Yeah, Southerners hate people from the North, they hate people from other Southern states, they hate sick people, they hate handicapped people, they hate poor people, etc. And they pride themselves on "Southern hospitality" and "Christian values," find comparisons between the CSA and Nazi Germany baffling and…

Honestly, the South—even the "New South"—does come across as weirdly backward to the point of making you think you stepped into an episode of the Black Mirror or the Twilight Zone. Examples:

I think falling apart after the first few episodes is more of an issue with recent seasons than the series as a whole. The first two seasons stick the landing and the second season is, by far, the best thing the series has done. And I thought the problem with season 3 wasn't that the story fell apart after the first…

I think you're discounting what a collection of short stories can be. A really good short story collection is one in which the stories are in dialogue and do tell a larger story. Alice Munro, for instance, is probably one of the better curators of short story collections to ever write in the English language and there…

Most people I've encountered have compared Mad Men's structure to being like anthologies of short stories featuring a common set of characters, not a novel.

I think this is an interesting failure. It'll keep me going back for Cianofrance movies as long they keep letting him make them. It's beautifully shot and acted—but there are script issues throughout and the third act is a mess.

Is anyone else slightly depressed that he's basically stealing conceits from Stephanie Meyer now?

Yeah, maybe swap him out with Willis, who I just realized wasn't even a working professional in the early 80s.

He worked on the scripts for years, which helped. He's not the kind of writer you bring in on short notice, judging by True Detective's second season, most of his short fiction, and this.

Taking cues equally from late 70s/early 80s prestige action films and Antz and A Bug's Life, which are basically the actual 1990s versions of the Magnificent Seven:

I don't have an issue with that particular decision, it just points to the whole Zoom arc actually being a conscious design. A very, very bad conscious design.

I've commented before that the show would be way more interesting if they contextualized all of Barry's "dumb" decisions this way. He's not dumb, he's just a sociopath who subconsciously realizes what Thawne says in the beginning of season 2 is right, that he'll never be happy, and is punishing the universe for it.…

Yeah, if the show wanted to do Flashpoint, they should have had it be the end of season 1. Having Barry avert Flashpoint consciously in season 1 and deliberately cause it in season 2 just makes him look stupid.

I think the first season is basically a perfect season of TV—up there with season 2 of Deadwood or the latter seasons of Breaking Bad. And that's why I think it's up there, the drop. (People bring up stupid decisions in the latter episodes but I think the season achieves and exceeds its aims if you are judging it on…

No, it's before the hat. They are discussing science—I think either the time machine or the device he's having Barry power to open the hole in space/time—and he specifically mentions Hunter Zoloman as a scientist who helped develop it that he liked.

With Zoom becoming Black Flash, I have a bad feeling this was less "we didn't really take the necessary time to think this through" and more "we've lost any and all ability to identify bad ideas at the script stage."

He mentions "Hunter" prior to the hat coming through the portal and refuses to explain it when it shows up. I think they are separate things and Eobard is supposed to be familiar with Earth-2.

Also—again, I basically stopped watching—did they completely drop the thread of Thawne and Zoloman knowing each other from the S1 finale?

This and how coy they were with the reveal were the two reasons why I just lost all interest in season 2 long before it was done.

With the main villain of the season being a Flash villain with the same exact motivation as Zoom and Reverse-Flash, I think you're courting disappointment.