You know, I like Fargo a hell of a lot, and I'm still pretty on the fence on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (as in, I'm giving it one more week to impress me as much as it has the reviewers, but if it can't, I'm dropping it). But the pile-on in these comments is getting kind of ugly. Could it possibly be that Fargo is a…

It's a breakout hit in the sense that it's the first CW show to get real critical attention, and their first serious award nominations (and one win). It also showed up on a lot of best shows of the year lists. Its ratings are also solid for the CW.

There's a difference, though, between a piece that is over-used to set a particular tone (and "O Fortuna" is a great example of that) and one that is imitated incessantly. Though I suppose "Clair de Lune" answers both counts.

They're very clearly hoping that The Expanse becomes a legitimate hit in the same vein as BSG. I've heard good things, but it's hard to believe that stingy Syfy will put the kind of money in the show that it will need to keep going.

Does Scandal take place in an alternate political reality where accusing people of using coded racist language works?

I don't think anything on this show has ever made me as happy as the fact that X-4's inexplicable hard-on for Frank got him killed. He was a ridiculous character only slightly humanized by Richard Schiff's performance, and spectacularly bad at his job.

How can Echo Kellum be so tall on this show, and yet apparently normal-sized on Arrow? Was Emily Bett Rickards standing on a box in all their shared scenes? What's going to happen when he has scenes with Stephen Amell and David Ramsey? I know that you can never trust anyone's height when they're on screen, but this…

By the end of the episode I was definitely thinking that Annelise giving Nia the pills put her in a precarious position, but before that I was mainly thinking that what Nia told Annelise made no sense. She says the doctors keep giving her chemo and signing her up for trials, but they can't do any of that without her…

You can perform a medical test (really just an examination) to determine whether or not the hymen has been breached. But as even the characters note, an adult woman's hymen wouldn't necessarily be intact even if she is a virgin. Not to mention that there's plenty of ways to have sex that leave you a technical virgin.

This was a pretty terrible episode (and it felt a lot more static to me than the reviewer) but one thing I did appreciate were the bits in Tommy's story where you get a glimpse of what life is like for evos in the US. The fact that Tommy's movements are restricted, or that his landlord can evict him for what he is,…

This episode is a winner for me just for having someone stand up and say how ridiculous the whole "gladiators in a suit" mentality is, and how pathetic OPA look from the outside (and has for a while). And even though Marcus ended up taking the job, I love that he did it for his own, political reasons, not because…

Well, Moira was on the verge of getting elected herself in S2, even though realistically she shouldn't have been able to step out of her house without being pelted with rotten vegetables. With that established, having another mayoral candidate cite her as an influence is positively believable!

There was an article published around the 2012 election, I think, noting that until 9/11, the American Muslim community largely voted Republican. They didn't leave the party, but it left them.

The people who made this protest, however, are not Americans. Their primary concern is how Homeland depicts their countries and cultures, and on that front they're completely right that it fails. It's not a reasonable justification of that failure to say "but don't you get it, Middle Eastern people are just props in…

The Catholic church and the United States are single entities - made up of many disparate parts, to be sure, but single entities nonetheless. It is therefore entirely reasonable to talk about their systemic problems. There isn't a single Muslim entity in the same way - even the different streams of Islam aren't as…

That's kind of the problem, though. Homeland isn't about the Arab world. It's about the American intelligence apparatus and its interactions with the Arab world, which is rarely more than a prop or a justification for its characters' actions.

There aren't a lot of similarities there either. The basic premise - MIA soldier returns home and has possibly been turned during captivity - is the same, but in Prisoners of War there are three soldiers, no Carrie character, and the focus is as much on the families of the returnees and their struggles to reintegrate…

The Potter books were a hit before the full extent of their serialization became clear, though obviously not as big a hit as they would become. It is true, though, that the serialization is part and parcel of the much higher stakes that series like HP and The Hunger Games have. Once you've read a book about a girl…

Regardless of who he was writing for, the years during which I would have described myself as a voracious King reader were junior high to early high school, and I think that was true for most of my friends who were into him too. There may be stuff in his books that is best appreciated by adults (as there is in all…

It's not as if there are no horror elements in Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. The latter in particular has some very bleak plot elements and inspired a whole craze for YA dystopia. That's obviously not the same thing as horror, but it's in the same neighborhood, and there's probably an interesting discussion to…