November 01, 2022

44. (Various Sighs and Groans.)

1 hour 24 minutes

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.

Show Notes.

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.)

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By Jared Pechaček, Oriana Scwindt, and Ned Raggett

4.8

2929 ratings