Yeah, I mean, I didn't read any of the comments because they were already at 1000+ when I read the article last night, but the one valid point he makes in the screed linked to upthread is that he clearly did not write this piece as clickbait. No one who is so earnestly dismissive of any opinion that deviates even…

You are implying that it is possible to fill more of the metaphorical diaper than he already did with the original article and its incessant dismissal of anyone who dislikes the Star Wars prequels as a mindless plebe.

The entire dynamic described in the book is imaginary. But Goldman, Helen, and their son are characters in The Princess Bride, and I didn't think he needed to revisit them.

King sort-of did write an action/fantasy novel in the vein of The Princess Bride: The Eyes of the Dragon. It veers more towards horror than TPB (and doesn't have a humor component) but the two books nevertheless have a very similar feel.

Kneejerk, pseudo-intellectual hatred of "dumbed-down" popular fiction? I'm just guessing.

I read an interview with Shonda Rhimes last year, shortly before How to Get Away With Murder premiered, and she described sitting down with Viola Davis and telling her "Is there anything you need to feel more comfortable? Because this entire show rests on your shoulders, so don't be afraid of coming off like a diva. …

In the introduction chapter to Buttercup's Baby (the "extra feature" on the 25th anniversary edition of the book), Goldman tells us that he and Helen ended up splitting up, but that he forges a better relationship with his son. I honestly don't love that extra chapter - it feels like Goldman trying to recapture the…

I'm blanking on examples right now, but there have definitely been cases where a certain TV storyline hit me too close to home because of something that had been going on in the real world. In principle, I don't see a problem with delaying these episodes, but in practice I've found that networks tend to overreact,…

I definitely think that Flash learned from Arrow's mistakes, and gave itself more leeway to skip ahead to the things that worked on the earlier show. That's probably why it felt so free to establish the team right off the bat.

Flash did that, though. And technically I guess you could say that Agents of SHIELD did as well. Arrow is the only recent show I can think of that took time to build up its superhero team, and that's not a great argument for doing so, since the early episodes of the show really suck, and it arguably doesn't click…

Secret identities seem pretty unfashionable these days, and while I can understand why that is, it really doesn't make any sense for a Superman-type character to be part of a team (unless that team is a superhero team, of course, though even then you have to work to justify everyone else's presence). As I said, I…

I've watched six episodes, and I'm in a strange place of liking the show but also not feeling the least compulsion to keep watching. I appreciate a lot of the issues the show addresses - the cold open of one episode, where you see Dev and his male friend cheerfully walking home from a bar, juxtaposed with their…

The ratings disparity between Flash and Arrow is significant, you're right (though I wonder if it has something to do with how badly Arrow fumbled the ball in S3). But even if you assume that Flash proves that you can draw new eyeballs (and I agree that its ability to maintain its audience is impressive and sets it…

I'm not sure that's true. Flash came out of the gate like gangbusters, but it's doing exactly the same numbers as all the other shows - it's only a hit because it's on the CW. Agents of SHIELD, like Supergirl, was hugely successful out the gate, and hemorraged quickly because it wasn't very good (Supergirl is better…

There's probably an interesting discussion to be had about why the audience for superhero movies doesn't translate into an audience for TV shows, even with a crossover property like the MCU shows (though in their case there's the added complication that the flagship show isn't very good and had an excurciatingly slow…

Big doings this week on Haven! The strongly-implied theory that Lucy was romantically involved with Nathan's father gets its confirmation, and nobody acknowledges just how messed up this is or how icky it makes Audrey's relationship with Nathan (I mean, it was already a pretty icky relationship to begin with, but it…

The thing is, I never saw the storm or the characters' fears of it as a sign of mental illness. To me it was a metaphor for financial instability. The family in the movie are doing well, but they're living on a knife's edge. One bad blow can mean that everything in their lives - their house, their comforts, their…

I draw some distinction between Dick (and, for that matter, Logan) and Blaine, first because the Veronica Mars characters are younger, and second because though what they do - various flavors of sexual assault, not to mention other destructive behavior - is horrible, it's still on a completely different scale than the…

Dear iZombie: please stop trying to make me feel sorry for Blaine. I refuse. There's nothing going on in his life right now that he isn't directly the author of. Shitty as his father was, Blaine is clearly self-aware enough to understand this, and at this point it just feels like he's using that as an excuse for…

With HIV, female-to-male transmission is much less likely than the other way around, but it's still a risk. But on the other hand, zombieism can be transmitted by scratching someone with your fingernail, which is made of dead tissue. So clearly the "science" here hasn't been fully thought through, and is…