Shakespeare
Really, REALLY digging the subtle "Exuent, pursued by bear" reference in there. You're good, O'Neal. Damn good.

My new favorite comment
If nothing else, "Work of Art" has contributed to my daily life by giving me my new favorite criticism comment about anything I even remotely dislike for any reason.

time lapse of Don
How did they film the shot of Don sitting on the couch as sunlight fills the room? Was all of the light completely artificial and so the shot was actually filmed in real time, or was it an actual time lapse and Don just sit really still for, like, 3 hours?

Not buyig Jaclyn's explanation
Don't get me wrong. I can fully appreciate the notion that a woman masturbating can in some context be empowering, in the sense that she is owning and controlling her own sexuality, something women weren't necessarily entitled for the first 95% of human history.

Maybe I'm making too much of it, and certainly Tony's relationship to war/history is made more explicit a little later.

tony as caesar
Although it's certainly one of the more facile themes worked into the first season and is probably more or less assumed that sensitive viewers will have picked up on, I'm still a little surprise you haven't touched on the Tony as Julius Caesar thread that foreshadows both his impending rise, as well as…

"and you may ask yourself, "Why such a big suit?""

::eyes narrowed:: I see what you did there.

Aloha
"Aloha, which means both hello and goodbye", was pretty clever. Shalom!

"Still, I'm chomping at the bit for new efforts by Mike Leigh"
I believe the phrase you're looking for is "champing at the bit". Sad but true. Look it up.

As other people have said, we know so little about "the rules" that it's difficult to speculate on the rules of "the rules". Maybe this other entity is bound by them, too.

how i read it
"Or is it an entity completely beyond Blackie—some evil genie that Blackie's breach of The Cave brought into the world? (Or perhaps brought back into the world.)"