That's just them, isn't it? There was a good scene involving those two in the Prancing Pony - <P>'What's that?'<BR>'That, my friend, is a 'pint'.'<BR>'(Slaver) I got to get me one of those!'<P>But that could have been carried out just as easily, more easily in fact, in a friendly Prancing Pony.<P>Pippin said that the cutthroat's inn was neccessary to toughen up the storyline since the Forest and the Barrowdowns ( ) had been cut out. I would have thought that the events of weathertop and the pursuit of the black riders was enough to do that, and anyway, it's after Bree that the world really becomes rough, apart from the small pocket of the forest and the Downs. I would still have like to see Barliman and his Inn a bit more like the book, Frodo's song, and a cheery yellow light in the room instead of a dark shadow, turned blue by the assorted (probably illegal) burning contents of two dozen pipes. There is plenty of roughness on the Road afterwards to toughen the story up.
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