lol this was exactly the edition we read in high school. Needless to say, nobody missed the homoerotic subtext.

Like, yeah there is a kernel of aesthetic insight in recognizing that Sauron takes deceptively appealing forms and the most appealing form for the post-Jackson LOTR audience is an ersatz Aragorn rather than an aloof aryan elf. BUT WHY WOULD THAT APPEAL TO GALADRIEL!?

Ya know, it reminds me a lot of the Khan twist in the second Abrams Star Trek in that it’s a theoretically clever twist that fails because it’s aimed exclusively at the audience.

Yeah, the perennial observation about the Midwest is that we’re *nice* but not *kind* and I feel like they should have taken that as a warning

Actually quite liked the twist, not as dramatically satisfying as some of the more contrived ones in other video essays, but thematically on-point and directly responsive to the title’s implied question.

The teenage melodrama of the novel is well-suited to the musical theater, which means this would be hard to mess up, and for what it’s worth the show doesn’t mess it up; there’s just a pervasive sense that this perfectly good show could have been an all-timer with a score that aspired to more.

I’m glad you said that because my brain instantly went “turd” upon seeing it!

Haha I was actually ready to cite North as the point where my attitude there developed! Definitely respect his creative wanderlust, but yeah…

Even as someone who dearly loves The Juliet Letters and his Bacharach collabs, every new release is a roll of the dice and I long ago made peace with that.