Camera One

To me, the problems are more with the writing and planning and what is needed to fix the show would still keep the story family-friendly and just as easy to understand. I chalk that up to the inexperienced showrunners who are writing and plotting out the story. That is why I really hope that they are willing to have a hard look at what didn't work (or someone tells them straight-up what the major issues are). I agree that this show does have a lot of potential, and it's not too late yet, to turn it around.

Summing up Season 1 could be interesting: Galadriel: You have not seen what I have seen. Elrond: I have seen my share. Galadriel: You have not seen what I have seen. Miriel: Well, you have not seen what I have seen. Galadriel: Fine, now I have seen what you have seen. Arondir: But you have not seen what I have seen. Galadriel/Miriel: But you have not seen what we have seen. Arondir: But what I have seen happens before what you have seen so maybe we can stop what you saw if we do something about what I have seen even though *someone* should have seen what we all have seen earlier. Gil-galad: Oops. Harfoots: You are the weakest link and have been de-caravan-ed. Goodbye.

Now that they have introduced the major settings and characters (which they didn't do particularly well), I am hoping this show will start to improve. I would like to enjoy being immersed in Middle Earth, and there were a few moments in this episode where I was almost there, but every few minutes, there would be glaring reminders of the major problems with the writing, planning and pacing. I wish they hired more experienced showrunners/writers for this show. If you took the endpoint for each storyline (like Miriel and Elendil's call to arms and Numenorians answering the call at the end), they didn't write a believable progression that explained the outcome (eg. why so many volunteered to go fight). I couldn't believe the same mob cheering on the anti-elf tirade at the beginning of the episode would respond positively to Miriel and Elendil's speeches. This must have meant there were lots of secret elf sympathesizers in town, but there were no hints of that. I think we needed more time in Numenor before we got to this outcome, and without that, it wasn't satisfying or believable. Likewise, the alliance between Galadriel and Miriel wasn't fun or satisfying to watch when it should have been. Galadriel continued to act like a blundering hothead (no one wrote the showrunners a note that Galadriel was blatantly unlikeable after 3 episodes?). Miriel was a bit better, and I liked the scene where she showed the palantir, but she also started by accusing Galadriel of stealing ancient documents (but not addressing how she got access to them while Elendil stood there) and then did a 180 after Galadriel barged into her father's bedroom. Seeing more from Miriel's POV was necessary to make her ultimate decision significant. I liked Elrond in episode 2. However, this episode's plotline culminating in Durin entrusting him with the secret of mithril and a strengthening of their friendship was also poorly designed. For the first half of the episode, Elrond was being a horrible friend spying on him, questioning his wife behind his back and eavesdropping to his personal conversations for no good reason. It made no sense that after all that, Durin would then give Elrond a piece of mithril. As much as I liked the banter between Elrond and Durin at the end, it wasn't earned. This subplot also seemed to occur a different timeline than the others. How could the dwarves already have progressed so far with Celebrimbor's tower when Arondir and Galadriel had only experienced a few days? The poor planning/pacing was seen especially with the Isildur subplot. For the second episode in a row, he got a certain chunk of screen-time, but hardly enough to make him a secondary character. He's like some weird tertiary character (his sister too). After he got his friends kicked out of the navy, he disappeared from the episode for awhile. We never saw him talk to Elendil about what happened. We never saw him interact with his friends, again, yet they were the first to take up Elendil's call. Adar letting Arondir go to "deliver a message" just felt convenient, like he got to live because he was a main character. Why not just send one of the men the orcs captured from one of the villages? The problems faced by the South landers were simpler to write (lack of food and teenage brat went to look for more), so this part of the episode worked better than the others. I too saw a few arrows flying towards Arondir, Brownyn and Theo when they were in the field of sunlight at the end, but it was a little laughable how they stood around posing so we could see the orcs stop at the edges of the clearing. Later, they seemed to be careless with their shots since they had Arondir and Bronwyn stand closely intimate with one another in plain view of many people below them. The guy talking to Theo about the sword at the end seemed to be one of the more moderate men defusing conflict between Arondir and the hotheads in Episode 1, so I was surprised he was a Sauron devotee. Overall, I thought this episode was better than the last one, so I hope that trend continues but at the same time, there are the same basic systemic issues every week and that's not reassuring after 4 hours.

I wonder if the writers realized this episode made the Harfoot seemed quite horrible. Up until now, they seemed to be portrayed as a rustic cohesive family-knit community who willingly cooperated on activities.

Probably poor Poppy, who had to pull everything herself with no help from other members of the community. Though I'm sure the heartfelt "left behind" tribute to her dead relatives helped her soldier on.

That's the impression I'm getting too. It does seem like most of the characters like Galadriel are "in name/looks only", which is sad considering their rich lore. And they've already changed some of the events from the First Age (eg. Galadriel's brother quest to find Sauron becoming Galadriel's driving motivation) so what the characters experienced would have been different, possibly making them a different person. Even for characters like Elrond whose past hasn't been spelled out on the show, I don't get the sense it's the Elrond who had experienced what the Book Elrond did (even the brief things they threw out like he wasn't important enough to be included in the councils, or Galadriel implying Elrond was naive).

That's why I like to watch adaptations of books. I just find it interesting to see what they tried or didn't try to do to adapt the original work. I wonder if this show would have worked better if it started in Numenor and the initial protagonist was someone more relatable like Elendil's family. Maybe through Elendil, Isildur and his sister, we could have seen the divisions occurring in Numenor, and maybe a bit of the political intrigue. The backstory of the First Age could be explained/narrated by a librarian in the room with all the scrolls, or something. Then, in the second or third episode, a less cantankerous Galadriel and Halbrand could be found by Elendil, and a reworked version of Galadriel's storyline from Episode 1-2 could be told in flashback. Galadriel can still be searching for proof that Sauron is still active and Elendil finds a way to help her without being too overt. Once the sign is identified as a map of Mordor, then an episode can travel over the sea to the South Lands and show us the story with Bronwyn and Arondir. And then at this point, the meteor could appear, and then the Harfoots and the Stranger could be introduced. I'm assuming Numenor saw the meteor as well and between that and the symbol/map of Mordor, it would push the characters from Numenor and Galadriel and Halbrand towards Middle Earth, and the various subplots can intersect. Out of all the characters so far, I do like Elrond, but maybe his stuff with the dwarves could come later in the season, as they build towards the forging of the rings.

I think they eventually felt they could do whatever they wanted in the flashbacks, but I remember thinking when I watched this episode for the first time that she *could* have been a young Snow. In that way, it's a little manipulative how they can make viewers like/sympathsize with a villain by making them the polar opposite when younger. The two main reasons always seems to be (1) drama (2) bold and audacious bantering. Characters in conflict can drive a plot and create obstacles, especially since they were relying on manufactured drama by S6 anyway. The other reason is the writers' room just loved to write love/hate banter. I suppose we got to see Regina and Zelena's closeness in S7. Thank goodness for that final season, eh?

It's hard to tell the difference between the Numenorians from the men from the South Lands from this episode except the Numenorians dressed nicer. Though so far, I agree it seems most people/elves/dwarves/harfoots in Middle Earth are intolerant assholes no matter where they are. Can most Numenorians tell that Galadriel is an elf even when she covers up her ears? It seemed so at some points, but not at others. Wouldn't the Numenorian rulers want to send her away as soon as possible back to Middle Earth? If I missed the first two episodes, I might not be able to tell who was a human and who was an elf. Galadriel dug into human food the way any person would. You wouldn't be able to tell she was older and had more wisdom since she responded to everyone with impulsive defiance, like she had no control over her anger. The other elf soldier guys didn't act much differently than human prisoners, and it took me a scene or two to recognize that Arondir's friend from Episode 1 was there.

The first two episodes were alright, but nothing special, and I was hoping the series would finally start to find its stride, so I was really disappointed in this third episode. It felt like a bit of a narrative mess. I liked it less than Episode 2 and it was worse than Episode 1 but in a different way (that one was boring, this one was convoluted). How did Arondir's fellow elf soldiers get captured? It felt random when they suddenly showed up. The elf "watch" never noticed all this destruction until now? Their escape "plan" was very poorly thought out and the orcs' fear of sunlight felt rather inconsistent. The violence in this subplot with all the other elves dying was off-putting and a total downer. I was looking forward to seeing Numenor but while the last two episodes provided a too-simple premise anyone could understand, I wasn't sure what some of the characters were talking about or referring to in this episode. The brief explanation Galadriel gave about the history of Numenor was not enough to understand the motivations of the various characters or the hatred towards elves/Galadriel. Galadriel said both she and Halbrand could "redeem our bloodlines". Nothing said in the episode explained why Galadriel's bloodline needed to be redeemed. How did her people "start" the war with Morgoth? As entertainment, the biggest problem for me was a lot of the characters were actively unlikeable. Galadriel's demeanor continued to be abrasive. To the point where she looked foolish/dumb not understanding when to show a bit of diplomacy. It was difficult to cheer for her despite being the main protagonist. At the same time, Miriel with her hatred of elves was equally abhorrent. Halbrand was smarmy as usual (what's the point of stealing that guild badge when the guild members probably all knew one another? where did he get money to buy drinks for all?). Even that Halfoot elder was a jerk putting Nori's father at the back of the caravan in one breath while chanting "Nobody goes off trail and nobody walks along" in the other. I liked Nori in the last two episodes, but she was getting way too obsessive in her quest to "help" the meteor man (how did he know to look in Nori's bag for the map, anyway?). The only part of the episode I liked was the conversation with Elendil and his son and daughter. Isildur actually seemed likeable. Galadriel was actually a much better character when she let down her guard at Elendil's place. This episode should have focused on establishing the characters in Numenor. I wish Elendil gave Galadriel the dagger back himself rather than Halbrand stealing it back for her. That would have been a nicer way of revealing he was pro-elf. Weirdest scene award goes to Galadriel riding the horse happy as Joker escaping from Arkham. Mood swing much?

I feel like this seems to be the approach of a lot of new series I've watched. Posing question after question, with the goal of the audience wanting to tune in to find out more. I guess in this case, it's having the opposite effect of causing frustration instead. Plus this strategy only works if a viewer cares about the question being asked. Am I supposed to care about what's in the dwarf king's mysterious box? From reading/listening to the thoughts of people who know the lore from the books, it seems like so much was changed or ignored that many are not satisfied. But I wonder how much of the questions they ask are targeted at casual fans who do have some prior knowledge? It is common in prequels with Star Wars too. Who could ____ turn out to be from the future? A viewer who knows nothing could still be curious about the Meteor Man, but a casual fan could speculate what known character he could be. Ditto for the ending of this one - who is standing over the raft at the end? I suppose in a well-crafted show, the mystery would be equally interesting for both groups, but it's a tricky balance.

From these first two episodes, I think the target audience is supposed to be everyone. They seem to be trying to appeal to the general audience (by keeping things rather simplistic), as well as Lord of the Rings fans (by including specific names and places). There seems to be goofy stuff that are more aimed for kids and then more serious stuff with the long conversations that would be boring for children. The problem is of course when you try to cater to everyone, you sometimes satisfy no one, which is sort of where the first two episodes fell to some extent. There were questions about how "adult" the show would be during production, but it seems like they ended up with a family-friendly show that kids can watch with their parents, like the "Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings". I personally prefer that, but I wonder if that will turn off viewers who prefer a more explicit show like "Game of Thrones" and "The Boys".

It is confusing. The Appendices provide an outline of events in the First and Second Age, including the basics of what happened in Numenor. It's sort of like looking at a summary timeline of British history, with a list and brief description of monarchs and a selective chronology of major events. So I am assuming the series has the rights to the major (named) historical characters and the significant events, and anything else referenced about the past in dialogue in LoTR, but the show writers get to fill in what's missing. What I don't understand is how that works, if they cannot explicitly use the details from the Silmarillion, and I've heard that they also can't contradict Tolkien's words. I'm not sure if this awkward dance could become a bit of a hindrance in the writing.

Such a profound tweet got a retweet from Adam, 169 replies and almost 4000 likes. You gotta love social media.

I think that shows the pilot might not have done its job properly. This is a prequel and the characters should be able to stand on their own without prior knowledge about their futures. This episode presented a rather generic scenario that was relatively simple... there was a long war, a woman is avenging the death of her brother and there are mysterious signs of evil everywhere. The screenwriters presented this "world", and should have been able to engage a viewer without relying on their nostalgia. I did like the Lord of the Rings, but even for me, this first episode didn't really engage me right away and I couldn't get myself to care about the characters. I had to remind myself that is supposed to be the rich world of Tolkien to convince myself it's worthwhile to keep going. I mean, it wasn't bad, but it also seemed like nothing special.

For 1st and 2nd age info, they only have rights to whatever is written down in the Appendices at the end of "Lord of the Rings". It affected what they referenced and what they didn't. Unable to bring in the specifics, the history prologue felt very vague and generic and made the First Age seem rather uninteresting. There was peace and then there was endless war and lots of people died.

This episode was more engaging than the first one, though that could be because there was just more action and life-and-death type situations. The characters weren't really developed much further in this one. Nori is growing on me, though. Hopefully, the man from the sky figures out how to communicate soon, since interpreting what he meant was getting old by the end of the hour. The rest of the show (stuff with Galadriel and the darkness in the farming villages) takes itself a bit too seriously, so at least the Harfoot portions provide a bit of levity. More balance would be nice. I get what they were trying to do with Durin being angry at Elrond for not visiting in 20 years, but the rock breaking competition dragged. I did like the later interactions between Elrond and Durin and his wife, though, so maybe this will lead to some good scenes. I guess everyone hates elves, to the point where that lady pushed Galadriel back into the ocean. It seems like these people were from the area with the villages with the growing darkness, so it should be interesting to see Galadriel eventually going there and maybe interacting with the watcher elf, the healer, etc. I am still finding it difficult to connect with Galadriel since she is so single-minded. The other character I am growing to like more is the healer. Does the son know what that sword is and represents? His mother is very open-minded but he doesn't seem to be at all, so hopefully, his motivations will be revealed in time. There were fewer map transitions with this one. The times they showed the map, it was again too zoomed in to figure out where everyone was. Can we assume all the subplots are happening simultaneously? If not, it gets confusing. The map seemed to indicate Celebrimbor's workshop was quite far from Khazad-dum, but Celebrimbor and Elrond seemed to walk there in a few hours. Since very little time passed in the scenes in the other subplots. Overall, I do want to see more but they need to work on pacing. I can see some viewers losing their patience and it would be a shame if ratings dropped. I feel like considering the number of places and people, it would take an entire season just to establish the premise. I don't mind when a show slows down to do characterization but that isn't how the extra time is used thus far.

The episode had a bit of a slow start. That prologue with Galadriel (including the ice expedition) dragged a bit. I didn't feel like I saw enough of the brother in the flashback to truly care about his fate or feel his bond with his sister. I didn't realize elf children bullied each other. Was Elrond in the flashback? Later, he said Galadriel was his friend, but I wasn't sure if we were supposed to know that. Again, that bond should have been established. Visually, the show was nice to look at. Before watching, I was curious how they would connect the various characters who were far from each other, but I think they did fine with that. Having the Elf King's order transmit to the Watcher Elves was a good link. The Harfoots could have connected a bit more. Maybe with the random wolf (?) in the abandoned farm, or with the travellers crossing the Harfoot village vicinity. At least everyone seeing the rock in the sky at the end was a nice connector. I liked seeing the map transitions, but it was hard to understand the bigger picture since the map was so zoomed in that it was not easy to tell the relative locations of the various characters. I don't like the implication the High Elf King made that Galadriel going after Sauron would cause its spread. What did he base that on? Hopefully, they're not blaming the rise of Sauron on Galadriel in this series. Unfortunately, I can't say I connected with any of the characters enough after an hour. Galadriel was too humorless and didn't really show enough charisma. None of the other elves even helped with the defeat of the snow troll. The Watcher Elf guy was so somber with an unchanging expression that it was hard to buy he was in love with the healer. So the healer's son is a secret Morgoth worshipper? I didn't mind the Harfoots per se. Hopefully, the characters will grow on me with time. I agree with the above point that the dialogue could be more natural and effective. I expected Galadriel's brother said something more profound than he did, for it to be revealed at the end. I am sort of interested by the ending and the sickness of the cow, so I will keep going. I do think the premise they laid out has potential, though this first episode didn't quite hit it out of the park. I guess I'll wait to watch the second episode tomorrow.

I watched "Descendants 2" and it made "Once" look like a masterpiece. It astounds me how Disney has all these iconic characters and worlds, and there have been so few mashups, which are usually of low quality. In this movie, there's Ursula's bratty daughter and Hook's bratty son and Gaston's idiotic son, but that's pretty much the extent of the connection. I think the first "Descendants" movie was a little better because they actually had Maleficent as part of the story manipulating her daughter, with the Evil Queen, Jafar and Cruella frozen in some "museum". But the worldbuilding was so bad in "Descendants 2" where an off-camera Ursula is supposedly running a bad diner and off-camera Tremaine is treating her granddaughter like a servant on some island that the "heroes" ignore. And that's without mentioning the Halloween store quality costumes and the overproduced songs where you can't even imagine the same voice coming out of the actors. That's why I was sort of looking forward to A&E and Brigitte Hale's failed series "Epic", so we could get another attempt at a fairy tale show. I think "Once Upon a Time" became too much of a mess to get spinoffs in the same universe. I can't think of a prequel since they already gave bad origin stories to a lot of the more intriguing aspects of the series (like the Dark Curse). A sequel set in The Good Queen's kingdom of kingdoms would be a total mess.

I don't even remember what the lifeboat is anymore. They practically need to offer a class on the nonsensical plot thus far prior to the new season. I guess we can rely on the inevitably clunky expositional dialogue. Michaela: "But Ben, the lifeboat... (insert summary here)"

I agree they did a bad job writing for him, but for me, that type of character was an important way the early series stayed grounded in reality despite it being sci-fi.

In the original Oz story, I suppose everyone assumed she was a sorceress since she was in a flying house. Though I'm not sure if Book Glinda herself would have thought she was a sorceress. Since she doesn't appear until the end, unlike in the MGM movie. Even if they considered Dorothy a sorceress in the "Once" context, she could hardly be considered a "powerful" one. For all they went on about powerful intelligent women, what did the witches of Oz do other than sit at a table giggling about a plate of cookies? One of the other witches asked Glinda "Aren't you going to tell her about the prophesy" in their first meeting. But she never added, "Aren't you going to tell her the REST of the prophesy?" This clip with Zelena in Season 5 Episode 16 highlighted all the weaknesses. The "cute" little Easter Egg call-outs made no sense. The Munchkins contacted Dorothy? How? Zelena was basically Regina-lite with her dumb desire to have "the love of the people". Her motivations were all over the place. She must have meant to kill Dorothy by throwing her a spell which killed the guard, but later, she just let her go. She also seemed totally incompetent (because the scene was framed so poorly) - she could easily have thrown a spell at Dorothy running away even though the curtain was on top of her. Dorothy not only had no charisma but did the usual dumb drawing-a-sword against a magical villain. If they cared about her as a character, why didn't she first get an establishing flashback about what happened to her in Kansas after leaving Oz last time? And at the end, does Zelena simply give up on taking the Scarecrow's brain? Because she later had to use Rumple's spun gold brain or whatever that was.

I really liked "Smallville" at the beginning, but eventually, it just got too repetitively frustrating. After Jonathan died, and Pete was written off, and Clark graduated from high school, the show sort of lost me. I managed to stick around until the end of Season 6, and I've been meaning to finish the show but the start of Season 7 was just really boring and I never get beyond a few episodes. After clicking that Annette O'Toole link posted above, I listened to a few of the podcasts on Youtube that Michael Rosenbaum (Lex) is doing with Tom Welling (Clark). I didn't know they were doing an episode-by-episode rewatch of Season 1, and I'm finding it quite interesting to listen to with some neat behind-the-scenes details, and also their discussion of each episode. I was surprised both actors seem to discuss the show in a positive way, since I would have thought they were tired of it by the end of its long run. Hopefully, they continue with these podcasts. It makes me want to rewatch Season 1 again.

LOL at this scene with Dorothy, Glinda and the other 2 two witches laughing having cookies while jealous Zelena looked on. Dorothy must be one entertaining dinner guest. Do they not use plates in Oz?

The tagline is "Make the Final Connection"? Seriously? This is "Manifest"... I'm pretty sure no one is expecting anything to connect on any level in these 20 episodes.