1586

This was another one of those episodes where if I could have watched it at 1.25 or 1.5x speed, I would have. Especially after the reveal of Sauron and Galadriel’s reveries. Felt like the Harfoot stuff dragged on too long also.

At least we got to see some actual rings of power.

Maybe when S2 launches in 2024 I’ll look forward to seeing it. But then again, maybe not.

1587

This was obvious almost from episode 2 or 3, except to those that think Lost was a coherent series or that Tony Soprano is definitely alive after the last episode because they literally didn’t show him being shot.

1588

I’m also highly suspicious this series will survive to see the full 5 seasons. That they haven’t even filmed the second series yet (to me) shows Amazon is playing its financial cards cautiously. I actually expect it will be cancelled around season 3, and Amazon retool / shop around conveying those rights to something cheaper / more profitable (cartoons, video games, ect). For better or worse House of the Dragon and this are kind of in competition, and it feels like a retread of the story notes of Game of Thrones has more marketability than heavy handed JJ Abram’s inspired Tolkien.

1589

OK, stop crushing my hopes and dreams. I totally ignored that Tony was eating onion rings in that final scene. . .they were french fries, damnit.

1590

Huh. Well, I was totally wrong about Halbrand. Damn. Still a really cool character though, and the actor is great. The scene with Galadriel was excellent.

Suitable finale. Yeah, there are things I hope they tighten up in season 2, and there were things I didn’t absolutely love along the way, but I thought they pulled things together pretty well with the finale.

1591

He hated it and loved it, as he hated and loved himself.

1592

Let’s polarize everything because zero nuance is needed!

OR

The show is “watchable”, but it still failed the assignment.

P.S. Hate is 9 times out of 10 always the wrong word. Disappointment, please.

1593

I’m trying to think how I would view the show if I didn’t know Tolkien’s work and if I didn’t have any issues with the opportunity cost of a bad adaptation. Stripped of Tolkien-related baggage, I think my view of the show would be like this:

It’s a great looking show at almost all points (the weird worg being an exception). There are some great settings and it starts out introducing characters, but then there’s some stuff that doesn’t seem to make sense. I don’t think there’s any way to make Galadriel’s leap into the ocean and the subsequent raft sequence good writing or plotting; it’s just poor and random. OTOH, what we see of the Elves, Dwarves, Southlanders, and Numenorians is all quite good and interesting. Some awkward scenes and dialogue with Galadriel and Gil-Galad, but some very good scenes with Elrond, Durin, Disa, Bronwyn and Arondir.

The backstory seems skimpy in places and inconsistent in others. (What’s up with the Numenorians - they had a big empire and then became isolationist? That’s implied but not stated. The Harfoot society seems completely bizarre - “nobody walks alone but we’ll leave to you to starve and die if you have a bad foot and can’t keep up.”) Also, the scale is all over the place: the capitol of Numenor seems suitably impressive but “The Southlands” is apparently one village.

OTOH some of the set pieces are incredible: The Stranger vs. the White Magi, the eruption of Mt. Doom, etc.

As to the story, does it make sense stripped of Tolkien? On the one hand you don’t get the visceral rejection of the elf-mithril stuff, but the whole forging of the Rings may not be that significant to non-Tolkien fans.

Eh, I don’t know. I’m not sure it’s possible to evaluate the show as a non-Tolkien fan, for me. The best I can come up with is: the show would have some good qualities but also some flaws, as a non-Tolkien work. On the strength of the production quality, I’d probably give it a 6 on the 1-10 scale, which is the minimum positive rating. That puts it 1 rating point down from The Wheel of Time IMO (which I would consider about a 7).

Now, if you add in the opportunity cost and Tolkien disappointment, it gets into negative territory for me.

But trying to be objective, I think I would say it’s a fantasy show with some good qualities and also some flaws.

Which, when you consider what they spent on it, is not great.

1594

I’m convinced the show is targeted only towards causal viewers who have only seen the PJ movies. There are just too many callbacks and the fact Elrond and Galadriel are the focus instead of Gil-Galad and Celebrimbor.

Plus they didn’t have the courage to include Narvi since he wasn’t in PJ’s movies. (nor should he have been, which is the point!)

I think I might actually hate the Easterling mystics a lot actually. They don’t make any sense. They are searching for the Meteorman who they think is Sauron, and actually call him Lord Sauron, and they have silly magic powers. Twelve year old understanding of the legendarium, appealing to the lowest common denominator possible.

Anyways thanks my lizard brain being hella intoxicated.

1595

Did anyone expect Amazon to spend a billion dollars on a show for people who know who Gil-Galad is?

BTW, did they reveal which character is secretly Tom Bombadil, or are they saving it for season 2?

1596

But, wouldn’t line one apply to line two, or… was that the?

1597

Everyone knows Tom Bombadil. The Jackson movies didn’t include him because the viewers already had his parts playing out perfectly in their imagination, and no on-screen representation could hope to match them.

1598

I watched it.

The whole who-is-Sauron (similar to a whodunnit) and their feeble, cheap attempt to make a last ditch fake out in the last episode, with powerful characters creating misdirection on the wizard by being wrong who was the person in front of them, just so the audience still would be surprised a few minutes later when the real Sauron reveals himself was pathetic. If you need to lower yourself to those tricks, you don’t have a good story, my dudes.

It’s that, the already well discussed elves & mythril issue, and the mcguffin sword that serves as faucet for volcanos (funny thing, all those episodes searching it and fighting for it and it wasn’t essential, the orc army could have redirected the river with a few months of manual labor), the three weakest point of the writing. And by far, because imo if we forget for a second about them, the writing wasn’t so bad, but once we take them in account it really brings down the experience.

1599

1600

You’ve been Alloyed!

I loved it.

1601

This last episode was OK for me. I really enjoyed the whole making of the rings thing, it was beautifully shot and really felt true to what Tolkien wrote. If anything it felt a bit rushed, I wouldn’t have minded it taking a couple or three episodes over a few “story months”.
I think this show can still be saved if they just stick to simple straight storytelling from now on.

There was no need for any tricks… Sauron could have had a hidden tatoo revealing his true identity shown to us when he first appeared and the show would have been a million times better for it. There’s a lot of cool stuff that can be done when the viewer knows and the characters don’t, instead of being straightjacketed because you can neither show nor tell.

1602

Something weird for me is how for most of the season it felt as if the series was slow and always far away from the final goals, and then suddenly on the last episode they did the three elven rings already. That was unexpected, at the pace of the series I was placing the rings creation on the third season.

1603

I really enjoyed the rings song at the end of the last episode. In fact, if I had skipped over all seven hours and just tuned in for that 2 minutes and 12 seconds, I would have been this shows biggest fanboy on the whole entire internets.

1604

I laughed out loud when the three hobbits hug each other and I figured, okay, they’re going to cut to a scene with Sadoc mortally wounded because it’s time for him to die, that’s fine. And then the son of a gun straight up walks into the camera shot and sits down to get ready for his death scene. Haha!

Also, not since Tom Hardy played Bane wearing a mask the whole movie has an actor been wasted as much as they wasted the actor for The Stranger. Bumbling around like a goofball zombie all season, and as soon as he speaks he becomes the best actor and most likeable character in the show. Just silly.

1605

Truly amazing the secret to working with Mithril was to simply drop it into a bowl of molten Gold and Silver while the Spiderman theme plays.