Has Cumberbatch worn out his damn welcome yet? It can't happen too soon as far as I'm concerned.

I really don't think so.

My problem is, say what you want about the Phantom Menace trailer being misleading etc. but the one way it wasn't misleading is that it "felt" like Star Wars cinematically — in terms of the graininess and the framing and the baroque-looking ILM effects (yes, there was a lot of CGI, but it had a classic-Hollywood sheen…

I'm baffled by people who don't like Star Wars but I'm especially puzzled by people who discuss it as a "guilty" pleasure.

They're mildly threatening during those speeder bike sequences in Return of the Jedi.

[redacted because I was being stupid and not understanding the reference]

That was one of the best trailers ever made. I remember it vividly.

"Outer…SPACE! Outer…SPACE!"

Yeah, enough Tatooine.

I love stuff like that! Wow, you even think in terms of "days of parity," Just like me.

I'm not saying it's "great." I'm saying they aren't making the formal errors you're accusing them of. Like I said, it's semantic.

It's just semantics. You keep talking about how it's "the same" or "different" than other examples (previous seasons; other books/movies etc.) based on your tastes and what's "done well," rather than objectively comparing the structure.

More formal confusion. The Stand etc. aren't good comparisons because "they were executed very effectively"? What are you talking about — they're perfect examples of exactly the same storytelling methodology. The question isn't what's "good" or "bad" (or what you enjoy or don't enjoy); the question is, are they doing…

But you're raising a misplaced formal objection when it's clear that your real complaint is simply that you don't find certain elements interesting, for whatever personal reasons.

They are competent. It's the most popular show on TV. It's taken a premise that has never been cinematically extended more than a couple of hours and made it work dynamically for five seasons.

Read the book. You'll thank me later.

Well, to each his own, but you sound like someone making the common mistake of confusing deliberate, effective narrative suspense with bad ("contrived") storytelling.

They tried that approach in World War Z (the novel). It doesn't work.

Right. This portion of the story has shrewdly juxtaposed Abraham's faith in Eugene; the hospital people's faith in Dawn; Gabriel's faith in his church and (by contrast) Carol's feints toward nihilism. Each of these characters is holding onto something that doesn't measure up under scrutiny, and each of them is…

It's conveyed in dialogue. Stuff that happened earlier, before we met the characters. Eugene doggedly recites a list of the dead.