I don't really think Freddie is being portrayed as irresistible—he's a fantasy to Henry, but primarily because he's both close enough and inaccessible enough to be obsessed over, and the situation with Gregory is really distinct. In both cases it has a lot more to do with the older men and their issues than with…

Casting is part of directing.

I think they never fully deal with it by turning the focus onto her "magic addiction" and her being "controlled by magic" and "letting the magic take over". It's an addiction storyline that never really deals with the roots of the addiction.

It wasn't necessarily clusterfucky, but season 3 was when Willow started transitioning into a giant toddler and we're clearly supposed to think she's just some sort of adorable munchkin and not a creepily infantile woman-child. And it's not entirely Whedon's fault, since a lot of it was Hannigan's acting choices, but…

I just find lazy, inaccurate criticism incredibly annoying. There are all sorts of actual valid criticisms to make about Whedon's writing (Willow, seasons 3-7, is a particular clusterfuck of different kinds of creepiness) but "he writes shallow female characters who just kick ass" really isn't one of them.

I think you're correct that there's a common thread between Whedon's Ripley and, say, Buffy—in the show at least, Buffy's power comes from demons, so the source of her power is the same thing she was created to fight, just as Ripley's power comes from her DNA being combined with xenomorph DNA. River was created by the…

But the ass-kickers are strong characters beyond just being violent. Even movie-Buffy is a well-defined character with an arc, very similar to the arc of non-ass-kicking Cher Horowitz. She just also kicks ass.

Whedon hasn't actually created that many movie characters. Even within that restriction, though, "110 pound supermodel martial arts expert" doesn't describe Dana from Cabin in the Woods very well. I didn't see his sci-fi film about people who can see through each others eyes, but as far as I know she was an adult…

His point about "genderist" was actually way more incoherent than that, because he didn't want it to replace feminism. He wanted feminism to be the unnamed norm, and genderist to be used to describe misogynistic or sexist things, like "Dude, that Jurassic Park clip was so genderist."

That does perfectly describe characters like Willow, Tara, Cordelia, Fred, Adele, Kaylee, Zoe, and Inara. Oh, wait.

I think she switched to vaping a while back. She was actually one of the first celebrities I saw with an e-cig.

Well, her mom smokes, so she grew up around it. Also, if you grow up around Hollywood at all, especially as a woman, you're probably going to smoke because its an appetite suppressant.

"Rabble rabble rabble": the height of nuance.

I feel like portraying Kurt as "this all-perfect Murphy stand-in who is essentially lauded for his homosexuality" really ignores the way his femininity complicates that dynamic.

I was so happily surprised to see Carol Kane, because nothing I read about Kimmy Schmidt prior to watching mentioned her. Nothing! What kind of travesty is that?

I don't know that the comparison to Frank and Monica is supposed to mean that their relationship is hopeless and them staying together is nothing but tragedy. It just means that it's complicated. Whatever else, Mickey actually dealing with Ian is better than him avoiding him and burying himself in drugs and liquor.…

Actually Mickey going to Ian is part of the pattern, according to Debbie: what she told him was that Frank would angry-drink and avoid Monica for a few days, but he always went back to her.

I think the differentiation is between Frank's normal drinking and his "angry drinking." Presumably they both got together because they like drugs, so I don't think Frank-minus-Monica is necessarily that different.

Sounds like Galax-Arena!

Trigger is a fantastic one. It had been planned for a long time but had to be rushed into production with funds from the filmmakers because the actress Tracy Wright had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and it was shot in 9 days over the course of a month to accommodate her treatment schedule. She died before it…