Last
night, the last few hours of September, I once more voyaged to my brother’s
house for a new installment of The Rings of Power. I had been studiously
avoiding all the review videos that had been popping up on YouTube all day already.
None of them looked like they had anything good to say about it. Odd,
that. I went in with as clear a mind as
possible, under the circumstances.
This
episode concerned itself with only two strands of the story, Mr. Tuvok and the denizens
of Tirharad fighting Adar and the Orcs, and Galadriel and the Numenoreans
sailing to Middle-earth. The two strands weave together for an explosive climax
as Galadriel and troops ride in to save the day - temporarily. No Harfoots, no
Elrond and Durin.
The
plot can be summed up thus:
Adar:
We’ve got you!
Tuvok:
(collapsing tower) On the contrary, we’ve got you!
Adar:
(somehow surviving) No, you don’t. We’ve got you!
Tuvok:
(somehow surviving the counterattack) Now we’ve got you at last!
Adar:
Ha! Those were human decoys. Now we’ve got you!
Galadriel:
(arriving with the Numenoreans) Now I’ve got you!
Adar:
(faking them out and escaping in the ensuing apocalypse) Now I’ve really got
you!
That
apocalypse is the triggering of Adar’s long-term plan all along, to set off the
first eruption of Mt. Doom so that the ensuing pall will make a Land of Shadow
where his beloved orc-offspring (“We prefer the term Uruk, you bigot”) can walk
the earth un-barbequed. The explosion seems to engulf both Orcs and men, and
the show ends with Galadriel just standing stoically while the fires overwhelm
her. But since we see her in the previews of the next episode, we can assume
her awesome girl-power will somehow allow her to survive. It would not surprise
me if she were to say something along the lines of “Naked I was sent back,
until my task is done.”
It
would be well in keeping with the innumerable and constant callbacks and Easter
eggs that plague the show as the writers rather obviously try to cadge some
magic and good will from Jackson’s wildly popular movies. They are none too
subtle, and it just comes across as lazy writing. The ‘creatives’ are none too
creative.
Episode
Six (titled ‘Udun’, the Elvish word for ‘Hell’, more or less, applied to Morgoth’s
first fortress in Middle-earth) is riddled with problematic plot devices. How
Mr. Tuvok (all right, I’ll call him Arondir) could rig the tower to collapse in
one night (where would he even get the metal bands to hold it together in the
first place? It couldn’t be a device already in place. No-one could possibly
live and work there under those conditions) is a mystery. How Orcs could delve
nearly four miles down to magma even over hundreds of years … how Numenoreans
could sail their ocean-going ship miles inland up a river before continuing on
horses … how Bronwyn’s wound, while cauterized on the outside, could also stop
bleeding internally … how nobody checked the package to see if the powerful
McGuffin was still there … how water poured on lava, though it might cause an
eruption of steam, could also somehow trigger an enormous magma explosion … these are all
‘improbable improbabilities’ that are handwaved out of consideration. (“But how
…”. “Shh. Hush, my pet. I rigged it.”) It breaks all suspension of disbelief if
you stop to think about it for five seconds. As Tolkien said, Middle-earth is a
place where (despite the existence of magic and miracles) ‘miles are miles.’
Once
more, in a dialogue between Galadriel and Adar, Orcs are argued to have a right
to existence, if only because they are in ultimate origin, ‘Children of
Iluvatar’. The same, however, could be said of Morgoth or Sauron. The tragedy
of the Orcs is that they have been twisted into a race that lives only to kill or
enslave. If they could live in harmony with other races (or even amongst
themselves) there would be no need to destroy them. But the humans of Tirharad
(though it was an occasion of pity and horror) had the right to defend
themselves and kill even their erstwhile fellow townsfolk when they turned and came
to attack them.
If I
would hazard a guess, I might say the next episode will involve the Harfoots and
the Stranger, and Elrond and Durin, probably with interludes of Galadriel
wandering in a visionary state. If I could say one definite positive thing
about this episode, it would be that at least it brings us closer to the end of
Season One.
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