I choose my words poorly. I meant that given everything Galadriel had been through to that point, over literally hundreds of years, it was foolish to think she would succumb to Sauron’s deception magic especially given that she knew his real identity before the scene even started. Maybe that was the point though, to show that Sauron miscalculated Galadriel’s strength, realized this during the scene, and switched to attempting to kill her with the deception magic when he realized she couldn’t be corrupted? So not so much a crisis of faith so much as a reaffirmation of purpose for Galadriel.
The mithril stuff still bugs me though. It could have been handled so much better. As written it is very sloppy. It would not have taken much additional screen time to tie things together better with a storyline about how Elrond or Celebrimbor poured through the elven archives and discovered that there was mention of places where the Valar fought evil or performed great feats of magic and the very earth and stone became imbued with traces of their power. That this power is the same as that which permeates Valinor and grants the elves their peace and immortality. Finding ore imbued with this power in Middle Earth would be the equivalent of bringing a piece of Valinor to Middle Earth, and that is why it can revive the Lindon tree and by association the elves of Middle Earth. But what the limited information in the archives do not mention is that the same power was used by the Valar to bind and imprison ancient forces of great evil, and that the veins of mithril below Moria have kept the Balrog imprisoned there for millennia. Simple, easy, doesn’t really change or break Tolkien canon in any grievous way, and could have been done in a couple of 3-5 minute scenes of Elrond/Celebrimbor doing research and having a breakthrough spread across a couple of episodes leading up to the forging of the elven rings.
Basically, I find myself solidly in between the opinions in this thread. One the one hand, I really liked the show for a whole lot of reasons I have already mentioned, and can’t wait to see more. I want to LOVE it, but the writing, especially the constant use of common TV tropes and crutches, keeps me from being all in. In that respect I find myself agreeing on many things with @Sharpe and the others who were disappointed that the show set high bars for nearly every aspect other than the actual plotlines/writing. On a positive note, that CAN be fixed. Assuming the producers take the constructive criticism leveled at the show seriously (and don’t just lump it in with the racist garbage criticism it received initially), there is room for improvement and plenty of time to rework the writers room and the scripts for next season and beyond.
Regardless, I am watching because more Middle Earth can never be a bad thing in my eyes.