Yes. A battle in which one side is going "why am I here and what was I trying to achieve again?" is _inherently much less cool_ than one in which all sides have actual objectives. There's nowhere for dramatic tension to come from.

No, you were right. The one actually useful or promising concept of the line, stupid name aside. (Of course, I grew to love it when it was rerunning as a back-up strip in Transformers UK, which is pretty indicative of how well it went.)

While I'd have loved to see Patterson Joseph playing the part, I can't deny that  I was wrong in my doubts - Matt Smith has owned the role.

No such argument exists.  Proponents of this scheme are exclusively people who don't understand the function of capital letters.

The thing is… Sanderson's the master of big universe-building plot hidden behind the scenes until needed.  And there's textual and construction clues in most of his books that Stormlight / Mistborn / Warbreaker / Elantris are all part of the same universe.  (Some characters appear in more than one!)

In my experience, literacy leads directly to watching Thor, writing slashfic and cosplaying as anime men.

Yes, but not being interested in makeup (or impractical dresses) is actually part of her character.

(replying to Lux Lisbon; *&%$ thread depth limit)

I'm with you; humour.  Also vicious, biting jealousy.

They're not just religious caste, they're _exemplars_ of the religious caste.  Delenn is one of their "top 3", the Council members, and Lennier has (presumably) fought hard for the tightly-contested position of her aide.  (Indeed, compared to most characters on the show, unfailing competence is one of Lennier's…

Note that JMS liked to work his actor's personal attitudes in to the show, never more so than here.  He emphasized the civil war in Delenn's plot because he knew Ms. Furlan  would play the hell out of it.

I actually liked that slow-burn approach.  Real civil wars do not kick off overnight. The occasional intrusion of steadily worsening Minbari politics gave me the sense that it was constantly getting closer to the edge behind the scenes, and our cast were simply failing to notice - mostly because they don't care enough…

Mann nails the delivery on that line, too. (And the music is perfect for the theme.)

Sophist, as usual you've put your finger on it there.

Iseult has it nailed here. Willow's frequent reckless misuse of magic before is all about *power*. As early as "Something Blue", her screwups are about being less helpless, taking control of her problems. And eventually of everyone else…

For me, the mindbogglingly skeevy premise is the strength. The show is abominably weak for the first 4-5 eps not just because of the network meddling but because the *writers* have somehow not yet caught on to how horrific the concept is. (By "Man in the Street" they're over that, and this is where all the genuine…

Previously on Buffy and a warning.
I just realised that there's an important spoiler warning I meant to give last week and forgot. You mentioned last week while discussing buffy's un-rotting shot that you're watching on DVD and don't see the 'previously on Buffy' montages. Watch out for that.

Well, if you're a dedicated Harmonix fan and Rock Band 3 somehow isn't enough, their dance game might be a reason. But yeah. The weakness of the Wii has always been the comparative rarity of games that _used_ the controller, instead of just substituting weird gestures for button presses. The real question isn't…

Well, maybe with Kick-ass, but most of the flaws in the movie of Stardust derive from… the movie. The movie wastes some good casting by horribly miswriting, basically, everything after the 1/2 way mark.

A note on viewing order
Also worth advance notice: