Channelknight Fadran

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You're telling me a warg couldn't spot a massive group of incredibly loud hobbit children from ten feet away? Come on.

that was quite a bit further than 10 feet away =P
also, i was under the impression that it did spot them, and simply chose not to chase.
also, nitpick on your nitpick, they aren't hobbits B).

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CGI, for the most part. There were a few bits that looked like it could very well be cheap 3D models, but that might've just been me. Obviously you'd be hard-pressed not to have epic CGI if you're presumably the "biggest show of the year"

the cgi is heccin great
it'd better be
it's not the biggest show of the year
it's the biggest show of all time
it has twice the budget of any show ever made ever
and nearly 3 times the budget of the original movie trilogy
i did notice that some of the practical effects looked a little off. specifically the dwarve's noses in the trailer
but all the cgi is awesome

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That wasn't a love arc they're trying to do with Galadriel and Elrond, is it? It started out looking like a love arc and then gradually faded away from it? I bring this up because she's a whole age and a half older than him and his cousin or something. Again, I'll have to double-check this.

they used the word friend many many times
felt very intentional to me, like they wanted to make sure people wouldn't think this exact thing
when you live for hundreds and hundreds of years, i imagine you become very close with your friends.

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The dialogue seemed pretty off, but I expected that for the most part. Somehow Tolkien manages to get away with nothing but flowery poetics from the elves while no one else can. For the most part it bothered me how conveniently each topic worked themselves into conversation. It was just really fast-paced and threw me off. Again, that's kinda fine though. It just needed some fine-tuning is all.

I thought all the dialogue was great, especially from the elves. especially especially from galadriel. 
if anything, the harfoot dialogue was the weirdest for me, and even that was still perfectly fine.

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Biggest biggie is that they didn't give us enough time to figure out each character and situation.

it's episode 1 whatdyu expect =P
they gotta do a lot of introductions very quickly. I'm sure they'll do a bunch more fleshing out as we get more time with each set of characters.
and for the record, I was very attached to galadriel's brother
well, sufficiently attached. The audience doesn't need to be 'attached' to him, we aren't supposed to be sad that he died, we're supposed to understand why galadriel is. He is her motivation, and I felt like it showed enough of their connection to thoroughly justify her grief and her motives.

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They just straight-up tell us that this hobbit child (who, by the way, is adorable and I love them) wants to go on an adventure, 

yeah that did feel a bit blunt to me. but i think it fits with the character. although i did feel like her language was a but too flowery in that moment. (that's what i mentioned earlier).

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You can't convince me that the elves went from "we're sure he's gone" to "ah snipe he's poisoning the literal elf trees" in just an episode.

They didn't =P
elf king guy explicitly says that he never thought the evil was gone, he just wanted to get galadriel out of the way
"the same fire that seeks to put out a flame can also spread it" or whatever it was that he said