I enjoyed the first season as well, but not at first. I thought it was too slow, and spent too much time trying to really send the message "we spent a lot of money on this!" Long stretches of not much happening beyond too-long focusing on costuming and sets.

The finale worked for me, though, and retrospectively made the overall narrative flow work for me as well, so that makes it easier to dismiss the self-indulgent deadwood as ultimately I felt the core story was solid and well-told.

On Tolkien's chauvinism, one review I read noted that Tolkien doesn't come across as especially sexist -- as in, he's not anti-woman -- so much as he just kind of forgets about women. Which, granted, is still a form of sexism, but one that leaves a gap that can be filled rather than a hostile rejection that would be difficult to overcome. So like you, I've been enjoying the Galadriel character, and really the general increased peopling of this world overall, and don't feel it necessarily contradicts Tolkien's writings so much as fills them in.