Of course I get all that. But there's a difference between showing a naked woman on screen, and inviting the audience to ogle her, and this show falls squarely on the latter side.

As you say, though, "success" means different things for different venues. Even if as many people (or more) watched the Netflix MCU shows as watch superhero shows on the network, that's still not the number Netflix cares about. They make those shows because they want to attract new subscribers and retain their…

I think that was kind of the idea with Agent Carter - a short season with a self-contained story, along the lines of the British TV model. That it didn't work may have to do with its particular style and tone, but with the possible exception of The People vs. OJ Simpson (which has an obvious hook) I can't think of…

Apparently not even when she's heavily pregnant.

Is it worth noting, though? I mean, if she's the director, then she's the person responsible for how, in the second episode's opening scene, the camera hugs Jed's body as she puts on lacey underwear like she's making softcore porn. As far as I can tell, the only thing we can learn from the fact that the director is a…

So the BBC has a new miniseries called The Night Manager, starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie, based on a John Le Carre novel. Which sounds amazing, right? And so far (two episodes in) it's smart and very well made, plus it's got a ton of other great actors like Olivia Colman, David Harewood, Tom Hollander,…

I think it's time to admit that there's a ceiling for superhero show ratings and shows like The Flash, Supergirl, and Agents of SHIELD have hit it. That's fine for the CW, where 1.5 ratings mean a smash hit, but ABC clearly wanted its MCU shows to reflect the movie series's success, which is why they keep throwing…

"Treachery, Faith…" actually makes more sense to me because making swaps to get the parts/weapons/supplies you need is a time-honored tradition within the military, which tends to develop an informal kind of barter economy. It makes a lot less sense as an economic system out in the wild, as in "In the Cards."

No, but most, if not all, of the ones who have set public and economic policy in the last 30 years.

I think the retcon for that (also applied to DS9) is that the Federation is moneyless, but everyone around them isn't. How that works for Federation citizens trying to interact with alien cultures is unclear.

I think you could probably posit a quasi-workable* model of Federation economy if you assumed that a) all of a person's basic needs - food, housing, healthcare, education - are provided by the state, b) that some professions are renumerated, thus allowing their practitioners to purchase things like land, and c) that…

Hey, it was the prevailing theories in economy that got most of the Western world to believe that cutting taxes on the wealthy would somehow make everyone better off because the excess money would end up in the hands of the middle and working class. Most of them are still peddling that theory despite the mountain of…

You know, it was bad enough when twitter and tumblr went nuts about this non-news piece of clickbait, but now reputable (?) news sources are regurgitating it as well, even though it doesn't say what it claims to say. Abrams clearly does not promise a queer character in Star Wars. He says that it's crazy that there…

I definitely think that there's reason to be dubious about Wes's guilt in his mother's death, and not just because we clearly don't have all the information. The sense I took away from the documents Wes and Laurel found was that the detectives initially suspected Wes in the murder, but then a guilt-stricken Annelise…

There's also clearly more to the story because something happened with Annelise's baby. I mean, I guess it could just have been an unrelated miscarriage or stillbirth, but with this show that seems unlikely. And then losing the baby drives a wedge between her and Sam, so really we're seeing the inciting incident for…

To me what felt particularly glaring is that everyone - not just the journalist, but her mother and even her freaking abductor - goes around criticizing Joy's performance as a parent. When really they should not only be marveling at her willingness to be a devoted mother at all, but at how good a job she's done under…

That was my reaction too. I found Jack's internal narrative twee and uninteresting, but I really wanted to find out more about Joy, how she dealt with her horrible predicament, and how she coped with returning to the world.

While it's obviously true that Crimson Peak's absence from the best costuming category is a crime, I would also argue for Brooklyn having been overlooked. Eilis's wardrobe and how it changes over the course of the film reflects the change in her character, and there are some truly striking and unexpected clothing…

The Martian and The Big Short are my bottom two of the best picture nominees (of which I've seen six). But I'd still drop The Big Short first, because I actually disliked it, whereas I just found The Martian forgettable.

I am, of course, perfectly aware of this. But as I said, I hope that some of the people who watched the movie are able to make the connection between Eilis and people who don't share her skin tone.