And then just when you think he's won the asshole championship for life, Cole Lockhart comes in around the bend and beats him in a photo finish!

Thanks for this. I was wondering why Algie and Opal seemed so enthusiastic about the act when talking to Bertie and Genevieve - even at the time, it seemed like something that people like them would shrink from. The context you've given explains a lot, though I wish the episode had made it more clear (for example,…

Also, whether or not it's harsh to condemn the Robertsons for their treatment of Algie, the bottom line is that he's the one who suffers from prejudice and racism and they're not. It's never going to be the Robertsons who have to hide under a sheet to keep from being strung up by an angry mob, or who are refused for…

I thought that was a little on the nose. Not to say that it wasn't being done - clearly it was - but I rather doubt that even at the time, industrialists thought they were being "responsible" by dumping gasoline into water sources. They just needed a way to get rid of their by-products, and here was one that didn't…

The issue isn't whether Henry stays with Lucy for now - it's clear that she can keep him interested. But as Cornelia says, Henry will never marry Lucy, especially now that his fortune is on the rocks. The best she can hope for is to be kept on the side and/or given enough money or property to keep her independent, a…

Beyond the factual error, I was struck with how differently Nowalk and I saw that scene. Juxtaposed with Bertie and Genevieve's first time - which is full of nervousness, yes, but also warm and affectionate and probably everything you could want from two unmarried near-virgins in 1901 - the mercenary tawdriness of…

If for no other reason than that killing him might have launched an investigation into his death, and left Edwards with a body to investigate, where a living one will soon metabolize the curare and leave no indication of Gallinger's tampering. Gallinger is a piece of shit, but I doubt he's willing to kill a patient…

As we've seen twice already this season - with his kidnapping of Thack, and in this episode with the plot to poison Carr with a too-strong concentration of curare - Gallinger is decisive, resourceful, and unencumbered by conventions. You can easily imagine these qualities appealing to Thack. The problem is that…

No Jane the Virgin? You know, if network shows are going to buy into this "mid-season finale" canard, I really wish there was a centralized place where I could find out when each of them is going off the air. To be honest, I'm looking forward to it - the last few months have been a blur of TV.

Scott Adsit was also the voice of Baymax on Big Hero 6, which is a charming and under-appreciated movie.

I'm less offended and more annoyed that a show with Israeli producers couldn't be bothered to sit down with the guy and coach him on how to sound like an Israeli - or at least how not to sound like a tired stereotype. At the very least, if he can't do the accent, have him speak in American or British English - many…

The King's Speech works, I think, because its subject matter is relatively small, and it has big actors to imbue it with importance. To go from there to weightier issues such as the experience of gays and transgender people in the first half of the 20th century seems to have put a strain on Hooper's ability as a…

The actor is German, Russian, and Finnish, and grew up in England and the Netherlands. So I'm guessing that's an accent he's putting on. It's not impossible for an Israeli to have a German accent, but for someone of Itai's generation it would be very unlikely, especially if he was already fighting in Israeli wars in…

She said "ya maniak!" It's an Arabic expletive, which has also made its way into Israeli Hebrew. It's roughly equivalent to "you bastard!"

Was it the same woman? I know she asked a question too but I'm not sure that was it (maybe the one about whether love was real). She was a brunette, and I think the woman who complimented his female characters was a blonde.

[Noah] is a parody of a parody of himself at this point.

I actually guffawed when Noah was asked how he writes women so well. I've been assuming that we're meant to understand that Descent is tepidly-written claptrap, and the subplot with the student paper critic in this episode feels like it confirms it. But moments like that make me wonder if Treem actually thinks Noah…

I think there was a slight sense that Noah had an inner life in the early episodes of the first season - his interest in engaging Trevor as a reader, or his fascination with quantum theory (kind of a cliche in its own right, by this point, but still). I suppose you could argue that all that has been swallowed up by…

This week, on Homeland's implausible accents: an Israeli character is played by an actual Israeli! Who promptly demonstrates how inaccurate Itai's accent is. That said, the odds of a woman that age being named Tova are pretty slim.

I tried to watch the first episode, and barely made it five minutes in - out of a ten minute episode. Though I doubt it was Tudyk's intention, the humor seemed aimed at the fans of his fictitious analogue, and fell on the cringe end of the scale rather than the funny one.