO streaming app one bit. It's never given me smooth playback so I always watch on my TV. If you can't do that and can't get decent quality on streaming, you may have to download it. It's usually available in those 4GB web-dl versions within hours of airtime. I'd suggest shopping at the Torrent store. 😀 You've already paid once, why let them take any more of your money?

It sucks to have to wait when you're a legit subscriber - maybe you should let them know how unhappy this makes you, and that you're considering dropping them because ... what's the point? - but if the only way to see it in decent quality is to wait a few hours, or until the day after, that's what I'd do. If a lot of other subscribers are having the same problem it might help explain all the piracy they're whining about. Nobody's fault but theirs, in that case.