This series of posts is going to be my rather disjointed thoughts on Season 1. The Prologue is a series of disclaimers/as-stipulateds I want to get out of the way first.

Writing: I’m just going to stipulate that it’s fairly terrible, possibly for reasons beyond the writer/producers’ control. The project was cut from ten to eight episodes late in development for instance, and a lot of dubious story-telling decisions feel like the kind of thing that started out as a “note” from an Amazon executive. Bad TV/film writing is not necessarily a deal-breaker for me (casts affectionate look at my Evil of Frankenstein blu ray and my Krull dvd), provided I can learn from it, laugh and point at it, or the actors can rise above it. I will talk about specific writing decisions I disagree with in later posts, as I deal with specific storylines/sets of characters.

Directing/Editing: ranges from mediocre to comparatively good; not hugely interested in arguing about it. May come up in passing here and there as I talk about the storylines.

Special Effects/Production Design/Music: Going to stipulate that all this is fairly okay at worst and darned good at best.

Fidelity to the Books: Will address on an as-needed basis. All I will say for now is that it’s not a new problem: the Peter Jackson films included Warrior Princess Arwen, Hamlet!Aragorn, Jerk!Faramir, and Psycho!Denethor…and those are just the deviations the PJ fans will acknowledge.

Casting: In a premodern setting dependent on sailing ships and horseback, ethnic groups tend to keep to themselves(1), except when certain travel patterns (in port cities, for instance) bring them together. In a premodern secondary world, you need to articulate how these groups are brought together, if at all. After a rocky start, some details emerge to make the ROP world a little more believable in this regard. There are hints that the diverse, wandering Harfoots we see are a merger of two different tribes; there’s a revelation late in the season that now-isolationist Numenor used to have colonies (presumably Miriel’s mother and Valandil’s family came from there originally), and it becomes clear from the background characters we see here and there that Disa is part of an ethnic minority in Khazad-dum, presumably one of those groups of Dwarves who lost their ancestral mansion and came to Khazad-dum as refugees.

(1) this is how they became ethnic groups in the first place.