I thought this might be a plothole too, but my girlfriend convinced me that Marty did it.  The entire complex is underground, so "Upstairs" would be the arena.  The filmmakers want us to think it was a higher power (and you could also theorize that the gods themselves are tired of being satisfied by the sacrifices and…

Anyone want to fanwank Kranz's survival (initially)?  Most of the odd things that happen that are typical horror elements are explained away as manipulation by the Whitford and Jenkins characters, but this one went against their wishes.  I understand the character that is believed to be dead coming back is typical of…

@avclub-84f9e7d729107289d35152b4262e2b53:disqus Yes, Weaver does make that comment.  Kind of a great joke, with the added benefit of twisting the genre even more.

Not sure what Chelsea or Sabrina have done to make them deserving.  They have proven to be generally likable, but I can't point to any smart gameplay.

The editing around Troyzan (and Jay) has been bewildering too.  Jay sniffed out the women's alliance last week, but then it got torpedoed because Troy didn't like Mike.  This week, Troy is worried about it, but Jay refuses to believe it.  What happened?  How did those girls (who are horrible liars) convince Jay to…

I'm intrigued to hear stories like this because I got stuck in the first couple hundred pages twice.  It's well-regarded enough that I assume it picks up and is worth it, but I haven't made it over the hump yet.

Count me on board the Trollope train (Phrasing!).  I read The Warden a few years back and loved it.

I loved that This American Life episode.  Loved, in that I found it horrifying.  The first 20 minutes might have been the highlight, but how can you gloss over an interview (however brief) with McCain and Feingold?

I completely agree with Todd on this one.  I never really understood why people liked Superman at all (was always more into Spiderman and the X-men) until this movie.  Reframing the story of Kal-El as Jesus instantly made a lot of sense to me and made the whole thing quite touching.

Exactly!  Key elements of why this may have been the best episode since Remedial Chaos Theory:

@avclub-33807fbc68d335db8080d3c10cb78822:disqus The unfortunate thing about 1) is that early on (I didn't watch much of season 1, but heard it got better and watched season 2) BBT was a bit nerdier.  They would sometimes reference semi-obscure things.  But as it grew in popularity and age, everything is Star Wars,…

@avclub-83de02c3cfc3634de1279cbc17a8fbae:disqus I don't understand this argument.  How is slavery perpetuated in so many cultures for so long?  Sure, there are a great number of people unwilling to accept their situation and do what they can to rebel, but there are also a great many that accept it and live their…

@avclub-0f0d67e214f9fef69b278e3d08114da9:disqus Exactly.  The amount of stuff in the book that wasn't in the movie briefly led 20 year old me to think I should stick to books over movies.  Didn't last long.

This is a point that I was recently discussing with someone.  Some of the best movies come from adaptations of mediocre books.  Great books utilize all the tools at their disposal (getting into characters's heads, beautiful sentences) which are things that don't translate well to the screen.  But given a solid story…

The problem I have with this @avclub-b9abc54b685d47db67da47a4007fdb12:disqus is that Daisey nearly created a work of fiction.  If he had cheated some of the details a bit, I don't think anyone would make a fuss.  But he claimed several things happened that didn't, lied to the TAL producers who tried to fact check him,…

I can't speak to the Oprah thing, as my memory of it is fuzzy, but the amazing thing about Daisey is that he still refuses to admit he lied.  To hear him aurally squirm and try to avoid admitting what he did is endlessly fascinating.  His resistance was such that I wondered if he really believed what he was saying.…

I think the comparison to Dexter is an interesting one, as I was endlessly annoyed by the cop-out there, but never really noticed it in Hunger Games.  I think this is because 1) Dexter called the question pretty explicitly, even having Dexter think about it in voiceover, but Hunger Games avoids it entirely and 2)…

@avclub-b6295f9a8b2d34f30d97c042a431dd6e:disqus I agree that Tasha was discussing mockery of unequivocal approval of something, which the original Dawes article was.  What I felt was misrepresented was Tasha implied that the Dawes review inspired the backlash, which was not the case - it was the Newswire post.

I think Tasha mischaracterized the issue there.  The reason for the Dawes meme was not that Hyden liked it.  The Dawes meme arose because Hyden wrote a "Newswire" piece that sounded like an advertisement.  Since then the AV Club has changed the nature of the Newswire a bit, but at the time it was only for news, not…

This question is roughly on par for me with "Why would an adult want to watch a cartoon?"  Why should a format/genre/category be dismissed because of its weaker entries?  Pixar makes amazing films - am I supposed to avoid them because they are targeted at children?