I can totally understand liking the Brother Sam stuff enough to forgive the sloppiness elsewhere, and I almost got there myself, but the locusts left a bad taste in my mouth.

I noticed this as well. There was no shots of Lila either though, so I
got the impression that they are trying to downplay Dexter's romantic
relationships in the fabric of the show. They showed Lumen because that
was last season, but between the absence of Lila and Rita in that
montage, and Dexter's "It's not what…

I got the same impression, but I hope it's a fake-out.

Can't believe I forgot to mention that. It's mostly because I immediately filed it under "Wait and See."

I absolutely miss Doakes. He was definitely grating at times, but I liked that he was a good cop who noticed how obviously bizarre Dexter's behavior was. Quinn as Doakes 2.0 never worked for me because Quinn was dirty, and it made it hard to root for him since his motivation was rooted in self-preservation. I was…

The pacing criticism is interesting, and I'm going to think more about it. The more I think back over the season, I wouldn't call the pace slow as much as subtle. It seems to amble along casually, but to see the threads tied together in this episode was enough of a payoff for me. Definitely not the pacing I would have…

I really dug that scene too. I'm invariably tickled to see the giddiness roiling beneath Patty's prosecutorial poker face. But Boorman won't kill Patty. Why? For the same reason he won't just kill Ellen. She's one of the main characters.

Absolutely. The execution of that scene was just perfect. There was a moment where I genuinely thought the foregone conclusion might not be so foregone after all. And then…snap.

As I recall, Sepinwall liked the first season but decided it wasn't for him after seeing a couple episodes of the second. But Joshua Alston, your second favorite critic is a pretty big fan.

I'm glad you're magnanimous enough to pop in despite your indignation. Every click helps.

That was rude.

I haven't crunched the numbers, but I was referring to number of episodes, not total season length.

I'm equally indifferent to Steve. I've gotten used to him more than I've grown to like him as a character or as a suitor for Fiona.

I'm not baffled by Jasmine's introduction, I'm baffled by this amount of table setting for next season when there were so many things left dangling in this season. The True Blood comparison is a good one, except that as they were introducing Michelle Forbes, they were also tying up the serial killer mystery that had…

I agree with Dygital Ninja. I really hate mumbo-jumbo and would rather just have the specifics of the broadcast remain a question mark. That was maybe the thing that irked me most about 24, the constant need to explain what was being done using goofy jargon. No thanks.

I agree about the overuse of the "They've got my family!" device. But this show doesn't seem to think self-preservation is enough of a motivation for someone's behavior.

This episode was an improvement from last week's. But I don't know that you can ever say The Event is "getting" better. You can only say that this or that episode made you want to kill yourself less than some others.

I agree with pretty much every word of this except for Sean's motivations being reasonable. Sean's way out of the convoluted conspiracy is to leave Dempsey alone. He's a man without a country anyway, no apparent job, home and now no girlfriend. If anyone has the wherewithal to start over, it's Sean, especially given…

I love the opening credit sequence. I'm big on them generally speaking, when they're done well. But even though I like this one, because of the length I can understand credits fatigue. I wouldn't be surprised if they tried something else with it in season two, much like Weeds did by having different artists perform…

I basically agree with the Karen assessments above and below. It strains credulity that Karen would morph into a different person as a result of the purity ball incident. I don't buy that Karen would care about the opinions of anyone in that room, so while I get while it would be a little mortifying, her spiral into…