Everywhere I turn, Josh Gad is in the news. For starring in a new TV show; for making jokes with some reporter somewhere casts of classic movies to raise money for good causes and entertain us in these trying times. Josh Gad must be exhausted. I wonder if he sleeps. But now that the One Ring is near to his grasp, perhaps he may not need to.
Wait, is gaining the power of the One Ring not the unspoken goal of Gad’s latest episode of Reunited Apart, which brings together the lauded and star-studded cast of the Lord of the Rings films through the magical medium of Zoom? Perhaps I misunderstood. At any rate, Josh Gad has gathered the hobbits, the wizards, the elves, and the wicked menfolk to go to Isen — YouTube, where they joke, talk shop, reminisce, and just seem to really thoroughly enjoy each others’ presence.
In this stream are Elijah Wood, Sena Astin, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler, and more, along with director Peter Jackson and, presumably, the kind doting ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien just off-screen. How does Gad do this? How does he find the time to do this? Some sort of snowman magic, perhaps? I don’t know. But I do enjoy it.