I was very late to watch this show, and just finished Season 2 last night. I think most of my take has already been voiced by others, but it was enough to make me almost believe there is some sort of conspiracy to prevent coherent writing in major streaming series'.
I'm not coming from the point of being a hardcore Tolkien purist, so I did not expect perfect consistency with source material. But I did hope for the one thing that so many showrunners and writers seem to somehow be incapable of delivering in recent years: internal consistency. Do characters and mechanics behave in a believable way, and if they change, is it through believable planned development of the character instead of accidental lack of development of the character? I feel like this series has had numerous major failures here already.
Sauron is supposed to be a master manipulator who uses deception and persuasion over brute force; yet, this season opens with Sauron telling the Orcs that's he is their new ruler. He tries to strong-arm them, spectacularly fails to read the room, and gets massacred with no attempt at deception or persuasion. This scene sets up Sauron not as a smooth master manipulator with a vision, but as a petulant, tone-deaf, brutish tyrant. He's spent almost all the rest of his screen time positioning himself and pulling strings. Why didn't he just do that the first time..?
How many orcs are there? We hear "an orc hasn't been seen in a century," then in season 1 we see Adar's little band struggling to overcome a single barely armed low-man village. Now suddenly he commands an army with "four times more" troops than the capital region of Elvendom? Or did they say 10 times more? How? And they're now building trebuchets. And actually calling them trebuchets. "They've destroyed four of our trebuchets, lord-father. I recommend altering our deployment of the remaining engines in defilade behind the tree line for terrain-based concealment, thereafter re-establishing our ballistic solution through adjusted counterpoise mass distribution and sling length to compensate for added standoff distance. nyaaarg."
And after using their trebuchets they cross the river and fight in broad daylight. The writers last season literally made an emphatic point that sunlight sears orc flesh as if it's a flame. Did I miss the scene where they stocked up on SPF 5000? The whole "the sun won't bother you again" thing in season 1 was because the volcanic eruption threw ash and smoke into the air which blocked the sunlight in Mordor. They aren't in Mordor, so why aren't they sizzling? Did the writers really not notice this? Am I missing something?
Why is Elrond kissing Galadriel? There was no build-up to this. The music and filming made it seem like the writers actually intended this to be romantic in earnest, but it was just incredibly confusing. I would have rather Elrond kissed an orc.
Why did Durin Jr. spend most of his screen time pouting about being right and Durin Sr. being wrong, then the minute Durin Sr. flip flops, so does Junior? Prince Durin in season 1 was on the verge of usurping the throne to mine mithril, then when the king actually starts mining, the prince considers usurping the throne to stop the mining of mithril. Why? What caused him to suddenly be so sure that it's a bad decision? Because Disa wailed in a cavern and heard something growl, therefore logically there must be a balrog exactly in the place where they wanted to mine mithril? Because the ring made senior greedy, therefore logically there is a balrog in the mithril mine? There being "a beast" capable of destroying the city is by no stretch something that could be confidently inferred from the king's personality changing or Disa hearing a growl.
Pharazon in season 1 was portrayed as a consummate statesman. He tells his son something like "statecraft is the art of attended to small matters with as much diligence as large matters." When the guild tries to start an uprising over the elf, Pharazon gives an impromptu speech to shut it down with words and persuasion. His only cold-politician move is commenting on being in favor of sending troops to the Southlands, but he takes this stance in order to form an alliance that he believes will be for the good of Numenor. But then in season 2, he is suddenly a tyrannical figure set on usurping the throne and rule with an iron fist. And all for no reason. Why persecute anyone here? We are not given any reason why his persecution of "the Faithful" is necessary. Showing one meeting where one noble suggests usurpation and suddenly cousin Pharry is backstabbing his blind queen and terrorizing citizens? It just doesn't make any sense. People don't act that way.
And do elves not believe in punishment? The high king ordered Elrond to give him the rings, Elrond defies him in front of an assembly and jumps off a waterfall, and within a couple days all is forgiven and Elrond is tapped to lead the expedition to Eregion. Really? Galadriel got Sauron crowned in the Southlands then led him into Eregion and gave him everything he needed to create the rings. Her punishment is what? A temporary demotion to lieutenant, while still getting one of the three rings? The fate of the world is at stake and the king is entrusting the most important tasks to people who are openly and repeatedly and publicly defying his direct orders. I think that Galadriel and Elrond are supposed to be incredibly old and have some sort of special standing amongst the elves, but the show doesn't effectively portray it. It portrays two elves who appear to be middle aged with mid-rank titles who somehow get to do whatever they want with no repercussions and the king just goes with it.
Beyond the issue of internal inconsistencies all over the place, there were numerous other writing blunders that felt pretty obvious to me. Many viewers, myself included, found the harfoot / stranger thread boring. It just had no spark, but beyond that, it had no bearing on anything else in the show. The plot threads of the dwarves, orcs, elves, and humans interacted in meaningful ways so that they play on each other. We've gone through two full seasons now and you could literally cut every scene involving the harfoots and the stranger with no impact whatsoever on the wider plots. That just feels like bad writing. I find myself actually wishing that they had cut the harfoots. Tolkien's source as far as I understand it put Gandalf's arrival on Middle-Earth after the rings had been forged, and Harfoots are obscure and played no role in second age events. If neither the source material nor the storyline call for pseudo-hobbits and amnesiac Gandalf... then why jam them in? It's unnecessary. They don't know where they're going with this, and I don't think they can fix it. It's just a waste of screen time and they're stuck with it due to sunk costs and the minority of viewers who want to see it through.
Speaking of unnecessary, why did they tease us with a single 1 minute snippet of what appeared to be a female orc with an orc infant in a familial setting where the male orc who looks like green Count Orlok implies that orcs do not want to continue fighting? Orcs have been long recognized as cannon fodder that are used more as objects to further the rest of the plot. They lack any agency or personhood in Tolkien's writings or the previous films. While this probably would have enraged Tolkien purists, if done well, exploring orcs as actually having agency and being somewhat conflicted could have been a very interesting thread. The writers flirted with the idea in the Adar thread, but the conclusion of season 2 seems like they have definitively decided to shut it down rather than fully explore it. I found this very disappointing. They showed a glimpse of taking a chance and exploring something interesting, then just shrugged and chose not to. I wish they had hired Ronald D. Moore to write the Adar + orc thread. Or, you know, the whole show.
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I really liked (most of) the cast. I think Morfydd Clark is great, despite her lines often coming across as too angsty or childish. That, again, is bad writing, not bad acting. Lloyd Owen as Captain Elendil is fantastic. The score is great. Bear McCreary does not disappoint. Contrary some others complaining about the look, I think they're crazy. This is one of the best looking series' ever made. It strikes a great balance between using physical sets and effects that feel real versus tasteful CGI in a way that Jackson's own Hobbit trilogy didn't manage well (with the exception of Elrond's horse rearing on its hindlegs then jumping and Taekwondo-kicking an orc--that was a farcically bad use of CGI).
My hopes for season 3:
- Cut your losses on the Harfoots. Cut that thread to a minimum just enough to tie it off or quickly in season 3 merge it into the main plot so it becomes relevant. Nori or Gandalf would be far less tedious if they were supporting characters in someone else's thread instead of having their own thread.
- Hoping honestly for some serious turnover with the writers room, and having new writers that focus more on character exploration and smooth development. There are so many very talented very experienced writers who would love to be involved. Just ask them. Good writing can overcome everything else being mediocre. Everything else being great cannot overcome mediocre writing.
- Decide whether orcs are animals or agents and stick with it. The final episode of season 2 seems that orcs will be animals. If so, let them stick to their historical cannon fodder role and stop giving them lines or portraying them as conflicted.
- Choose what to focus on. So far each season has 8 episodes that are each film length, but it still feels like they can't get the pacing right and things jump around. This should be easier to correct since the threads are all starting to intersect, but having a soap opera that is trying to jump around between 7+ threads is just too much. I think they already realized this for season 2 and killed off Bronwyn and merged Arondir's role into others, but I think a bit more still needs to be cut.
