I think the whole issue has generated so much conversation because the people behind the show are being ambivalent about whether or not the scene showed a rape. If they just said, "We changed it to rape on the show because we wanted to do something different with the characters," that would have been the end of it.

I never understood how the rent in the ladies-only apartment building could possibly have been cheap enough (relative to other apartments in the area) that it would be worth the hassle and expense of cross-dressing.

Well, the guy is so loathsome that I've always viewed his comments about the civil rights movement as posturing. But you're right that this has been consistently portrayed — maybe I'm being too cynical towards the character.

Governor Ken made a reference to him in his office, didn't he? The episode was kind of front-loaded with character introductions (which happens in every season premiere of an ensemble drama), so I think they decided Bob Benson would be one too many and they saved him for the next episode.

My girlfriend's interpretation of that scene was that Pete was trying to "share" the real estate lady with Don, by mentioning that "she turns it on for everybody." I think she's wrong — it's just that Pete's attempt to mark his territory is borne of such desperation and insecurity that it almost looks like he's…

When that episode aired, everyone was saying it was out of character for Pete to get that worked up over MLK's death, but obviously you're right — that was just Pete was just making it all about himself again.

Yes, but what about the fact that The Truman Show violates the 13th Amendment? Truman is the star of a multi-million dollar production, yet he has never been paid for his services, nor has he ever given permission for the show to use his likeness. And this show has an audience of millions, so it's not like the…

I like the movie, but it has difficulty stretching its premise out for 107 minutes. Because the problem is that once Truman starts to suspect something is up, there are only so many "mistakes" he can find in the world before he figures things out. And then once he figures out what's going on, there's only so much…

Marvel's big innovation was creating a "house style" for the MCU, similar to the old studio system. They found a visual style that works really well, and they've clearly given their directors and DPs very tight guidelines about how to shoot and frame their movies. It's a clean, simple look that doesn't require…

The MCU has never established that Captain America doesn't age. His lack of aging from 1945-2011 can be explained by the fact that he was frozen in the North Atlantic. I know in the comics, the super soldier serum is supposed to keep him from aging, but they haven't gone there yet in the movies.

The difference is that all the Marvel characters were created as regular people with recognizable flaws, and their superpowers are secondary. So it's fairly easy to update the stories — you just change Tony Stark's backstory to include Afghanistan instead of Vietnam, or have Steve Rogers wake up in 2011 instead of…

But on the other hand, they do wait until about 75 minutes into the movie to reveal the Winter Soldier's identity. I guess it raises the stakes for Cap to find out just before the third act, but there was a bit of coyness with all the masks and classified files.

My thinking is that the Winter Soldier storyline is so ridiculous (they had cryogenic stasis and bionic arms in the 1940s? why don't we have them now?) that it was best to condense the story down to the bare essentials.

The expense comes in man-hours for artists and animators, as well as the cost of equipment necessary for modeling, animating and rendering.

Yeah, I've noticed this too. Judicious use of product placement would actually *help* root this series in reality. One kind of depressing thing about the modern Deep South is that it doesn't have the unique character crafted by The Walking Dead — all of those mom-and-pop shops that Rick's gang keeps running into…

People say that, but there are only a handful of anachronisms, and a lot of evidence that at least some effort was made to keep the action grounded in 2008 and 2009. Towards the end of the series, it became a little difficult to keep this up without drawing attention to the show as a period piece, so Gilligan just…

Breaking Bad premiered in 2008 and covered exactly 2 calendar years — while there were some anachronisms (i.e., wrong model year of the Dodge Challenger, a reference to bin Laden's death), they largely stuck to this. The characters were very slow to move onto smartphones — Jesse still has a flip phone in Season 4 —…

And if we don't watch the commercials, he'll never become Batman. If the show is cancelled at any point prior to a long-overdue planned series finale, then we'll have just spent hours and hours watching a show about a bunch of characters who haven't yet done anything interesting.

Definitely not a good sign that literally every promo photo includes some kind of too-cute reference to the character's future role in a much more interesting series about Batman, which we'll never see until the series finale (but only if we keeping watching for 10 years, waiting for Batman to show up).

The problem is that Lando is the kind of friend who hits on every girl you're interested in, even if he's not interested, just to show you up. And how are you going to show up Lando?