I was just thinking about how much more expensive this movie was going to be, since everyone involved is much, much more famous now, except for Spud.

I was in Europe the summer of '96 and saw this with the family I was staying with in Normandy.  It totally blew me away.  When I got back, I told everyone I knew they had to go see it as soon as it was released (I want to say it came out mid-August in the States).

Illinois elects governors during the midterm elections.  So, this is basically taking place a year in the future.

See, that plotline I found a bit unrealistic.  Sure, they would ask Alicia to cut down the bill, but the final bill would never be shown to the associates and it wouldn't affect their billable hours target, barring something else (like serious shenanigans).  The bigger conflict would be going forward, with Alicia…

Yeah, I think Agos and Associates is pretty much a done deal at this point.  It's just got to be too hard for Cary to have to answer to Alicia, especially after he was offered the same thing.

Governor is generally the better launching pad to president, but he could also be angling for something like a cabinet slot.

@avclub-7445cdf838e562501729c6e31b06aa7b:disqus In a surprise twist, Mr Creepy, Esq. is actually after Frank Landau.

Not while they were presidents, no, but it's not hard to believe that Bush Sr might have paid for some action while on the Pacific Front in WW2 (though I'm not saying he did—just that it's plausible that a 20 year old might, while serving overseas with the military, hire a prostitute).  The point wasn't that…

I feel like we should all write HBO and demand that they let Knauf finish it as a novel or graphic novel or something.

He wasn't really fighting with the Germans (or, at least, that wasn't his interest); he was hunting down Belyakov/Management.

What impresses me is how not surprised I am by the ending he described.  From Sophie's vision in Season 1, as well as the Samson introduction in the pilot, I thought it was pretty obvious we were heading to the two killing themselves in an atomic blast to rid the world of the avataric battles.  Throwing their kid into…

Yep, pretty much.  I'd point to the same string of episodes Knauf did as being weak and the source of a lot of the slow pace complaints.  And the show really did pull itself together in Season 2 to an amazing degree.  It wasn't perfect, but it was still damn good.

I was insanely bitter at the time because of the way they cancelled it.  There was definitely the sense in the months leading up that it was on the bubble, so it wasn't entirely unexpected.  But whatever HBO stooge announced the cancellation included a statement along the lines of "We at HBO feel like Carnivale has…

One way to save money: not hiring four actors at the last minute because someone suggested a carnival should have a cooch show.  I love the Dreyfusses, but that's the sort of decision that has a major impact on a show's budget.

It's funny, at the time I thought it was the creators directly responding to the criticism that the show was too slow by ramping everything up; now I find out it was that they had to cut the season down.  Not that it wouldn't have been good at 16 episodes, but here you can really see the benefit of someone saying,…

Yeah, it was Michael Moore who freed Mississippi's slaves:  http://www.youtube.com/watc…

OUAT is fairly mediocre, but @avclub-5cacf3537687ab9a5b03778cfb57f476:disqus does sort of have a point.  The official line on AV Club grades is that they are based on the show itself, not in comparison to, say, Breaking Bad.  OUAT does consistently fail to live up to its potential, but not every episode should be…

Also, if they're in Maine, why drive all the way to Boston?  Why not just fly out of Portland on Jet Blue or something.  Oh, wait, no one involved with this show has ever been to Maine, so they probably don't even realize there's a Portland, Maine, or that it has an airport with direct flights to NYC.

@jerodast:disqus Why didn't I concur?!?

Taking it back a level, though, Emma is only a crapsack parent because Regina deprived her of her own fairytale parents.  There's a lot of family drama going on here that can't just be dumbed down to "who is Henry's real mommy?"  That said, the show seems to be written by a bunch of drooling idiots, so the complex…