Yeah, it would be cool to watch s1, maybe read a quick recap, and then watch s4. You can even skip the middle step. And the good thing is that by the pilot you'll know whether this is for you, so there's very little wasted time finding out.

Oh yeah. In a soap (or "soapy drama") every secret or misdeed eventually comes out. It's just a matter of time. One has to laugh at the teacher's "No one will read these journals." He does not know he inhabits a soap.

To put it another way, there is no unreliable narrator—or shifting first-person point-of-view, even—in Defiance. What we see is "objectively" true. (Characters can still of course lie.) [I guess there's some impressionistic stuff with the mystical elements.]

Available at Kenya's.

McCawley really has a lot of facets. Protective of his children; unsentimental wheeler-and-dealer like Datak; racist (?) asshole (plague episode); Datak's nemesis; pillar of the community / guy who's got your back. Also a bit Old School in terms of Earth before the terraforming.

I like (but don't love) almost all the characters, and in the aggregate it adds up to a good watch. A little nudge here and there might be needed to push it toward being a flat-out great show.

I really liked the Sherlock line. What does he care if Kenya killed her abusive husband. He lives in a post-apocalyptic world and has no time for "academic" mysteries.

They're lying in the present, I think; the flashbacks are true.

Grade: solid A, an A minus at the least. The quinceanera party (and the preparations for same) provided a great opportunity to have everyone's plots intersecting with everyone else's. The explosion of all the time bombs was also well-executed (Jesus and Lexi's secret hookup, Brandon/Callie/Talya, the…

Good on Brandon for D'ingTMFA.

Yeah, the way the show handled the Mike material (TM) was awesome. He is told to pace himself, which sets up an alcoholism future plot, but/and it turns out he's of the "I love you!" drunks (and even acquiesces to his designated driver; this has never happened on TV!).

Do Hemingway now!

We're lucky that the embedding goes only so far, because I like *yours* more.

I echo @avclub-13d7df3c17502af69aafccc758195f96:disqus 's reply. Since this isn't a show that's very vulnerable to spoilers, and since it's not a water-cooler type show where the fun is in talking about it the next day, I'd say there is also no downside to simply waiting it out, to see what sort of reviews it gets in…

A compass? What does it matter which direction the cow is facing?

I'm so glad Datak capitulated. It doesn't make sense (though it often happens, both in real life and in fiction) that the characters opt to cut off their nose to spite their face: They care so much about "the family" that they alienate the incarnation of said family, in this case the only son. What good is securing…

I would have preferred its destruction (though then I would have complained about the dead-end of its having been introduced in the first place).

Once she inherits the mines, she'll have the power (and the glory)—oops, wrong Graham Green.

I figured it was a tribute to Top Hat, but I can't quite remember whether he wore them.

RELEASE THE CRANK-EN!