I love Cautionary Tale: it's easily my favourite of this run of more standalone episodes in the first half of season 5. It's fun, it's heartfelt, and it just gels together well somehow. When I go back to season 5, it's often the only episode I bother rewatching prior to Damage.

Those are some hefty misfires, though: easily two of my least favourite of the whole show. Particularly the Italy episode which I've actually consciously managed to forget 95% of just through effort.

My completely random anecdote adjunct to this urban myth: when watching season 3, I was regularly discussing it with a New Zealand friend. She loved this scene because apparently that myth had been turned into a 'True Kiwi' advert on NZ tv. She sent me a link to said advert, which was indeed exactly the same scenario.

Yeah, I think a lot of the love/hate line for this season boils down to whether you feel the show is aware of how unlikeable she's getting. I did, so I loved it, but I definitely appreciate it's not exactly clear-cut and she doesn't have a redemption arc or anything to completely balance it out. So I can understand…

It's really weird that Sage is apparently nearly as old as the Originals, though. That seemed incredibly out of the blue. Though at least if she has history with Finn it might give the least interesting member of the family something to do…

*grins* I still love how unlikeable she is. Granted, it's difficult to watch, and it makes the show a whole lot less fun, but I think it's absolutely right for her character that she turned into this kind of monster, and that attempting to turn her back would take a lot of work and would need to come from her side.…

Oh, I'm happy this show is back. And it was really nice to come back with a fairly introspective episode that had little to do with the show's obvious main plots, but lots to do with who our main characters actually are.

If TVD ever depresses me half as much as the second half of S3 of BSG, I'm out. Seriously, I enjoyed s4 more…

Yeah, there was a little-boy-lost aspect to his 1912 performance that was really appealing, and made a lot of sense as the 1864 vamp-Damon after 50 years of self-loathing and basically having no friends. It also makes sense as a hidden part of his character that has slowly been coming out more and more ever since the…

But she was blacking out too… wouldn't it be awesome if they were both being possessed by Jonathan Gilbert himself? The guy did not seem well-balanced, after all…

I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders,
for the cruelty of Pierce is as wondrous as Peru
But there's no place like Greendale!

I think the Leslie of "Camping Trip" somewhat bridges the gap: she's hyper-competent when she really has a project to work on and ideas to implement, but she's inclined to freeze and over-compensate when she's focusing on how people see her and not letting others down. A political campaign is obviously lots of the…

I don't remember Shauna Malwae-Tweep ever being properly in 'evil media' mode, and she's definitely intelligent. Also, she hasn't been around in a while, and I miss her. Bring her back!

Yeah, I was actually waiting for Ben to get judgmental about it what with how he'd been painted into the 'unfun Ben' corner, and then he just didn't and moved on to damage control, and it was really nice.

They were definitely much more convincing drunks in The Fight. Ann was okay here because she didn't have much to do - and actually I find Ann/Tom much more believable when they're both drunk, since they both approach a goofy/schmoopy/mean midpoint between their characters. But Leslie was a bit too much of a cartoon…

The way I always handwave it is that they can remember everything that happened which didn't directly include Connor, but that their memories have been twisted so that they don't think too hard about anything that wouldn't make sense any more. So Wesley doesn't know he betrayed Angel (that's pretty clear in later…

Even not ignoring the comics (no spoilers), there would still be huge consequences from those actions no matter what the outcome. I definitely agree that it's a reaction to the soul-crushing on a personal level for the characters, not a grand gesture by the show saying 'we didn't mean all that moral complexity we were…

Whilst I'd agree that Dollhouse season 1 came together when the 'good' and 'bad' sides crystallised in Epitaph One, my least favourite thing in the whole show is how artificially created the head of the 'bad' side is in season 2. I don't think it was necessary to give evil a face on that show: the whole point was that…

Yup, I'm still on board so long as it doesn't do a HIMYM in season 5. *sigh*

Yeah, that could work. I don't think there's no way I'd be okay with her losing, it's just that her winning seems to have more potential.