@avclub-0ae7484a9f3bbd2a21df420050c032ae:disqus I wouldn't call it a retcon. In the series, they made it clear that experiments had been done on her brain, she was psychic, and she was potentially homicidally dangerous; they didn't show her beating up a room full of guys, but she hadn't received the trigger to do so.…

Agreed, and I'm confused by the way some people have complained about that aspect: I've seen apparently serious arguments that Piper is a stereotype of a bisexual who can't make up her mind, and that the show just doesn't understand bisexuals because Piper never uses the word "bisexual." I think the former is just…

I don't know what you mean about Alex's accent. I have friends who sound exactly like that, mostly from the East Coast but some from the West. I'm also not sure why you think her eyebrows and makeup were so freaky and weird; that's a style plenty of people favor.

I disagree. All three of those things made sense in terms of the characters:
1. By the time Piper decided she had to leave Alex, she was hypersensitive to Alex's ability to manipulate her and control her movements; so even if she saw the funeral request as legit, she couldn't take the chance of staying around Alex long…

@avclub-5470317571e6488699c5096861915107:disqus It's also a reprehensible thing for the Ira Glass stand-in to do. He's probably smarter than Larry and definitely less personally involved; it wouldn't be hard for him to see that this guy might be causing serious problems for other people, and is at the very least…

Healy's "butch wing" proposal is based on a true story from a different prison.

If O'Neal is confused, he's not the only one— I've seen that story told many times and it was always about Shivers, not Rabid. Example: http://blog.thecanadianency…

Mal doesn't say he expects the government to fall, and he doesn't seem all that surprised at the end of the movie when it hasn't fallen. He just thought it was important to get this story out, both as a matter of principle ("someone has to speak for these people"), and to reduce the chance that the Alliance will try…

I don't think the Confederates ought to be allowed to permanently hijack a perfectly good story premise until the end of time. I mean, rooting for scrappy rebels against an evil central government is something people should naturally want to do; that's why the Lost Cause apologists chose to portray the South that way,…

In federal prison, the warden can order an autopsy for any apparent suicide, but isn't under any obligation to do so.

@avclub-912a96819c9a3f09a4217e7dbb4d3e74:disqus She's also got pretty limited time for these conversations, so it's not surprising that she's not concentrating on keeping him up to date with the latest changes to everything she's said in previous weeks.

@avclub-884c4beddd8c98bb3b016bdfcc1bcdf8:disqus You seem to post a lot of comments (especially on Savage Love threads) about how various things literally nauseate you. Maybe you should ask a doctor about these stomach problems.

Catching up late with the show here, and yeah, I think it's kind of an understatement to say that the series has never been "as invested in" logical plotting. I got to enjoy it a lot by the end of season 1, but only after desensitizing myself to some amazingly bullshitful writing when it came to anything involving the…

"…it doesn't really bother me that he says his being rejected is the main reason for his nastiness - it may be true, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the only reason."

Same here. By the time I was Sam's age, I'd been secretly horny and pervy for 3 or 4 years, and non-secretly falling in unrequited love with a different object of obsession every year… but they were always kids of more or less my own age. "Sexy" people on TV and in movies were like some other species.

Maybe this should be a separate category: first really embarrassing experience with pot.

I'm lucky that I never tried cigarettes as a teenager, because based on the experience of my sister, who I'm a lot like, I would've gotten really really into smoking and would've found it awfully hard to quit. Had a lot of trouble with depression and anxiety, so I could've easily gotten into self-medicating with booze…

I don't know if you're a prude, but I think you're not using your imagination. Lots of personal shit can come up when people are exploring BDSM, especially if one person is a lot less into it than the other (which is how ROPER sounds to me): anything from "wow, in this role-playing situation you were really…

Yeah, claiming that people only disagree with you because they're herd-followers who "love sucking off authority," and responding to someone stating opinion X with a rant about how stupid opinion Y is and how it's all about you, aren't trollish behaviors at all.

Actually I thought Walt more or less knew what he was doing in this case. There really isn't any explanation that could fool Skyler— I mean, I'm sure he would've been happy if she'd just accepted it and not asked him about it in private, but realistically that wasn't going to happen. So he just has to confuse Junior,…