…"that was a lot of time spent on something that likely has no relevance."

I think Phil is implying to Martha he's been caught up in a Soviet spy ring…

I missed that entirely, too. I thought truck lady was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Good question. Oleg is competent but he ain't such hot shit that keeping him around is worth defying your Soviet superiors.

"…after he essentially said he would kill someone for her."

Something like that. The Killing had a very promising pilot, but went off the rails early and often, to the point that it was clear by the middle of the first season that the writers had no idea where the story was going from week to week. It was utterly incompetent.

The radically different responses to two of Pizzolatto’s withholding
scripts is that one was radically better than the other. And I say that as a viewer who was underwhelmed by the better of the two.

Yeah, he didn't fold so much as he almost physically came apart at the seams.

Exactly, I echoed this thought below but it's an important point when the confession is getting so much play at the expense of the actual smoking gun that elicited it. The confession only makes sense in the context of the entire scene, in which Durst visibly folded in the face of hard evidence. The filmmakers and (I…

I agree, it's much more difficult in my mind to spin "You're caught" than "killed them all," which could conceivably be presented as an act of nervous ventriloquism in the voice of his accusers rather than a straightforward confession. "You're caught" sounds like Durst talking to himself as Durst.

"The Killing" is the worst show I have ever watched at length and got exactly the response it deserved.

For the love of god, please *please* do not let the 'The Killing' enjoy an afterlife as a piece of patient craftsmanship that was ahead of its time. I was there. It was not.

I'm aware there are ways around a degree (I have an education degree moldering away somewhere myself) but generally speaking I expect standards in an NYC private school to be slightly higher than "random person off the street with no experience." Even School of Rock, which had a much lower bar for realism than GIRLS,…

I get that it's "non-traditional," which is pretty far outside of my own experience. (I don't know the specific requirements for subs in most places, but they seem to be largely retired teachers or aspiring teachers who haven't landed a full-time job.) My assumption is that a progressive school that wanted to…

"I like Hannah as a teacher…"

Termination from the "school" or whatever it is that lets any random 20-something with

It continues to boggle the mind that Iran-Contra, arguably the worst scandal in U.S. history, barely rates in the public memory next to Watergate and Lewinsky.

Obviously tracking ratings is a slippery business, especially considering the distorting effects of DVR, DVD, etc. But the live audience for The Americans has been on a steady decline from the pilot on — apparently this season's episodes have consistently come in below 1 million live viewers for the first time. (http:/…

Given the plunging ratings right now I'm more worried about the show living to see it.

I was thinking about this last night as I watched the show. I'm a straight guy, early 30s, and simultaneously aware that a) Sexually mature teenagers are physically attractive, sometimes extremely so, and b) The idea of hooking up with a 15-year-old is selfish, destructive, and crosses every conceivable moral…