The Restrictive Ring

Last night's Rings of Power was the second best episode so far, after the one written by Gennifer Hutchison. It was badly written and filmed, like all the episodes, but it felt sort of like it could have been a weak episode of a strong series. The writer, Justin Doble, who's written for Stranger Things, seems like maybe he's a kind of writer who specialises in padding episodes, episodes where the few important things that happen could have easily been shifted to a prior or subsequent episode but, for whatever reason, the show needs to meet a certain episode quota. So a "hack" in the original, slightly less derogatory, sense of the word.

The main reason I think this is the case is the episode's indulgence in a device I like to call "Everyone Always Finds Out Everything". This is something you see repeatedly in the later seasons of The Expanse, another Amazon Prime series. One character does something or has something they need to keep secret from one or multiple people. An episode or two later, those people find out and we have the "Can we still be friends/allies?" conversation. We find out where the two stand with each other by the end of it, which is generally right back where they started. It's stupid, especially as a device that is used repeatedly. You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to say that sometimes people in real life successfully keep secrets. It's really just a way of treading water until the show gets to a more important episode.

In this case, it's Elrond's promise to keep Durin's secret about the mithril mines. The way in which the secret is revealed involves some especially gratuitous strains of logic. The vague diminishing from The Lord of the Rings that compels the elves to go into the west has been recast as an affliction only mithril can somehow cure. The substance Durin believed the dwarves came up with a name for, and which Elrond seemingly translated properly to elvish for the first time, is now in this episode something the high ranking elves already know of by name. And then Elrond does an unintentionally hilarious job of keeping the secret. When Gil-galad basically asks him, "Do the dwarves have mithril?" Elrond basically says, "I promised I wouldn't tell." It wouldn't take a genius to interpret that as "Yes."

And then it cuts to a shot of Celebrimbor actually holding the chunk of mithril Durin gave Elrond and Elrond is wringing his hands, talking about how he has this secret and he's torn between his friendship and his loyalty to the elves. But . . . . Man, clearly you've divulged the information to Celebrimbor.

There was a moment I kind of liked in the episode where Probably Gandalf saved the Harfoots from wargs. That at least had some drama to it. As action sequences go, though, the show is still rather weak when it comes to swordplay, as can be seen in Galadriel's lumbering, heavily edited training scene.

Not for the first time, I started to wonder where the money really did go. I can believe, with the sets and costumes, and weak actors, the show cost maybe a little less than a million. But ten million? Twenty? No way. Could Rings of Power be part of a big money laundering scheme? I guess it's better than Laser Tag.

I heard a lot of people believe that Halbrand is going to turn out to be Sauron. I guess that would fit with the show's pattern of racial and gender casting in which white men are all evil or pathetic (or both). Pharazon, the Numenorean wise man with the black and white beard, was revealed in this episode to have a racial hatred of elves despite having helped Galadrel escape from prison in the previous episode.

Last night's episode also had half of the white hillbillies defect to pledge loyalty to whom they think is Sauron. If that guy doesn't turn out to be Sauron I wonder who he is meant to be.

The Rings of Power is available on Amazon Prime.