[ray gower]

I agree that the scouring added more perspective to the Hobbits, brought closure to the lives of the Hobbit heroes and would have been nice to include, it did little to advance the story of the War for the Destruction of the Ring and would have added another half hour of film.

Indeed, reading the Appendicies, I submit that little actually changed for the Hobbits after the event. A few more foreigners passed through their land, a King now sat on the throne and a few Hobbits are well in with him, but they remained a simple and largely introvert rural community. Possibly a few did wander further afield, but as the book had earlier observed, this was not new and Hobbits had frequent trade dealings with men.

As for Bombadil, I believe he was an insert to tidy some loose ends and try and make the journey to Bree interesting and dangerous. Indeed Christopher Tolkien has stated that Bombadil was not in the early drafts of the book, which puts a certain validity to my opinion.