Ah, kids today. I read LOTR before I knew the internet consisted of anything but AOL.
SpoilerFair enough, I suppose. I thought it still worked as a natural outgrowth of what had gone before- Gollum's primary skill set seems to be in climbing sheer walls, and his slip shows how his desire for the ring robs him of something that had been second nature to him all this time.
At the same time, Frodo is not as corrupted as Gollum was- rather than killing anyone who tries to take the ring, he lets Gollum live despite it being against his own best interests. This leads to him surviving the episode, ironically because Gollum tries to turn on him in the end. The Mount Doom chapter is a lot more about the self-destructive nature of corruption and the possibility of redemption than any arbitrary plot-wrapping-up would be.