So, we got (spoiler alert) an unconfirmed but plausible explanation for that rumored late-season 2 kissing scene, and it struck me as a good time to talk quickly about something kind of unconventional about this show…

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the show’s emotional dynamics in the first season because you’re never quite sure what’s early installment weirdness and what is actually going to pan out, but now, almost halfway into the second season, it seems to be trying to show off a particular style of emotional but largely asexual friendships that you see in older English works. The interplay among the human characters in the Dracula is probably the example best known today, after LOTR itself (half a century newer than Dracula). Our own society places a very heavy focus on sexuality and tends to reinterpret such interactions in that light. So, going old-school sentimental actually allows the ROP creatives to have their cake and eat it too, with regards to things like the “cosmic connection” between Sauron and Galadriel, which the shippers can interpret as romantic, and the nonshippers can see as something more like the dynamic between James Bond and Scaramanga.

It may even, if the rumor I linked to above is true, allow them to stage a standard issue “kiss the captive to pass him/her a lockpick” scene between platonic friends instead of the flirting parties that usually “kiss the captive to pass them a lockpick.” But where does it leave romantic love in the show? The Bronwyn/Arondir relationship was a nice, courtly, understated thing, needed more chemistry but I got the vibe the actors didn’t like each other very much, so there they were. Durin IV/Disa are of course, a very sincere, charming married couple, and so were Mr. and Mrs. Brandyfoot from the first season. Earien/Kemen mostly aren’t given enough to do – I can see the faint outlines of the young woman rebelling against her father’s untrendy belief system and taking up with the good-humored fratboy with the important dad, and then there’s her brother being MIA due to a military expedition she didn’t approve of. But there’s just not enough there to invest in, and it comes back to these stupid attempts to cut the Numenorean subplot down to a nubbin and leave in the wrong things while they’re at it. Estrid/Isildur – too soon to say, although I suspect it’s inspired by the Jon Snow/Wilding girl romance in Game of Thrones.

How is the show – and Galadriel – likely to handle Celeborn’s return (pretty clearly not a this-season thing but definitely a sometime thing)? What about the Elrond/Celebrian angle, if she shows up? I don’t know. I would expect a lot of working through PTSD on both sides for Gal and her husband, however it pans out. If Celebrian is alive and about in the show, she’s estranged from her mother, which would play into the dynamic between her and Elrond at some level. On a related note, I’m less okay than I thought I was with the idea of Nori or Poppy as romantic leads at this point. The show is continuing to “code” them as tween-aged or barely teenaged girls, and that makes anything of a romantic nature involving one of them feel very awkward. Anyway, just random thoughts.