Except that, as I mentioned further down in the comments, the show is giving us "X time later" messages, and they're always too short, because they're always "a fortnight." The episode specifically indicates that Jaime will be back from the Reach with spoils for the Iron Bank in two weeks, which is much, much too…

An unknown amount of time is one thing, but the writers actually assigned a span of time to Jaime's journey, and it was fucking nonsensical.

If anything, the fact that this loathsome piece of shit is willing to deprive thousands of people of their careers and their livelihoods purely as a distraction from the other terrible things he's doing is doubly outrageous.

Only if one assumes that "working class" means "poor." The urban vs. rural divide was probably an oversimplification, but the best predictor of Trump support was education level, and I've seen pretty compelling arguments that his supporters' disaffection was more about feeling condescended to by the intellectual…

Yep. The alt-righters are basically the tiny percentage of the educated urban population (the "front-row kids," as folks have started to call them) that went gung-ho for Trump, while his real base is the disaffected rural working class (the "back-row kids").

Oh, they're definitely laying it on thicker in the trailer this time, but it's all still being used to set a creepy mood or show how a moment of childhood innocence turns to horror or what have you. It's never just playing Where's Waldo with random memberberry moments like the Ready Player One trailer.

I'm not sure I buy that "priceless gift" could believably mean "You know, whoever I happen to find when I attack their fleet, I'm sure it'll be someone you care about."

What really struck me, seeing both trailers in the span of an hour, was how clearly they demonstrate the silliness of the common Stranger Things hot take — "It's just shameless nostalgia bait!" There's certainly a lot of nostalgia in the Stranger Things trailer, but it's all in the service of story, character,…

I actually had that game as a kid. Since it did not involve constantly falling into pits, I gather that it was based directly on the movie and not on the Atari landfill stimulus version.

M'eh. Logistically, Benioff and Weiss have accomplished a hell of a lot. Shooting a show this sprawling with a cast of hundreds in locations all over the world is an astonishingly impressive feat. But Game of Thrones' writing is adequate at best.

I mean, I assume that's where they're going with it — either that or he's going to steal one of Dany's dragons like he plans to in the book. But that still wouldn't make his appearance here anything but pointless vamping, since nothing about that appearance indicates that he's a sneaky motherfucker who can snatch…

Yeah, with all the silly shortcuts the show indulges in, it amazes me that people constantly harp on how crazy it is that a magical object that allows you to shapeshift your face can also allow you to shapeshift your voice and body. It doesn't make any more sense for it to be capable of the first impossible magic…

On the other hand, Sam's idea of a revelatory discovery is, "Omigod, a volcanic island has a lot of obsidian on it!" even after someone already told him that, so maybe the maesters are right to assume that the wonders of their double-secret collection would be lost on him.

Totally agree that show!Euron is the worst. In the books he's mysterious and sinister; here he's just a wisecracking thug who insists on telling everyone how untrustworthy he is. The show gives no sense at all why anyone would ever follow him, out of loyalty or out of fear.

(shrug) It's a tradeoff. It would've been hard for an adult actor to capture Dash's youthful energy, which is so important to the role. And since the filmmakers had no intention of starting a big ongoing franchise, it wasn't really an issue until now — when they just recast the role with another prepubescent kid.

In this case I feel like "visionary" means "Has a specific artistic vision for the project beyond phoning in an inoffensive adaptation of an existing property." It might be partly about DuVernay's visual style, but it's probably more about her commitment to hiring a diverse cast and a biracial lead.

Yeah, probably at some point he should've made a clean break from the original cover story, admitting that it was just some necessary bullshit given the times, but instead he kept doubling down and compounding the difficulty of extricating himself. But like you said, all's well that ends well.

The showrunner of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles posted a great Twitter thread yesterday that helped me to see Dekker's perspective on the whole thing.

No, he was referring to an already well-known controversy regarding Dekker's character on Heroes — a story Fuller himself had shared before, naming the character in question but omitting the "and then the actor came out" part. The notion that there might've been an identical controversy with another character on the…

It was a formal speech at a public event that drew national press coverage, including an article in the Hollywood Reporter that connected the very obvious dots and named Dekker as the actor Fuller was referring to. To me that seems like a different thing than folks in the industry talking among themselves or whatever.