Note: my co-watchers and I were originally planning on watching 108 and 201 as a double feature on Thursday and maybe holding off on 202 and 203 until Friday, but a mystery anthology series we watch handed us one of those bummer episodes where the murderer is the only sympathetic character, and we wanted something to wash off the taste.

The co-watchers seemed to feel that 106 to 108 really brought the show up a notch in their view, and I was inclined to agree. There’s a certain amount of stupid stuff, like Gil-Galad randomly losing hope just so Elrond can quote his own words about hope back at him, but this thing where characters pull a 180 seems pretty common in modern tv: the later seasons of Person of Interest committed this also, usually in the interest of making Root or Shaw look good at the expense of my favorite character, Harold. Loki, which is the only other somewhat current English-language series I follow besides ROP, did its fair share as well.

General thoughts on the episode and season overall:

-The only possible explanation for this version of Galadriel is that we’re supposed to see her as the rather spoiled youngest child and only daughter/sister of a family of particularly good-natured and easy-going Elves. (1) Which is not at all the vibe I got from the LOTR books or the Unfinished Tales, which summarizes most of the known bits of (conflicting) backstory Tolkien gave her, but there are bits that I guess could be read that way by someone who disliked the character for some reason (or was a vampire recoiling from the “Marian” characteristics she seems to show in the LOTR books). With regard to bits that could be read as spoiled!Galadriel, I’m thinking specifically of the backstories on the Elfstone that passes to Aragorn.

–That being said, I respect ROP’s attempt to interrogate and deconstruct the infallible warrior girlboss trope; it’s been played straight pretty much continuously since Aliens (1986), with a few zigzags here and there (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and maybe Fringe come to mind here), and we were about due for a counterpoint. It’s also somewhat appropriate that it be done in the framework of this mythos, originally created by a man who knew, long before Yoda, that mere wars and mere prowess in wars did not make one great. I just wish this wasn’t the character they were using for it.

-I really wish they’d found a way to spell out earlier in the show that Elrond sees Galadriel as a mother figure or big sister figure, given how touchy-feely he is around her. His description of her finding him by the seashore as a “newly orphaned elf-child” is sweet, and you could with a bit of timeline crunching argue that it is about the fallout from his kidnappers/foster-fathers/first half-cousins thrice removed Maedhros and Maglos(2) messing with the Silmarils rather than about the disappearance of his biological parents.

-Less bothered by the alloy stuff this time around. Celebrimbor does know about alloys, he just doesn’t think it would work for mithril, and since he’s positioned as basically a jewel smith seeking to emulate Feanor’s Silmarils (rather than, say, the blades and wargear of the great Dwarven smith Telchar(3)), it’s not completely crazy that Celebrimbor might be unfamiliar with copper+tin=bronze.

-If Will Fletcher’s impersonation of Charlie Vickers in the Sauron-masquerading-as-Finrod scene is acting rather than some Rogue One cgi bs where they mapped his face over Vickers emoting, Fletcher’s frigging brilliant and deserves a better career than he seems to have gotten.

-The Stranger’s murmured “I’m good” is probably meant to be dorky-cute in the same way that all the harfoot stuff is. It worked for me at that level, YMMV. Over the course of the mid-late series Markella Kavanaugh seems to have settled into a more platonic, hero-worshipping mode for Nori’s interactions with the Stranger, so maybe we can chalk the more crush-like moments up to early installment weirdness.

Thoughts on the upcoming season:

-I felt like season one had an intriguing but also disorienting opening, a rocky middle and a strongish close (4). The fact that Amazon’s dropping three eps instead of two this coming Thursday suggests they have more confidence in ep 203 (rumored, like ep 103, to be fairly Numenorean) than they did in 103.

–This does not rule out the possibility that episodes 204-205/6 are long on the kind of (square?) wheel-spinning and general talkiness that dominated 103-105. I’m not overly concerned with 207-208 because they are most likely dominated by the siege of Ost-en-Edhil in Eregion, and the teasers suggest that this part at least is competently done.

-I see a certain amount of badmouthing by fans of the production design and music for Rhun for season 2; I suspect there is a conscious effort to not tie the Sauron-worshipping Rhunish culture(s) too closely to real Middle Eastern or Asian cultures. If so, probably a wise move.

-comments leaking out from early screenings of the first two episodes claim that there are flashback scenes addressing Sauron’s history with the proto-orc Adar, and the sequence of events that landed him on the raft, which is good to know. These comments also suggest that there continue to be kind of contrived plot elements, like Poppy suddenly showing up to chaperone travel with Nori and the Stranger (not that I’m complaining), and that some elements of the Elf subplot (probably meaning Elrond’s sudden disapproval of the Three Rings shown in promo clips) also come off as contrived.

–Basically, I think we’re likely to see some polishing off the rough edges of the show’s writing style, and maybe more palatable versions of characters who came off as either abrasive or foolish in season 1 (Galadriel, Isildur, maybe Gil-Galad although I’m not holding my breath) as they work their way from zero to hero. But this show will probably always (for however long it is made) prioritize the Cool Moment and the Big Reveal over strict plot logic,(5) just as Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens did before them. Unlike PJ et al, and because we’re dealing with tv producers from the Bad Robot stable, ROP is probably always going to try to paper over the plot holes with talky character moments instead of piling spectacle on top of spectacle.

—As a fan of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which didn’t have much going for it initially, except cool sets and an endless string of semi-interesting character moments, I have good news for you: sometimes tv writers dramatically improve as they get a feel for their setting and for their actors’ strengths. But, it’s never a guarantee, and even when they do, they don’t automatically learn how to do other things well, like story arc writing.

(1) canonically, her father and eldest brother were kind of that; her younger brothers Angrod and Aegnor (whose failed love story with the human woman Andreth appears in History of Middle Earth and seems like a probable inspiration for Arondir/Bronwen) had more “fiery” or intense personalities. Orodreth, who had Finarfin’s and Finrod’s softer side without their leadership skills, was another brother in some versions (used in the Silmarillion) and a nephew in other versions.

(2) Maedhros and Maglor were the eldest sons of Feanor, half-brother of Fingolfin, grandfather of Elrond’s paternal grandmother Idril. In the versions where Celebrimbor was descended from Feanor, Celebrimbor rebelled against his father Curufin, who was one of Feanor’s middle sons, and a thoroughly bad lot who betrayed Galadriel’s brother Finrod and tried to assault Elrond’s maternal great-grandmother Luthien. Galadriel’s father Finarfin was half-brother to Feanor and full-brother to Fingolfin. There’s a reason, beyond the rights issues, why ROP doesn’t want to draw attention to how closely related Galadriel, Gil-Galad, Elrond and the royal line of Numenor (which descends from Elrond’s brother Elros and includes Elendil’s ancestors as one of its offshoots) all are. It’s simultaneously kind of remote, and just close enough to be really confusing in a visual medium, where we don’t have a handy family tree!

(3) who made Narsil (later reforged as Anduril, Aragorn’s weapon), the knife Angrist which Beren used to cut a Silmaril out of Morgoth’s crown, and the Dragon-helm of Dor-lomin which figures in the Tale of the Children of Hurin.

(4) I could quibble about all the people who survive a sudden volcanic eruption in ep 106, but I see this kind of nonsense so often in action movies that I’m kind of jaded about it. And PJ had Frodo and Sam all but stick their faces in the lava of Orodruin in Return of the King, so his fans don’t have a leg to stand on when criticizing this aspect of ROP ep 106.

(5) You don’t have to like it, but you do have to recognize that the beloved LOTR movies and less beloved Hobbit movies laid the groundwork for this slam-bang, flashy-washy approach to what were originally rather philosophical stories, which had a low-key approach to magic and a jaded veteran’s view of war. And once you recognize that, you have to shape your critiques of ROP accordingly. In a word, I feel like the ROP team makes many of the same mistakes as the LOTR movie team,(6) and if I’m supposed to roll my eyes in a jaded way and go along with them when PJ and Company make these mistakes, I don’t really see why I’m supposed to jump all over these tv ppl for making them.

(6) although the ROP creative team don’t think Elrond is a grumpy anti-human bigot and they don’t think Gandalf is a twee, smarmy Father Christmas standin who happens to have combat skills, and so far they have not had Galadriel manifest her darker impulses by turning into a cgi banshee, so I guess they have that going for them.