Discussion of Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter Twelve

Join Cam and Maggie for the grand finale of Fellowship Book One! This chapter has a truly blockbuster ending, and we dig through all the fascinating, provocative details hidden within the confrontation with all nine (!) Black Riders. Strider's telepathy continues to unsettle Cam, and he's got an intriguing follow-up to last week's conversation about free will and Frodo's subservience to the Ring. We analyze the color palette of this chapter – startlingly grey – and offer a few different theories about what that color means in Middle-earth. (This part of the discussion totally changed how Cam thinks about Frodo!) Maggie tracks the echoes of Gandalf through these pages and we wonder more than once if he has quietly returned to the fellowship (the birds! the mysterious figure in white! the secret markings!) and we work together, throughout the episode, to make sense of Frodo's strange, corrosive, "evil" wound.

In our Second Breakfast segment, we're doing a Best of 2020 discussion! Cam and Maggie share their top three (in no particular order) movies, tv shows, albums, books, games, podcasts, and comedy specials from this terrible year. But quarantine meant that we caught up on a ton of older works of art this year too – so we start by sharing our Best Discoveries of 2020. Classic horror movies abound – but there are some surprises in there too. No Winnie the Pooh, sadly. We end the show by each announcing our favorite works of art this year in any category.

Thank you so much for your support this year, and we'll be back next week with the first half of the Fellowship movie. Obviously, I mean the extended edition. Come on.

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