I think it was a send-up of art/indie films (even non-French language ones) which tend to use those kinds of songs at those kind of moments.

Man, I get some of the complaints about "Repilot", but I've never seen a show fix all of its problems so quickly. It's like they literally went through a list of each of my issues from season 3 and 4 and directly addressed them.

Johnnie To is an amazing director.

B+. A lil' hamfisted, and the third act kind of spirals into silliness, but the rest is excellent.

Well, thanks to that "Best Film Scenes" list, I am never going to be able to read the words "Uh oh" ever again without imagining Adam Driver saying then.

I agree with the general principle that economic development would probably yield greater long-term results than a solely military approach, but a lot of your thinking on Iraq is seemingly based on silly conspiracy theories (and a rather fundamental misunderstanding on how currencies work).

Sure. I'm not super busy.

Yup. People are still people, and people still make mistakes. But there are still less of them.

I'm not presenting it as a choice. Merely that inaction can be an error as well. A rather clear-cut example would be Rwanda, for instance.

If the US military erred on the side of bombing, there would be vastly more civilian casualties. Look at how restrictive the ROE is in Afghanistan and Iraq, for example; Western militaries are more careful than any others in the history of warfare when it comes to engaging targets.

The trouble is that when you're fighting a group of people who almost exclusively target civilians, inaction will also result in innocent people dying.

A wedding convoy is hard to differentiate from a convoy of insurgents. It's obviously an unfortunate thing to happen, but it's not like it was an act of staggering incompetence.

"If your answer to the question in the last paragraph is "probably" as opposed to "yes," then I can only wonder where your doubt comes from."

I'm not defending America's involvement in Vietnam as much as I'm trying to stress that the situation was a whole lot more complex than people tend to see it. A great example being that the human rights abuses of the Vietcong and NVA are almost completely ignored while those of the American armed forces and South…

"Right, but you'd have to strain really hard to argue that the Thieu regime was any better."

Rationalizing is necessary in the real world. It isn't pretty, but it is what it is. One has to remember that China and the Soviet Union were also directly supporting North Vietnam and the Vietcong; lack of American presence or intervention would not have resulted in some utopia.

It appears that Raylan Givens keeps an eye on crime stories outside of Kentucky.

I hate it sooooooooooooo much.

Brand reminded me a lot of "The Waldo Moment"; he was more well-meaning than just empty snark, but he didn't provide any sort of coherent alternative to what he was criticizing. It was just broad encouragement of "revolution", and just seemed really stupid to me.

I don't think these elements are that broad, though. It's really different for an episode to say "the media is out of control" and "increased connectivity between the populace can lead to a situation of quasi mob-rule": the former is a broad platitude and the latter a more specific and well-observed point.