Kwaidan itself was based on a series of stories by Lafcadio Hearn, whose real life is just bananas. It's a shame he's not better known.

I saw that one right in the sweet spot, at about age 8 or 9, when movies still had that power to burrow into the deepest part of the mind and metastasize into things both terrible and ecstatic. Like a character from Lovecraft's "The Hound", I'm still chasing that macabre frisson that came so easily back then.

Well, we have officially hit that point in the season when I go from hopeful to duty bound about watching this show. That dinner party took up time that should have been spent on Alex's story, I found the performances more caricature than characterization, and the whole thing just felt rushed, empty and boring.

I've tried, but I found the beginning of last week's episode so unfunny and offputing that I just gave up. PB is great, but even she can't get me back to the table by herself.

Isn't Andy Daly supposed to be joining this show? Is he one of the surprises?

Thanks a lot for this article. Right now I'm rehabbing an old house, which I'm spending my nights in, while listening to "Ghost Stories of an Antiquary" by MR James on Spotify. Now I have all sorts of new ways to terrify myself as the wind batters against the shutters of a dilapidated manse with spotty cell coverage…

Or raping him. (It's also about that, right?)

Of course, those same people probably associate that song with either an unplanned pregnancy or sexual assault, so that kind of muddies the water a bit.

I absolutely agree. I was being a bit reductive and more than a bit facile when I made that comment, and I apologize for not really adding anything constructive to the conversation.

Of course they could have solved this by making the Native Americans the POV protagonists, with Kurt Russell as the exoticized outsider.

And I think that was his reflection in that countertop/bathroom bench thing Claudia saw before she checked in permanently.

I think there might be a middle ground you're overlooking here.

Wait, Dr Shrinker wasn't a figure of my febrile toddler imagination? It was real? Yes I want to talk about it.

All of them, I should imagine.

Well, he's only extremely poor because we're doing such a bad job imagining the end of capitalism. We'd each have our own genuine Luisa Williams if we could just do that.

Yeah, it's pretty easy to keep things on an even keel when your country (Finland) has a third of the population and four times the total area of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area (where these videos seem to have been shot).

Great Job bringing this pointless, tone-deaf non-satire to my attention, Internet!

So, anybody want to wager on when we'll get our first Bowie and what it is?
I'm saying Episode 4, Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps).

So far, Murphy, et al. have made reference to James Turrell and Chris Burden. Clearly someone on the team has a LACMA membership. I'm waiting for Levitated Mass to show up somewhere.

I was seeing Adam Scott all over this episode. I agree about Peters, but I actually thought Wes Bentley was Adam Scott during part of the fashion show segment.