I guess it depends if you're counting assumed deaths that would later result from the attack, or only deaths that concretely occurred within the season. I remember Tony saying at some point that around three hundred thousand people were confirmed to be infected, and the virus had almost a 100% mortality rate. But it's…

Yeah, now that I think about it, I think the guy who escaped CTU's eternally-useless perimeter was just kind of trailing disease all over the place, so even though they eventually caught him (I think), the quarantine area wasn't totally locked down. It was pretty bleak.

The hotel! Michelle and Gael in the hotel. I'd almost forgotten about that part. I think that's what I liked about the structure of the season—it definitely was slow to start, yeah, but it just kept gaining momentum and the ending was REALLY intense.

Right? I'm not sure whether she or Tony was the longest-lasting character besides Jack, but she was such an iconic one. I was trying to remember if she was in the second season, because it feels like she was around for that long.

Yeah, I wrote off season 5 as bullshit as soon as they killed Michelle. (Which was in episode 1, IIRC.)

Season 3 was by far my favorite, for a few reasons—I found the bioterrorism angle more interesting than the threats of other seasons, especially since it was a "viral apocalypse" kind of threat, but I also thought Salazar was a really fascinating villain for as long as he lasted. Plus, it was the season that gave us…

Whoever started this is clearly not the sharpest tool in the shed.

You don't pronounce a T unless it's at the beginning of a word, and sometimes not even then, in the cases where it's replaced with a D. ("gimme summa dat," etc.)

Baltimore is pretty much just Philly turned up to eleven.

Seaowth Schtree' *glottal stop*.

Clumsily, and somewhat delayed?

I'll be fucking devastated when Michael Wincott goes. I had the most ridiculous crush on him in high school.

Yeah, I'm not trying to argue that Elizabeth and James personally dictated all the themes that playwrights wanted to tackle and people wanted to see onstage, early modern censorship practices and prison sentences for making fun of Scotland notwithstanding. I do think that narrower genres in particular tend to arise as…

No, that's definitely a fair point, I wouldn't try to suggest that trends in any kind of popular culture arise or shift solely based on who's in charge of the government. But as a general shorthand way of discussing those trends, the categories aren't useless.

"Just grab her by the country matters and tell her you're going to lay your head in her lap. They let you do it, because you're the Prince of Denmark."

I'm actually in the middle of a thesis on why themes like incest were largely specific to Jacobean drama and didn't show up in plays written during Elizabeth's reign, so I'd personally contest the idea that the eras are meaningless.

A Chaste Maid in Cheapside is still my favorite Middleton play by a small margin, but The Revenger's Tragedy is my shit.

I like the term "forced-birthers," myself.

"All this pressure to be bright…"
"I got children all over town!"

Tremendous. Tremendous ratings, ask anybody.