Robertson was literally paying the "natives" in trinkets and blankets - his own words, mind you - for a shortcut that was probably making him millions. And then he gave them smallpox. In a just world he'd be up on charges for that, and yet the first thing Thackery cares about when looking at a village full of people…

I think those were at around the height of his career (and Shoot 'Em Up comes after all of them). Children of Men is probably the highest-profile and most prestigious thing he did before The Knick.

I found it interesting how in both last week's episode and this one we see the limits of Thackery's humanism. His reaction to finding out about Gallinger's illicit vasectomies last week was basically "well, it's not illegal, so what do you want from me?" and this week we see him find out that Robertson started a…

I don't understand Clive Owen's career choices at all. He was poised to be a major star - I think there was some talk of him playing James Bond at one point - and OK, let's say he didn't want that. But it's not like he's been doing terribly interesting stuff instead. The most memorable entry in his filmography…

I think she probably also has a complicated relationship with sex and sexual desire. On the one hand, she's clearly knowledgeable about the subject, but she's also seen the worst aspect of it, and for most of her life her vows and status allowed her to be above all that. The idea that she might be just as vulnerable…

Neely's father-in-law is keeping her in a constant state of anxiety with his not-so-subtle undercurrents of harassment and bullying. Her husband isn't much better - in fact, he might be worse, because he's setting himself up as the good cop to his father's bad cop, while advancing towards the same goal of crushing…

I honestly never considered that it was Barrow. I can see how it's possible, but it feels like too much of a coincidence for him to have chosen to torch the hospital on the exact same night that Cornelia and Henry chose to meet their father there.

I'm not sure I see the similarities between what happened to Alfredo and what happened to Marcus. In the latter case, Marcus was justifiably angry because his shooting was the result of Sherlock's carelessness and arrogance. If he hadn't goaded and belittled the shooter for no reason except to flaunt his own…

It has virtually nothing to do with the King novella. It's about a town where people are afflicted with various powers or abilities, which usually make their lives unbearable, and a cop and a mysterious woman who try to help them. They've gone on to involve aliens and alternate universes and ancient curses. It's…

OK, but that's the same as saying that Age of Ultron was a disappointment. It's true, but it's also not a useful metric, because the movie still made a fuckton of money and fully justifies the decision to go forward with the franchise around it without making meaningful changes to it (I'm pretty sure that if Joss…

Yeah, based on the trailer, I had zero interest in watching the movie for precisely this reason. Mind you, I'm not sure how interested I am in watching a movie about how these guys are bastards either - we already had that with The Wolf of Wall Street, and once was a little bit more than enough for me.

Something I've been wondering about since watching the trailer: am I supposed to be rooting for these guys? I mean, their righteous indignation at the banks and ratings agencies is all well and good, but this is still a story about people who got rich off the misery of others, right? I'm not sure it makes it any…

It worked in The Wolf of Wall Street. Though arguably the best use of that in the film was the scene were DiCaprio starts explaining to the camera how his company's scam works, then stops and says "actually, you guys aren't interested in the details; just know that it made us a shitload of money."

Believe what, though? If they were breaking and entering, it's felony murder no matter what their story is.

Hamilton is exceedingly clever but definitely not glib - if anything, it's earnest to a fault. It may not be your thing (and I'm not enough of a Broadway fan to say if it's truly as revolutionary as it feel to me) but it is definitely a work worth engaging with.

Her name is Brooke Lyons, and I was wondering all episode where I recognized her from, but it was only after checking IMDb that I realized that she also recently appeared on The Affair as Eden, Noah's horrible, shallow publicist. It's really impressive that she was able to play a character so unlikable, and then…

In fairness, that's something that a lot of fictional authors suffer from. For some reason, fiction (and particularly film and TV) seems incapable of imagining an artist who creates anything but a thinly-veiled roman a clef.

But what difference would that make? Liv would still be at the mercy of the brains she eats, and still just as likely to break the law or put herself in danger. Clive was right to break up with her (to be honest, he should never have started working with her in the first place) which is the tragedy of the episode.…

I've been saying for a while that the whole show is a metaphor for coping with mental illness/chronic illness. The stalker brain was a particularly potent exmaple of that - Liv's line about "you think it's exhausting dealing with this, try being it" to Major felt like something that I've heard a lot of people with…

I'd like to believe that the show realizes that killing children is worse than pimping out unwilling women (not that the latter isn't terrible, but still). And despite my issues with how this season has been woobifying Blaine, no one seems to be forgetting the child-murder thing (Liv brought it up last time he tried…