But she: a) is not actually better than everyone else at everything (like plenty of other characters probably have the same level of Quidditch and spellcasting talent—Harry, for one, but also probably Fred, George, Draco, Cedric, Angelina, and others. And it makes sense that she would be a talented spellcaster and…

Right, those are the character traits she presents to Harry and due to the narrative structure of the HP books, we basically see every character only through Harry's eyes. But given that most of the plots in the books are driven by Harry (usually wrongly) making assumptions about people's entire character/motivation…

I mean, she suddenly becomes hot because…puberty, man. It works like that for some lucky bastards.
But really the only things we see her being flawless and awesome at are Quidditch and spellcasting, because those are the only things we see her do (other than like making out with Harry). And plenty of characters in the…

Wait, seriously? In what way were either of those characters Mary Sues?

No, I don't think they ever had that conversation on screen. So while, yeah, maybe it's a lot to expect a relationship to remain exclusive if you're planning to live apart for two years, they still needed to explicitly have that "define the relationship" conversation for Adam's actions to be at all sympathetic. And…

It's just a very enthusiastic version of OTP. And do we absolutely need a portmanteau for every ship?

There actually have been a lot of moments throughout the show where I wondered if the writers were trying to build up to Watson and Bell being a thing, and it would be fine, I guess, but he's probably too normal for Joan (if we're to believe Sherlock's theories on Joan's romantic needs), and while Jon Michael Hill is…

Yeah, I agree with your read wrt Watson's decision. It was very much in line with the whole tortured "I am a danger to everyone I love/every time I slack off someone dies/etc and thus I can't have a life outside of my very important job" thing that we generally associate with male characters and MANPAIN. Which is sort…

I know AV Club commenters largely seem to look down on shipping, but fuck it: WATSON/MORIARTY OTPPPP
Also, does it really count as "spoiling" the perp's guilt if his shiftiness at the meeting was actually how Sherlock figured out how he was guilty?

Yeah, I grew up in NoVa, so hearing them namedrop Don Beyer Volvo was just like…whoa, right, this is actually supposed to be the DC area beyond just the government buildings. (Did I put way too much thought into what mall Paige and Henry got stranded at back in season 1? Maybe.)

I didn't see her comments to Linda as particularly shady, although yeah, they weren't super considerate. But it could be that even though she doesn't want to date Barry, she doesn't like the idea of his immediately moving on to someone who she might see as a more successful version of herself—so it might be a…

I read this book a few years ago because the cover and title were appealing, but oh god I hated it so much (although it was well-written enough that I finished it). It was such a cringingly unsubtle and preachy critique of smartphone culture*, and the romantic plotline was just…ugh**. It seems like a TV version of it…

Abbie and Irving already confronted Ichabod about that when he name-dropped Jefferson at some point in season 1, though. Which is not to say that Abbie shouldn't have called Jefferson out to his (holographic) face, but the writers may have felt that they already had that covered.

I mean, it's more about the circumstances of getting him. She might have been happy if he had dumped Clementine because he was actually in love with her, but it's made pretty clear that Clementine dumped him/was going to dump him and Marnie is just his convenient back-up. So Marnie sucks, but Desi sucks more, probably?

Yeah, it would be nice because I enjoy watching Hannah suffer, but also, because she probably could find someone better/at least more well-suited to her than Adam. Their communication issues were so painful to watch (especially since Adam started acting) and I never totally got how their relationship functioned…

I would kind of love if Girls ended in sort of a reverse of the first season, with Hannah holding down a steady job (like the GQ job—something related to writing but not necessarily being a ~writer~) while Marnie is the one pursuing a delusional artistic goal, and this episode could be a step in that direction.…

Ahh, i'm glad you mentioned Night Watch, because that's the only other movie I can think of that did something non-standard with subtitles (although probably others exist?) and also lol Night Watch. But it would be cool to see more movies playing around with them, similar to how the way text messages are displayed on…

I mean, he's been convincing in everything I've seen him in prior to Whiplash, and he was convincing in Whiplash. It wasn't really revelatory, so I didn't feel the need to comment on it.

Whiplash: I didn't actually think I would like this, because I was not super interested in watching what I assumed (and I was not that wrong) would be 100 minutes of macho posturing. But yeah, fine, the popular consensus is correct and Whiplash is pretty good. I do think the scenes that focus more on Andrew's sort of…

Yes! Season 5 in particular is spectacular, but except for some major missteps in Kalinda's storylines, they're all pretty great. And most of the characters do get more developed, although I can't remember at what sort of pace. (To be fair, though, I watched the first five seasons over 10 days in my summer of…