So it was either Second Age or stuff earlier in the Third Age, which does have some potential but doesn't build up to a climax the way the Second Age does - or rather, it does but that climax we've already seen in the films. But yeah, the idea was that the Second Age is a big sandbox in which they'd have to make up lots of the plot themselves as there's so little written about it, so it's bizarre to have Isildur already in the third episode. That's really a lack of guts and confidence, going for the crutch of the familiar names already so soon. As was making Galadriel their heroine rather than some Elf they'd made up themselves, for that matter.
For sure they had to compress time, they were never going to have a series stretching across thousands of years - but they didn't have to do it to this extreme extent.
But jamming both of the major storylines in the Second Age, the forging of the Rings and the fall of Numenor, into the same story, they are burning through all the material to which they have the rights in one shot. They could introduce Numenor under the benevolent reign of Tar-Ministir, they could show the friendship between the Men of the West and the Elves, and show it deteriorating from the Elves' perspective, then a time jump to Elendil's era to show what Numenor has become since the Elves lost contact. As it is, they are practically introduced as villains, before we find out that Elendil and family are not so bad. We never get the Fall, just have them bad from the start.
“Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.” GK Chesteron
Inde muagdhe Aes Sedai misain ye!
Deus Vult!
*MySmiley*