44. (Various Sighs and Groans.)

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, season 1.

Jared, Oriana and Ned talk about the inevitable: the first season of The
Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Ever since By-the-Bywater began, the
show’s creation, filming and buildup to its release has loomed large in our
news reports and there were inevitable questions about it the more information
was surfacing. But there was always hope that it could in fact succeed and add
to the notable if admittedly varied canon of Tolkien adaptations already
created over time. Suffice to say that there was a lot of heavy promotion, a
whole amount of attention and there are definitely plenty of people out there
who have enjoyed the series to one degree or another. The three of us…are not
among them. Frankly, not in the slightest, outside of a few particular points
and factors, and we try and bring them up as we can. But we’re not going to
pussyfoot around the fact that we found this eight episode introductory season
to otherwise be a near-unmitigated disaster and are still picking our way
through the wreckage like the orcs after the ‘are you kidding us right now’
Mount Doom relighting trick. What choices were made by the showrunners to
create incidents and particular character arcs, whether from Tolkien’s own
creations or invented characters of their own, and why did so many of them
fall so flat? What did the continuing use of non-standard English dialects
mean for certain characters and how they’re meant to be perceived or
understood? Who were the good actors who actually did something of note with
their often confusing or underwritten or just poorly written character
motivations? What if anything was in line with Tolkien’s general themes and
approaches, and more importantly, what wasn’t? And once again, what in the
WORLD with that scheme about Mt. Doom, good frickin’ grief.

Jared’s
doodle. See,
if they’d cast a Celebrimbor who even LOOKED like this…

Yup, second season of The Rings of
Power is
happening. Yup, sure
is. Great.

The HarperCollins union
announces the
strike. Again,
please honor it.

We tend to favor the reactions that look at things with at least a slightly
gimlet eye. James Whitbrook’s end-of-season episode recap at
io9 had some good tart points, especially on the unnecessary
approach making the entire season a prologue or pilot, in essence.

Published before the end of the season, Kathryn VanArendonk’s Vulture piece
“The Fantasy Prequel Problem,” which also and
understandably takes in House of the Dragon as well, also had some sharp observations.

Undone is a really,
really good series that Amazon has, indeed. Check it out.

Repeating from the previous episode’s show notes: Ned’s
Twitter
threads on the
time compression problem in the series with specific regard to Númenor.

The actual destruction of the Two
Trees in this clip is truly
marvelous, an excellent brief summary…and as we say, it immediately falls
apart after that.

J. J. Abrams’s famous/infamous TED
Talk about
the mystery box/puzzle box approach he favors, which the ROP showrunners
clearly have taken to heart. (We are not fans.)

A recent argument about how the Star Wars prequels became more embraced. (The point
Oriana notes about having a vision is brought up as a factor.) See also Rian
Johnson’s 2020
tweet.

The Bronwyn/Theo/orc duel in episode
2 and the Galadriel/Adar barn
debate in episode 6 are very
good scenes! But they were all too rare in comparison.

Our earlier episode on orcs.

If you want to delve more into the haphazard weirdness of 1980s/1990s D&D
novels – and there are quite a lot to choose from – Rob Bricken’s irregular
‘Dungeons & Dragons & Novels’ series on io9 has been a treat; here’s the most
recent entry.

Caroline Framke’s Variety piece on the
show is much more positive than ours but zeroes in on
an inescapable fact: the lack of traction the show has had in terms of wider
discussion/interest, especially in comparison to House of the Dragon.

Star Wars: Andor! The Wheel of Time! The forthcoming
Willow series! There’s
so much more that’s just…better out there.

Our episode from last year on Peter Jackson’s Fellowship of the
Ring.

Subscription required but we do indeed recommend Lindsay Ellis’s new video on
Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings adaptation
choices, as well as the Like Stories of Old’s YouTube video The Rings of
Powers Has a Narrative Momentum
Problem.

The Spouter-Inn’s episode on The Two
Towers – the bonus episode with Jared
is forthcoming. (Their earlier Fellowship of the Ring
episode, as well as the bonus episode
with Oriana.)

Support By-The-Bywater and our network,
Megaphonic. Thanks!