When the writers originally name-dropped the Dominion in "Rules of Acquistion", and then seemed to promptly forget about them, I got a little pissed. Why hint at this shadowy, scary group and then fail to develop them? Why blow a chance to finally flesh out the Gamma Quadrant's politics? How long are you going to run…

Agreed. The Azula/Zuko Agni Kai was epic, but the scene, for me, really hits its dramatic climax with the Azula/Katara face-off. And Katara totally trounced her in one of the most supremely badass hero moves I've ever seen.

I've always thought of "In the Pale Moonlight" as an understandable but fairly isolated incident. This is an interesting perspective on the character, and I'll keep it in mind as we move through the series. (To help, are there any particular episodes where Sisko demonstrates this tendency?)

My only disappointment is that the showdown between Suki and Ty Lee got interrupted. I was really relishing it. Was this the only purely unarmed, nonbending fight in the entire show?

The point when I realized this was written by Sean O'Neal:
"…this despite the fact that Human Centipede 3 reportedly features 500 people sewn ass-to-mouth, and is therefore mathematically 166.667 times better than the first Human Centipede. "

I think what you're getting at is that Winn Adami is Mitt Romney.

This episode marks the introduction of Vedek Bareil, and the review largely overlooks him in favor of Vedek Winn. For good reason. I suspect that the writers envisioned Bareil as the "good" religious character, with an air of serenity about him (perhaps as a complement to the fiery Kira, and this episode already hints…

I may be judging him against Azula, which is a pretty high bar, true.

"Why am I so bad at being good???"

I imagine Cardassians debate in the Lincoln-Douglas style. No real back-and-forth. Just alternating turns at long-winded speeches.

On that note, just what was Garak up to during this episode? Hmm.

@avclub-618fd0370047b25592c8a7db0ff8a9c0:disqus, to test his DNA, they'd need a sample to compare it to, and it's conceivable that they'd have no such samples available.

Also, Memory Alpha quotes Ira Steven Behr as saying "Cardassians love to speak. Garak loves to speak. Inabran Tain loves to speak. Dukat loves to speak - very slowly - and certainly Marritza loves to speak." He also cites Duet as the first example of the "long Cardassian monologue".

"[Lwaxana Troi] had an unparalled reputation for brutality and ruthlessness in the Betazoid Planetary Security Service, where she rose through the ranks as an analyst but was eventually made chief of intelligence operations, where she used (I’m told) morally dubious methods of information extraction involving Betazed…

I'm guessing the citizenry were very accustomed to sincerely believing the lies they were fed while fully aware of being lied to, without any mental discomfort or cognitive dissonance. We've already seen overt parallels drawn between Cardassian society and the world of 1984, and it's not surprising that doublethink…

SPOILERS

@avclub-18d84eb30b59b5f3cc748bfe9f68b472:disqus : In that same vein, I don't see how Odo survives. He never seems to consume anything, but he needs to metabolize something to keep living. There's a larger set of implied questions here about Changling biology that aren't specific to that pendant.

I think we can pretty easily consider it a member of a distinct, much less complex, but evolutionarily related species. It is to Odo what a lizard, maybe, might be to us. And this is in line with Bashir describing it as a distant relative (or was it cousin?) to Odo.

You look lonely!

No, he's clearly Lyman, Jon Arbuckle's roommate from Garfield.