quarks

At one point, JB and Michelle were talking - seriously - about reaching 200 grandchildren, or about 10 kids for each of the 19 Duggarlings, plus a few extra for some of them. That seemed unlikely at the time, and seems even less likely now that most of the oldest Duggarlings - with the possible exceptions of Jessa and the convict -- appear to be opting for smaller families. At least, smaller than ten children families. Jeremy and Jinger in particular - for a time there, at least, it seemed that they would have just two kids. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop at three. I will be surprised if they have more than four. No judgement from me. But I'm guessing at least some judgement from JB and Michelle. Partly because it's a clear rejection of the lifestyle that JB and Michelle deliberately chose - and I suspect that hurts their egos - but also because, any child that doesn't participate in this WE NEED 200 GRANDCHILDREN thing by popping out ten kids is preventing JB and Michelle from reaching that goal. That might be acceptable for Jana prior to her recent marriage, but Jinger? Married, by all appearances decently well off? Why wouldn't she have ten kids to support this 200 grandchildren goal? Why is she doing this to JB and Michelle? So, yeah. I suspect that there's been some parental judgement/pressure/guilt tripping about Jinger's choices.

Judgement from her parents, perhaps?

The show called the previous now dead king "Tar," but I have no idea if casual viewers noticed this point. Regarding the name of the shrine: I thought that was meant to be a shrine to Nienna, but after I thought about it, I think your suggestion of Nienor also works as an indication of just how mixed up current beliefs are, and how mixed up the myths have gotten. I like it. Agreed that the show hasn't done a great job of showing/clarifying what the Numenoreans - any of the Numenoreans - feel about the Valar. Miriel as probably the most prominent example - she's one of the Faithful, yes, but she often doesn't seem to be following their faith and tenets. She didn't show up to the ceremony at the shrine, for instance. Then we have Elendil, who apparently stopped believing at one point, and is now a believer again, and Pharazon, who apparently is not a believer but is happy to make use of their beliefs. There's also the issue that back in the first season, the Faithful were apparently so unpopular that Miriel and Elendil initially felt they could only speak about them in coded language, but in this season, we have Belzager talking about them in open court - disparagingly, but still - and agreeing to have a Faithful ceremony as a trial for Elendil and Miriel. So my guess is - and I have to stress is that this is just a guess - that we are meant to figure out that the Faithful are a small but quiet group, with a few members at court, with coded ways to identify each other, and that the majority of the Numenoreans are skeptical to hostile towards the Valar. The Sea Monster trial didn't have all that many witnesses, after all, and although at least some of that is thanks to production issues, I think we can also assume that not all that many Numenoreans believe in the Valar. I think.

You may well be correct that the two of them have certain biases about women. But: 1. JD Payne and Patrick McKay are not the only showrunners/executive producers. Yes, they are doing a lot of the interviews - but their interviews also reveal that one of the main guiding forces behind this show is former Amazon executive Sharon Tal Yguado, who is not only credited as a showrunner/executive producer/creative executive, but as the one who helped pitch the show in the first place and then hired the rest of the showrunners, producers and writers. She remained with the show after she left Amazon and by all accounts maintains a leading creative role in between doing gaming stuff, reading/reviewing/approving all scripts. Other executive producers/showrunners include Lindsey Weber, who also does a lot of interviews and appears to be active on the creative side, and, as previously mentioned, Gennifer Hutchinson. All three of these women appear to be heavily involved in the show on the creative side, in contrast to, say, Eugene Kelly who appears to be there to keep an eye on copyright/trademark issues with New Line/Warner Bros, or Bruce Richmond, who I suspect is there to handle finances. Those two aren't running around doing interviews and conventions. Lindsey Weber and Gennifer Hutchinson are - and they are discussing why decisions were made and what involvement they had in those decisions. 2. I think it's important to note that many viewers don't see any sort of romance between Galadriel and Sauron at all, or Galadriel and Halbrand, either. That's a mileage may vary situation, certainly, but I don't think this is a situation that was necessarily intended to be read romantically by all viewers. The show has, after all, been fairly explicit about its other romances, both the established ones (Durin and Disa, Poppy's parents, the Ents) and the potential ones (Arondir and Bronwyn, Poppy and Nobody, Eärien and Kemen, Isildur and What's Her Name, and What's Her Name and What's His Name). I'm not saying that Galadriel and Sauron/Halbrand haven't had their romantically coded moments - I think they have - but those moments are nowhere near as clear as the near kiss between Isildur and What's Her Name, or the actual kiss between What's Her Name and What's His Name, or the Love At First Sight between Poppy and Nobody, or the way Eärien and Kemen are continually grouped together as a couple, or the way people spoke to Arondir about the issues of pursuing a romance with Bronwyn - a conversation that no one has had with Galadriel. People aren't talking to Galadriel about the risks to her heart. They're talking about the risks to her mind. But let's assume, for a moment, that this is intended to be viewed as explicitly, blatantly romantic. That still leaves one glaring difficulty: We have no idea who came up with the idea of teasing a romance between Galadriel and Sauron, when they came up with this idea, or how. The idea of Galadriel being tempted by Sauron and Sauron's power was probably there from the beginning because that's from the books - it's not an original idea from anyone involved in this show. But the ship teasing stuff may well have come up during filming, when showrunners/writers/directors noted the chemistry between the two actors and told them to play it up. We don't know - but it wouldn't be the first time that a show looked at the relationship between a couple of actors, said, yeah, let's go with that, and written towards that relationship. 3. In any case, look, I agree that the industry needs to hire more women across the board, not just on this show or just at Amazon. But I also kinda have to note that women have worked on and written some deeply misogynistic stuff - so just having women around isn't sufficient. And that's partly because - 4. The final calls here aren't coming from any of the showrunners. Those final calls are coming from Amazon executives. Which leads me to: 5. I'm not convinced that all of the male characters are more complex and layered than all of the women characters. This very much depends. Yes, we have Eärien, a character who is not working for me - but we also have Disa, Nori, Poppy, and Gundabale (who has, granted, barely appeared in the show, but done a lot with that limited screen time) and Miriel. How is this connected to Amazon? Well, reportedly, Amazon executives, after seeing the first cuts of the first few episodes, ordered the showrunners to remove much of the Numenor plot - a plot that presumably gave more screentime and depth to Eärien and Miriel. So again, you may very well be right that JD Payne and Patrick McKay have some deep inner rot in their souls. I've never met either of them, so I can't tell. But it's equally possible that the deep inner rot comes at least partly from Amazon executives, who watched a show about men - very specifically men - feeling envious and resentful of the power of women and the immortality of the elves, making plans to remove those women from power and challenge traditional ways of doing things, and said, yes, let's cut as much of that as we can.

The show did hire several women: 1. Gennifer Hutchinson (wrote episode 102, "Adrift," and 201 "Elven Rings Under the Sky; also has co-writing credit for episode 108, "Alloyed," also has executive producer credit (aka, showrunner) for seasons 1 and 2. 2. Stephany Folsom (co-writer for episode 104, "The Great Wave," also is credited as consulting producer on 8 episodes, which can mean a lot of things but usually means additional story input) 3. Helen Shang (wrote episode 203, "The Eagle and the Sceptre," IMDB also has her credited as a producer/co-producer on 11 episodes) 4. Glenise Mullins (wrote episode 204, "Eldest," credited as a co-producer on 6 episodes) As far as I know none of them worked on The Expanse, but Hutchinson wrote for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and has been nominated for various Emmys and Writer's Guild of America Awards. Folsom wrote for Toy Story 4, and Star Wars: Resistance, and somewhat infamously did script doctoring work for Thor: Ragnorak. I was unfamiliar with Glenise Mullins prior to this show, but she previously scripted for Star Trek: Discovery and other genre shows. Same with Helen Shang, who does not appear to have too many previous scriptwriting credits, but has been working in production in multiple genres for multiple shows for years. So Amazon didn't just hire a fucking woman; they hired four, gave all four producing credit, and made one of them a showrunner, and had them write about 1/3 or 33% of the episodes so far. Since The Expanse was mentioned, that show had one - one - woman writer on staff for the first season, Robin Neith. The other seven writers were men. Neith wrote two episodes and received co-writing credit on a third; so...about 25% of the ten episodes of that season. In the second season, Neith again wrote two episodes; new hire Georgia Lee wrote two episodes, and new hire Hallie Lambert wrote one. That is, five out of 13 episodes - or about 38% of the episodes, only slightly better than Rings of Power's record so far. But here's the fun part. That was all back when The Expanse was with SyFy. When Amazon took over the show for season 4, only two of those ten episodes were written by women. Only one of the ten episodes of season 5 was written by a woman. Season 6? No women writers whatsoever. So if Amazon had just, as you suggest, gone with the team they had for The Expanse, even fewer episodes of Rings of Power would have been scripted by women.

It's not just Celebrimbor. I'm talking about earlier scenes/episodes, where it's fairly clear that an evil army is approaching - Elrond and the gang see it; Sauron sees it; and even people in Lindon and Khazad-dum seem to be aware of it. But although the people of Eregion appear to be seeing something, they all seem remarkably calm right up until the last few scenes. I figured either they were like, eh, after Gondolin and the other things we've seen, this is nothing, or Sauron was casting illusions/doing something with their minds. Not up to the level of the Celebrimbor stuff, but something.

1. Add me to the chorus of people here going, wait, bats? Dwarves are afraid of bats? These dwarves have been living in caves - elaborate caves, but caves - for thousands of years and still have a bat problem? I can't even justify this by saying that bats in Middle-Earth are evil bats under Sauron's control, since these bats were clearly under Disa's control - a control she says was given to her by Aule, something I think we're meant to believe. So...the dwarves are scared of good bats? While I'm complaining about this, Durin and Disa are - at least in theory - meant to be intelligent, relatively sensible people, right? And yet they are planning on halting milthil and other mining with just an axe and some bats? I hope there's more to this. 2. Love Sauron spending all that time being all diplomatic and discussing trade solutions, then realizing that he maybe - just maybe - was a touch too successful with his ring plan, and just going ahead and stealing the mithril or making mithril out of his own blood or both anyway. And doing that while also somehow preventing the Elves of Eregion from panicking/noticing that hey, there's an army out there with flaming things. He's very good at being evil. Full credit for that. 3. Celebrimbor badly needs therapy. 4. Loved that final Sauron/Celebrimbor conversation happening right next to the statue of Earendil. 5. Not loving this Poppy/Nobody romance. It's Nobody, Poppy, not you. Again, I realize that Poppy hasn't exactly had the chance to meet too many other partners, but still, I feel her standards should be higher. Surely this Stoor village has other potential partners, all living over graveyards? 6. I think I liked Tom Bombadil more in his previous appearance, where he was more of a passive guide. But, still, Tom Bombadil! 7. Was Arondir only in this episode to remind us that he's still on the show? Because it felt like he was only in this episode to remind us that he's still on the show. 8. Still not working for me: Earien's character. I think the show is trying to go for "still has complicated feelings for her father," but what I'm seeing is a woman who has switched sides, knows she's switched sides, apparently genuinely thinks her father is wrong here, and yet is trying to save him - without seeing any of the complicated feelings that at least in theory should be going on here. As it is I kinda half wondered if she had brought Miriel in to try to collect evidence against both Erendil and Miriel - it would have been as convincing as what we saw on screen. 9. That said, Miriel deciding to face the test of the Valar, followed by the Valar being nicely overdramatic with the timing? Kinda awesome. Mild book spoilers: 10. And even if the Poppy/Nobody romance is kinda making me think that the show should avoid romance for the rest of its run (not that it will, hi, Isildur, and presumably some other upcoming pairings), I'm now kinda onboard for an Elendil/Miriel romance now. Kinda.

It's definitely difficult for me to make the timelines in the show make any sense. 1. In the Khazad-dum plot, the dwarves have made at least a couple of trips back and forth to Eregion; designed and built a rather lovely magic door; vastly expanded the mines; welcomed at least six dwarven emissaries, and brought in quite a bit of finished (that is, not just mined, but worked with, presumably in a forge of some sort) gold into Durin III's main room. That was just in this one episode; if you add in the events of the previous episodes, which included an earthquake and the realization that they were going to starve to death, it's probably been at least three, more likely six months since the start of season two. 2. In the Numenor plot, the Faithful are just barely getting around to holding funeral ceremonies for everyone who died or presumably died in the Southlands - so seemingly not that long - but, enough time has passed for Earien, a member of a Faithful family, to ingratiate herself with Kemen and Pharazon to the point of being able to keep or dismiss military leaders, and enough time to put together a somewhat disorganized coronation and a military coup. The timeline here is really vague - it could be a couple of weeks since Miriel and Elendil's return from war, or several months. 3. In the Southlands plot, Adar and the orcs have had time to set up a base camp and basic buildings, and a system of branding humans supposedly loyal to Adar. Arondir in turn has had time to learn what the brand looks like and where it is usually located. I'd like to think that this took at least a month, perhaps more, but... ....also, the ash and whatever over Mordor and nearby areas seems to have mostly settled down, and the areas of the forest covered with ash at the end of last season are already nice and green, which would suggest a longer period. Let's say three months, but... ....are we really expected to believe that it took that horse one to three months to reach Isildur, and that Isildur is still capable of battling baby Shelob after one to three months of hanging in a cave? That seems to have been a shorter period - let's say a couple of weeks. Which does not mesh with the rest of the timeline. 4. In the Lindon plot, they've had time to hold a funeral for a dying tree and get everyone ready to sail over to Valinor, halt the funeral for the dying tree and get everyone to stay in Middle-Earth, use the Rings to restore other parts of Lindon, realize that the Rings are giving them little flashes of precognition, and send spies to Mordor/Adar and get reports back from said spies. Some of this could be done quickly, but not all of it. 5. In the Elrond plot, he's doing a lot of running. 6. In the Eregion plot, they have failed to hear from any of the Lindon people - but not to the point where they are actually worried about any of the Lindon people even though, last they all knew, the Elves were all fading and dying and all that and they only had a few months left. Granted some of the lack of concern here is thanks to Sauron's lying and manipulating, but still, it feels as if it can't have been too long.... ....but during this period they have also helped build a magic door, crafted Seven Rings for dwarves, convinced the dwarves to take the ring, crafted additional rings that confer invisibility but otherwise don't quite work, and met with the dwarves several times. The last meeting, with Durin IV, almost certainly had to be at least a couple of weeks after they gave the rings to the dwarves - to account both for the travel time and for Durin III to note the changes in his father's character and recognize that this was more than just one day. So the timeline isn't clear here, either, but, I'm thinking at least three months? 7. Meanwhile, over in Rhun, it seems that only a couple of weeks or at most one month have passed since The Stranger failed to actually kill The Three Weird Guys, unless we can believe that the Evil Wizard would be willing to wait three months to summon the Three Weird Guys for an explanation, and I don't think we are supposed to believe that. And although that plot isn't directly connected to the rest of the show, we did see the other characters see the meteor that brought the Stranger to the Harfoots in the first place, and we saw the flaming debris from Mount Doom hit the Harfoots - so I'm fairly sure that the timelines are supposed to be kinda matching up. That's the best I've got.

It took them six months to reach Mordor from the Shire, largely because they spent several weeks resting in Rivendell. It took them about two and a half months to get from Khazad-dum to Mount Doom, partly because they spent close to a month in Lothlorien. Here are the dates, from Appendix B: Putting all this together, I'm willing to buy that Adar and his armies could have reached Eregion in a couple of months.

The showrunners have said in multiple interviews that the show is planned to run for five seasons. Season three is currently in pre-production.

The first few episodes of this show suggested that Halbrand/Sauron could convince animals to do things for him, so....maybe Sauron just got into the minds of some bears and said GO EAT THAT BRIDGE and they did. Or if not bears, trolls.

Yes and no. Cut for spoilers: But the show didn't completely make this up.

I like the Harfoots, but I think that maybe - maybe - ten episode seasons, which would allow us to get to know Numenor and, to be fair, more of the minor characters of Eregion, Lindon and Khazad-dum, just a touch better would be an improvement. Miriel, Pharazon and Elendil, and to a lesser extent Kemen are all working for me, but I think we needed to see more of the relationship between Earien and her family, not to mention more of Valandil, for those scenes to really land this episode. Also, a bit more about how different Numenoreans feel about the Valar.

1. I've been kinda trying to give the timeline a bit of a break here, since the in-show maps have established that Eregion and Khazad-dum are fairly close together and Lindon is a bit of a ways off, and although Mordor is also fairly far off, Frodo and Sam managed to get from Khazad-dum to Mordor in just a couple of months - with a little mini-vacation in Lothlorien along the way. So I'm willing to accept that Adar's little army would have made it close to Eregion by now if they left Mordor in episode 2. That timeframe also works with the Numenor timeline and the Rhun timeline. I am struggling, however, to believe that the dwarves would have a) gotten the seven rings, b) reopened that many shafts/mines/hidden pools, c) welcomed that many agents/ambassadors from the six other dwarven realms, and d) traveled back to Eregion to say, hey, something seems slightly off here, ALL WHILE ELROND IS RUNNING BACK TO GIL-GALAD. I feel this needed just a touch more storyboarding. Just a touch. 2. Cut for minor book spoiler: 3. Cut for completely different minor book spoiler and very minor speculation: 3. If the timeline and book references were slightly off, though, the acting tonight was on point from pretty much everyone, with one major exception that I'll get to in a moment. Right down to the extras listening to Sauron, absolutely enthralled; the other extras playing mourners/soldiers in Numenor, and even the orcs fighting Galadriel. The highlight, though, pretty much had to be Charlie Vickers as Sauron, capturing that absolutely reasonable, this isn't my fault at all manipulative evil, and also conveying that narcissistic thing where he's just pretending to be human and can almost but not quite manage it. It's chilling. Runner-up: Lloyd Owen as Elendil, who is just not having a good time right now. 4. That one major exception: Ema Horvath as Eärien, who is just not selling me on any of this. It's not helping that I don't like the character, and that I also can't see the character given the responsibility for, say, eliminating an entire division of the Numenorean army. Kemen, as Pharazon's son, sure, but Eärien hasn't really done all that much on the show to suggest that she would be given all that much of a position of power, influence and responsibility. Sure, she's loyal to Pharazon, and sure, she found that palantir and accused Miriel - correctly - of using it, but she's also the daughter of a suspected member of the opposition and she just demonstrated that she wants to remain friends with a definite member of the opposition - something she did right in front of Kemen. But apart from my questions about that, I'm just not buying any of her expressions in this. It's a pity because otherwise I thought the Numenorean storyline was a highlight of this episode. 5. But speaking of Kemen, dude, you don't have to take Prince/King Joffrey as a role model! Honestly! There are better ways to manipulate people and become a major leader! Look at Sauron! 6. Not-Galadriel! You are surrounded by beautiful people! Go flirt with one of them - any of them. TRUST ME ON THIS. (She's not going to trust me on this, is she? Oh well. It was lovely to get to know her for an episode or two.)

Book nitpicks from season 2, episode 5: 1. Remember back in the first season, when the Elves of the Southlands apparently had never heard about Tuor and Idril? And yet, in this last episode, Sauron just nonchalantly name drops Tuor? And it's not so much that Sauron knows most of the major human heroes of the First Age - after all, he met a couple of them in person - but he expected the Eregion Elves to know those names as well, and yet for whatever reason, the Southland Elves apparently....didn't. 2. Speaking of those names, though, I appreciated the Beren name drop, kinda, but given just how many other names Sauron could have used there, I can't help but feel he would have used pretty much any other name than Beren. 3. Also while I'm discussing this little speech, Tuor is mentioned in the Appendices, and I believe Turin gets a mention in the main book, but I'm mildly surprised that they got Hurin in there. 4. I did love that moment when Pharazon mentioned Avallone. It's about time that the show clarified that the Numenoreans do have a genuine reason for resentment here - they can sometimes see the island just off the coast of Valinor, and speak to Elves who travel back and forth from Valinor, but they can't get there themselves.