Aileen certainly has handlers. Someone warned her that Faisal was being tailed, and someone had to provide her with the safehouse. Unless there is some pretty filthy misdirection going on, her handlers are certainly related to the Saudi Arabian prince's assistant, who had someone steal the necklace, because the house…

1. I don't get the confusion about who is trying to kill Aileen or why they would be. They're being hunted down by Aileen's handlers, because since they've been made they are now a liability and said handlers don't want people who know about them getting tortured and spilling something sensitive. I thought that was…

Castle seems to have a degree in all that sort of Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew shit, so it's plausible.

The implied norm is that terrorists are muslim Arabs… so when that turns out not to be the case, it's a TWEEST!

I don't know what the second part is, but when he holds the prisoner's hands he's saying "As-salamu alaykum," which is just a greeting (Peace be upon you).

I'm more irritated that the show seems determined to punish us by giving us naked Morena Baccarin, but always in unimaginably uncomfortable circumstances.

It's possible for the thought that torture is effective, and the notion that it is morally indefensible to coexist. Whether or not torture works has no bearing on whether it is wrong; I mean, I'm pretty sure killing people works brilliantly to keep them from doing things you don't want them doing, but that doesn't…

I have to say I don't like fantasy being shoved into a genre ghetto. The Wire was about real issues but a great deal of its greatness comes from exploring universal questions (Around the show's central themes of how institutions fail people and vice versa) through that 'lens' of the Baltimore drug trade, and if you…

I have to say, not having read the books, I too was looking at this as an ensemble piece and already not expecting Ned to survive as a main character through to next season. Then again, I generally think of television as a naturally 'ensemble' medium (C.f. The Wire, whose nominal protagonist was pretty much gone for a…

It's really weird watching this after coming off playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. I'm going, "I killed that guy… and that guy… and that guy too…"

Network TV, ruinin' things…
It strikes me that maybe the reason this is so overstuffed, and has so many plot threads that abruptly come to a close, is that if it didn't, there would be more hanging plot next episode than can conveniently fit in the recap, which means it would be - gasp - not episodic. Like everything…

That makes sense, actually. The B plot was probably the best B plot the show has done in a while, and an all-time great Jack moment, but it could probably have been saved for another episode (If only the series wasn't running out of Alec Baldwin, at least) and replaced with a B-plot that fit the overall arc. Although,…

Not to nitpick or anything, but…
…how come this is an A-? There's nothing in the review to indicate that it has some small flaw that keeps it from being an A, and I thought it was pretty much the best episode of the season. The last-minute gag was perfect.

I'm not in any way trying really hard to like this show. Like I said, I thought it was pleasingly mediocre. The A plot was a complete failure except for a few moments; none of the drama there really worked. I thought the B plot worked because House trying to avoid Cuddy's grief by doing something which only he would…

No, I said 30 Rock and Glee are better than House, but the three put together are still more or less on the first tier of network shows. I confess I haven't seen Modern Family so I won't make comparisons to that, but really: Network programming is so terrible nowadays that 'pleasantly mediocre' feels like an…

I'm not so much bothered by the opinion the reviewer gives as much as I'm bothered by the tone. It just makes his point weaker when he sets off, from paragraph one, to attack the show. It's like music reviews that open with a paragraph about how terrible the band is - it doesn't exactly make your opinion come across…

It's still better than anything on network TV save Glee and 30 Rock. Maybe that's sad, but there you go.

Dear God
People really shouldn't be asked to review things which they are already openly contemptuous of. If you're going to hate something, you have to hate it after you've seen it. Otherwise, you just look like you set off to dislike something and, amazingly, succeeded.

I personally really dislike Miyazaki's work, and I thought that the Totoro parody in the episode highlighted the things I dislike for me - the overwrhough whimsy, the pacing - but I still thought it was funny. Funny that. Parody!

That hat
This might seem weird, but: Is it just me, or is Schroeder's hat the ugliest piece of wardrobe ever to appear on television, and deliberately so?