I'd actually give a shout out to the dialogue. It's not DEADWOOD brilliant, but it's convincingly Victorian in a way that remains rare in popular entertainment set in the era (Caliban's rhetoric, of course, is that of the Romantics, and is true to form as well, even when he's not quoting his creator's husband).

Back. All's well. No UFOs (Unidentified Floating Objects in blood).

I have to go in for routine blood work (fingers crossed that the leukemia cells are still absent, if you please) and my iPad is a bitch to use with DisGusting. Will respond to this and other points when I can use this desktop PC again.

De gustibus and all that, but the melodramatic overstatement seems a bit adolescent. It's not like this finale was a huge break from previous episodes. Why stick with it to the end, or bother commenting? You won't see me posting condemnations of DEXTER or TRUE BLOOD. I only needed a couple of episodes to tell I…

It wouldn't have been unusual for her to be playing a role in blackface.

One thing that I think may ultimately work to the show's benefit it that it doesn't try to bring all of the characters into a single united "team." Not doing that can lead to discursiveness, but the program may be stronger for it.

While I really like the very final scene, I almost wish it could have concluded with a Christmas gathering.

I do wish these reviews would say more about the look of the show, and at least acknowledge it even if it's not the critic's thing. I think it's had some of the most poetically Gothic visuals since the heyday of Mario Bava, and its mixture of Hammer and Eurohorror mis-en-scene is one of my favorite things about it.

Why would anybody feel sorry for the character in Mary Shelley's novel, who does worse things, strangling a child who called him ugly and a completely innocent woman simply because he wants to hurt the man she's marrying? Yet they have, for hundreds of years now. Hordes of academics, many of them, like my old…

As I've said elsewhere, I don't have a problem with Caliban's assault on her, which I find less disturbing than Vincent's reaction to it. Caliban has embraced the role of a Monster and will act in a monstrous way. This isn't as bad as his strangling Elizabeth in the novel because her fiancee broke his word, and that…

It's fucked up, but I almost find myself wanting the show to show more Victorian attitudes, without criticism or comment. I realize that Victorian mores can seem more pernicious because we're closer to them and they still affect us, but I really like it when stories set in the past are willing to show how alien it…

No doubt, but Maude got better than I expected. I really thought this was going towards OF MICE AND MEN territory and it didn't.

Yep, that and "I would rather be the corpse I was than the man I am" were perfect.

I like the fact that he's brutal and loathsome. This is something that is often forgotten in straightforward adaptations of Shelley. Her monster is tragically abused, but he also is extremely intelligent, and when he rejects the world that rejected him, quite consciously chooses evil and embraces his role as a…

I love them, it's just that now they've become the norm, and worse, are usually CGI.

As I say upstream, he's also more of a bear-badger than a wolf, which Baker admits wasn't necessarily ideal. He'd be an interesting interpretation of the Beast of Gevaudan, though, as there are some historical drawings of werewolves that look a bit like that.

The truly demonic looking werewolves in THE HOWLING were a revelation at the time and I still love them. The big burly badger critter at the end of AMERICAN WEREWOLF isn't entirely satisfactory, but the transformation scenes are so cool one forgives it.

The movie was disappointing, but Baker's makeup was great. Too bad they wouldn't use his practical transformation effects.

I laughed, but not completely fair. LaPierre scares (or annoys the Hell out of) lots of people who are gun geeks, much the way that every single person I know who has a concealed carry permit thinks the open carry advocates are inbred loons.

I'm used to, and appreciate, the sometimes longueurs of 60s Euro horror, the look of which PENNY DREADFUL homages so gorgeously, so the pacing doesn't bother me at all.