Two advance caveats:

1. It’s been years since I read The Hobbit. I remember most of it, but to me it’s not a sacred idol to be treated as holy writ every time it’s adapted into another medium. My impressions of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey were previously documented to this effect.

2. Some of the following will assume you’re familiar with the book and/or already saw The Desolation of Smaug for yourself. As a latecomer to the party once again, I doubt I’ll be treading unfamiliar ground for too many readers.

That being said: I may be one of the few viewers who found The Desolation of Smaug a more satisfying experience than its predecessor, burdened as that one was with cumbersome exposition and morose musical numbers. Faced with a 161-minute running time, I entered the theater this time with despondent expectations, but realized partway through that the movements are so neatly segmented, it was like binge-viewing a TV miniseries at home. Granted, Desolation was the equivalent of a series’ middle and therefore guaranteed to disappoint no matter how it ended, but taken as Disc 2 of 3, its 3½ episodes zoomed along nicely and moved the story forward with only minimal irrelevant detours.

In my mind, those 3½ episodes of The Hobbit: Season Two break down as follows:

* Episode 0.5: “The Country Bear”

After escaping the first movie/disc/season/whatever, Our Heroes meet a big scary bear and then have a slumber party with him. His name is Beorn and we never see him again. If this had been aired on network TV, it would have been padded out to a full hour as a clipfest in which Bilbo and the dwarves take turns reminding each other of “That time when…” followed by scenes from season 1. I’m cool with them deleting the clipfest for this edition.

* Episode 1: “King of the Forest”

Our Heroes enter scary Mirkwood Forest and encounter a team of Super-Shelobs, because fiction formula says that the best way to improve on a formidable villain is to crank out a team of superior carbon-copies. Bilbo proves he’s a milksop no more in combat, but a grim-‘n’-gritty Martin Freeman keeps us guessing as to whether his motivation is (a) Quickly Learned Pure Heroism, or (b) Nobody Puts Precious in the Corner.

Out of the spiders’ frying pan and into the elves’ fire, Our Heroes are imprisoned and sneered at by tall woodland snobs, led by Ned the Piemaker as a shifty, almost serpentine Thranduil who exemplifies the proud elven tradition of smug isolationism. Orlando Bloom returns as Legolas and begs us to forget the deep, dark void named Will Turner. Kate from Lost debuts as Tauriel the Strong Female Elf, whose primary objectives are to give Legolas a road-trip buddy and to help the movie score higher than zero on the Bechdel Test, assuming the shrieking Lake-town girls only count a half-point apiece.

This episode concludes with an astoundingly fluid river-rapids chase sequence in which Legolas, Tauriel, and for some reason Kili (the original UK Being Human vampire) take turns dazzling the audience, the dwarves show off their years’ worth of carefully rehearsed synchronized-slaughter lessons, and Bombur the Offensive Fat=Funny Dwarf proves he has Spider-Man reflexes and deserves to be MVP rather than waterboy.

* Episode 2: “The Bard’s Tale”

Our Heroes meet a middle-class ferryman named Bard who lives on the set of Robert Altman’s Popeye, where food is scarce and the people are tyrannized by an unkempt Stephen Fry. Bard is a disgrace, a loving father, a skeptical ally, a bit of a sucker, and more layered than we first think. My seventh-grade self doesn’t remember Bard taking up more than three paragraphs in the original novel, but admittedly some chapters were more thrilling and memorable than others. Then orcs attack and everything’s action-y again. The dwarves wander here and there, and Kili insists that if Balin and Bombur can have personalities, then he can have one, too. This episode plods a little, as if the showrunners turned over the reins to the second-tier guys on the writing staff while the big guns worked overtime on another, more important episode instead.

* Episode 3: “Desolation Row”

Erebor at last! The mid-season finale reveals the Big Bad himself, Smaug as voiced by the Benedict Cumberbatch, augmented by sinister Halloween voice-changer with the basso profundo equalizer lever maxed out. Cumberbatch’s precise, luxurious diction shines through, but recording studio wizardry could’ve made this role work for Adam Sandler. Smaug is arguably one of the most visually magnificent dragons in cinematic history, which is an unimpressive feat if you consider the pretty lean competition. Then again, I’ve seen neither Eragon nor Dungeons and Dragons, so who knows, though I’ll be tickled pink if 2014’s How to Train Your Dragon 2 finds a way to make Smaug look like an Asylum refugee.

Anyway: the important thing here is that Smaug doesn’t stay hidden in the shadows, was obviously crafted with tremendous care and effects funding, and is onscreen for a very, very long time. At one point he made a face that reminded me of Grumpy Cat, but I’m hoping I’ll forget that mental image someday.

* Pretend-webisodes: “Gandalf’s Side Quest”

Gandalf relapses into his old habit of leaving the party to go have separate adventures for a while. He reunites with the Seventh Doctor and gets knocked on his back again, but also stuns us with an intense display of high-level magical combat, instead of swinging a fighter’s sword around as he kept doing in Return of the King even though arming a magic-user with an edged weapon was a clear violation of old-school Dungeons and Dragons rules.

Just as all the bedlam and mounting tension come within a hairbreadth of an action-stuffed climax, a black screen slams down at an arbitrary moment, our time is up, and that’s all we get. Please deposit ten bucks and one more year of waiting to continue. This, more than anything, was the most aggravating drawback.

Despite my poking at Desolation, I was along for the ride while it lasted. It didn’t grind to a halt for too many canonical flashbacks, the new story insertions complemented rather than derailed, Peter Jackson’s generic CG-armies took a movie-length time-out, and best of all there were no musical numbers, not even from the guy named Bard. I’m curious and now a little more eager to see how season 3 turns out, and I hope its finale answers more questions than it raises.

Speaking of which: to answer the burning question that MCC is always happy to verify: no, there’s no scene after the Desolation of Smaug end credits, though bibliophiles may be fascinated by the Special Thanks list that salutes each of the specific overseas publishers who’ve translated the novel for other countries. Classy literary touch.

In lieu of any in-character filking, we also get a new song from Ed Sheeran called “I See Fire”, which actually works “desolation” into the lyrics just as you’d predict in a banal soundtrack single, but it’s still the best Ed Sheeran song I’ve ever heard.

Also interesting to me: Andy Serkis, Gollum himself, is credited as a Second Unit Director. I presume he’s tutoring new generations in the ways and means of proper mo-cap Method performance. I totally approve.