It made sense to me. From Owen's point of view, if Nucky has found out about the affair, then the way he's talking is really strange - Nucky isn't really angry (since, unknown to Owen, they're not talking about the same thing), he's coming on like a patient but irritated parent. Since Owen has no reason to think Nucky…

Yeah, that was totally it. It was such a nicely tuned piece of anxious dialogue, because Nucky is clearly on to something and Sleater has an obvious reason to be nervous, and then when Nucky says "An Irish friend?" you're set up to think "Oh shit, Nucky does know about Margaret!", and you can see that Sleater is…

I think Louise is meant to either be or remind us of Louise Bryant, the radical journalist who covered the Russian Revolution (played by Diane Keaton in "Reds"). Bryant was from San Francisco. I don't know if it's plausible for her to be in New Jersey at this time though.

"I don’t believe they ever had a sexual relationship—nor will they—which makes Gillian’s inappropriateness just another cue that she’s not right in the head"

Nucky hasn't been making the best judgment calls about people. I don't think he expected Lucy to just take the money and run - not that he necessarily would've cared a whole lot about that, but he seemed to just take her new motherly affection at face value because it made a nice change from her old personality.

If you enjoy a flamboyant Laughton with a whip — especially in conjunction with lots of shirtless men — you must immediately watch the 1935 version of MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY.

Thylacine, what THP has in common with Putney Swope is: 1. a CEO dies, 2. the board members are assholes who don't mourn his passing, and 3. an unlikely guy gets promoted. But other than that they're totally different. Swope's promotion wasn't a ruse to sabotage the company; it was an accident, due to all the board…

strange_attractor: electrocuting the monster was a detail from the original novella.

Jaycel, I said some stuff further up in the thread about Winter's Tale but you mentioned some more connections that I forgot, so thanks.

Oh yeah, Cuba Libre was a good one… well, it was VERY good for the first two-thirds or so, where he really seemed to be interested in the history and politics and was doing a really credible impression of what a 19th-century Elmore Leonard would've written about. And then near the end it turned into an endless…

Unknown Man #89
I haven't read this early one in a while, but I think it's one of his best. None of the characters are super-cool or super-villainous… the story isn't particularly epic, it just kind of rambles along with most of the characters being pretty unclear on what's going on… but it all feels really immediate…

read the book if you can find it
The novel, A Hall of Mirrors, is an overstuffed first novel but still really fucking good. I wouldn't really call it a political thriller; the fascist scheming is portrayed as just the kind of thing everyone knows is going on, it's more of a backdrop for the various spiritual crackups…

My favorite moment between Hurt and Brooks is when Hurt has this very sincere speech about how he knows his own limits and he'll never pretend to know more than he does, and then about two seconds later Brooks provokes him into doing exactly that ("Yes, I know the names of the Cabinet." "All twelve?" "Yes." "There's…

I liked "The Wife" a whole lot too, and you can find it on DVD with some effort. It's a little bit less claustrophobia-inducing than "What Happened Was…" (four characters instead of two, and they go outdoors a few times) but just as twisted and drily funny. I'm pretty sure it's also the only movie in which Wallace…

Doesn't make a lot of sense even by Fringe standards. There was an intruder at a nursing home, a confused patient said it was his son, and a blurry video image showed a silhouette of someone who looked vaguely like him. Report that to the police and at most they'd conclude that it might've been someone related to him;…

nitpickers assemble!
Maybe at this point I just should accept that the Fringe team will always get called in whenever the plot demands that they get called in, but… was it ever explained at all how they got summoned to the nursing home in the beginning? Does Fringe get alerted whenever any security camera anywhere…

asthma fail
This is really far from being the worst science fuckup on this show or on TV in general, but it kind of bugged me that their depiction and explanation of an asthma attack was so bogus. It doesn't cause you to make loud noises like that, and it's not triggered by "adrenaline causing an elevated heart rate"…

I saw this episode before I ever heard the phrase "tramp stamp", so I could never really get with the general consensus that tattoos on the lower back were cheesy or for bimbos, because, you know… SCULLY. Sigh.

I really hated the magic effects too. I sort of thought the silliness was intentional, like they were trying to show Willow's perspective and she thinks magic is just fun and games, so everything is sparkly. But it was just clumsy and distracting. Might've still worked if we *also* got to see the same scene from the…

Well, besides being a plot device to mess up Angel's life, I think she also fills in a necessary piece of Angel's character. I don't mean the flashback scenes (which looked kind of silly, yeah), I mean that she makes his guilty vampire hero thing seem a little more connected to who he is. I mean, Angel was a vampire…