They Learnt NOTHING! Rings of Power Season 2 Episodes 1, 2 and 3 Review Reaction

So after two years of peace, somehow Sauron returned. And we're under attack again by the Rings of Power Season 2. Disgusting. The big question is, did they learn any lessons? No! But then there's so much slog and we've got three episodes tonight. We had an entire Lord of the Rings movie length premiere. And they gave us less than a movie. Somehow TV shows, like even though they have more time, they can't tell even a fraction of the story that a movie can. They've just decided that TV shows are a good way to do inefficient writing. So they're just like, oh, we can just fuck around for like hours at a time. And that's all this really was. Well, the first two episodes are crowded by way too much Nori and not Gandalf because we still have no confirmation despite all the hints. And he's even going for a wizard staff now. We still don't even know that it is Gandalf for sure. And that story in itself is just completely directionless. We start the show a while ago in the past. Basically, it's when Sauron gets murdered, but it seems like it's set just after they defeat Morgoth. And Sauron's like, okay, I'm in charge now. And then a Darr from last season says, lol, no, and kills him so that we can then spend the first 10 minutes watching Sauron do the Venom thing. How he like slowly claws his way around as Blackooz. They did this to show how powerful Sauron is because like season one, you don't really see it like he just do in season one. But I don't think they showed that he was powerful. They showed that he was essentially a mortal. There's a lot of power attached to the being that is him. That's what they showed. Yes, they show that his like being is powerful, but he's not intimidating and gets called out by orcs and is like, oh, I'll kill you. I'm a bad guy. I'm the king of evil now. He does kill one. And it is moderately brutal, but just the fact that the first thing we see of the God King Sauron. Yeah, it doesn't make him threatening because he wasn't threatening in season one because he was just a bloke like he said like he's We're just normal men. In this, he's a little bitch boy, gets smacked around, gets killed almost immediately, and then we watch him do the Venom thing for him to turn into Halbrand, and then he steals the mark from season one that makes Galadriel think he's a king. But it doesn't answer my question of why would he have that. Like, he sees it, and he's like, "Oh, are you the king?" And he's like, "No, no, no." This doesn't mean anything like that. Why would you assume seeing this that I was the king? That's a crazy thing to assume. Wouldn't a crown mean I was a king? But then he takes it when they're in a shipwreck so that it lines up perfectly with episode two where we first meet Hal. But it just makes it a completely pointless journey of like, okay, he died and came back to life. Cool. I guess he can do that again if he needs to like that. And they could have made that like five minutes rather than make it half of the entire first episode. Yeah, it's like a it's a cool little sequence, I guess, like if that happened in the law, which it doesn't, it would be a cool thing that someone made to say like, hey, guys, I imagined what it would be like. Yeah. Hellbrand.amv, Lincoln Park. (laughing) Somebody help me They seem to want to make Hellbrand slash Anatar slash Sauron the star of the show, but then they kind of forget that again. It's like they set him up to be the underdog even. It's weird, they have to like dilute his character. It's like, no, no, no, we can't just have the character always winning and doing evil stuff and showing how powerful they actually are. Like in "Breaking Bad," Gus Fring is always like on. Yes. Like he's always like running at 100% evil capacity. Whereas like Hellbrand, who's actually like the evil king of all darkness, like he's essentially Satan is like, I want to be the king and a blacksmith for a little bit. And like, I'm the king of the orcs. And they're like, no, you're not. And he's like, maybe. It is strange that, yeah, they show that he does actually want to retire from being evil. Cause he's like. got stabbed in the back, didn't love that, had to spend ages as like a swamp goo. It didn't do a good job of telling it, at least to me. At least to me, I didn't see enough to be like, "Why isn't he just more vengeful?" Well yeah, they just turn it off. Like, they do all that setup. Yeah. I feel like I'm like, "Oh, okay." So maybe when he died and got reformed as Hellbrand, he's gonna forget a little bit. He's gonna have his memory wiped, but then you see him three seconds later and he's like, (growls) and his eyes are doing the whole darkness thing. When he meets up with those guys and sees that he's carrying around a subscribe button, he's like, "Does that mean you're subscribed to Bergenbeard?" No, no, I simply just hit the bell notifications. No, no, I just lurk and comment. He's meant to be this master manipulator and he's going to basically go back to Celebrimbor and is like, "We need to make some rings." Because he would think Galadriel would have found out this horrible thing and she's like guys guys don't be mad at me I'm so sorry, but Sauron's back like I was right, but then he tricked me so like fair game both of us were wrong Well, why would she do something selfless to finally finish the quest she started a thousand and ten years ago? Instead we're introduced to her chasing down Elrond who is No. Elrond's just running away with the rings because he found out that Halbrand wasn't who he said he was. Yes, that's all he knows. And that's enough for him to be like, "Oh, that's bad." And if an unknown entity had their hands in it, it's best for him to get it to the king and be like... But why would he immediately jump to a being who has the ability to corrupt magic rings and not just a human? I mean he goes to the king to be like, "Give me further instructions, like I don't trust..." You're the king. I'll give you these rings and then collateral goes. Oh, it was Sauron by the way Whoopsie-doopsie and then he's like, oh, that's even worse I'm actually gonna jump off this cliff now because we were worried that they were gonna carry that storyline on of like, oh Oh yeah. So he's able to trick people. So worried. belabor that point. Yeah, so he's still like, "Oh, Howbrand, like, we were good buddies." So he's like, okay. She said I'm not to have any dealings with him, any further. But then as soon as it starts raining, he's like, oh, a little hub rained in the cold. Oh no. But how cool is his umbrella though? He was very cool. Sauron's supposed to be like the master manipulator, but I don't know if the writers are able to come up with like clever ways to do that. Their idea of Sauron like manipulating Celebrimball was like, I don't know, the king kind of said, you're a bitch. And then he was like, how dare he? They've given Celebrimball like hubris. That's the. But yeah, if you said-- This 5,000 year old elf, they just made him salty. Galadriel said you couldn't make any extra rings. (laughs) He's not a master manipulator if everyone else is a fucking moron. Yeah. That's gonna ruin the whole show, because that's what it's gonna hinge around. Mm-hmm. And we've seen in trailers that Celebrimbo like finds out the truth and he's like, "No!" Yeah, this is like, what's that movie where he's like the only smart guy in the world? Oh, you mean "Idiocracy." Yeah. Yeah. Wait, it's just, that's the movie, but like Sauron is- Yeah, Sauron is the only smart person because he's just like, "Oh no, I'm in the wrong line." I should be in the "Making Magic Rings" line. And Caligorn was like, "Oh my God, you're so right. Let's make some rings." He does do one cool thing where he like turns from Hellbrand to Anatar, which is like, I guess like his, who he really is. Anatar is the fake name that he uses when he appears as someone else to- like that. He's the name that everyone thought that he would use in the first season. But then they're like, okay, I guess they've changed Halbran to Annatar. It's because then everyone would just find out they wanted to do the twist. But everyone knew that already. That's the dumb thing. But they thought maybe they could do the twist of Gandalf is Sauron and Sauron is Gandalf, whatever. And they're still relying on that whole like, oh, who's this mysterious character? Because Gandalf's whole storyline doesn't make sense to be in the show unless it's Gandalf. He calling it now, lock of the week, he is gonna be Saruman. That'd be stupid. They have to, they have to do some dumb shit like that. No, they don't, because they think just making him Gandalf is like a big reveal and they're gonna freak out. Nah, just wait, just wait. That's Ryan Johnson subversion. Yeah, wouldn't Gandalf already be around especially if Saruman was his teacher? No, they just don't they just don't care. They just changed it. Yeah, they've just decided. The one thing that I'll say that they did do good was that they've done a lot less Galadriel, especially in episodes two and three. I don't know if the show is bored of her or they have enough other characters now that they're thinking they can rely on them or there's just no room for her. But there's a lot less Galadriel in these three episodes than there was in last season. Morford Clark, we're just going to like slow down on you. We played you up a lot. Like season one was her show. I'd like to think that but I think it'll just be like episodes four, five, six, seven. Yeah, they're going to double down on her. I think they have to break her down a little bit and then they go she's going to come back like twice as strong. They're going to try to make her the underdog. Yes, that's exactly it. Like it's like now she's like kind of not being betrayed but she's there's bigger players now in her life. Like Elrond has now become more important than her. The Elf King is now doing more important things. Calibrimbo is doing more important things in Helbrand blah blah blah. So she's like doesn't have control of any of these aspects of her life now. And I think yeah, now she's going to come back soon and do something. But also they gave her a ring of power. So she's also she's even more powerful than she was before. And the way she gets that ring of power hilariously is Elrond jumps off the bridge to escape and everything because he's like I can't trust anybody with these rings. like this. to basically say, "Hey, what's your advice?" slash, "Can we destroy them? Do you know any ideas?" And instead, Keirton goes, "Oh, these rings are actually dope as hell. I'm gonna give one to the kids." Well at first he's like, "Oh no, yeah, yeah, definitely. I'm gonna go roll it out to this deepest point of the entire world where not even God could find it." And then he's like, "Well, just one look wouldn't hurt." He like drops it weirdly. Well, he might be intervened by God. Maybe. Or the ocean. Or Sauron, because Sauron seems to be able to do some powerful shit. Yeah. Which he shows off later. So after he's looked at the rings and decided, no this is sick, I've decided I want red. And then I'm gonna go give- You put on his J.O. Crystal? I'm gonna go give Gil-galad the blue one. And then the king's like holding the rings. He gets scared, he gets like a fright from something. Or intervention from the gods. Intervention from the gods and made him go "boo!" It's the will of the force, it's that whole thing. Yeah. Oh my god. How is Galadriel gonna convince the king that she's not in good favor with, right? got tricked by Sauron. He hates her by the end of the first season. But then he drops the ring and it just dances down the stairs to her and she just picks it up and goes, cool. And it's like, that's not- The king's like, I want to do that. And then just puts his on instead of being like, no, no, no, no, no, take that off. Just take that off right now. Get the back, get the back. What are you doing? And then gives it to like somebody he actually trusts. Yeah. Because she's only commando like the Northern armies. Not even like the armies. They probably got three other armies. I think those other people that were in that meeting were like the other generals. Yeah, keep on a member. There was also a woman there to wear that feminine ring. It is a very womanly ring, which is so funny. He's like, ah, yes, two nice gold, big ornate rings with big jewels. And then one will make twisty and- Dainty and silver. But now they have the rings and then the tree just gets fixed. They don't take them off though. I was hoping they'd like touch the tree. You'd see the rings glow or them shake a little bit. The myth rule needed to be near the trees, but. No, people just needed to wear the ring. Yeah. Because surely just the rings existing when Elrond was holding them near the tree. Yes, why do they need to be worn? Would have done the same thing. They needed to be worn for some reason. I guess like channeling the power. Weirdly, this show about a world-ending evil king has no stakes for me. Yeah. Guys, we have to leave this two-bedroom house and move into that mansion with the free food and the partying all the time. The king said, "Well, it's time for us to all go back to Valinar. He even sings the song." Yeah, he sung a nice song. He gave us a nice tune. He did sing. I know that they're singing in "Lord of the Rings," but it still feels dumb. I was telling Dan, there's a lot of singing in "The Hobbit." Like when they cross into the land of the elves, they're like, "Is that singing?" But that's also from the perspective of someone else going in. Yeah. Yes. The whole time Galadriel is trying to convince the king to be like, let me just go back to Kalibrimbor. Let me go find him. Make sure he's safe. I'm scared Sauron's not actually in Mordor. And he's actually gonna try and find him and do some mischievous shit. And the king's like, no, no, no, that's silly. I would never risk you going. He says no. And then she goes back to the king. He's like, guess what? You're going. She's like, oh great. You trust me? He's like, Elrond's your boss. But the dumb thing about that is that before they do that, they send a messenger because Raven's don't exist. And it wasn't just one guy, there was a few people. There was two, we saw two. Two. But they send two people to go check in at Arregion and be like, "Hey, Celebrimbo, Sauron's hellbrand, do not--" In fact, don't trust anybody. Even if he puts on a blonde wig, don't trust Sauron. What if he has elf ears? Oh, shit. What if his name isn't Sauron? What if he calls himself something else? What if he's, what if it's Anatar now? What if he's really hot? But we find out that they die. But the timelines are so messed up. Like the time it takes for things to happen in this show is stupid and wrong. Because we see later on that Isildur is alive. And his horse that gets set free in episode seven, as far as we can tell, goes straight to get him. Find out. He's still alive after possibly weeks because Elrond says that the rings took weeks to make. So there's so many things of like, things take time in this universe getting from point- Whereas Sauron goes from Eregion just before the rings are built, goes to Mordor, gets captured, spends time in captivity there, then goes back to Eregion before the messages can arrive and then before Galadriel and Elrond can arrive. And Elrond's done his little like dive in the waterfall and hide out for a day or two. I don't know how long things are taking. I think it's confusing because these showrunners love to show one person's little five minute segment. It's like, well, they have to go through a night, a day, a night, a day, a night and a day. And then they'll cut to someone else and they'll do their whole five minute arc in just one day. So it's like, hold on. We just watched this person go through like three days and then this person went through no days. Yeah. We get three or four days with Brandyfoot and then her friend rocks up and says like, oh, you've been gone for a while. So it's like, but we don't know how long they've been on this trek. They were in the green area and now they're in the Gerudo desert and they're going to meet a bunch of Gerudo's apparently. The only cool thing about Adar is that he meets with the hill trolls, the eater of dragon bones and he's like, where's Sauron? And he's like, oh, and that's it. That's all you see. I guess they're meeting so that they can bolster the army. The weird thing about the whole Adar thing is that Adar thinks he killed Sauron, but now Sauron's back, but all the orcs hate Sauron, but they're going to follow him later. I think he's gonna use a lot more fear. The power over flesh. It's just kind of weird that they're semi-humanizing the orcs. Dad, I'm scared. Is Soren really back? And he's like, "Trust your father." And then he goes and hugs his orc wife, who has an orc baby. And I'm like, "What the fuck is this show? These must be monsters!" Yeah, they're basically saying like, "Oh, these are German soldiers." We were just following orders. Exactly. It's literally like, these are Nazis. Not all Nazis were bad, guys. Apparently, according to this show, I'm not saying that's- No. But it. What do you mean by that? Tell me about Miss Brandiefoot and her big gray-bearded friend. We semi-touched on it before. It's like, it's only interesting if it's Gandalf. The Dark Wizard. Who is definitely Saruman. Like there's no way he's not, right? He's definitely someone, he's very powerful. And they brought back them and them. My most powerful general. She got deleted season one pretty easily. Like he grabbed a stick. He keeps finding one use items. But that's literally how Brandi's storyline goes. They get in trouble. He uses some magic to save them, but it slightly goes wrong. But at the end of episode, he makes a tornado to protect them and blows away Brandi, Foote and Friend. They get taken into the sky. These are little people by the way. It's twisters. Like they, it's them. They get deleted, but they'll be fine. They'll be fine. Gandalf's whole story is literally just like, I need to find a stick. I need, yeah. I need to find a stick. I see this stick in my head. Is this my stick? It looks kind of like my, oh, my stick broke. It's the little kid's book, Are You My Mommy? It's his. Doesn't He's gonna grab a stick and it's gonna morph into his stick. Cyberman can't be a bad guy yet, right? Like he has to be... No, because they're friends. Yeah. So if that's between now and then, I guess he's hunting down the Ishtar. And then I-- I'm not looking forward to this storyline at all. I'm not looking forward to it. It's the only moderately interesting thing is Sauron's performance. Wait, wait, wait. You're missing one storyline before we wrap up for the folks. Asildor and Arandia. Yeah, so they basically do nothing. They killed off Bronwyn between seasons. Did she not want to come back? I wouldn't. She probably got roasted on the internet and she's like, "Fuck this." Very true. Well, she was like, people would just been calling her Mary Sue everywhere she went. Well, yeah, she saved- every time they got in trouble, she would rock up behind the orc, stab it in the head. So basically she died from poison and now we have an angsty teen again who's like, "You're not my dad!" My thought is maybe he's somehow Isildur's brother, because Isildur ends up hanging out with them now. And Isildur is meant to have a brother and we don't know who the kid's dad is. And they both have mop haircuts and they're both pretty tanned. That's... But how's he going to find out that he's his brother? He got lifted up by an ant. Yeah. Off screen again, because I don't know. He gets lifted up by possible ints because you pointed out that the guy was, um, chopping and chopping and chopping. trees down. So true. The actor has a very strong accent and then he's- He looks Peruvian. He's trying to put on like a British accent to make himself sound more like an elf, but it's just very mumbly and I can't make sense of it. Like either- His waves are going out of it. Or don't cast him. He's getting like a fuzzy waves. Oh, I was gonna say no one's haircut's changed still, so we still don't know how much time it's been. Yeah. The one fun lore thing was that Cirden was shaving. Yes, that was cool. And then that forced us down a little rabbit hole where Dan was saying that once elves become like really old, then they get facial hair. Apparently in the third age or something they can grow beards, but this guy's the first one that can grow a beard. I guess that proves that they know the lore. Someone just found this cool tidbit. Duran doesn't have that complex. He's a poor person now. He's a poor person. We can't afford big mushroom. We have to get little mushroom. So when Mountain Doom erupts, it causes their light channels to cave in and no one can help them except for Sauron. He says, "Hey, look, if you take these magic rings, they'll fix all your problems." They legitimately say rings of power. And they say the Lord of the Rings. He says you will be remembered as the Lord of the Rings. Rings of Power season two, now on Amazon Prime. Shut the hell up. This script right up thought he was cooking, huh? Instead of just digging out these tunnels, I guess they're saying it's unsafe. And instead of just opening the front doors, farming out the front of their Khazad-dun, instead they think rings of power are going to help them dig through the mountain better. It's interesting because like him and his dad have almost like swapped characters a bit where he's like, "No, no, no. Let's just focus and do what dwarves do. We'll figure this out." And his dad at the end is like, "We need these rings." So by the end of the third episode, the dwarves are all getting their rings. The men still haven't got their rings. No, because Anatar Sauron has decided to make the dwarven rings. He says, I have an idea. I need you to make nine rings for the men and seven for the dwarf lords. And we haven't met any of the dwarf lords. We maybe know one. We're at one. Like we know. There were some other dwarfs maybe in last season at the end. I guess that's him wanting to make sure that he can control literally all of them. And Caleb Rimmel is also like, I'm not making anything for no humans. They are very like, um, stupid. They're corruptible. They're impressionable. They die very easily. And he's like, no, no, no, we must. The very last one, one of the most boring back in Numenor, Asildur's dad is trying to help the blind queen and on the day of her coronation, her cousin conspires against her with Asildur's own beautiful, big breasted sister to show everybody, look, she was using a palantir. Ha ha. She's evil. Yeah. She pondered the orb and everyone's like, elf magic, elf ponder up, orb ponder up. And then an eagle lands, which could have been a sign for anybody. It was her coronation and he pulls out a sword and then some guys like, holy shit, that's fucking cool. That's so far as all. Oh shit, Farazhar Farazhar man. Because they said, I think 10 minutes before he's like, wow, did you know that if an eagle rocks up to your coronation, that is a huge deal. And then he looks to the left and goes quite devilish Farazhar, quite devilish indeed. He either had running captivity or he. Yeah. Or it was meant for the Queen Regent and he just took credit. I think, yeah, he just took his chance. But aren't eagles clever? Wouldn't the eagle be like, nah, man, I meant her. They're omnipotent beings. They're not just birds. Yeah, so he could have said, no, I don't mean that guy. I mean her. Yeah. It's very directionless. We're one episode away from being halfway through the season. I think these three episodes were a waste of time. It should have been one episode. It could have been one really well done episode. All we've done in these three episodes is just be like, it just felt like a here's what you missed on Glee. These three episodes just set us up for the season. It literally just sets up the status quo of-- Yeah. And especially because from what I've heard they're doing a two or three episode battle. We're not an episode of two away from the battle. Like what they have set up so far is nowhere near on all that war or a battle or anything. They're milking the seasons, I guess. The start of the season made me feel like this show shouldn't be what it is. Yes, not actually Sauron, like do the Halbrand thing and make that the reveal. If they want to make Sauron the underdog, actually go into it and make- Let's make him a wee Yeah, it's like, I feel kind of bad for him. He was betrayed. Hitler decided not to be a bad guy. These are evil people. Yeah, literally. Tell us what you thought of the episode. Do you think it was three episodes worth? Like that was three hours of content we just put ourselves through. (laughs) Yep. Yeah. First episode should have just been everything that had to do with, um, Hellbrand and Galadriel. Yeah. Just... And then I'd be like, "Wow, they've set this season up for some cool stuff to happen." Tell us if you liked it though. And why.