The reviewer might see the Bolin/Mako conflict as taking energy away from the story, but I can't wait to see those two finally throw down. And I like how the show is revealing that each brother is making choices that increasingly isolate them- Bolin is making choices that cause Opal and Mako to distance themselves,…

Fair enough. Looking back at the Emerson review, I was mostly thinking of this segment:

Okay, I didn't get that you were referring to the film press, as you clarify further down. I was just pointing out that your argument can be used to take down a lot of reviews of Lady in the Water that are equally scathing, and seem equally informed by real anger. Jim Emerson's review on Roger Ebert's website comes to…

Yeah, you never see critics complain about stereotypes like corrupt politician/cop, evil businessperson, or mad scientists. The difference is that critics actually have less of a platform to complain about critics in movies, because they invite this argument. A critic who rolls his eyes about yet another abstractly…

Tobias's review mentions that the director insults the film press in this movie. Per your comment, this means that Tobias is mad that the director insults the film press- it has no bearing on the quality of the movie at all.

Which is the real problem with the "parasitic critics" stereotype in movies- it's a stupidly easy strawman, because anyone who has any problems with the use of the stereotype is "obviously" just another bitter critic who is stung by the truth of the depiction. Think that Mayor Ebert in Emmerich's Godzilla is a silly,…

In context, that statement comes across as heavily sarcastic. Imagine I wrote the following sentence:

Yeah, just like how all the critics got mad at that overlooked Shyamalan masterpiece Lady in the Water, right?

I think Bad Judge was bad enough to kill all the Ferrell/McCay projects in development at NBC.

You SAY the peacock? That's crazy!

The Mr. Garrison episode predicted the rise of "otherkin," so I'm willing to give it a pass. I mostly just remember watching the clips of the sex change video that plays in the beginning of the episode, and being weirdly depressed by how artificial the whole process seemed- it's like the doctor was just molding the…

Yes, then I thought that might be stretching the bounds of credulity for this show, then I started thinking about what the bounds of credulity might be for a show like this, and then I didn't know what to think.

They have figured out that she is very, very good at acting flustered, and they are milking it for all it's worth, which is quite a lot.

Well, this episode is sort of "self-cohesive?" I mean, each plotline resolves naturally from something that was set up in the beginning, each sequence of jokes works as a delightful string of you-think-I'm-going-left-but-actually-I'm-pretending-to-go-right-and-then-I-punch-you-in-the-face misdirection, and the…

"Tell her I'll make her a mixtape."

Yeah, that's what I was thinking- I know at least one of the pro-Registration heroes turned out to be a Skrull fomenting discord, but it might have been Hank Pym instead. And really, Reed Richards is a supervillain most of the time. Fantastic Four gets a lot more interesting if you think of Doom and Richards as rival…

Isn't this basically the premise for Everybody Loves Raymond?

Didn't it turn out that he was being impersonated by a Skrull at the time? Marvel must love the Skrulls- they're the ultimate device for apologizing for crappy characterization.

Issue 2 dealt with this in a pretty hilarious way- it turned out that Cap, while on the run, was still hunting down and chaining up bad guys, and a sort of arms race starts going down between registered and unregistered superheroes about which side can bag the most impressive villains- sort of the Marvel Universe…

Because it's Millar totally messing with your expectations, maaaaannnnnn.