Sometimes comedy illuminates hard truths with a pointed urgency that other means can’t quite achieve. Sometimes comedy is just funny. This series of posts is mostly about the former instances, but the latter is valuable, too.

Without delving into the particulars, I had cause today to recall director Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved literary epics. Although I will still gladly champion at least two–thirds of the first trilogy the filmmaker brought to the screen, my nostalgic appreciation of its virtues is always accompanied by — and tempered by — persistent thoughts of this expert comedic exposure of a major plot problem. I can’t claim to have watched every tidbit crafted by the commendably prolific people behind How It Should Have Ended, but I’m skeptical they ever topped the ingenious simplicity of this early entry in their canon.