"You happy now, fish?"

I've never felt that way. I like it better than 1 and 2. Its pacing is far less laborious and I love that season 5 is one of the only seasons (along with 3) where all of the main storylines are tied together by a single clear, thematic idea. In season 3 it's 'reform', and in season 5 it's 'lies'. It's my third…

Most of what Stringer's doing in season 2 is stealthy setup work for season 3 where he has a much showier role. Kinda like with Marlo in season 3, it's easy to forget just how much he's there because his role expands afterwards.

David Simon has said it's about what he considers the "Problem of the 21st Century" which is that say 10-15% of our population is no longer needed due to the evolution of our economies, but they're still there, and the problem is that we don't know what to do with them. Season 2 is the one that most directly addresses…

So would you say you were utilizing the tactic of psychic driving?

Nailed it.

This is really good news, since I've pretty much given up on Alana ever being the awesome character I want her to be. Bedelia being all brainwashed by Hannibal could easily be a shitty use of the character, though, and this show really needs good storylines for its female characters.

Time is a flat roll of tape.

Not sure about that. It's the basis of Scarlett Johansson's and Christina Hendricks' stardom too, but they clearly dislike it and wish they were recognized more for their acting than for their bodies.

Like, we're defending racial slurs now? That's what we're doing now?

By the way, is anybody else struck by how strange the use of the word "banishment" feels? It's almost like they went with a deliberately antiquated term. By referring to Daniel's punishment as the sort of punishment you'd imagine people getting thousands of years ago, it furthers the Biblical imagery/allegory of the…

I'm so grateful that you'd share that here. I imagine there could be no higher compliment to Ray McKinnon than that his story feels so truthful to the sort of people it's based on. I know Damian Echols wrote a piece praising season 1, too, and I'm sure that meant a lot to McKinnon et al.

Yeah, I think Trey's frame job was less him being an evil genius and more him improvising some way to get some sick satisfaction and then sloppily trying to cover his own ass on the way out.

I'd get mad at you guys for being Islamophobic but you're nowhere near as bad about it as Homeland is so I guess you're fine.

My bad.

The first season is pretty consistent. After that there are peaks and valleys but there were only one or two times it wasn't at least okay.

Kara and Lee were both great characters at the start who got steadily worse (although Lee did have a major uptick from Gaius' trial through the quorum business).

Completely agreed. I really liked Callie in the first couple seasons.

Her reaction to the Bob Benson proposal was one of her finest moments on the show. She was incredible in that scene.

Ugh. Okay, look. Sometimes TV characters do offensive things. Sometimes they do offensive things that the writers are intentionally presenting as offensive - Libby's treatment of Coral in this episode, for instance, is something that the writers are presenting as the racial condescension that it is. Sometimes they do…