johntfs

Stories take some liberties for the sake telling themselves and being dramatic. Nori's families needs to be in a bad position so The Stranger can help them and show his value to the rest of the Harfoots so they'll help him with his stuff and Nori will be re-accepted. Galadrial aside pretty much all the elves wanted to believe that the war/conflict was over. The elven "guards" (aside from "hot for human" Arondir) are there out of habit/racism. They don't think there's any threat. Sauron here isn't Sauron from the movies. He's not the super Dark Lord ruler of Mordor. Right now there is no Mordor, just the Southlands. He's likely more of a bandit chieftain with orcs than anyone with a real army. So of course he's cheaping out on stuff. He can't afford not to cheap out. At some point I wish someone would make a series where every character acts with cold, tactical logic at all times.

The people the Harfoots left behind were dead. By landslide, wolf, etc. Nori's family is not being left behind. They just got stuck at the back of the caravan, which is pretty much the most dangerous spot. That said, somebody was going to have to be in that spot no matter what because that's how trains/caravans work.

It gets a bit into the third episode but the actions the Stranger takes just do not seem like anything that Sauron would choose to do under any circumstances.

The Harfoot elder didn't want to abandon Nori, who is still considered to be a child, to die alone in the wilderness. The back of the caravan is the most dangerous part, but it's still part of the caravan. It was a compromise. Nori wants to be more than she is (a Harfoot child among other Harfoots who want to stay as they have always been). The Stranger is extraordinary so of course Nori is kind of obsessed with helping him because then she'll be a little extraordinary as well. The only person the Stranger knows is Nori so of course he'll look in Nori's bad.

Was it cold compared to the rest of the environment or just cold compared to normal fire? Was Nori shivering when she got near it or something?

Was his fire shown to be actively cold or just not harmful so Nori didn't burn to death in agonizing pain?

So any bets on the likely internet reaction to tomorrow's episode? I'm betting on some version of "Wahhhhhh! The CGI green lady said mean, truthful things about men. Now my pee-pee feels even smaller. Wahhhhhh!"

IIRC Artie was never really part of his son's life until much later after he was grown. His discomfort with being Claudia's surrogate dad was partly that he whiffed his chance when he was a real dad. Pretty much every scene they were in together saw Jaime Murray and Joanne Kelly playing H.G. and Myka with maximum femslash chemistry to me. Like HG saving Myka with the grappling gun or Myka looking really focused at HG offering Pete romantic advice because "many of her lovers were men." HG dropping that to get with some dude because it gives her a second shot at raising a daughter just seemed like the laziest "Yep, gotta close out the storyline now" way to end it.

It's not a Silmaril. If it's a Silmaril that bit ends with Elrond taking it and possibly killing Durin for having it in the first place. It's almost certainly Mithral ore.

Figure among other things this show is a "proof of concept" to the Tolkien estate that Bezos and co. can and will handle J.R.R. Tolkien's work and world in a competent respectful way. So wet clothes or not, no elf or hobbit titties (or Marvel snark) here. Assuming the estate likes what they see, we might well get a Silmarillion series. Or at least a series of series based around it's stories because it's just a sprawling story that covers 1000s of years.

I thought that Pete always felt a little something romantic for Myka, who did not feel the same way. In a better ending he fully recognizes that, accepts their sibling/friend relationship and gets romantic with somebody who wants to be romantic back with him. Instead the ending seemed to be Myka saying, "Oh, fine. Fuck it. I'll be your girlfriend." I think W13 came maybe three to five years too early. Three years later starting in 2012 with legal gay marriage clearly not leading to the apocalypse and I think a Myka/Helena happy ending would have worked for the network. Meanwhile, what explanation do we really need for Artie's son? At some point Artie had sex. Done.

Taggert was basically "crazier" Steve Irwin. And S.A.R.A.H. being Fargo talking like a girl because he couldn't get Sarah Michelle Gellar was hilarious to me. It was amazing how much emotion Grayston was able to pack into a falsetto voice. The final season kind of fell down a bit because of "Oh noes. Holly is broken and must be healed/repaired. Again." I really wish the show had had a real sixth season to tie everything up a little better.

It's not that. Remember the elf kids and the boat? That's where she was going back to. She's wasn't going to die or get her organs harvested. The big thing from the King's perspective is that she'd play no further part is stuff happening in Middle Earth. This next part gets maybe a little into Book Talk so I'll spoiler it:

I'd go with a general "This ain't Game of Thrones. No Elf-boobs here."

While eventual events show that the High King was ultimately wrong, there's a couple things to consider. First Galadrial's search for Sauron was difficult, dangerous and had lasted for centuries. That's centuries of frozen wastes, snow trolls and fuck knows what else. Figure at least some elves (who are otherwise immortal) died doing it. And in the end she found some frozen orcs and a weird sigil in a fort abandoned centuries before. The HK didn't want to waste any more time, energy, and most important, elven lives on a fruitless goal. Second, it's not much of a leap for someone to decide that a fanatical search for an external evil might well lead to a fanatical search for an internal "evil" and the HK didn't want Galadrial to eventually kick off the Elven Inquisition.

"He rips your arm off and kills you with it. This is not an honorable death because technically you died by your own hand." Also Tendi in a towel was supernova hot.

I don't know whether it was in Hawkeye, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier or something but IIRC the Avengers specifically did not get paid for being Avengers. Stark paid for the vehicles, equipment and other expenses but he never gave them any kind of salary.

Those girls (or others like them) probably throw themselves at Boimler all the time whenever he's home and he's sick of it. He's the son of the raisin vineyard owner so they're all hoping to be Mrs. Bradford Boimler. Boimler clearly hates the vineyard and life on it, so that's the last thing he wants. Tendi is Broimler's friend. She's also close to Rutherford. Boimler isn't going to make a move on Tendi that would ruin their friendship or be a betrayal of Rutherform because Boimler is a decent guy. I think Boimler/Mariner will be the endgame romance but I doubt it'll pop up all that soon. For one thing I don't think Boimler could fall for someone who doesn't respect him as a man. And Mariner has often said that she looks at Boimler as a pet. My pick for the next Boimler romance/relationship would be T'Lyn from the Vulcan ship from episode 9 of last season. It seems likely that she'll end up on the Cerritos. I could see an emotionally available Vulcan falling for an OCD human like Boimler.

Having a semi-grateful friend in the DA's office would be useful to the firm and they probably scoped out the elf to make sure she could pay her debts. As I understand it, judges, even civil judges have a good bit of discretion over who they will or won't toss into jail for contempt. Honestly the elf is lucky the judge just gave her 60 days as an afterthought. A full trial would involve charges of identity theft and fraud against the court which could have result in really serious prison time. As I recall it, Iran does not have diplomatic relations with the USA. If the Iranian ambassador to Venezuela came into the USA and committed murder, he'd have no diplomatic immunity. The parole board hearing wasn't an actual criminal or civil trial. No swearing in needed.

They're a cult/harem that I predict will go spectacularly wrong in coming episodes. We've already established that blood/fluid transfer can potentially create a Hulk. I'm expecting a post-prison orgy that creates seven "Aboministas."

It probably was, but figure that Jen was called specifically as a "rebuttal" witness to the defense's assertion that Bukowski was a reasonably intelligent person when in fact he's a delusional narcissist.

Based on what we saw in Shang-chi, I doubt that. The two seemed to have a pretty cordial working relationship. I suspect that Wong said something like "If you try to fuck me over, I'll send you to Pluto" but it didn't look like he was using magic or anything else to control Emil.

Except that in the case the dialogue would be: [JEN] Is this because I'm a She-Hulk? [BOSS WHO JUST FIRED HER] Yes, OF course it is. That's what I just told you. It's not really her fault, but the end result is that the prosecution on the dude in Jen's trial will have to retry him (and thus spend the money they just spent on the trial again) because Jen turned into She-Hulk and provoked a mistrial. Jen wasn't working at Crane, Poole and Schmidt. She was a prosecutor working for the District Attorney. That office can't afford distractions, further mistrials or cases potentially getting thrown out because the jury preemptively likes She-Hulk.

Jen wasn't equating cat-calling, man-splaining and murder, she was listing them as the possible consequences of... being a woman. There's an anti-drunk driving commercial that lists possible consequences of driving drunk: losing your insurance, having your driver's license revoked, getting yourself or somehow else killed. Hell, look at any commercial for prescription drugs and note the side effects which can include death. Jen was pushing back at Bruce's assertion that his experience as a Hulk naturally trumps Jen's experience as a human female living on 21st century Earth and it doesn't. Sometimes, plenty of times, not being a straight, white, cisgender male sucks. That's just the truth of our world. And apparently in the MCU as well.

There's "there are no coincidences" and then there's "board of string and crazy" conspiracy theories and this feels like that. As far as we've been told, this is the first time Jen turns into She-Hulk after she leaves Bruce. So, Jen's new boss: Somehow learned she was She-Hulk, somehow learned that Titania was also a superhuman and hired Titania to go to traffic court and "Titan out" and attack the court next to it, somehow convinced the DA to fire Jennifer and somehow ensured that no other firm hired Jennifer and then hired Jennifer to do... something with Blonsky. Let's Occam's Razor this a little bit. The above idea requires a lot of extra assumptions as witness all the "somehows." Doesn't it make more sense if we take things at face value? NuBoss was there trying to defend a client and about to get beat by Jen when Titania, stupidly fleeing traffic court, interrupted the proceedings. Everything else follows. The DA's office fired Jen because they can't afford criminal trials to become super-human circuses (sucks for Jen, but there it is). No other firm has the balls/ingenuity to hire Jen. Jen's new boss hires her because he knows she's a really good lawyer from having faced her in court and he's putting together a super-human law division because he sees it as a coming thing where a superhuman would be an asset instead of a possible liability. Blonsky's just another client to him.