I don't think it's unbelievable at all that Quinn was surprised. Most people position themselves as the hero of their own story, not the one due a karmic comeuppence. Her job also requires her to spend a lot of time figuring out how to use and manipulate signifiers, and Chet put forth the engagement. the settlement…

Gasp! People can do something for multiple, even conflicting motivations? What is this witchcraft of which you speak?

Between Rachel's mom and Dr. Wagerstein, I'm pretty grossed out by the therapists/psychologists on the show. I know those staff "psychologists" exist, but Dr. W is horrible—including that by saying a pretty stupid thing she ended up giving Shia the whole idea to mess with Mary's pills. (That's not making her…

I only read this because I couldn't figure out the Rapunzel picture from the headline. Because a Manson/fairy tale mash-up would probably cause me to tear my (non-tower-length) hair out.

Way to go, Trump, you made it look like NBC has integrity and/or standards!

Agreed. I don't think it makes for psychological plausibility to just show a few suicides and declare that yup, everyone's minds work exactly this way. And frankly, if Pilcher thinks people are so fragile, his strategy for "Group B" is even more stupid. Does he think seeing your neighbors executed on the regular…

I'm amazed there isn't a single one of the myriad Law and Order episodes about sperm banks/sperm donors here. I think there's at least seven across the franchises. Seriously, an episode of Bones makes it over Wonder Woman's con artist daughter giving rich guys roofies to electrically extract their sperm, or Angie…

I was trying to figure out how the hell CBS was making that into a TV series, since I've never heard of this show (CBS procedurals blur together enough when they actually exist, let alone as concepts.)

I had the same reaction and I'm glad it wasn't just me.

In real life, I'm pretty die-hard (pun!) anti-capital punishment and vigilantism, but even I shivered with delight when Helena pivoted and said "Did you threaten babies? You should not threaten babies." Bam.

"I will now take my leave. I live here, so I won't actually be going anywhere, but you don't have to talk to me anymore."

The Below the Root books, in combination with the snazzy AppleIIC game. (And the bizarrely HARD Alice in Wonderland game from the same company.) Your shuba has torn. . .

Every now and then I still have Worst Witch earworms.

Those shots of Gillian Anderson crossing the rain-bleached Florence square were breathtaking. I keep telling non-believers how gorgeous the show is, but I didn't even fully remember.

I also assumed that in the book the name "Dr. Fell" was chosen on some level because of the unsettling "Dr. Fell" nursery rhyme.

"Of course Annie is going to be attractive to a handsome, charming older
man like Jeff, but it’s up to Jeff to redraw the proper boundaries
between them. Jeff has clearly come a long way, but he could have really
demonstrated his growth by telling Annie to save her kisses until Troy
gets back from his trip."

It's still wildly conflating and compressing from a much broader span of time, where he's picking and choosing the flashiest elements, and it very much flattens out the actual complexity and contradictions of the Catholic church at the time. The impression it's given me is that GRRM doesn't think the real religious…

"No right" is such a silly way to phrase that, though. I mean, SCOTUS just ruled you have the right to tell a specific person you want to murder her and dump her body in a creek; I have every "right" to say anything I want about an author's work. I don't have the right to demand it be heeded, but I have the right to…

Picking and choosing the goriest incidents from a span of almost 1000* years and packing them into a few isn't really an accurate portrayal of the quality or quantity of Middle Age violence, although it does probably make for more exciting TV. And frankly, no portrait of the Middle Ages that minimizes the Church as…

I find the idea that we constantly need extended and graphic depictions of rape to make people understand better how Rape is Bad and Rapists Are Evil ends up being both self-important and terrifying. There are situations where I've found a graphic depiction of rape to be tonally important to the story, but the idea…