I Watched Amazon’s Rangz of the Kangz so you Don’t have to – Part 6: Galadriel’s LSD Trip

When we left off I promised that we would be getting to the three most retarded seconds of television that I have ever watched. But this is Rangz of the Kangz, so rest assured, we’ve got a whole lot of nothing happening to work our way through before then.

Nothing happening begins with these two elves, Big Chief Elf Guy on the left, and Twink Elrond on the right, who are talking about absolutely nothing. Okay more specifically they’re blabbing on about Galadriel and the Undying Lands and some other stuff. It’s not really important.

Big Chief Elf: To that end, are you acquainted with the work of Lord Celebrimbor?

Twink Elrond: The greatest of elven smiths? Of course! I’ve admired his artistry since I was a child. Why do you ask?

Even when nothing is happening, this show still manages to make itself so bad that I can’t not bitch about it. Just like with JeQueerus the Elf doing the “karais/mate in 3,” bit in the last piece, you can practically feel the fictional world tearing at the seems as the writers practice their “clever,” weaving of exposition into the dialogue.

Then Celebrimbor shows up, and gives Twink Elrond one of the weirdest looks I have ever seen. It’s one of the few times I really regret doing this review through text, because it’s just so odd. The camera hangs on his face for a while as he creepily smiles.

We then have yet more uncharming ghetto hobbits on screen where all that we learn is that “the skies are strange.” 

With that genius insight it’s back to Fetish Watch. We get these two having another nonversation about how the village she grew up in might have sided with Morgoth. Chastitylynn is quick to take offense to this, but then nothing comes of it. JeQueerus says she’s “the only kind touch he’s known out here,” and none of this has anything to do with them then running to the edge of the hill and seeing that the next town over has been destroyed.

I don’t really know what the significance of this is, but towns getting razed to the ground is at least a thing that people care about, so maybe this is important somehow. I’m also so far done caring anyway, and we’re about to get to the hilarious bit.

Galadriel and her surviving crew are put on a boat going to the Undying Lands. It’s the big happy place that elves go to if they’ve been good boys and girls. For some reason they were all wearing their armour, which some veiled maidens take off.

There’s a drawn out scene where the maiden goes to take Galadriel’s knife. Galadriel resists, but then just gives her the knife anyway, making the entire thing yet another waste of our time.

Then some birds come flying out and everyone starts singing. If it made any sense at all it might have been affecting. As it was I was just confused and a little bit embarrassed.

But finally the doors to Elf Paradise open, and all the elves are basked in light, enraptured by what they see. 

Or at least what they think they’ll see. It’s mostly just a lot of light. But with this it’s finally time for the dumbest piece of television history.

Do you remember that totally asinine conversation Child Galadriel had with her brother in the very beginning of the episode? Well in case you were being charitable to the showrunners and forgot, they’re really eager to remind you.

While the other elves are transfixed on the light, Galadriel turns away. Her eyes set sight on her discarded dagger.

And no sooner do we see it than the narration of the idiotic conversation from the beginning plays once again.

LARP guy: Do you know why a ship floats, and a stone cannot?

This is already accidentally hilarious, because the actress who plays Galadriel has this “WTF is going on,” look on her face, that reads as if the knife is literally talking to her and she’s actually physically hearing this narration with us. 

Concerned, her second in command, who is the guy she berated on top of the mountain at the beginning of the episode, extends his hand. But Galadriel isn’t done having a knife narrate at her, so she turns back.

This time it narrates her own voice back at her.

Child Galadriel: But sometimes the lights shine just as brightly reflected in the water as they do in the sky. How am I to know which lights to follow?

The camera makes sure to zoom in on this inanimate object while this narration is happening. This affects Galadriel so heavily that she remembers that one part of the conversation that the showrunners cut out. You get it now for maximum dramatic effect.

Galadriel’s then still alive brother leans in closer and delivers the elf version of a bumper sticker to her.

 

LARPer: Sometimes we cannot know, until we have touched the darkness.

That was my face while watching this. Galadriel’s? She’s positively stunned by this revelation.

She plasters this look on her face and then slowly turns towards the camera.

Worse, her eyes “snag,” us long before the rest of her face gets there.

But eventually she gets there and they have her just look into the camera for three full seconds while the music swells.

I simply cannot explain how simultaneously dumb and unnerving this is. I have no idea what the showrunners were even going for. What could possibly have been the point of this extended fourth wall breaking look at the camera?

We may never know, but with that look she jumps out of the boat. We then cut to –

Hold on a second. Jaime, do we have a map of Middle Earth on us? I want to see how far she had to swim to get back to land.

Well it turns out that yes, we do have a map. The show made one for us at the beginning when we see the elves going to war.

The camera pans from the shores of Valinor all the way over this gigantic sea to Middle Earth. 

It also established that yes, elves need boats. So Galadriel’s “plan,” was to jump out of the boat after it had already sailed to the Undying Lands, and then swim across the Atlantic Ocean. This was easier to do than decline the journey to the Undying Lands, which the show already established she had every right to do.

The show ends on a sort of anti-climax. Nothing could top Galadriel’s outrageously funny and baffling stupidity, but Norry the hobbit girl finds a guy who fell from the sky and is currently sort of on fire. With that we get credits.

I’ve always had a very low opinion of these gigantic Globo Homo corporations. But even still, I sat their stunned that Amazon Studios could turn out something so utterly idiotic. Something so completely devoid of logic and artistry. Something totally irredeemable even before we factor in the anti-White and You Go Girl political messaging.

The show is occasionally pretty. There are editing errors and some weird cinematography choices, but for the most part you can see the production values. The costumes are a bit hit or miss, but this isn’t a stage play.

But this show has undoubtedly the worst writing I have ever seen, and not just among big budget productions. Everything that happens is illogical, the characters are stupid, random things happen that don’t move the story forward, the hobbits are annoying, the dialogue is abysmal, and there are so many weird and inexplicable choices they made, especially in regards to plot. The show has a habit of being so stupid on a second to second basis that you can’t even focus on how dumb the whole thing is overall.

Take that very last scene as another example. Why wouldn’t you just have Galadriel refuse the offer to go to the Undying Lands while she’s still in the Elf Home Base? Then you could get any number of actual dramatic scenes. Instead, the ambiguously homosexual showrunners have Galadriel jump off into the ocean so that she can eventually drown. And then the episode ends.

Well we know that the story can’t end here, and in Episode 2 she gets conveniently semi-rescued by wreckage from a random boat. This boat then gets destroyed, so she gets conveniently rescued by another random boat in the middle of the ocean.

Four episodes are already out, and everyone who has watched them says that it only gets dumber and more tedious as the show continues. That doesn’t seem possible, but if any show can pull it off, it’s this one. As for myself, I’m tapping out here. I think I’ve made my point. This is a monument to civilizational failure, and Jeff Bezos has got to go.