I thought we agreed to call it a Homeland Wall of Crazy ? Not that Homeland invented either, but that's where my mind went first.

I didn't like in the movie and don't like it in the show. I just don't get the purpose of it, to make fun of the fact that we care a lot more once we're told something is a true story ? To make us wonder if these events actually happened ? I don't know, and I don't care. Pretty much the only thing I dislike about both.

Mostly it's that we can relate to Lester. We judge him more harshly because we feel like his situation is in the realm of the possibility for us, and we obviously don't feel that way about Malvo.

That seems like a reasonable thing to do actually.

I disagree. GoT has a lot of things about power and legitimacy, it just gets distracted by boobs and violence too much to make its points across. This is also a fault of the books, except GRRM mostly gets distracted by food and prophecies.

You don't need to be knowledgeable about the history of Rome to know that Romulus & Remus weren't literally raised by wolves… I mean come on. But yes, Rome was founded on two things : honor (the military kind) and religion. The wolf story appears in a few other cultures too (I think it shows up a lot with Germanic…

The dog-killing was what shocked you in that story ?

Right. Ok. I promise I did read the article, just missed that caveat !

Before a horde of "Blink" lovers shows up, I'll nominate Doctor's Who's Midnight.

Machinery existed before the industrial era. They have trebuchets and crossbows in pre-industrial societies, not to mention the printing press.

Humans are complicated.

Spain is definitely part of Western Europe. I think you mean Northern Europe.

Yeah, it shows how democracy is awful and anarchy is the best !

You have an everything though. Any city that had 10k people in 17th century Europe has an homonym in America.

I'm through episode 8 and episode 4 is definitely still the best of the bunch so far.

You just made me realize that this is the reason I find Claire much more interesting than Frank. How quiet she is.

That was my reaction ! Next episode is shit but the two after that are pretty good.

Arguably The Sopranos in later seaons. Basically I think early season of The Sopranos follow the pattern you described of making you root for a monster, but in the end, David Chase kept making Tony more despicable to make you realize how problematic it was that you still rooted for him.

That is the textbook example yeah. Tony Soprano was fascinating in the ways it made you empathize with a monster, the way it made you root for him against your will.

I would compare Frank's monologue to Dexter's own voice-over rather than Ghost Dad. 90% of Frank's monologues are stating the obvious : "You see, this is a crucial moment for my master manipulation to work, because this and that". It's annoying because it makes me fel like the show doesn't respect its viewers…