Rings of Power Made The Same Mistake That Ruined Game of Thrones
Well, not as much "ruined" as "annoyed fans to no end", but still. And about what exact mistake we're talking about, you might ask?
Well, in Game of Thrones it was called "Littlefinger's personal teleportation device", though other characters later got it as well.
This meme pointed at the tendency during the later seasons of Game of Thrones, where characters conveniently appeared just where the plot needed them to be at the moment, even if the last time we saw them in a location supposedly thousands of miles away.
In other words, at the show's tendency to just casually disregard matters of simple physical distance whenever they threatened to impede the plot.
And oh boy, does The Rings of Power suffer from exactly that.
Galadriel's misadventures in the immeasurably vast western ocean may raise a few eyebrows, but can be written off as abusing plot-convenient coincidences. Elrond's trip to Khazad-dûm being treated like visiting a neighbor next door is questionable, but okay, Khazad-dûm was supposed to be near the elven lands.
But Galadriel and her posse crossing the ocean and large swathes of land to arrive in Southlands within what looked like a couple of days from their departure? Then Galadriel and Halbrand treating the journey from Southlands to Eregion approximately as a simple ride from a village to a nearest town which has a doctor?
The show included the map of the Middle-earth, more than once, so its creators cannot pretend they did not realize that in either case a large part of that map, with rivers, mountains and trackless wilderness had to be crossed.
They simply did not care enough about the world to stick with its dimensions when that got in the way of their plot ideas (to be fair, "tiny Middle-earth" was somewhat of a problem in Peter Jackson's movies already, but not remotely to this extent).
You can actually spot other, less obvious, symptoms of that problem in both GoT and TRoP. The showrunners in both frequently didn't bother with the smaller details that could make their world seem real and lived-in.
Southlands consisting of one small village is the same problem as Winterfell having no town outside of the castle walls, just to a more glaring degree. Elven cities with no more thought to their design than "this can make a cool-looking cityscape" – no discernible town areas, and, for that matter, almost no elves – stem from the same root as King's Landing and its surrounding transforming irrecognizably between the seasons. Someone just didn't care.