I Am Love was so gorgeous and intensely atmospheric, I really hope this one is just as good.

But it's not any cleanse, it's advertised by those people we see doing shitty things on TV/Instagram/their "lifestyle & wellness" blogs, and are therefore totally valid role models.

I'm more of a The Situation (or Ryan Gosling; potayto-potahto) guy myself, but I won't judge you for thinking about Snooki taking a dump every once and a while.

Maybe the exchange was more like "How dare you look like Shia LaBeouf? If you're out there in the world being adorable, people may start thinking he's not a douchebag anymore!"

I loved watching Christian Petzold's Phoenix in the theatre - I was literally gasping for air on that last scene. Before Midnight, Amour, The Return of the King and any Star Wars movie are also highlights.

I think it's more worrisome that "celebrities" want us to think about the end result of all that laxative slurping. "You can't be a Kardashian, but you can poop like one! #that'sthedream

This is a really great piece of cultural criticism. At first, I was ready to dismiss it (the clickbait-y title screams "Why can't it be both?"), but your writing and the way you frame your arguments were clear, well-presented, and above all very instructive. Thank you :)

Favourite lines (from the first five minutes of the episode - this show is just too packed with good lines, I can't write them all):

Yup, I was watching that scene and thinking "I wish I could make such important decisions like flying halfway across the world without thinking too much about finances, work and personal commitments". I guess that makes Ren's the closest thing to an audience surrogate: he does whatever other people tell him to do just…

True, but we were already going down that path by having him second-guessing himself - since the show hasn't given us any reason to believe Joanne's anything other than a cartoonish villain, she would probably dispose of Luke sooner or later if he stopped killing with her: he knows too much, she can't be stopped, etc.

Let's not forget that Bennet probably ran on his girlfriend in the middle of the night and no one ever mentioned her again - if they didn't want us to care about that (the fact that he had a life post-amnesia), why introduce her in the first place? To listen to boring wedding details for an event that we already knew…

If they had to introduce that story beat, I believe it would make more sense from a thematic standpoint to give those powers to the people who's still acting like a psycho (Joanne) instead of giving it to someone who's already second-guessing himself (Luke), which I assumed was the show trying to show Luke as a more…

They appeared more prominently in the Dark Matters webisode prequel (which includes an episode called "Renautas", meaning that the people in charge of making the chyrons don't really care about the show either), so I guess Kring thought he had license to dole out their agenda more smoothly (i.e. languorously avoidant…

Especially since that's the only reason we're supposed to care about these two mass murderers in the first place. Luke having second doubts AND realizing he's an EVO is just a stupid story beat - it would be far better if Joanne, the one who's still an unrepentant psycho, was the one developing powers and trying to…

And wasn't he supposed to be near Odessa, TX just a short while before that? (the hospital scenes)

The evil corporation is actually called "Renautas" (as shown in the screen at the Epic launch during Kravid's speech), not "Renautus" (which showed up on screen minutes earlier when they first got to the HQ). It's unbelievable no one from the production noticed that blunder on the editing room before the episode aired.