The timelines get twisty, but Henri was definitely on the run from Noonan to begin with, and Noonan was definitely there hunting Henri and definitely killed everyone else at that lab, so there's no reason to believe Cole's presence prompted their encounter or that it would have ended with Henri surviving absent the…

I choose to believe she was being honest, but when he wouldn't help her she felt she had no choice but to go back. Maybe I'm being too charitable.

We can reasonably assume that originally Henri was killed by Noonan and crew, and since he doesn't evince any plans to flee the country even after Cole pleads with him on the subject, and they tracked him down the first time, we can reasonably assume that they would eventually have killed him in this version of the…

So glad they're not trying to just remake the movie like I initially feared from the first part of the pilot, even though I would still have rather seen a Fargo-style approach - i.e., similar feel, whole new storyline with no direct ties to the original (yes, Fargo-the-series had a couple nods to the movie that…

Well, Spartacus is a tragedy. You know from history that virtually nobody put on screen is going to survive, so any attachments you form to these characters are doomed. It's a testament to the quality of the show that they get you to form them anyway. I'm still not clear if there's an overall arc in mind for Banshee,…

It is truly ridiculous how good this show is. There is no way this material should be this relentlessly well executed and intelligent even when being incredibly crazy.

You're saying Banshee doesn't have both those things? Because it totally does. Maybe not quite as frequently on the "feels", but see for example "The Truth About Unicorns" or the finale last season.

It's rare to find a trilogy that gets better as it goes along, and Grossman's Magician trilogy is no exception. I enjoyed the latter two books and I feel like it reaches a good ending point, but the first book is in a class of its own.

Yeah, I'm down with Hannibal as #1. I still can't believe that show is on network TV.

I wouldn't put 3 Days to Kill on a 'best of 2014' list by any means, but it certainly doesn't belong on a 'worst of 2014' list, and certainly not while praising Lucy. (I kinda liked Lucy for the action scenes, but it's a significantly worse movie - incoherent and frequently nonsensical, with the clear implication that…

Scared straight? Scared straight into hard drug abuse, more like. He might have been clean for a couple of days, maybe (if only because it would presumably be hard to fly internationally while high as a kite on heroin), but the fact that he's going through withdrawal when Zed touches him suggests it hasn't been all…

We're shown him with a cigarette in his mouth and puffs of smoke emerging. Granted, he's facing away from the camera at the time, but that's pretty unambiguous.

Yeah, I think that's probably the most potentially problematic change (at least, so far). It's a fairly significant character trait. And even so, not crucial by any means.

Sure. Why is that relevant?

No, because it's a person's name. John Constantine, the character, has a last name that is pronounced Constan-tine, regardless of how stupid you may feel that sounds, or how other people using that name may pronounce it.

It's Constan-TINE, not Constan-TEEN. But otherwise mostly promising, if rushed-feeling, and hearing that dropping Liv was last minute makes the rather abrupt about-face on her make more sense.

Well, they did cameo Dr. Fate's helmet.

I loan people books, but I don't give them often, because I would need to know it's something they'll love enough to own long term. I don't even know that about myself a lot of the time.

The Last Detective is more pre-apocalyptic fiction, which is something that you see far less often and I honestly find more compelling. The disintegration of a world is more terrifying and tragic than poking through the ruins of that world, or trying to rebuild. (Though I dig both.)

I get that the premise is largely saying "hey, this is a medium with a ton of great stuff in it, pay attention", but that's simply too large a list to be all that useful, especially when 4/5ths of it is hearsay.