Join Cam and Maggie for a fascinating, moody slice of Tolkien. Eyes are watching everyone in this chapter – Sam is watching Frodo, Frodo is watching the Eye of Sauron, Sam is side-eyeing Gollum, Gollum is watching the Ring, the Black Riders are watching everyone from the sky, the God of Middle-earth is looking down on everyone – it’s a busy, paranoid dynamic. Amid the chaos, Cam thinks he might have spotted the ghost of Gandalf the Grey (a few times!). Sam and Gollum have an argument in third person that reveals a subtle bias in the narrator. Frodo throws caution to the wind and doubles down on his worrying new beliefs about fate. Then the oliphants show up and blow the whole chapter apart, and we kinda think Sam summoned them with that little song in the last chapter, which maybe was a spell or another echo of Gandalf the Grey? Jump in and read the tea leaves with us, this was a fun one!

In our Second Breakfast, we read through some feedback about last week’s episode and continue our conversation about honest art and fate, but this time we throw faith into the mix too. There’s some discussion about religious horror, 1984, and the work of Christopher Hitchens, with touchstone artistic examples like Penny Dreadful and Deadwood thrown in for good measure.

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Discussion of The Two Towers, Book Four, Chapter Four