johntfs

Numenor is sending 500 soldiers on what is essentially a reconnaissance-in-force. The Numenoreans are over-confident but let's pretend they're not utter morons. A full mobilization and invasion fleet would be extremely expensive, time-consuming and labor-intensive. So they really don't want to do that. Instead they're sending over some enthusiastic troops to get a bit of combat experience and check out the lay of the land.

It's not the life-risking that was the problem for Galadrial's squad. Theoretically if I asked you to help me hunt down a serial killer of children, you might help me even though it would likely be a risk of your life. If I ask you to help me hunt down the Easter Bunny at the risk of your life, that's probably going to be a hard "No." from you. Galadrial and her squad where basically hunting Sauron as the evil Easter Bunny at the point that they mutinied. They'd been risking (and probably losing) their immortal lives for centuries hunting him with basically nothing to show for it except a weird sigil in an abandoned-for-centuries fortress (and it's likely that sigil has nothing to do with Sauron but is instead linked to Adar, who is also likely the one who actually killed Galadrial's brother).

If Mr. Immortal's case gets through the doors of a courthouse, he's fucked. He's going to the cleaners financially and then going to prison. Nikki and Mallory's job is to prevent/mitigate that as much as possible. They did that job. Nikki upping the eye contact was something that helped sell the deal to the wronged spouses. That she enjoyed it because Mr. I was an asshole is beside the point. Maybe men and women isn't a zero sum game but over past 6000+ years of human civilization, the men side of the equation has gotten stacked pretty high. This is a comedy show about a female lawyer and her problems and one of those problems will tend to be men. Not all men. Jen's family, which includes Bruce is pretty good. Pug seems cool. Even Holden Holliway, her boss isn't too bad. Plenty of shows would have had him treat the trademark problem as "Fix it or you're fired!" He put the firm's resources behind Jen to get it fixed instead. Assuming he doesn't turn out to be evil or a robot and an evil robot, Josh seemed like a nice guy who wasn't "nice guy."

So you'll be happy if and when She-Hulk punches a big-ass sky beam? I'm loving this show specifically because it isn't doing stuff like that. I love that we're getting fun, low-stakes cases like the shape-changing Light Elf and Mr. Immortal as a serial bigamist.

Is one of Mr. Immortal's interests staying out of prison? How about not getting sued into homelessness? Then Nikki and Mallory perfectly represented his interests. You get that there was no "win" here. 20 seconds of eye contact beats 20 years in prison for multiple counts of fraud. One thing to consider is that She-Hulk likely wrapped production several months ago. And yet it's near-perfectly predicted the "Wahhhh! The green lady having agency pinches my widdle pee-pee! Wahhhh!" reaction of all these insecure men. As an actual grown-the-fuck-up man, I'm fine with this show.

They didn't mutiny and/or try to send her to Valinor because they didn't think she could beat Sauron. They did it because they thought she was risking their lives trying to find someone who no longer existed.

And abandon Middle Earth to Sauron and his orcs? Gil-Galad clearly knows about Sauron and what's happening in the South even though he wants to keep it on the down low for now.

Galadrial was the one pushing Halbrand as the would-be Southlands king. Him being called "Lord Halbrand" is down to her. And no, she wasn't "suspicious" about how Halbrand got his guild membership. She knew damned well that he'd ratted her out about going to see the old king. She didn't care about that as long he played his part as the would-be king. This was all explicitly spelled out in the show. Pharazon is supporting the expedition, albeit for his own reasons. Galadrial doesn't give a shit about Numenorean politics outside of that. Bronwyn appealed to their patriotism and emotions. The barkeep appealed to their "the elves have been keeping a boot on our necks for 3000 years and also if we don't join (Adar) he's going to kill us to the last child." Yep. Halbrand murdered Galadrial's brother. After using a time machine to go back multiple centuries to find said brother.

Saruman was actually a good guy right through the events of The Hobbit. I still think this is Gandalf - or at least proto-Gandalf. I don't think the Stranger is evil, but he's clearly dangerous. Still, I recall something of a speech Gandalf made to the point "I am the most dangerous person you could meet short of being dragged in front of Sauron himself." In terms of conscious acts, he protected the Harfoots and Nori only got hurt because she foolishly touched the guy while he was concentrating on his magic ice healing.

I liked it as Dwarven metaphor for "Get to the fucking point." Galadrial as Elven Errol Flynn was great. Figure the Galadrial/Halbrand smut-fics likely number in the low thousands at least at this point.

I think we can take what we saw of that at face value. No bride would want giant green super-model She-Hulk upstaging her at her own wedding. After the wedding when she was clearly drunk off her ass., she was more secure and fine with She0Hulk and Jen.

Probably but I hope not. Jen as Jen deserves a win. But yeah, she probably actually did iron the shirts.

What else would you want regarding the White Tree? We were flatly told about it earlier and the petals falling was them paying that off. And the stupid was blathering about elves taking their jobs because he was stupid. That was the point of him - being a stupid guy that was stirring up a riot that Pharazod calmed and dispersed with his own speech.

Maybe diplomacy isn't like riding a bike. For the previous several centuries she's been leading Elven war parties on a hunt for any trace of Sauron so perhaps she's a little out of practice. That wise patient beautiful elf from Lord of the Rings doesn't exist yet. Part of this show is how she became that person and the missteps she made along the way.

The scammers didn't set the things up to kill. They became deadly when they got broken.

Back in the day as I understand it Billy Shakespeare's stuff originally premiered at the Globe theater, the female parts were played by men, specifically white men. I don't know for certain but it seems extremely likely that the Moorish parts in Othello would also be played by white that were either really tan or in some version of "blackface." Should we still be doing that? Are we committing some terrible sin against Shakespeare by failing to continue doing that? Is the ghost of William Shakespeare shrieking in fury at the thought of actual women playing women's role or actual black people playing black people's roles? Probably not. Storytellers tell their stories in ways that depend on their audiences. So, yeah, a miniseries produced and filmed in New Zealand with its main audience expected to be in the 21st century USA will have a cast that tends to reflect the 21st century USA. Maybe in 40 years a Chinese film company will acquire the rights to LotR and make a film and cast mostly Chinese people in the principal roles. J. R. R. Tolkien's screaming ghost isn't going to rise up and devour them any more than Shakespeare's will rise to devour plays performed with non-whites or non-males.

Galadrial is supposed to be something of a blundering hothead. Having her start out wise and calm like she was in the LotR movie, as though she floated above all the conflict on a cloud of her own farts would have been boring. She's a character. She's getting a character arc. Everyone saw the those falling blossoms and had a sphincter clutch moment. Plus, they're all going to Middle Earth to fix something the lazy-ass elves couldn't be bothered to fix. And to so through badass force of arms.

Did you not see the rain of falling petals from the White Tree? The only clearer omen would have been for the Valar to appear in the sky over Numenor as a choir singing "Oy! Morons! Get your arses on those ships and help the rude pointy-eared lady. Now!!!"

My thing is if you want something that does not deviate from the source material, then read/watch the source material. Anything adapted from source material into another medium will deviate substantially. I look at adaptions, any adaptions as basically alternate universes based on some "source universe." Is there going to be time compression here? Sure. Why? Because they don't want to have to replace their non-elven main cast every couple of episodes. If we're going to concede that all the characters are speaking modern English instead of having them speak whatever their language is and putting it in sub-titles, then we can also accept black elves, Iranian humans, etc.

The thing with the engineers is that they like engineering. It was the constant pressure to fix all the latest disasters that was getting to them. Freeman's situation was that she'd caused the problem by putting on (or just touching) the mask so she felt guilty and she wanted to "fix" the engineers so she wouldn't feel guilty about the extra work they had to do. The engineers were probably all at green shortly after boarding the Dove. It was Freeman's constant demands that they relax her way that was stressing them out after that.

Don't touch masks.

Well, I mockingly laugh that once again "being true to the source material" is getting used as cover for bigoted bitching because assholes are feeling their pee-pees getting pinched because non-white, non-male people are showing up in their nerd crap.

These people that are "very particular about being true to the source mater" are they also bitching about pale people playing the Southern folks who are supposed to be darker hued? No? Didn't think so. If this show was something like Vikings where a few of the Vikings were black people without explanation, you might have something. But elves, dwarves, etc are fictional, made-the-fuck-up beings. So they can be any damned color/race the show-runner wants. Also, the Tolkien estate sold Bezos and co. the rights to do this show. Presumably they demanded a presentation on how that show would. The Tolkien estate are presumably the purist Tolkien purists around. If they were fine with black elves, why would anyone else care? Unless they're racist.

OTOH if you dislike this show because of black Elves or other non-white characters, then yeah, you're a racist.

On the other hand the Harfoots seem like they're on a schedule with their migration. Like, they need to be in specific places at specific times. Presumably because the weather will be worse, other races/men will be there, the food won't be as plentiful, etc. So they put the slower folks in the back to keep them from delaying and possibly killing everyone else.