I loved that. And Maura Tierney's delivery was great. (I also loved Helen yelling out at the bar at large to translate textspeak.)

That quote really rubs me the wrong way—but then, I have very little patience for anyone claiming what "writers" in general are like.

I know a lot of writers, and that's just not true. A writer can give their villains/antagonists complex motivations without necessarily justifying them. And you can enjoy the process of writing an awful character—in part because it tends to offer a lot of freedom without arguing that they are secretly just…

+1 for the perfect concluding sentence

I literally squeaked with delight when the door opened and Nick Offerman was there. And the duck. The duck was perfection.

That's a really good point about Helen and Cole seeing Whitney as human and vulnerable.

It just makes me think the Book!Noah must be even worse, and named his kids Whitman and idk Thoreau because he's Deep and Different.

Slowly revealed? I kind of thought "impossible to be satisfied" was telegraphed pretty clearly by around Episode 2 of season 1.

Aw. . .I have fond memories watching the Greg Kinnear episodes with my four-years-older than me older brother, as part of my snarkiness education. But I guess I can forget the channel number E! is now.

I feel like this would improve the endings of about 50% of all movies.

FWIW, I have that, too, and I have found it to be relatively watchable in spite of that. There are a few moments where suddenly I have to type something very fast and hum, but for the most part it hasn't been as deeply visceral/vicarious embarrassment as I feared.

Noooo. . .he's a professor, and in my biased opinion, he's a pretty crappy one. (MFA programs shouldn't really be full of classes where everyone shares their deep personal secrets.)

I assume because Jane felt sympathy for Petra just wanting her mom during her pregnancy, and for the relatively short sentence Magda was apparently serving, having a victim impact statement on her side would probably be enough. (Except that I don't think "parole" even applies to that kind of sentence, but that's a…

That would be more interesting, although the show creator still seems to take these people way too seriously for me to believe she grasps what a tool Noah is. Also, I guess it might get too niche in the stuff I would find funny—one, that quasi-literary fiction gets certain authors (like Franzen; I've actually heard…

To complain about it, yes. Not to fawn over it. The awards it won were based largely or even entirely on sales impact (and one was an online vote); it's a very different reception than what we are being shown about Noah.

But it isn't being breathlessly discussed at name-drop literati book parties, either.

I try very hard to shut off my inner pedant, but this is one case where the use of "disinterested" (impartial, having no personal stake) for "uninterested" creates a meaning exactly the opposite of reality. Unless that's meant to be some kind of meta-comment about Trump himself.

It makes sense, I think, in the world of the show, where now I guess cursed bloodlines and the weird Victorian-esque morality of blood in Noah's book are an actual thing. This is also the world where Page Six cares about the marital affairs of "literary" novelists and where Noah and Allison can afford that apartment,…

Yeah. If it were JK Rowling, maybe. Otherwise, nope.

I'd be kind of delighted if Franzen threw a hissy fit about being name-dropped. (He is an asshole, but he's an asshole with very specific aesthetic tastes.)