I'm sure that comes as a great comfort to coal miners.

And my point is that a show like this has no excuse for not being ready out of that gate. Really, no show should have that problem anymore, or else it should be delayed. But a show that has the weight of the world riding on it cannot air crap the first few weeks. The results speak for themselves, which is that it's…

Well, that's alright to think, but you do realize that opinion is in the minority?

Pilots sucking has been the defense of SHIELD here and elsewhere (including in this very recap, which maybe you didn't read), and it's bogus. Pilots suck because the people who made them made something that sucked. They can be as brilliant as anything else these days, and no show of this magnitude should ever go to…

We shall see. But the sooner they admit the risk, then the quicker and smaller the suits will be. And we all know that people in this country have an ability to rationalize anything (how else to account for the modern GOP?). 

A few generations down the line?  That's 50 or 60 years you are talking, and trying to predict that far out is nonsensical.  You cannot do it. By then, we may be a society that cocoons our children in pillows from birth to adulthood, or we may be a society that has shucked off football for even more violent games like…

Lost. The Wire. Breaking Bad. The Shield. Firefly. Hill Street Blues. Deadwood. The Sopranos. Hell, Desperate Fucking Housewives, for christ's sakes. Need I go on?

I have to say that Tarantino is not the first person of note I have lately heard praise The Lone Ranger as being completely misunderstood by a critical community desperate to find a giant tent pole that can be used to anchor their stories about Hollywood, money, spectacle and bombast destroying culture (as if The Lone…

I don't know, you seem to be good at arguing with the numbers, which show that no show has done this in nearly a decade. Hard to believe that Scandal just executed the first, best story twist in the history of television (or that anybody who wasn't already watching would give a shit).

Well, thanks. Bet you were there to say, "24 hours of sports? who wants that?"

Yeah, this is much too long a comment.  I apologize. But I would love to hear what anyone thinks of this. It's just an expansion of what they are saying in the article, but maybe I'm taking it a few steps further.

I mean, a little DP never hurt any movie.

No, Ike, I'm thinking in terms of today. A 3.1 today is good, but it's barely good for a show like Shield, which is pretty damn expensive.  But my point is not 3.1, but rather that the 34% drop indicates 3.1 is just a stop on the train to the 2's and possibly below, and that will not be good enough.

I wasn't sticking it on you, nor was I endorsing it (I wanted Chiwetel Ejiofor), but I was empathizing with the difficulties it would create.  I also didn't say "must."  I just said it makes things easier from exactly the type of time traveling conundrum you suggested. I can understand the idea that not everything in…

That's why I called it an "O'Neal take" on things, because it's like O'Neal while missing the mark.

Eventually, Qweef, but shouldn't they have a boom period prior to the bust? It's not like Boxcar Bertha is Scorsese's best movie, or A Cold Day In the Park is Altman's.  And on and on.

Why are you so invested in deflecting blame from the faceless corporations who turn most network television to shit? Are you Walt Disney IV?

And Stirling Silliphant wrote the Stallone movie Over The Top, while Paddy Chayefsky wrote Altered States.

By the way, I wasn't trying to mark his stuff as great literature, because it's not (while I'd argue much of LeCarre is). I'm just saying for a great techno-thriller, which he sort of invented, you cannot beat a number of Clancy's books.  Some of them are amazing. I'd say ten cuts above John Grisham, for example, but…

That's okay.  Once I read Rocky Horror Picture Show and my brain saw it as Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang.  You can imagine the embarrassment that mix up caused.