It's mostly the source material comparison effect. Taken on its own, it's a fitfully enjoyable popcorn flick. The comic is, however, probably one of the top five works by one of the top five writers in the field, who roundly condemned it. The deck was heavily stacked against any adaptation at all, let alone a…

It's fun in the way the old "Flash Facts" worked in the Golden Age comics, but I don't really see how it helps. 1.) Zoom's fists can still pummel you faster, and 2.) you're now falling from skyscraper height. I'm not even sure what the rationale for Barry not dying from that was.

I think what's implied but maybe not stated explicitly is that in the past, if an executive cancelled something, no one would ever know if you fucked up. It's gone, and there's no way to tell if it might have turned around. The old line that I possibly read here was that nobody ever got fired for cancelling a tv…

I'm pretty sure it's been established that hosts have complete veto power over the sketches they appear in and that's the end of it. I've never even heard rumors about a writer arguing with one of them. I suppose they could comically eviscerate him in the few places the host doesn't appear, but there are all sorts…

For what it's worth, the best single predictor of a person's political and religious beliefs is what their parents believed. The second best is geographic location.

There's really no other way to explain it. You don't up and decide to make a group of backbenchers who have never had a book top twenty issues the new centerpiece of your comics at the expense of your sales giant just 'cause.

Actual Trump quotes:

He's actually treated with more dignity in the Dexter's Lab clip.

More of a nation as depicted by a film nerd.

I've always thought of "Director" as honestly more of a film nerd thing. Maybe slightly less so now that the internet exists.

You're right; friends are generally people you like and respect. Colleagues and (an under-representative smattering of) superiors are people you're forced to work with for a paycheck.

It's the Heisenbang Uncertainty Principle!

Despite this "they can't be racist; they have black friends" argument, virtually every statistic suggests that the law is not being enforced equitably across racial lines. Black people are more likely than whites to die in a confrontation with police. They're more likely to be arrested in the first place and more…

The recent MMA trend has taught us that most martial arts are generally less effective than just tackling the other guy and going apeshit on his face. It's not true 100% of the time, but if you're only going to learn one technique, the odds suggest you should go with that one.

No kidding. I'll vote yes on any straight up legalization initiative, but I'm voting against giving a cabal of pop stars, investment bankers, and the rest of the uber-wealthy a legally enforced pot monopoly.

I agree completely on DS9. I would argue that from a creative standpoint, it's the best of the series that balances optimism with a realistic portrayal of how human beings actually behave, which is a tricky line to walk.

I actually agree with you, but those days are a WAYS back in the past at this point. Every show save DS9 is basically a retread of the first series (and this is coming from a guy whose personal nostalgia is mostly for TNG), and DS9 is the one purists seem to have the biggest problem with.

"The use of the term 'organism' seems to allude to the fact that the child is governed at this point by its biological needs and is unable to step outside them" — That would seem to run contrary to the point of the sentence, though, right? That kids use stories to fight off sleep?

The problem for me is that it feels like the show never quite figured out what it wanted to be about. It wanted to do big, sweeping changes to the status quo, never lose Alicia as the main character, and never fire any of the primary cast. Those are frequently contrary objectives.

I think Howard not being perfect — indeed, being kind of an asshole — is part of the point. He is an asshole and a bad lawyer.