I'm currently watching it. I like this Harfoot Meteor man thing going on. But the Halbrand Celembrimbor arc was god awful. Nine episodes to get this far, it being painfully obvious that Halbrand is probably Sauron and the writers are probably trying to imply that meteor man is Sauron as a red herring and then Annatar just teaches Celebrimbor that metals can be mixed into alloys, and that making a small piece of jewellery uses less metal than a big piece, and they presumably forge the rings in like a third of an episode or so.
The moment Halbrand woke up and was told he should be resting for days I shouted Sauron at the screen, which was a little satisfying. And Saurbrand messing with Galadriel's head is pretty interesting
This show is such an odd mix of meh, ok, genuinely good and genuinely bad. It's a shame, you can see the potential it had in so many places but overall it's rather disappointing for me. I'll probably watch the second season if I have enough spare time and access to prime already, but I definitely wouldn't pay to watch it. Hopefully the pacing is better in future seasons.
I think if HOTD hadn't come out around the same time then ROP it might have compared better.
Mm, that's fair comment.
Thoughts on the Halbrand/Rings bit:
They've still got a lot of rings to make, given we're on 3/20 so far, so they're not short of material in that sense. But I absolutely think they should've cut down on some of the mithrilmarillion bit in favour of getting Halbrand to Eregion at least an episode earlier. I agree that the "hey, have we considered alloys" contribution was a bit lame, though I liked the extent to which I think Sauron's excitement in contributing to the forging had an air of authenticity: yes, he's a decieving power of evil, but some small part of him will always be a Maia of Aule and the resulting drive and aliveness around the act of craft is something I think it's interesting to have in his character.
I do wonder if he's going to return to Eregion in the same or a different form when they work on the Nine and the Seven. I actually quite liked the Halbrand/Galadriel scene, in that I think the dialogue did a good job of having her 'win' in the sense that she talks him into showing who he actually is (the crucial lines being "To save, or to rule?" "I see no difference." - that outlines the essential arrogance in Sauron's corruption, and finally Galadriel is actually making her D&D Wisdom checks successfully). I'd have liked Celebrimbor to be a bit more savvy: in Tolkien's work he's I think generally shown as rather more suspicious of Annatar, which is why he forges the Three in secret.
I haven't found the show a disappointment, but I think possibly my expectations were fairly low. I think they've done a significantly better job than I expected of capturing some Tolkienian themes and ideas, which is nice - I would certainly agree with the case that the pacing and writing weren't ideal and some of the plot adaptations were a bit wobbly, but honestly trying to capture the Second Age of Middle-Earth and ending up with anything other than an unmitigated disaster sort of impresses me given the source material they had to work with. There are some bad points and disappointments, but I think I went in assuming that they'd set themselves a ridiculous challenge that they'd definitely fail at, and even having them hit half the notes right is enough for my end-point feeling to be more a "you know what, fair enough" and take a glass-half-full approach.
I haven't been watching HOTD, the GoT universe never quite grabbed me as much, though I do hear it's good.