avclub-eb058ced22520c3a8f4e4a6e2fb16403--disqus
Abigail
avclub-eb058ced22520c3a8f4e4a6e2fb16403--disqus

As usual, I must step in and say that Jesse L. Martin's Joe is a great father to his son Barry, and an utterly garbage father to his daughter Iris. And it's probably only going to get worse now that his biological son is back in his life.

I'm really hoping that Winn's ugly behavior has been deliberate and not the show falling for the nice guy worldview. Perhaps confronting him with his father will be a way to get him to see his own character flaws, and reject them?

In theory, there should be more: the series ended in the middle of Cromwell's story. But now Hilary Mantel has to write the third book before they can start producing another season. It's like Game of Thrones, but with significantly less stakes because it's based on historical events that happened 500 years ago

To say that the NAACP works within the system is to ignore their decades-long history of civil disobedience and public protest, and once again to erase everything about them that might be considered "not nice." And even if you ignore that, there is still no way that the NAACP's tactics and goals are equivalent to

I think you're kind of making my point for me when you ask what the difference is between "deadly Evo" and "scary black man." The difference is that in the world constructed by Heroes Reborn, "deadly evo" is a real thing, whereas in reality "scary black man" is a construct of white society used to justify oppression.

There are obvious problems with Broadway's business model (and to be honest I've never really understood why the Tonys are televized, except that they're usually a good show). But I'm not sure I want to hold Hamilton up as an example of those problems. It's not like anyone, over the seven years during which he was

To be fair, I don't think the news that Quentin Lance is a crap boyfriend should come as a shock to anyone. Mind you, Oliver apparently left his fiancee's mother alone in the hospital while her daughter was in surgery, so it's kind of a race to the bottom there.

OK, you know that absolutely no one is actually saying "have you seen Hamilton yet", right? People aren't stupid. They know that the play is only showing in one city in the world, and is sold out until November, and is insanely expensive even then. The overwhelming majority of Hamilton fans haven't seen the play,

It somehow doesn't surprise me at all that Hayden Panettiere wouldn't even lend the production some old high school photograph to use.

To be fair, this is fairly standard stuff for the redeemed killer trope. You'll usually have a good and pure character who tells our hero that they're not a killer anymore, and shouldn't give in to their dark impulses. The problem here is, first, that Luke was established as so irredeemably awful at the beginning of

I think as a general rule, using mutants/Evos/people with superpowers to tell a story about civil rights has proven itself to be a bad idea. You're never going to get around the problem that you're comparing oppressed and exploited people to fictional characters who have awesome, sometimes world-destroying powers.

I found the case of the week really offputting. We've spoken a lot already about Elementary's frustrating belief that a detective story is only interesting if it's about a murder, but despite that the show has generally been OK about staying on the right side of the "women in dumpsters" line. I can't quite put my

You're missing the point. The question isn't "did Michael B. Jordan give a searing performance for the ages?" It's "why doesn't anyone ask this question about the white actors who get nominated for the Oscar?" Damon gave an adequate performance in a movie that will be forgotten by next year, but he's being called

I haven't seen the film, so I can't speak to the performances. But I did see The Martian, so I know that there was at least one slot on the best actor ballot that could easily have gone to another actor. It's a pretty weak category all around, and it's hard to believe there wasn't room for Jordan on it.

Uh. Matt Damon? It was a nothing performance, and anyone claiming that it was one of the top five of the year has got to be seriously high.

That's weird. I had remembered that it wasn't nominated.

You're not seriously trying to argue that Hollywood isn't racist, are you? That's not even an assumption any more. It's simply a fact.

Thank you. This has been a really weird and bewildering conversation to watch play out.

As the evidence of last year shows, not even the Civil Rights movement is enough to get your movie a nomination. Maybe if it had been about a white guy…

Right. Because in an industry with a proven, irrefutable record of racism, the "logical" assumption is that racism played no role in the fact that a white actor was recognized over a black one.