Reviews

I guess I'm just not into sitcoms, and I have been wondering for a long time if they are going to kill someone in TBBT, just to bring something different into the endless boredom of the last few seasons. (They did kill Rachael's boss with a car accident in Friends, if I recall correctly.)

What does surprise me about this episode is that Amy's dad drew first blood in the entire series, just when I thought it's going to end family-friendly, no nudity, no gore. Personally I have nothing against some healthy blood, but if I really want that I can go watch game of thrones, so I guess the writers have either totally forgotten what kind of story they are writing, or completely run out of stuff to write.

But at least this episode contains nothing offensive, and Sheldon and Amy are only regularly annoying. That's already something worth praising in the late days of TBBT.

Before watching the season finale, three clouds kept hanging in my mind whenever I thought about this show.

Firstly, I promised myself if they are going to cook up some romance between Galadriel and Halbrand, I'm going to give this show a 1/10 and never watch anything made by Amazon again. King or not, no human will every be worthy of Galadriel.

Secondly, anyone familiar with Tolkien's works would know that Sauron cooperated with elves in the second age under friendly disguise, and secretly made his own ring. By the end of last episode, I was wondering how they are going to deal with that, with Galadriel so crazy about hunting down Sauron? Or are they cooking up something completely new that has nothing to do with Tolkien's works?

Thirdly, why the hell are there so many Hobbits in this show??? They are cute, but they really don't matter in the history of middle earth before a certain Bilbo Baggins unfortunately joined a dwarf's adventure.

And really, really surprisingly, the season finale answered all my questions. Halbrand turns out to be Sauron, and did manage to learn something about ring-forging from Celebrimbor. The stranger, whom I always presumed to be Sauron, turns out to be Gandalf! Yes it's still different from Tolkien's story, but after all exploring some history between Gandalf and the Hobbits is not as grave a crime as imposing romance between Galadriel and some random guy.

If this were an original story, this episode would have been a perfect conclusion to a very epic season. Alas, it's not. And one good finale is not enough to appease all the outrage that the previous episodes have incurred.

Right now I only have two wished for the future of middle earth. In the following seasons of Rings of Power, I hope that they can stick to Tolkien's story. Just as House of the Dragon has proven, when the source material is so fantastic all you need to make a good TV adaptation is simply sticking to the script. And if they are ever going to adapt Silmarillion itself into a TV series, I just hope that they can learn from the devastating lesson of Rings of Power, and don't make the same mistake again by presuming that they can change Tolkien's story into something better.

The third episode treats us with more action (and more dragons) than episode two, but it's still not as good as the first episode, directed by Miguel Sapochnik, the same guy that directed some of the best episodes in Game of Thrones: Hardhome, Battle of the Bastards, The Winds of Winter, The Long Night, and The Bells.

But I'm not complaining that this episode is too slow. On the contrary, all the politics about who's going to be heir is what makes it a solid episode. The problem lies with the opening and closing battle scenes. Something that the directors and writers should keep in mind is that unlike A Song of Ice and Fire franchise, which often dedicate entire chapters to a small battle from one character's point-of-view and thus provide ample source material for the TV series GOT, the book that House of the Dragon is based on, namely Fire & Blood, is more like a factual record of history and much more brief in such matters. If I recall correctly, the book only covers the battles at Stepstones with something like "Daemon slew Craghas single-handed with Dark Sister, declared himself king of the Narrow Sea, but struggled to hold the islands against the Three Daughters in the following years."

So, while I appreciate how this show is trying to stay faithful to the source material (as opposed to the last season of GOT, the problem being that the last two books of A Song of Ice and Fire haven't been completed), the writer and director simply have to be much more creative with the battle scenes.

A flying monkey on a plane would make a good creature feature.

A female pilot fighting WW2 would make a good war and feminist movie.

A mother smuggling a baby onto a warplane would make a good psychological thriller.

But put them together, you get a fiasco.

On top of bad story and worse storytelling, there's Chloë Grace Moretz. She might be a good choice for the baby-smuggling story, but definitely not for the other two. She's in no way a convincing soldier, and definitely not a kick-ass heroine.

The first three seasons of this show were great, but season 4 doesn't offer much that we haven't already seen. The kids are starting to really annoy me, and all the talk about Mike being "the heart" is downright ridiculous, especially considering that he made practically no contribution to the plot's progress in this season. The relationships between Steve, Nancy and Robin are some of the few things that kept me from turning off the TV, but after all those flirting we get ...... NOTHING?

There's no giant at all. What's washed ashore is just the corpse of a whale, as is suggested near the end by the narrator. And the story is told through the scientist's perspective, with his fantasy where the whale is imagined to be a giant. That explains all the other people's reaction.