I think my main issue with how the show is handling the romance at this stage is that it's unclear to me why Rafael is still on the show. He's not a very interesting character in his own right (unlike, say, Petra), and the show has slowly whittled away all his important relationships (most of which weren't terribly…

I can totally buy Valencia believing that she's made it clear to Josh what ring she wants, and Josh not getting the message at all. Remember the table? He was certain he was doing a great thing for her (even though buying furniture without consulting your partner is a no-no when you're dating a normal person, much…

Yeah, my main reaction to this review was that if there's a Walter White in this scenario, it's Paula, not Rebecca. I even found it a little annoying that Paula is so judgmental about Rebecca's poor spending habits, when she's the one who has been encouraging them and continues to do so after she finds out that…

Well, first, why this arbitrary decision that only Manhattan counts? The first season of Agent Carter happily goes outside the city completely, so why not include Brooklyn and the Bronx?

So you're saying there were no people of color in New York in the mid-40s? Because I'm not sure I agree with you a hundred percent on your detective work, there.

Howard is fun, but I think he's pretty clearly fun in small doses. Having character point out his excesses in absentia works better than having him on screen full-time.

God, yes. And beyond that, it's amazing how the show can keep pushing a romance between Peggy and a man who clearly doesn't know her, and wants her to change the things that make her who she is.

So this weekend I watched the show second season of Agent Carter and it was… eh? The things that worked in S1 were back here - Hayley Atwell is still a treasure, she still makes a great comedy duo with James D'Arcy, and the action scenes are still awesome. Plus I did really like the season's villain. But the things…

To be fair, Annelise was lying to Laurel, just as she lied (by omission) to the police ten years ago. She fled the scene of a crime without reporting it (which, I think, among other things, could get her disbarred). She could have stayed in the apartment - and spared Wes the sight of his mother's dying moments - and…

I appreciated that part of Rebecca's closing argument was to urge the judge not to let that affect her opintion of Brett's testimony, because otherwise it felt like, with so much else going on in the episode, that point could have gotten lost in the shuffle.

Largely because Galavant's rap battle wasn't even a rap - it was a song where the actresses's dance moves and the camera movement were clearly intended to recall rap battles, but there was no actual rapping, and the lyrical complexity didn't even come close to what Crazy Ex-Girlfriend did this week.

Yeah, Josh is immature but pretty emotionally healthy. Rebecca is more self-aware but also has serious MH problems. Taken together, that more or less brings them to the same level, and more importantly, they could both grow towards each other.

Well, the Paris Commune, which inspired the novel Les Miserables and thus indirectly the musical, was a radical socialist group from around the time when socialist and communist ideas were starting to be formulated. I don't know how much the musical preserves of that, though.

Well, honestly, pretty much everyone except the last three survivors is basically there for a short vignette and that's that.

I think it was more the case that the character was misconceived - the original concept was clearly "McCoy, but a woman," and no one involved with the show considered that where in the 60s McCoy's bigotry against Spock might have seemed cute and funny, in the 80s applying the same kind of bigotry against Data would…

I like to believe that Pulaski's attitude towards Data would have improved if she'd stayed on the show - there's already a sense, towards the end of the second season, that the writers have realized that constantly questioning his personhood isn't a good look for her, and instead do more interesting things with her,…

I was a lot less impressed with how the show handled the 1960s racism, because it seemed to be making it more about Jake - and what an awesome guy he is for not being racist - than about the actual racism. The scene where he offers Mimi coffee was good, because it's a relatively small thing that he can't change, and…

Alas, McFadden's absence from S2 of TNG is not mysterious. She was being sexually harassed by one of the show's producers, Maurice Hurley, and finally left to get away from him. It was Patrick Stewart who convinced her to come back (I assume after Hurley had left, though honestly I don't know).

The only Le Carre I've read is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and yes, women are mostly notable in their absence there. That still somehow feels better than The Night Manager's approach, which is to treat women as disposable objects whose purpose is to die beautifully, motivate the hero, and titillate the audience.

Technically, Agent Carter isn't limited either, but its stories are self-contained, with only minimal continuity between seasons. Most of the other shows you cite don't do that - The X-Files and Under the Dome are telling a continuous story (or continuous/procedural in the former case), and Wayward Pines, as I…