04:12 I honestly don’t get what they are doing here. Isn’t Galadriel the heroine? Even if they are trying to depict growth by having her overcome her issues, this is just her being pissy about her demotion. Everything about her reaction to the other Elves discovering her buddy, the Man she promoted as king of the Southlands, over his own objection, was Sauron, has been the act of an incredibly immature adolescent, not someone who, in her own words, predates the sun and moon, and her people’s knowledge of death itself. This is not the depiction of a great and awesome person who made some mistakes and is paying for it, perhaps even unjustly, it’s of a spoiled brat or a person enduring incredibly unreasonable and petty slights and mistreatment.

There is no slight, no putdown in Elrond asking her which soldiers she recommends they take with them. “Oh are, you sure you can trust me with that?” is the appropriately sardonic response to an assignment or question that is well below the capabilities or dignity of the speaker. It’s what you say when you tell Elrond that you have some ideas about who to take with them, and he rebuffs the offered aid and gives you a bullshit make-work assignment (and even there, the snark is ill-advised). Not when he asks a question that invokes your expertise and experience.

That whole exchange, utterly removed from the context of Galadriel’s past misdeeds, just by itself, makes her look petty and spiteful, and gives the impression that Elrond used underhanded means, or a blatant violation of process to steal the command position from her. With the context of the last 11 episodes, it’s even worse, and utterly supports the negative interpretation a lot of people put on her actions last season.

4:48 30 seconds of sweeping, context-free landscape shots to transition to them discovering the bridge is out. Also, is the journey from Lindon to Eregion really so mountainous and rugged? It should be the same terrain that the Hobbits traveled over in LotR, going from the Shire to Moria and from the Shire to the Gray Havens.

5:02 Yes. Lightning. That’s what knocked down a huge stone bridge. Lightning.

5:24 I’d like to point out, that stripped of the superfluous place names and time estimates, the Elf giving directions summed up their options as going north or south to get around an obstacle on their east-bound journey. Did they really need a guy with a map to tell them this?

6:01 An issue of legitimate concern for the Elves, and a position Elrond espouses, is that the Rings were part of Sauron’s plan. So why is Galadriel’s warning that Sauron wants them to go a certain way taken without a lot of cross-examination and healthy skepticism on Elrond’s part? Last scene, Galadriel is being passive-aggressive about the state of distrust in which she is being held, but now her random assertion of Sauron’s intentions is being taken at face value. If they intend to show her suffering for her issues over Sauron, whether unjustly, or as part of a growth arc, they are not following through.

6:28 It’s like she never experienced the first scene. She offers, unsupported by evidence, the assertion that Sauron wants them to go a certain way, and that it is a trap, and when Elrond makes the decision to go that way regardless, she formally protests, is acknowledged and overruled, and then she addresses him personally, which the direction and blocking makes clear, their subordinates are taking note of, so he invokes his authority to shut her down, as he really has no other choice but to do in this case.
Elrond has the higher rank, he has been specifically put in charge, by the king, after having been recruited specifically for the mission, and he has made it clear that he objects to her participation in the mission and believes her to be compromised, and her past judgment shown to be flawed. But she is acting like none of this is real, none of it matters, and the minute she has a difference of opinion, even on a matter touching on her past indiscretions and present potential for being compromised, she just expects Elrond to give in to her unsupported whims, while publicly challenging his authority. Doesn’t she remember what it was like in her position in the beginning of the show?

Probably not, because I don’t think the writers understand what a military command position actually entails, I believe they see it is merely an acknowledgement of one’s prowess as a warrior, like a level you reach with enough XP in a game, and the formalities of rank are merely a form of purely superfluous courtesy that can be set aside whenever urgent or convenient. Chain of command is simply another oppressive social construct designed to prop up the –archy of your choice.

6:52 This is framed as prejudice or unfair treatment on Elrond’s part, but really, what else should anyone expect? This has been his position from the outset, and he is clarifying that he knows her advice is not just her opinion, but is derived from the ring and that he is not going to be doing something based solely on the input of a device of the Enemy. And while in the original lore, Sauron had nothing to do with the Elven rings and was not aware of their making until he donned the One, he still had power over them and could find them, because they were made through his lore and presumably, design specs. In this version, Galadriel and the writers seem to think that because he did not physically touch them, they are okay, but they were still made invoking his ideas about power over flesh, that is attributed to his extensive evil research in his northern fortress. Gil-galad says that once you give Sauron your trust, he can mess with your head at will. The show itself has firmly established these rules and given us no reason to doubt them.

Galadriel’s behavior and the sympathies of the camera are acting like these are unreasonable doubts, or institutional inertia working against a visionary.

7:06 If you can’t follow orders, go home, answered by I wish I could go home, but I don’t want to see you guys get killed, comes across like they think she is being noble and self-sacrificing, looking out for others, even when they doubt her, in a kind of X-men/Spider-men ethos, but the actual denotation here is simply incredible arrogance on her part.

8:33Okay, why does the camera linger on this guy’s face? Are we supposed to recognize him from something?

8:42 Meteor Man, I think the implication is that he has changed Nori & Poppy into goats. Which I don’t THINK is the case, but that’s how I would read his comment.

8:47 He’s got what sounds like an Irish accent. Maybe he’s a giant Harfoot?

8:51 FUCK NO. Is NOTHING safe? Do NOT tell me this is Tom Bombadil.
Fuck this show.

9:27 He’s making less genuine effort to catch that paper than Baby Leia’s kidnappers made to catch her on the Obi-Wan show. Or less effort than Galadriel does to persuade people in power to listen to, or help her.

9:52 Is this how Meteor Man gets a staff? It’s not QUITE as stupid as Boba Fett’s nose-lizard vision-quest to get his very own gaffi stick, but that’s a low bar to clear.

10:05 This bit with the tree swallowing up Meteor Man is EXACTLY what happened to the Hobbits in the BOOK “Fellowship of the Ring” until Tom Bombadil came along to make the tree let them go. They had Treebeard do it in “Two Towers” in the movies. But it’s pretty clear that’s what they’re doing here.

10:32 Wow, that paper is a little piece of shit. It just led Meteor Man to a tree to get eaten?

11:35 Last episode, they vanish like ninjas when a stranger appears, thanks to the camera not following them. But when the camera is watching them, they move awkwardly and slowly, like two actresses not accustomed to the outdoors.

11:44 Hiding in a bush worked fine last episode, and there are a lot of bushes around. Why was jumping off the cliff the preferable option?

12:36 Oh, joy. We have a love interest for Samantha Gamgee. His name is Merrimac. Does he have a rival called Monitor?

13:19 She’s talking like she looks down on a water-thief as the lowest of low, and also, like she is plugged in to the local society and in good standing with the authorities. But she stole water herself last episode, and is hiding from the authorities. Or to be precise, hiding from anyone who shows up, because she has no idea who or what the locals are. The attitude about a water thief makes sense for a desert-dweller, not at all for someone who wandered into the area recently and is completely uninformed about the customs and structures in place. Needless to say, the threat is also ridiculous, and I think they are playing the card that the Harfoots are so lovable and comic that their dialogue doesn’t need to make sense and they can just whimsically get their way with their cute wee accents.

And then Nori gives her a little look like “Ha, ha, this is ridiculous but we can get away with it because we’re cute girls/whimsical comic relief, maintain the pressure.” But they ain’t that cute or funny, and need a few rounds with a fire hose and industrial quantities of soap and (especially) shampoo before they are anything but repulsive to even the most hard-up incel.

13:26 One impotent threat and they’re off to meet the big cheese. This guy is basically Jar-Jar Binks, with less charm.

13:38 “If you want the Gund to take you in there’s four rules.” This has me thinking we are going to hear a set of rules of conduct, that with minimally competent writing, will be telling us something about this community, their priorities and what they require from guests. Instead, we get a mislabeled and miscounted list of personal peeves for the sake of hUmOr.

Fuck this show.

13:52 Ha HA! It’s SO funny that nothing matters!

15:01These are not Harfoots, they are Stoors. The AQUATIC branch of Hobbit ancestry. And they live in a desert. Why use the names, if you’re not getting anything right?

16:30 IDGAF about what just happened. These are nonsense comic relief people and no rules apply.
If Merrimac is so stupid and useless, why do you dispatch him for external tasks from a village that requires secrecy for survival? And it’s fairly obvious he done fucked up, so maybe don’t mouth off at the people whose help you need, hmm?

And notice with original flavor Jar Jar, Qui-Gonn didn’t lecture the Gungans about being nicer to him, he just intervened to save him from punishment, citing their own rules in order to take responsibility for him.
17:09 I know this guy’s voice. I supposed he’s the Dark Wizard the Tardfoots were talking about.

17:18 I think that’s Ciarin Hinds, under all the beard. Hopefully his bit of the billion dollars being spent on this show will give him a comfortable cushion to let him take on a much better project that might not have the budget to pay him what he deserves.

17:50 This guy has the same tortured cadence I recall from the very special (by which I do mean retarded) trip that Sons of Anarchy took to Ireland for several episodes. IDK if it’s from badly trying to fake the accent, an effort to avoid the excessively perky leprechaun accents that are the stereotype, or how Irish people legit talk.

I am stalling, because Meteor Man has just asked him “Who are you?” and I don’t want to hear the answer.

18:06 Fuck

21:00 I can’t decide whose “r’s” are more annoying, Galadriel’s or Tom’s.

21:14 The tree that ate Meteor Man is Old Man Ironwood, instead of Old Man Willow. Creativity FTW.

21:30 Actually, asking the tree seems like the kind of thing Meteor Man would do, since he just showed up out of nowhere, with no memories, and no civilized values imposed on his worldview, and preternatural senses to tell him the tree is alive. It could have been a thing that to him, trees are just as much to be respected as people. He might also have taken Tom and his oddities in stride, again, not having any frame of reference. Like, this is literally the first building he has ever been inside! This should be just as remarkable as Tom changing a piece of paper into a slice of bread, to his eyes. But that would require actual thought and imagination, and all these hacks can do is superficial depictions. They are writing Meteor Man like a normal person most of the time, and from his voice and speech, someone who teleported here from a library, rather than an actual newly aware being experiencing everything in the world for the first time with no frame of reference.

21:47 I see a blue coat in the background.

22:26 This is not Tom Bombadil. He barely understands the concept of wielding power and doesn’t think in terms of this pseudo-mystic philosophical jargon about worthiness.

24:09 All this speculation is what I mean. Tom Bombadil just IS. He lives in the present and the past goes so far back for him that he doesn’t really care about history. Her certainly does not project or think in terms of potential threats or concern himself with plans, his own or others. He wouldn’t be suggesting a training program, no matter how idiosyncratic or abstract. In LotR, they say that although he might be sufficiently powerful to keep the One Ring from Sauron, he wouldn’t be able to concern himself with its safety for very long or concentrate on the threat that Sauron poses.

This Irish goober is just a clichéd fantasy hermit they have occasionally mutter nonsense song lyrics and call him Bombadil to excuse their lack of creativity.

24:23 “Old Tom’s a wanderer, not a warrior” says the man with the stone house and livestock pens.

24:35 Tom’s going to leave great deeds to others and gather lilies where they grow. Just copy-paste Tolkien’s dialogue from a man who lives in a temperate climate forest with lots of water, onto a desert goat-herder, and don’t worry if it makes sense.

24:48 I wouldn’t bet it means your hands, Meteor Man. On this show, it probably means Nori.

Old Tom Bombadil, is a depressing fellow,
Dingy tan his clothing is, all their hues are mellow.
No one has filmed Tom yet, because Tom is so dreary,
Tom's songs are out of place, and all the fans are weary.

25:14 Smash cut to a full moon with a dramatic musical note and then slow pan down over the woods.

25:24 Ah. It’s Elrond. Probably about to fall into the trap Galadriel warned him about, because we can’t let her be wrong for a whole half a season.

26:01 Oh, FFS! The Barrow downs. Where in ancient days, men laid their lords and kings to rest. Those lords and kings came from the realm of Arnor and its balkanized successor kingdoms. Arnor, of course, was founded by Elendil the Tall, after he and his followers landed in Middle Earth, fleeing the downfall of Numenor, centuries after the destruction of Eregion. The Barrow downs became haunted after the Witch-King of Angmar attacked Cardolan. The Witch-King, of course, was the leader of the Nazgul, and did all this after he had become a wraith, which was due to the use of the Nine Rings, and Sauron’s power over them via the One, all of which have yet to be forged. So the means by which this land became dangerous do not have their originator, and the source of his evil power has not even come to pass.

28:22 This is the actual poem the barrow-wights recite to the Hobbits. So it’s not just inspired by the things in Fellowship, it’s the same ones. Who can’t exist, because they are like, two iterations of the setting still to go. It’s like these guys are supposed to be from the Ostrogothic kingdom in Italy, but we’re still in the time of the Etruscans.

29:08 Wow, when they aren’t bothering with special effects, Galadriel is extremely unimpressive in her attacks.

29:49 They are still switching between Elvish and English, when there are only Elves about. Why?

31:52 “Theo has survived far worse. He will weather this,” says Mori to reassure Isildur. They really don’t understand words, do they? First of all, AFAIK Theo has, on a couple of occasions, played hide and seek with a single orc, hid in a building while orcs attacked the village, and then followed Galadriel on a trek out of the range of the cloud cover for Mordor. That’s rough, but not a particularly harrowing CV that should render him beyond ordinary concerns of danger. Lots of people who went through worse have died. Also, the dice have no memory. You can survive a long series of hideous dangers and then die by something relatively minor. People are not RPG characters, whose hit points and immunities to injury grow as they gain experience.

Also, there is the point that Mori doesn’t actually know what has befallen Theo and cannot say with any certainty that it is not worse than any of his prior experiences. He has already noted oddities, like the wildmen’s weapons lying about, instead of being carried off, so it should be easy to extrapolate something powerful enough to quickly carry off numerous wildlings, either alive or dead. How does he know whatever this is, is not worse than anything Theo has dealt with?

32:43 It’s way too dark to see what that was, forget any dramatic effect they were going for.

34:17 His face is still filthy. What was it about the spot Astrid said he missed and felt the need to wipe clean? Don’t the actors even realize the incongruity of the lines they are speaking?

There’s that famous interview where Mark Hamill describes his concern with how fast his hair supposedly dried after escaping the Death Star’s trash compactor and imitates Harrison Ford blowing it off, but come on. This is the actual face she is looking at. It doesn’t register to Astrid’s actor that the hygiene issues go far beyond “a spot”?

34:23 Bros before hos, Isildur! Stick up for the unnamed betrothed!
Or maybe, just maybe, her betrothed is, if not fictitious, already dead, and she is having a hard time acting like he is still an issue. I am assuming he is not a hostage to her cooperation since she seemed to be burning off her mark of servitude last episode.

34:34 Most people say “How long” when referring to time, not “how much”. And given how excessively verbose and elaborate the speech of the Elves on this show, it particularly stands out.

34:55 Time to get exposed, so your lying ability vanishes. Sucks to be a character.

35:42 This is the weakest hostage protocol ever. They are just having her walk freely with them, her only guard, the guy who was suckered in to bringing her into Pelargir.

And why DIDN’T they check her? They know Isildur’s backstory, they know he came with his fellow Numenoreans, and is a stranger to these lands, he would have no way of vouching for Astrid with any certainty, unless she was a fellow Numenorean. So why did they NOT check her at the gate, instead of passing her in on Isildur’s say so? For that matter, Mori found them on the road, and seems to have escorted them back. Why didn’t he check?

Also, what is the passage of time? Mori is talking like these are long-established protocols, for a group of people who just got there. How long did it take them to develop these security measures, and be able to speak with confidence about wildmen and their practices? How does Adar feel about wildmen immediately burning off his mark (because it’s been a very recent event, his rising to power in the area, so anyone who has burned off his mark, has done so very soon after receiving it) in order to infiltrate Pelargir? Why don’t they just put it somewhere discreet, or forgo it altogether for those who will be infiltrators? Why not have infiltrating the enemy be the feat that earns you the right to wear the mark?

It’s like they wanted this to be an established evil kingdom that just ported into Middle Earth with the eruption.

35:51 Her wrists are “tied” with at least a foot of give between them. She has more than enough flex to wield a blade with two hands, or strangle an enemy.

37:57 Oh, that’s chain on her wrists. Where did they get chains and shackles in a refugee camp in the ruins?

38:01 I honestly don’t see how having her wrists loosely shackled to each other is a major impediment to escaping.

38:06 She asked him to unlock her. So they are shackles with a lock, not just welded together.

38:16 Okay, she had a chain trailing after her, so there might be something slowing her down. And I guess she’s going to use it to get Isildur out of this bog.

38:39 Yeah, Mori can’t pull him out. Any time, Astrid.
Actually, he looks a little like Atreyu in the swamps that sucked down his horse.

Speaking of which, where IS Beric?

38:59 Now how is Mori going to pull them both up? This is not compatible with physics. I am enjoying the headcanon that Astrid is thinking “Seriously? I’m all chained up in the middle of a swamp, because I only had two idiots guarding me and they both went into a bog.”

39:19 That is a really weird branch to use as a rescue pole. Your leverage is going to be shit for hauling them out.

39:52 How did Mori get swallowed in one piece, past all those choppy things in the mouth?

39:57 Oh, STFU. Just because your own dialogue sucks, don’t go stealing from Tolkien. Maybe Nori has been reading Bronwyn’s copy of LotR since she died.

40:12 His arrow fletchings were all muddy. They, and his bow, should be useless now.

40:19 So we just cut to the Retardfoot village, in the dark, so you can’t recognize it until the Gund speaks.

40:25 How do they think casting our Nori & Samantha is going to help their security? In their shoes, most people would offer to show the Gaurim where the village is in exchange for their lives, or even as a final gesture of spite at the people who cast them out. This isn’t like their vicious peripatetic kin who can kneecap their unwanted and move on without them, to be picked off by predators. The not-Stoors are in a fixed location and vulnerable to detection. They should (and if they are related to the Harfoots, would) be slitting their throats first.

40:37 Why are they making it a point to mention Sadoc to these people? Is it because they have similar skin tone? Was Sadoc a not-Stoor before becoming the trail-finder for the Harfoots? Was he cast out for security issues?

40:45 Merrimac’s facial expression suggests he is about to say “I guess, maybe?” like they’re asking him. He should be looking at Nori & Samantha, not the Gund. And why is he tied up anyway? Scratch that, why isn’t he ALWAYS tied up?

By the way, “Gund” resembles a Dwarf word with underground implications. The Dwarves are no relation to the Hobbit folk, who are a Mannish offshoot.

40:53 I can barely see that they are moving around somewhere, and that this is not still the prior scene where they are all tied up.

41:44 Let me guess. “Suzat” means “Shire” in some Tolkien language. Probably Westron, from the look of it. They have those z’s and hard sounds.

Also, for the record, the Harfoots have lost the plot, if they are the descendants of the original Burrows guy, because the implication of the all the dialogue about their travels last season is that they go back and forth to different places at different times of year, rather than wandering to find a mythical homeland.

Also, also, if Sadoc’s post was hereditary, aren’t they kind of SOL, now that he’s dead, since he didn’t have any offspring we know of, or apparently an apprentice he was training?

This does, I suppose, explain how his book tells Meteor Man where to go.

42:31 I think she’s trying to say what I just said, but her words don’t mean that. She said he never found the Suzat (assuming her tribe are not themselves a breakaway group, and Rorimas and his faithful followers are not settled down and cultivating pipeweed in proto Michael Delving) and after a while, they just kept wandering. What she said suggests they gave up on a search and now just travel randomly, instead of fixing into a migration pattern.

42:45 She’s all damp-faced when she says “We don’t have a home” as if they are searching for one, or carrying the memory of a home long since lost, like Jews in the Diaspora or Babylonian Captivity, but they have no memory at all of their ancestry from this place, nor any indication that they are seeking any sort of place to settle. As I said, they seem to have a nomadic life, migrating between various seasonal camps. Someone raised to this lifestyle, who has no contact with any outsiders, would not care very much about this concept of a home, or be so mournful about it.

This is also pretty much the opposite of her introduction as an eternally curious and restless individual. She is exactly the sort who would constantly be thinking about leaving her home, or wanting to break out of the migration patterns and go somewhere different. This sad yearning for a home doesn’t fit at all.

43:14 Ah. They are not a hidden village. Maybe if the Four Rules every newcomer must know had included some useful guidelines, we would have known this.

44:17 You killed the black Elf first? For SHAME, show!

44:42 “I know you believe this ring is deceiving me, but I believe that it is guiding me.” This sentence is A. not at all news to the audience or to Elrond, or, basically, anyone. It’s why you were demoted to lieutenant, because you believe the ring is guiding you, and B. it’s not an argument. It’s basically an assertion of your superiority. “You believe X, but here is evidence of Y” is an argument. “You believe X, but I believe Y” is merely a statement of the differences between those two peoples’ opinions. When you try to use “You believe X, but I believe Y” as an argument, the implicit assertion is that the speaker is inherently superior to the other party, and furthermore, this superiority is universally accepted. Another way to phrase that exact same concept is “What you believe does not matter, because I am always, or at least, more likely to be, right”

44:58 Now they are arguing whether or not there is a point beyond which the cost of victory is too great. Galadriel, of course, has not found that point and Elrond is asking doesn’t that scare her, but that is not the situation they are at odds over. It’s not that Galadriel is willing to do anything, no matter how immoral, to win, it’s that her judgment is grievously flawed, causing her to make stupid moves that help the enemy and render victory less likely. She says that she is more afraid of the suffering in a world ruled by Sauron, but the whole point of the Rings is that they are part of Sauron’s plan to rule the world, and she is going along with it. She is facilitating that world being ruled by him.

This is an appropriate argument to have if she is willing to press on to Eregion at all costs, leaving some of their company to die if necessary, because they HAVE to get to Celebrimbor and warn him at all costs, or maybe of going to war against Eregion and pit Elf against Elf for yet another Kinslaying, in order to bring a recalcitrant Celebrimbor to heel or prevent him from forging more Rings. The actual issue is whether or not doing what Galadriel wants is playing into Sauron’s hands.

46:40 Good on Elrond, but absolutely nothing in the depiction of Galadriel thus far makes his promise that defeating Sauron will come before her, very meaningful or difficult. I feel like most reasonable or decent people would HAPPILY pay Galadriel’s life as the price of defeating Sauron. Considering that we know in the end, it will cost Boromir’s and Theoden’s lives, and will require Frodo, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Sam, Merry, Pippen, Gandalf, Eomer, Eowyn and Faramir to risk their lives, and long before them, the deaths of Gil-Galad and Elendil, absolutely every one of whom is more likeable and more heroic than this Galadriel, and even Pippen is not so stupid or danger-bringing as she, I doubt anyone really cares about her death if that’s what it takes to win.

46:51 Who are THESE people in this incredibly dark scene?

47:15 Mori, she was all alone in a swamp, wearing chains, and the key was in that bog with you. She did not prove her trustworthiness, she merely pursued the course of action most likely to get herself freed! She has not earned having them removed.

47:33 I guess she read the script so she can tell Isildur that Mori is leaving the choice of freeing her up to him. I would think that if that was his intention, he would simply have handed the key to Isildur. Last season did he place the package believed to contain the Morghulsaber on a log next to Theo’s friend, as an indication that it was up to Theo to decide to give the thing to the Numenoreans or not?

Speaking of which, how urgent is the Theo-quest, if they are camping out and cleaning up? Also, what is the timeline? Unlike Rhun, the area around Pelargir is in roughly the same timezone as Lindon, so the alternating day-night scenes between the two locations doesn’t really work out. Is Elrond’s party currently sleeping after hearing the drums?

48:24 Mori, did you get something RIGHT? He wasn’t just randomly disappearing because the script needed Astrid and Isildur alone for a tender moment, he was setting Isildur up to demonstrate her untrustworthiness. Funny how she forgot he was around until she heard the bowstring being drawn from some distance away, though.

Also, you still need a guide to Theo, Mori. Not that I believe he’s going to shoot a spunky female of color, who is only so shifty because the world is so hard on her.

49:05 A MONSTER just appeared and swatted her across the set. Normal people are a bit more concerned about the monster, than the current state of health of the person recently holding them at sword point.

And why was Mori so concerned with her safety that he was urging her to drop the sword?

49:21 He claims to be from the Greenwood. So does that mean King Thranduil was the one who had sent troops out to keep an eye on the Southlands? I mean, he is closer than Lindon, but then why did he recall them? Why has no one come looking for them from the Southlands? Is there any correlation between withdrawing his garrisons, and the fading of Lindon? Does Thranduil even know about that?

And why did he start speaking in English, if Elvish got the Ent to stop?

49:27 The Ent has a female voice. And she sounds distressingly like L3-37, from the “Solo” movie.

53:35 We’re all cool with Astrid now? We’ve totally moved past her having the mark of Adar and trying to steal Isildur’s sword?

It’s like the default setting is that a woman is a good guy until her actions establish her as firmly on the side of bad (and going by Galdriel, that takes quite some doing), and otherwise, it’s up to other people and the world to prove worthy of her, never that she has to establish her own trustworthiness or innocence.

53:42 Wow. The fiancé is real? Isildur, you avoided a landmine with that one. You do NOT want to be with a chick who can forget a fiancé whose body she has not seen, and move on to the first guy she meets that quickly.

Can we talk about what and who Hagen is, and how he came to be imprisoned?

55:13 Why is Theo now Lord of Pelargir? How did this happen?

55:26 I can’t read the damn map in the dark, show!

55:45 I thought I saw that troll who kills orcs for fun and Adar lets him. Otherwise, it’s way too dark to understand anything other than “Orcs!”

56:06 Okay, they have no idea what these orcs are doing, so why was the one Elf’s immediate reaction “Elf treachery!”? What, specifically, is treacherous about this?

56:12 What an utterly pointless observation, Galadriel. The question is not whether the Elves are at war, but why Adar has an army heading to wear Sauron was last seen, which raises the issue of that agreement you and Elrond made in the last scene about Sauron’s defeat being more important than anything else. Well, if Adar is at war with Sauron, how do you pursue the defeat of Sauron over all other considerations, if every orc in this warband you kill is one less weapon Adar has to use against Sauron?

THIS would be a good thing for Elrond and Galadriel to have their argument about – Galadriel being willing to let Adar and company be, allowing them to fight Sauron and weaken or kill him, even if it means the destruction of these lands and the death of any Elves who are caught in the crossfire, and Elrond prioritizing saving the Elves, and seeing Adar as equally a foe to be eradicated, regardless if it means Sauron gets away.

56:29 HOW do orcs take Elves by surprise, in the forest, while they are aware of the orcs’ presence and watching their host?

56:48 They did not even notice the map guy getting shot? How are these Elves?

57:05 But the orcs smelled and heard them! This is clown world

58:00 Regardless of your opinion on the Rings, Elrond taking it is the right move. They are bad, in which case, get it away from the most likely-to-be-corrupted Elf, or they are good, in which case they must be protected, rather than be carried into danger. The other side of the coin would be that the ringbearer should be the one to get the wounded guy (or is he? Be helpful if this scene was not set in the dark, so we could see if any of the wound remained) back to Lindon, while the others fight the rear-guard action, or try to get through to Eregion.

59:05 Orcish lanterns are highly explosive, when a piece of metal heated by a rapid combustion that propels it at supersonic speeds, passes through their fuel supply. Oh, wait. That’s bullets. No idea how Galadriel made the orcs explode when she shot them with fire arrows, or made the lantern blow up, or why the orcs didn’t swarm her on horseback, especially as the leader’s words indicated they wanted information and thus needed her alive, so they should have been dogpiling her instead of swinging a blade to give her a chance for a dramatic dodge.

Do they think the darkness makes the fight scenes more palatable if we can’t see well enough to notice things like the exploding orc who was nowhere near Galadriel’s sword last season?

59:34 Good point, Elrond. Also, we are talking a Calaquendi, against a small group of orcs. Self-sacrifice should not be assumed as the outcome of the fight. It was her cousins who fought a group of Balrogs and drove them away when they first arrived in Middle Earth, and her father’s brother who went mano a mano with Morgoth himself and gave the most powerful being ever to set foot in Middle-Earth a permanent limp.

59:49 They have plenty of torches. If you are going to order them to “go back to the shadow”, why not call them “flame of Udun” and warn that the dark fire will not avail them?

1:00:08 Adar might be an ancient Elf, but Galadriel is still a Calaquendi. His appearance should not be an automatic peril for her.

Ugh.

Just, ugh.

Generic fantasy wise man we label Tom Bombadil. Ciarin Hinds (IMDb break - he us in the series as Dark Wizard, so yeah) has now appeared in two episodes and been given nothing to do, even though he is a better actor than any three members of this cast. Also, apparently, Olivia Williams and Jim Broadbent were somehow lured into a studio to record dialogue for the Ents. Do the showrunners remember that Ents are supposed to be all male, or have they decided, in their hubris, to tackle the Entwives as well, in the arrogant assumption they could deliver something more satisfying than the mystery and sense of loss their story evokes in Two Towers? And despite being blessedly free of the Harfoots for the season (while being reminded that far and away the worst parts of that plotline were Nori and Samantha, whom we can't seem to be rid of) we now have a new group to take their place.

The best thing about this season is the conflict between Elrond and Galadriel, but I've been burned too badly to trust this will work out. At least they spared us Numenor for this episode. For normal people, I would say it is out of shame at depicting the political structure as "whoever gets close to the eagle first, gets to be king" and meanwhile, the eagles, who can talk, and do so quite often in the books set years from now, when they have diminished like all magical entities in Middle Earth, are sufficiently invested to show up at Numenor coronations, but not actually offer any opinion or commentary on the process. Blurgh.