Review: The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, "Partings" | Season 1, Episode 5
After pushing forward in its previous episode, the show falls backward into stalling
Recently on Twitter, I posted a thread on how the current focus on serialization in television has changed the medium for the worse. My comments were off the cuff, as is usual on that site, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while; I instinctively wince whenever someone complains that an episode “didn’t move the story enough,” and I’ve been trying to figure out why. The complaint is a legitimate, honest response, but it feels like it’s mistaking trees for the forest, in a way I struggle to precisely articulate. I think it has to do with the terrible “It’s not a TV show, it’s a ten-hour movie” approach some showrunners brag about; by shifting focus away from individual episodes and towards the season as a whole, it changes our priorities as viewers. We’re not engaging with the material just for the pleasure of the experience—we’re thinking in terms of how this fits into the overall arc, and the shape of the thing as a whole. We’re vibing, bu…