[mormegil]

Let me add to my Merry argument. He essentially is neither here nor there. He's, as I said, moderately funny but not enough to keep neither is he serious enough to be kept for his depth. He's not exactly dumb, and we can find some charm in dumb or slow witted characters, but he's not really intelligent either. He's not a blundering nincompoop on the battle field, well at least by the end, but he's no master strategist either and do NOT tell me the Scouring of the Shire plan was a stroke of genius, he simply blew his horn and had the hobbits out number the ruffians. He's neither repugnant morally nor is he scrupulous.

The sum of it is: Merry is just plain and average and nothing he does can change that. There's really only a sense of mediocre blah when it comes to Merry and that my friends is a rating killer plain and simple.