I loved the idea of cloning someone without copying them so much that the technical absurdities never bothered me*. The technology in sci-fi shows rarely lives up to the Arthur C. Clarke maxim about technology and magic. Just by having a concept of technology in the first place we're able to make the distinction…

yep. I saw The Arrival with my brother because we were both so pumped to see Independence Dayndewr we just wanted to see some damn aliens. And then we saw Independence Day and… The Arrival was pretty good. Underrated. Fun, forgotten, and probably should have been.

Don't apologize for the science bit, that was awesome.

Some stuff I liked-

Since this is probably the last thread I can safely admit this on, yeah,
Firefly didn't do anything for me. I had this show recommended to me
so many times by people who are usually right, too. I did the whole show
on Netflix over a weekend with a good friend of mine (who was also
seeing it for the first time) and he…

"Bill Moves On" is such a great eulogy for Phil Hartman. I love the letter-reading scene. I mean, I hate it, I hate that it has to exist, but it's so damn great. They have the whole cast — barely holding it together — reading quintessential Bill McNeal lines, which just drives home how irreplaceable Hartman's voice…

You may as well re-title this "shows to lose to Ozymandias," but here are a few I liked…

I'm sure she's a wonderful person. She seems nice. I don't want to say I don't like her. She was always really terrible on SNL, though.

I forgot about all of that. Thanks, man.

I'd love for my Cards to grab a sleeper QB (Carson Palmer can't be the answer), but I've resigned myself to yet another serviceable no 2/3 receiver. I like the team as is, actually. The only thing we're* missing — as always — is a great LT, but those guys aren't going to be around past the first 19 picks.

I can't tell you that. I really want to like this, but that first episode… It's good. The actors are committed, the direction has the appropriate murky flair for a cable prestige drama. It just feels a little self-serious. A show that (so far) seems to be about Dracula meets Frankenstein meets Allan Quartermain meets…

Do you still have her number?

If i was making the list I'd replace Modern Warfare with Poultry and AD&D with Conspiracy theories. I think CAP is a better representation of Community doing genre parodies than Warfare (even though they're both awesome). I think Conspiracy theories shows how easily Community can take a hard left into dream logic and…

Thank you for giving me an excuse to vent about Fringe. I really liked Fringe, but it was a frustrating show. They had a creative peak for about a season, where they figured out their mythology and how their characters fit into it, and then… it didn't really go off the rails. It would've been fun if it had gone off…

The way this show can drop a bomb in the last scene is bringing me back to 2nd season Fringe. I was just minding my own business, enjoying the show but not thinking it was anything that great for POI, and then "this is the trial of the United States Government." Next week is going to be fun.

I really hope you're right about Freddie. It would ruin my enjoyment of the show if Will actually killed Freddie Lounds. In the Freddie lives scenario, I'm thinking that he served up cavebear-suit guy leftovers to Hannibal.

I'd be the guy shouting "hyena people!" at Sunnydale's prom and then slow jamming to The Sundays.

A rule of thumb is supposed to be useful, but flexible. Ideally, that's how I think the Bechdel test can best be used.

I have no idea. I haven't seen either of them.

It's a good rule of thumb. I'm glad I learned about it because it gives me a quantifiable way of understanding stories from a fundamentally different viewpoint. I think it's important to keep in mind that it is still just a rule of thumb. There are all kinds of stories that could conceivably need to break the rule to…