So there really isn’t a need for a “default rule” at all. Immigrants may (or may not) need to make a conscious effort to learn or improve their English. But their children and grandchildren and so forth born in the United States will typically automatically learn to speak American English from birth in the normal way…

This show was instrumental to me learning to appreciate Norwegian humor, and in fact to appreciating specific Norwegian actors I have since seen in other things, so I will always be grateful.  And it is definitely a fun series in itself.

Given the reported dynamic (a lot more people starting it than finishing it), it appears Cowboy Bebop was not in fact entertaining to enough people to merit the cost of continuing to produce it. Personally, I slogged through it to the end, but I had to just start skipping all the Vicious parts to do even that much.…

So part of what I was suggesting is we should definitely give kids a lot of latitude when imitating other people in their youth, but be much more cautious about paid entertainers doing the same.

So this isn’t a court of law and in this sort of context I do not think we need to leap into formalized roles like the accused, the prosecution, and so on. Indeed, I think the ideal first step is for the paid entertainer herself to be a willing participant in the process of identifying when she is starting to get too…

My two cents is it is natural for kids specifically to play around with imitating the entertainers who make their favorite music, movies, TV shows, and so on. That could involve speaking, mannerisms, clothing, and so on. That is part of being a young fan, really, what I might call imitative play. And I would include…

There is a Sexy Grogu available as well.

I could not stop laughing at Pedro’s delivery of, “Is that a bench? How long will I be waiting?”  He is doing so much to make Djarin a viable character despite the helmet.

That’s quite fair. I once heard someone else derisively call it a travelogue. So I would never try to suggest that people who didn’t like it for your reasons were missing something.

“The lengthy info-dumps. The endless exposition. Talking down to the reader. Chasing word counts. Poor character development. Multi-book anthologies. Look-how-smart-I-am technofetishism. Concept over narrative. Passive fucking voice (because that’s how scientists write and therefore it must be the best way to write).”

Season 2 gets off to a bang when it turns out she is somehow the illegitimate child of both Fez AND Jackie.

I don’t care ‘bout that. I don’t care ‘bout that.

Just as long as it is clear our hero can run just fast enough to escape the Moon as it is coming for him . . . .

Die Cheesier.

At this point, I am willing to just say flat out that TV is a better format for interesting world-building-type scifi or fantasy than movies. Even a long feature-length movie is just not enough time, and the typical pacing of sequels is just not quick enough. The LOTR was still a success, of course, but I think that…

I could not agree with both of you more. Losing an implied realistic point of view is a big problem for me. Of course every once in a while, directors would do unusual shots. But typically they had a lot of thought behind why that particular shot made sense. Now it feels very overdone to me in many action movies, and…

I think Fargo just used him correctly. If you play him as a completely conventional leading man, it will likely be pretty unsatisfactory. But if you actually give him some unusual below-the-surface stuff to do, then it can be interesting. So in Fargo, you have things like Lou struggling to handle the homicide…

I liked Seveneves all the way through. I also agree the stories before the time jump were perhaps a bit more fresh/interesting. But I suppose I was just interested enough in the question of what a rebuilt society would look like that I was happy to spend some time in that period.

Yeah, Westerns indulged in this mysterious stranger who turns out to be “super fuckin’ badass in every possible way” protagonist a lot. And as I recall, Lee Childs specifically referred to those as one of his inspirations, although he also pointed out the type is very common, including knights-errant, ronin, and so on.

I would not describe it as the MOST progressive cop show ever, but ultimately Bosch did get into police corruption, police brutality, and some other stuff like that. In fact it also showed consequences for the “good” cops when they did improper things they thought were for good reasons.