But it does mean that Cohen took her accusations beyond mere Facebook commentary, and in the process exposed herself to criminal liability for any falsehoods.

Yeah, I was initially leaving room for uncertainty, since anyone can say anything on social media, but incriminating details are starting to congeal: witnesses coming forward who say she told them about the rape at the time, the LAPD opening an investigation. It looks pretty bad.

Fair enough. I actually didn’t mean to imply that; it makes no sense, even from a purely chronological perspective, for me to argue that you could develop an actor’s ability to perform a romantic scene by joking about it months after you’ve finished shooting it. But I certainly see how my dumb phrasing gave that…

Not my field, so you needn’t worry about that. But since it seems to be yours, I’m curious—are you saying I’m wrong that producers and directors should be helping their actors become more comfortable with romantic scenes, or that this was an unhealthy way of doing that?

Honestly, I’d be more open to a critical examination of child acting in general—it is a weird phenomenon, paying children to perform for our amusement!—than an argument that this particular example is especially outrage-worthy.

So to determine whether or not there was any wrongdoing here, we can’t count on Sink’s parents, nor even Sink herself—but we should trust the impression a couple minutes of video commentary leave on random Internet viewers who have no other knowledge of the situation or the people involved?

As I understand it, Nielsen benefits greatly from being basically the only outfit doing their very elaborate and expensive work, and they at least produce numbers that look legit enough to serve as the basis for programming decisions and ad rates and such. But I have heard rumblings—not just from my felonious inside…

Say what? I’ve heard of a “nudity rider” in a casting contract, by which an actor and the producers must agree that a role is to require nudity, but the notion of, like, a “kissing rider” seems pretty absurd.

Yep. Another important voice we haven’t really heard from is Sink herself, who’s being presumed to be traumatized and exploited based on the fact that she seem kind of uncomfortable during a minute-long conversation in a behind-the-scenes special. This isn’t a situation where the actor is insisting that the producers…

It’s less about the act and more about the fact that it wasn’t part of the script, and the ONLY reason Duffers added it in was BECAUSE it made Sink uncomfortable. That’s an asshole move, no matter what.

Full-grown producers and director compel child actor to perform specific actions on demand for camera as crew, fellow actors, and child’s own parents look on! Scandal of the century!

It was part of the writers’ original concept for the character; Will is described in the original pitch packet for the pilot as “a sweet, sensitive kid with sexual identity issues.” And the first season certainly raises the possibility that he may be gay, with Joyce telling Hopper that Lonnie derided Will as “queer”…

The Duffer Brothers have mentioned in interviews that they originally planned a supernatural storyline for the teenage characters, but it had to be cut for time. I’d be willing to bet that it involved Billy getting infected and becoming a more willing agent of the Mind Flayer.

I think there’s also another element of their dynamic in episode 3 that explains Mike’s reaction here: he doesn’t actually dislike her. If he really did just think she was annoying, he wouldn’t be as bothered as he is, because what does a random annoying girl have to do with his feelings for Eleven? The only way she…

I do wonder what happened to their cordless phone from the end of last season. That one didn’t get nuked on screen, did it?

He was talking more about its statistical validity—that it’s not really an accurate measure of viewership and everyone there knows it.

I worked with a guy once who used to be an executive at Nielsen. He swore to me that the whole operation was essentially a scam. Though he himself later went to prison for Social Security fraud, so he might not have been a totally reliable narrator.

Definitely Chicago. The gang killed their mark in Pittsburgh in the opening of episode 1, so they’d moved on. I’m not sure why they were in Chicago, since they didn’t have a bead on a new target till El remote-viewed Ray Carroll, but I guess they knew he and/or some other potential marks were in the area?

“And . . . whoa. That threw me for a loop.”

VAGUE E9 SPOILERS