For my part, I would be happy to see a thriving "no book spoilers" thread here. But I wouldn't participate in it, since I'm as book-spoiled as they come.
An easy way would have been to avoid borrowing from the book and launch a new fantasy series. I am very serious about it: having watched the show with people who never heard about the Middle Earth outside of a casual watching of the Peter Jackson films...
1. They don't get thrilled by the namedropping because they don't recognize it and are puzzled instead;
2. They like the new elements of the show (the harfoots are totally unidentified as hobbits);
3. They identify the same pacing problem as I do;
4. They... hardly make links with the characters of the films. Galadriel wasn't recognized by name, those films were 20 years ago. She's just "an elf", like... Dobby and who was it? Legolas!"
All in all, it could be an original story without losing anything.
Tolkien fans are less than thrilled by the changes they made to characters, literary adaptions fans complains about the inconsistencies, they'll probably generate more criticisms if they don't resolve a few situation they have put themselves in because of leftover inconsistencies with the LotR films... The only advantage of using direct reference to LotR are because it attracts curiosity from the slim slice of humanity between "Tolkien hardcore fans" (a few, but generally vocal as fans do) and "people who don't care particularly about Tolkien", both of which are not benefitting from the Tolkien association.
I'd say that the "mainstream reviewers" don't fall within the slim slice, most probably belonging to the "people who don't care".
Let's take an illustration. The Dwarves are swearing using Aulë's name. It has 0 added benefit for people who haven't read the Silmarillion and remember it well enough. I don't think Aulë is mentionned in the LotR movies and possibly even not books. It only puzzles them "Who? Did I hear well? Oh it was just filler text." It can also infuriate fans (why would they use this name and not call him the Maker or Mahal, esp. Durin who is demonstrated to be bad at speaking sindarin?). Is the number of people who remember their reading of the Silmarillion enough to justify introducing this kind of difficulty for the other two types of target?