This Rings of Power show is really boring and spreads itself very thin as each episode is split between like three or four different character groups with their own drama. It will be like a whole season before these threads come together, the geographical distance is enough to assure that.
It also has that horrible problem all popular fantasy and “sci-fi” has where the thing’s major conflict lamely takes the shape of some modern political argument, providing a really shallow and probably conservative gloss of the real thing as it vamps as progressive and compellingly written. The latest episode has some real hamfisted drama about human xenophobia towards elves, with people yelling about elves living in the human city and taking jobs away from the humans (this is literally a joke South Park did 15 years ago guys).
All this while the rest of everything else greedily takes as much time as it wants to do fucking anything.
I might keep watching just to see how it develops, but I’m pretty much settled on figuring this as just more unremarkable franchise bullshit. I think the reason I’m watching it is that it’s kind of a fun way to build lore connections to the world of the books, which I’m reading at this moment. I could read a wiki but I could also watch this once a week and go, “ah, yes. this will lead to the Balrog.”