I'm really nervous about iZombie's return. Last season's finale seemed determined to jettison most of the things I appreciated about the show. I liked that it wasn't a zombie apocalypse story, and that it treated zombiefied characters as people whose lives mattered and who were not automatically killable. The…

I haven't listened to the original cast recording (though that's the plan now), so I'm judging Gyllenhaal mainly against himself. He's definitely not bad, but doesn't wow you the way Ashford does. Though there are point where it's easy to imagine how Patinkin would have sung the part, and Gyllenhaal just doesn't…

I really wanted to see that one, but I had already exceeded my allotment of musicals with Sunday, so I had to pass.

I've seen it. And, honestly, I thought it was fun but not amazing.

Greetings from New York, where I am having an Americans-themed week by seeing both Ruthie-Ann Miles and Alison Wright in plays. Neither is a big part - Miles is a minor character in the revival of Sunday in the Park With George, though she has some good moments and an amusing German accent (plus her character fools…

The only thing I'd add to this is the importance of gender in both Meachum siblings' stories.

Someone I spoke to last week pointed out that the way that Danny feels free to impose on people - women in particular - and gets offended when they act like independent people who don't have to take his feelings into account is not light-years away from how Kilgrave sees the world. The idea that Jessica would ally…

Don't forget the time he sexually assaulted Quinn. Or the time he slit an innocent woman's throat because of some vaguely-defined belief that in doing so he was protecting his family. I haven't been watching Scandal this season, but I crossed the point of no return with Huck a long time ago.

I really couldn't understand why they made such a point of the decapitation thing only to kill Harold in three different ways that are not decapitation. The only explanations I can think of are a) the writers are leaving themselves an opening to bring Harold back in a putative S2, or b) the decapitation business is…

It seemed to matter to Ward. It presumably would have mattered to Joy (and possibly also Danny) if they ever found out. And then it happened again, and neither Ward nor Danny seem to feel anything more than philosophical sadness? I mean, that's not entirely unjustified on Ward's end, because he's done a bit of…

Weirdly, I find myself a little more hopeful about Inhumans after watching Iron Fist. The Meachum stuff was the material that felt most natural in IF, and my impression has been that "dysfunctional family who love and hate each other in equal measure and have no idea how to relate to anyone outside their core group"…

Yeah, because rushing your productions has worked out so well for this series until now. Not to mention doing it for a "he's a serial killer, but he's hot!" show.

Especially since I went into the finale convinced that one of the Meachum siblings would have to die before the series's end, and Ward felt like the more obvious choice. Having him die practically as an aside felt like an insult, but having him just show up alive again was even more jarring.

As I've said a couple of times already, I think this absolutely was the intent, and while as a character arc it suffers from the obvious comparison to Ward's, I still think it works. Joy feels like a very familiar type to me - the ambitious, even ruthless woman of privilege who has been allowed to think of herself as…

I was facing the prospect of a 12-hour flight in coach yesterday, and then I got unexpectedly bumped up to business class which, let me tell you guys, would spark the long-awaited revolution if it weren't so damn comfortable. Now I'm in NYC for a week's vacation and my bedroom overlooks a giant billboard featuring a…

The point is that the show opposes Davos and Danny's handling of their emotions, and then makes one of them a hero and the other a villain. You don't have to assume a causality between the two to deduce that one of those behaviors is being validated and the other is being rejected.

Realistically, Rand will implode five minutes after the season's credits roll. We don't know exactly how much of the company's cash flow came from running drugs, but even if it was only 10%, no company can withstand losing that kind of income at once - and that's assuming that no other assets will be frozen during…

I want to see Ward and Jessica interact. It would either be hate at first sight or soul-deep bonding at discovering another person who is as over the entire universe as they are.

Claire's conversation with Davos crystallized for me not only the problems with how this show writes Danny (and the reason why, ultimately, I don't believe that the show intends for us to criticize him as much as he deserves), but so many of the problems with how the superhero genre approaches its characters. The two…

Seriously?