03:13 This little speech, two sentences in, sounds nothing like Tolkien dialogue, and more like something out of the Wheel of Time show. In other words, generic, modern, pretentious self-congratulatory writing. You’d get it sometimes on Legend of the Seeker, or Game of Thrones, in the seasons when they were still trying, but veering away from book material.

And speaking as a fellow unreconciled Latin Mass Catholic, there is nothing impressive about this Blessing of the Children ceremony. I doubt Tolkien would have invented anything like this, or put it in his story if it were suggested to him.

4:28 Okay, why is she getting a vision of the fall of Numenor? The Valar would not send it only to her, unless it was to warn her off a course of action she is directly taking that will bring it to pass. And frankly, she is just too dark-skinned to be given Ar-Pharazon’s role.

5:31 Pretty sure “statecraft” does not consist of telling people to their faces that they constitute “small matters.” And why is the villain of Numenor, or at least their equivalent of Denethor, being shown as a government official, instead of the king? Are these progressive modern writers actually monarchists, portraying a heroic queen standing up to a professional politician (who answers in at least some way to the people, if he is out pressing the flesh)?

7:24 Ahh, he’s Trump. Soooo clever. So original.

9:15 Galadriel stole those scrolls…that are on the table in front of the Queen? That’s a unique definition of theft.

9:53 How about the thing where Miriel’s ancestor Beren and Galadriel’s brother Finrod were tossed into a werewolf pit together by Sauron? Is that not a thing that they would bring up, rather than some nonsense about an alliance of the Elves and Numenor against Sauron that cannot have happened yet, since the war with Sauron only started after he had forged the Rings?

10:31 Is isolationism in such bad odor these days, that they feel it makes a better national sin that conquest and colonization?

11:34 Was that supposed to be impressive? Answering an argument about her rank and importance with “I am special!” when the other person accurately points out the lack of either? This Galadriel is the worst. Like someone online said a few weeks ago, she is both a Karen AND a Mary-Sue.

11:43 In jail for sedition basically means you’ve been cancelled.

13:42 Valandil is talking a lot of smack about a guy who is going to name his son after him. I think. Pretty sure Anarion’s son, the progenitor of the Kings of Gondor was Valandil.

14:01 But seriously, what kind of organization kicks someone out for trying to fix someone else’s mistake? That was done purely to create drama.

14:57 Can’t be Sauron. Maybe a rogue Elf?

18:11 Well, this is a very Morgoth-y type of sermon. And if Adar means father, he DID create the Orcs.

22:58 I want this kid to get eaten.

24:44 Unimpressed. If you think someone is hiding somewhere in a limited body of water, you wait until they could not possibly be holding their breath. Or pull the bucket up and drop it in again, to see if you hit anything. This is a plot-mandated escape.

24:56 Elves and dwarves worked together a lot in the First Age. Celebrimbor’s father was one of the primary dealers with the Dwarves of Beleriand.

25:15 Okay, what we know of Celebrimbor in the First Age was that after his father, Curufin was driven out of his lands (near the dwarves he did business with), he lived in Nargothrond, which was the kingdom of Finrod, Galadriel’s motivational device brother, which was built with the help of Dwarves, who bestowed upon Finrod the cognomen, “Felgund”, for his awesome cave-building chops. And when Curufin rebelled against the leadership of Nargothrond, he left, but Celebrimbor renounced his father’s deeds, and remained. Meanwhile, Elrond’s father, Earendil, was raised in a coastal enclave after the fall of Gondolin, and then Elrond himself was raised by Curufin’s brother, after Curufin died killing his father-in-law, and then said brother took part in an attack that separated Elrond from his mother, when she was forced to flee without him. I feel like Celebrimbor would not have had a whole lot of opportunities to meet Earendil and far more opportunities to meet Elrond. It should not be 1500 years into Elrond’s adulthood that he is discovering an acquaintance between Celebrimbor and Earendil.

25:51 I was wondering what sort of plot nonsense is going to happen to justify Celebrimbor’s (doomed) future being in Elrond’s hands, and then I realized, “Duh, Vilya.” Celebrimbor’s future, that is, his legacy, his greatest creation, will literally, end up in Elrond’s hand (or one third of that legacy) Not the greatest way to phrase that.

26:10 Okay, if they are so about the souring of relations between the Dwarves and the Elves, that they can’t help but comment on the irony of Elves and Dwarves working together at every opportunity, then Dwarves keeping a secret from the Elves they are supposed to be working with, should be setting off a whole lot more alarm bells. Things went bad between the two peoples, because the Dwarves hired by Elrond’s great-grandfather to craft the ultimate piece of jewelry, mounting a Silmaril on the Nauglamir that had been a token of friendship between Galadriel’s brother and the Dwarves of Beleriand, they decided to keep it for themselves and murdered the Elf King in order to steal it. This was the big event that made them mistrust one another. It should be a whole more than mere social awkwardness.

30:27 Why do you teach your children the password to your greatest secret, or conversely, why do you make the password to your greatest secret, a children’s game rhyme?

32:11 Ooo, about that, Durin. Elrond’s kin have already been doomed to sorrow. Over shiny rocks, too.

34:39 I guess they’re going to make one of the rings out of that chunk.

36:45 Galadriel spent decades, if not centuries, in Doriath studying under its queen, and also spent time in Nargothrond with her brother, its king. There is no reason she should not know how to deal with a royal court. Especially since both her grandfathers were kings.

37:50 Galadriel should not need to be taught all this or walked through the logic! The show has established that it knows her behavior is boorish and obnoxious, but there is no justification for her being this way. She is not a rebellious young punk, she has been around for thousands of years.

39:49 More to the point, you’re not allowed to go west! That was a rule your family was fine with, in contrast to the entire rest of the country.

44:08Holy crap, Galadriel has the most incredible ego. The virtue of the Edain was not loyalty to the Elves, but to the Valar and it was opposition to Morgoth. Friendship with the Elves was a symptom of their virtue, not the source of it. Not least because Elves are not perfect either, and did some bad stuff to Men, and many great heroes explicitly defied the will of their Elven lieges or benefactors, such as Beren, Haleth, and Tuor.

44:39 This is entirely the opposite of the truth. Numenor’s crime was not isolationist behavior, it was not a refusal to help against Sauron. The worst of its kings, the one whose actions resulted in the destruction of Numenor, took the fight to Sauron. This looks like making Galadriel and Miriel equally and inexplicably pig-headed and blind or else servicing modern political arguments, regardless of the actual story they are supposed to be adapting.

45:35 Seriously, what was the long-term plan here, Bronwyn? Hide out in this tower, until what? Did you think the food you brought was going to multiply somehow?

46:00 That wheelbarrow could not hold enough food to feed a single meal to everyone just in this scene, let alone the whole population of a village.

46:28 Ah, yes. Night, the best time to evade nocturnal creatures. This is not a case of ignoring Tolkien’s established lore, these are rules the show has been leaning on hard, in its every depiction of orcs so far!

48:32 I am sure the writers are very proud of themselves for ending the scene on that line. Which has no connection to the people who used it in Moria. Now, if someone had used it in an innocent context in a scene Khazad Dum, that could have been good foreshadowing.

49:36 The dramatic slo-mo of Bronwyn’s arrival just highlights how silly and impractical her costume is. It does not add a cool factor.

53:45 Earendil did not singlehandedly sail to Valinor, he had teammates, and they failed until Elwing joined them, and brought the Silmaril, which enabled him to penetrate the magical defenses.

55:00 That was a good use of backstory lore to deal with an original and present-day issue.

56:34 Actually, Dwarves believe, in the case of this particular royal family, that those they name Durin are the reincarnation of their progenitor, Durin the First.

1:04: Silly woman of color doubting the white lady. Now you bring your doom.

1:06:00 Are they giving Ar-Pharazon’s act of hubris to Miriel? That’s actually refreshing that they are doing the good along with the bad when it comes to shoving female characters to the front.

So this wasn't too bad of an episode. Not much in the way of actions scenes to butcher or lore to get wrong. But it also doesn't feel like it has a point. What did we get out of the bits in Khazad Dum? They were mining mithril and then stopped when it got dangerous. We know they did this, we know it eventually goes bad. Did we need to establish that Durin and his father love and respect each other, but sometimes disagree? What was the point of the Dwarves keeping mithril a secret? The stuff about Sauron's rise to power in future-Mordor is kind of interesting, I just don't care about the stupid kid or the romance between Bronwyn and Mori and their own plot is hampered by inextricable bad decision-making.

Blessedly, we were spared the Harfoots this week.

Galadriel is still just an utter waste. This whole fixation on Sauron - it's a PREQUEL. This is the same problem with the major change to the lore that "House of the Dragon" made - they are linking their prequel characters to the preternatural enemy of the original series, but we know what happens to that enemy, and it has nothing to do with the characters who are so linked. What is the point of Galadriel's obsession with defeating Sauron? Is this all just build up to her decision to give a flashlight to a Hobbit that will get him past the penultimate boss on his quest to take down Sauron? Because that's about the extent of the role she played. The only explanation for the depiction thus far is if they are giving her an arc of personal growth, which should already have happened. Older. Than. The. Sun.

The Downfall of Numenor looks like it's going to be scrambled into incoherence in service to fashionable politics, with Miriel being an underappreciated Queen. I have no clue what they are doing with Pharazon and Halbrand. I guess the conflict between Pharazon and Elendil over he direction Numenor should take will be made primarily a source of drama in the budding romance between their children, rather than the soul of a nation and shape of their world. How interesting that for all they made her adept in the STEM fields, they still just introduced this female character to have a love story. They have learned nothing from The Hobbit, have they? Meanwhile, one possibility for Halbrand is he looks to be a secret villain, he's working for Sauron all along, or maybe he IS Sauron with his interest in forging and skill at winning people over, and cruelty he can't help indulging. Or he's a tragic figure who will fall fighting Sauron and Galadriel's inspiration going forward. Maybe she finally see in his fall the futility of trying to go up against Sauron with mere might alone. Because watching her uncles go through that exact same arc with Morgoth didn't teach her anything.

At least it's better than Wheel of Time and the Disney _ Universe shows. However low a bar that is to clear.