Season One: the autopsies

[Michael Murry]

As I've pointed out previously, the opening scenes of this Rings of Impotence television series reminded me of the film Miss Congeniality, where the young tomboy girl punches out boys who give her any lip, then grows up to be an FBI agent who goes undercover as a contestant in a Miss American beauty pageant ("scholarship program"), wins second-place on the basis of her own looks and talent, and saves the day at the end by foiling an attempted terrorist attack. In a show of gratitude, the pageant awards her the title of Miss Congeniality.

Obviously, a one-to-one correspondence does not apply here, but in the Rings of Impotence, the elvish tomboy Galadriel starts out the same way in bucolic Valinor (a.k.a., "Heaven"), absorbs some bad advice from her older Elf brother about trying out a little "darkness" (i.e., evil) in order to "see the light" (i.e., do some good), and grows up to be a revenge-obsessed "warrior leader" in the mundane world of elves, men, dwarves, Harfoot-Hobbits, Wizards, Nazgirls, and orcs. Unfortunately, her single-minded pursuit of the "evil" Sauron causes her to embrace both evil and him (in the rather transparent disguise of "Halbrand," about the only masculine-looking character in the cast). And who should win the object of their desire? Her (Sauron dead)? or Him (Sauron in possession of a base of operations in Middle Earth)?

After watching days and hours of video clips and analyses of this eight-episode television series, I think I've got enough material for a first cut at a structured verse critique. Since another two years will probably elapse before the producers of this drek dare to assail television audiences once again, I will probably find ample time to refine and extend this treatment or else perhaps supplement it with another, differently phrased, composition. Anyway, for now . . .

Miss Congealed Hostility

“What's past is prologue,” so we’ve heard propounded
by sages, scholars, pedagogues and such.
But prologues of the past leave us confounded
when Mary Sue narrators try their touch,
resulting in an audience astounded
at little learned for which they paid too much:

In flashback, mean elf-children (six in number)
made fun of Girl-like-person’s paper boat
shaped like a swan. Now which is dumb or dumber:
that it would fly away or stay afloat
if stricken by a rock? What could encumber
the other elf-kids’ choice to grin and gloat?

What else but Girl-like-person then attacking
and punching out mean elf-boy for his sin.
And after giving him a decent whacking,
inquiring if his elf-friends wanted in
to get themselves a taste of elf-girl smacking.
If so, then let the butt-kicking begin.

But then an older-Elf-guy’s intervention
(non-threatening, of course, and whispered low)
perplexed the Girl-like-person whose intention
lay solely in demolishing her foe:
by which she meant whoever urged abstention
from violence wherever she would go.

So much for Prologue. Girl-like-person ages
but as a “grown up” Elf no growth displays.
Throughout the centuries she fumes and rages
determined to give weight to what she says.
No person or experience assuages
her lust for vengeance. So she simply slays.

Then Girl-like-person jumps into the ocean
to swim about awhile. Who knows what for?
“Adult” now but propelled by raw emotion,
what could for Girl-like-person lie in store?
Of course! She’ll fall for Sauron! Clever notion:
To trust the one whom she claims to abhor.

Obtuse stupidity like this requires
a writing team unskilled at what they do;
mass marketing by sycophantic choirs;
some eager fans not difficult to screw;
a corporation seller cheating buyers;
an audience locked-down by Covid flu.

It seems an epilogue should be in order
To recapitulate and summarize
what smells and looks like one big pile of ordure:
that Girl-like person hands Sauron his prize
conveying him across the southern border
of Middle Earth, so Evil there may rise.

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright © 2022