Discussion of The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter Three

Join Cam and Maggie for a chapter that celebrates all things Pippin. I guess he's our main character now, and Tolkien takes great pains to differentiate him from Frodo or Bilbo. The stakes are higher than ever – our new heroes don't have a wizard's protection or any survival skills. Merry and Pippin are launched into a great adventure, without weapons or friends or anything but some lembas bread. The orcs are developed into real characters and genuine villains. We learn about the infighting and resentment that plagues Middle-earth's "evil" characters, and Cam gets to talk about Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Later on, we revisit our discussions about fate and the original sin of Tolkien's world (spoiler: it's the fact that people keep torturing Gollum). And then, in the grand finale of our year-long investigation, we finally, definitively identify Tolkien's narrator. It's not who you expect it is.

In our Second Breakfast, Maggie leads us back into the world of horror with a breakdown of Insidious and Sinister. The films are explored for their surprising structural echoes of LOTR and Cam slips in a claim that this week's chapter was horror. Oh no, I forgot, he also makes a Winnie-the-Pooh reference early in the episode. It's a full-blown regression. We end the episode with a redemption arc for Zack Snyder and his wonderful, loyal adaptation of Watchmen.

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