I like how the "or is it Richard?" moment, in the train scene, is genuinely ambiguous— it's equally easy to take it as a source of suspense or just a piece of atmosphere, because of the way the show's been constructed so far. I mean, we know Don has some secrets, so maybe Whitman is his secret life. On the other hand,…

It's probably worth mentioning that Watkins followed his usual practice of casting mostly non-actors whose real opinions fit with those of their characters, so in this case the National Guard characters were played by people who really thought hippies should be thrown into the desert and/or shot. I can't find the…

Yeah, the explanation given in the movie is that the whole thing was set up as a training exercise for the stormtroopers, not for anyone's entertainment, though it's clearly giving some of the guards a chance to blow off steam.

And May only has to move her face a little to be hilarious. The running gag in the scene where she's doing martial arts practice was nicely done— all she does is go from being tranced out to paying attention to Coulson for half a second at a time, but it's such a pointed look that he takes it as a strong statement of…

Based on what I've read about About Time, it makes sense that they're focusing on the kind of time-travel stories where the main characters interfere with their own personal history in some way, which isn't Time Bandits at all.

Just goes to show how differently the same thing can come across to different people, I guess— I didn't at all get a "check those gross fat people fucking" vibe from that scene. I mean, beyond the fact that those are pretty ordinary-looking people who are only "gross" by Hollywood standards, I thought what the…

I wasn't mad, I followed up right away by acknowledging that I "may be a little defensive about that scene", and I didn't say that your mixing up the characters had anything to do with my disagreement with your opinion, nor did I claim to be quoting your words when I wasn't; I think I said what I meant pretty clearly.…

It's a last name and the name of a bunch of places— so it's like someone's first name being Monroe or Madison, which happens. Fits with the X-Files tradition of names that wouldn't have been anyone's first choice on most other shows.

I think it's also just lack of familiarity. I mean, critics from LA or Chicago don't seem to be terribly bothered by Woody Allen poking fun at New Yorkers, but a) they can't possibly forget that he's from there, b) even if they haven't been to NYC they've seen it a million times in the movies, and hence c) they may…

Sorry, I may be a little defensive about that scene, I just love it so much. I think the actors nailed it, and for me it's genuinely romantic in a way most movie romance isn't— this weird tightrope feeling of falling in love, where you're kind of aware that you're not talking like people normally talk, you're getting…

Oh hell yeah. Kids these days have no idea.

I agree that Don cares, but I also don't think he thinks of calling the psychiatrist as a very big deal. He's probably gotten the idea from other people— possibly even from the psychiatrist when they first talked— that that's just what a husband does in this case. And I think he's not comfortable with this psychiatry…

I was late catching up with these and unwisely read the review first, so I was all primed to have a strong opinion about the first one, but didn't really— could go either way between "this is gloriously bad taste" and "this is ordinary bad taste." But then the second one, which Rowan dismissed as a retread, I thought…

Look, you know and I know that Pepsi Jr. mostly just writes troll comments, but not everyone knows that or needs to care about it. So when he actually writes something that's on topic and not unreasonable (which may never happen again), responses like yours really do look like just pointless message board drama— plus,…

I had the strange experience once of transcribing the original tapes of an interview of Pryor by Barbara Walters— or actually re-transcribing, because the network had looked at the original copy and sent it back, having correctly suspected that the first transcriber had been a little too shy to reproduce Pryor's words…

Even when Bruce was doing stuff that wasn't innately gut-busting, I find his delivery hilarious. He had a great way of reducing a side bit to such a distilled form that it should barely make any sense at all, it would just look like a random unfinished thought if you wrote it down, but in context it was clear and it…

It was established in "Within" that Scully hangs out at Mulder's place and feeds the fish there, and Doggett claims to do so too.

What really got me when I saw it again more recently was the scene before the last scene— where it's just the guy coming to work, going through the motions of various tedious tasks, and it seems likely that he's a pod because otherwise they'd be going after him… but if that's the case, it means they don't just act…

Well, "maximum human potential" just means whatever the writers want it to mean at any given time— it's science-fictional hand-waving of a kind that's still popular (see also "you only use 10% of your brain"), but was an especially common theme in early 20th century pulp. It's particularly appropriate for Cap because…

Makes sense— I just got bored with him as a kid and stopped paying attention, though I did finally read Brubaker's Winter Soldier arc recently and liked it.