In the Flesh: The Rings of Power S1E02: 'Adrift' (Patreon)

If you don’t want your fantasy to be about anything I suppose I can see the appeal of The Rings of Power. A mysterious guy (Daniel Weyman), who I’m assuming will be revealed as Gandalf sooner or later, falls out of the sky in a meteor. The intrepid ‘Harfoot’ (Markella Kavenagh), one of the proto-Hobbits introduced in the premiere, looks after him. The Silvan elf Arondir (Ismael Cruz Córdova) longs chastely for the human healer Bronwyn (Nazanin Boniadi) while her son Theo (Tyroe Muhafidin), Gollum-like, covets a broken blade bearing Sauron’s sigil. Elrond (Robert Aramayo) seeks to repair his friendship with the dwarven prince Durin (Owain Arthur) by challenging him to a contest where they stand side by side and smash rocks. It’s all very by-the-numbers stuff. The season’s main source of tension seems to be whether or not Sauron is going to return and bring his orc armies with him, and since we see a town razed and burned by orc raiders and hear of an entire kingdom consigned to the same fate, it’s safe to say he’ll be along sooner or later.

In the meantime we’re left to spin our wheels. Galadriel, for instance, spends the entire episode adrift at sea after deciding to forsake the reward of eternal life and bliss and instead swim back across the entire ocean to pursue her grudge against Sauron. It doesn’t exactly make for riveting viewing, even after the sea monster shows up. On a thematic level there’s nothing more complex than “sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing” and “prejudice is unpleasant” going on here. Stretched out across more than an hour of screen time with nothing more exciting than Bear McCreary’s serviceable Howard Shore impersonation of a soundtrack to back it up, that thematic shallowness swiftly goes from boring to excruciating.

The show’s lack of visual flare continues to underwhelm as well. Its sweeping vistas look cheap, its CGI creatures are both unimaginative and dully choreographed, and its costumes waver between unexceptional and actively repellent. It’s unremarkable right down to the editing, which treats every single scene with the same leaden visual language. A low angle for something sarcastic or comedic, a medium shot for something sincere, and a high angle for peril. Throw in a tunneling orc like a mildly upscaled Buffy monster of the week and finally, mercifully, the episode clunks and shudders over the finish line, having spent 68 minutes saying nothing to no one in particular for no reason I can detect.