I should add that I have a friend who actually ascribes her entry into the BDSM/leather scene to watching that episode. She described her reaction as "Oh my goodness, I've never seen anything like that on TV. That sure is pretty extreme. And [BLUSH] oddly very, very interesting."

I think the Buffy/Spike hotness may come across differently to people who have actually had a relationship like that, versus people who haven't. I mean one where you know they're wrong for you— but that kind of helps, because you don't have to worry about disappointing someone when you don't respect them— AND they're…

Darla
To each his own, but the time I really fell for Darla as a character, both in the writing and the acting, was right after her resurrection as a human. Yeah, she was kind of a bummer, but I thought that kind of grounded the show in a way it needed; not every character has to be witty.

Lungs don't work that way. They can't inflate by themselves if they're out of the chest— it's the diaphragm and the ribs that make them expand.

That's sort of what I figured Scott was getting at, but if so he wrote it in a way that almost means the opposite. "Shrugging off" a justification sounds more like *not* accepting the justification, or at least being indifferent to it, not arguing in favor of it. And I still can't tell where the "Damn right" comes…

Scott, what does this sentence mean?
"That people get up in arms about movies like Martyrs while shrugging off the 'Damn right' justifications for real-life torture is telling, I think."

The MPAA isn't a governmental agency; movie theaters have just agreed to use their ratings. Video stores don't need to pay attention to them at all. They could get in trouble if they rented porn, or something a judge might consider porn, to someone under 18— so they might have a policy of not renting unrated movies to…

Henry & June
"Anais Nin, who had affairs with author Henry Miller and his wife June"… well no, she doesn't sleep with June in the movie and probably didn't in real life either. The movie suggests that Anais was up for anything but June was straight. Nin's diary is slightly cagey on this point, but it sounds more like…

I'm glad Moriarty is annoying. Sherlock is an emotionally abnormal genius, and he's annoying as hell; Moriarty lacks the few restraints that Sherlock has, and has even less need to interact with regular people. Sociopaths in real life are rarely smart, and they're almost never smooth.

@wallflower: Interesting - I never thought of it that way, creativity as a kind of arrogance. The failed writer thing actually seemed kind of sweet to me, like it was the one thing in the CSM's life that was really heartfelt and genuine, but unfortunately he was just really bad at it.

YES. That was my favorite part of the book.

Timidwildone: well, Kale approached the guy in front of a bunch of people in broad daylight, and asked him "Do you have the time?" so he could bail out gracefully. Will charged up to the other dude at night on an empty block. Pretty sure Kale knows his shit in this case.

Whether it's thematic or just aesthetic, the opening credit sequence makes this seem like a pretty deliberate choice. It's full of handwriting, scraps of paper, newspaper clippings, transparent overlays, stuff crossed out in marker - very anti-digital, even though someone probably slaved over a computer for a long…

Tammany: Eh, that line was from Grant, and he's a pompous asshole. It doesn't mean the team is really that important, just that Grant either wants to think they are or just wants to fuck with Tanya's head.

Carterspeak
"Carter's heavy dialog is basically that kind of pseudo-poetic junk done right—or at least done with purpose"

Scully's paranoia
re: "It seems so much more like Mulder's deepest fear than Scully's"
I dunno, it worked fine for me because it's about her relationship with Mulder. She loves the guy and they support each other, but it's his fault that she's been dragged into all this murderous conspiracy shit, and he's pretty scary…

wild-ass guess about Crystal's family…
I'm not sure I care about any of the Crystal subplot, but I'm starting to think they have something in mind other than werewolves there; her family looks way more fucked up than the werewolves did— they always look like they've been in a 24-hour fistfight. The way Sam cut loose…

I'd say it does more than leave the possibility open; Todd's "pretty clear explanation for what happened" is the only one that fits what we see, and since Morgan could've easily added more loose ends if he wanted us to keep wondering, I think it's safe to say that that *is* what happened. The gray aliens are…

You're just trying to explode my brain with one of those Captain Kirk vs. Computer logic traps. MUST STERILIZE IMPERFECTION frztt pop

But Rowan, I've already explained that I'm too lazy to look it up on the Internet. Wikipedia is part of the Internet. Besides, that won't answer my last question about whether the idea was used elsewhere before.