I admit I laughed every time they said it, and then said "your momma ain't name you no damn Mario Pepper" to myself in a DMX voice.

This pilot suffers from a classic case of “show, don’t tell,” throwing heaps of clunky exposition at the audience rather than finding ways to incorporate these details smoothly into the story.
I dunno, I have seen SO many pilots do this, even for shows that turned out to be quite excellent, that I'm more or less…

Usually I think this show is great about not judging its characters and presenting their bad decisions fairly, but I'm still really not sure about the Austin/Flo stuff. When she started describing her rape fantasy this week I was just sitting here like "…okay, yeah, that's a common one, but…you do know you just had…

"'Orgasm' is a problem." "For some people, yes." I laughed, not even gonna deny it.

Even in the camera angles, her sexual pleasure was the focus.

It did make me sort of chuckle that that was a fairly literal recreation of the Jungle Fever poster.

It's not as much fun when not said in a Michael Rooker voice, really.

Massive eyeroll at the Chalky/Milton plotline — the parallel with Fern and Maybelle was nice, mostly because I'm still really mad about Maybelle's senseless death and was glad she got a shoutout, but when we've got six episodes to go, let's not wander into a semi-bottle episode with more unnecessarily shitty treatment…

Am I the only one who loves Herb Welch? Apart from God, I mean. "THEY BURNED MY FRIEND!"

Oh, geez. Why is this happening, again? Well, it certainly won't be the worst thing I've watched for him. Remember Shrooms? And The Garden of Eden? Someone kill me.

Not only is the story not just about him, but he's not a badass. He doesn't go around committing awesome crimes like Tony/Nucky/Walter/Dexter/etc, he's just a scientist. And more importantly, the show never uses that as an excuse for his behavior. There's no sense of "yeah, he's really nasty and awful sometimes, but…

What, exactly, was he supposed to do for his brother? He had no resources, nor did he possess the tools to change anything.

Yup, definitely this. And I thought it was fairly obvious that the whole "coward" speech was directed largely towards himself. He has guilt about his brother, he has guilt over being impotent, he has guilt over betraying Libby…hell, he might still be upset about Catherine. It doesn't totally excuse his behavior, no,…

I mean, technically that was some major sexual harassment, but given Austin's history and the fact that he definitely enjoyed it, I don't feel too bad. The implication seemed to be that the main reason he was against it is because she wasn't conventionally attractive.

Luciano’s stinkeye this episode could peel paint off the walls.
Well, which eye? 'Cause, you know. (God forgive me, but I snickered when Torrio told Nucky to "look [whatever enemy] right in the eye" because, well, both of them…sorry.)

I particularly hate the "well, at least he casts black actors" argument in defense of Perry — it's basically saying "who cares if the films are offensive and degrading; that's the best those black actors are going to get, so they'd better just accept it and be grateful for the scraps." Like, what kind of backwards-ass…

Don't forget "uppity women need Jesus or else they deserve to get smacked and/or contract AIDS." Temptation made it brutally clear (if it wasn't before) that Perry has major issues with women.

In general I love these two actors, but the trailer sort of immediately pissed me off because it might as well have had RAPE THREAT DETECTED flashing in red letters at the bottom, it was so blatant, and really, we need another movie about that? Where that's, like, the main source of tension? But then I heard there was…

How very dare you. Fop is for the likes of…of…Mickey Doyle.

"You know, W.B. Yeats…" "I've never heard of him, mate." "He's the greatest poet since Dante. If he'd died when he was 25…" "I would've heard of him, Tony!"