The beautiful thing about red shirts is that they're almost literally infinite. You kill them off, another busload comes in to Georgia ready to get killed off.

It's called melodrama. The writers set up a Jenga tower with new characters and knock it down by killing them off. It's not earned. Things happen to characters because the writers are pushing buttons, not because it makes sense.

Can we, as a nation, agree that anyone who describes anything as "bomb" or "whack" can be ignored as a matter of routine?

I turned the episode off as soon as Tara came on screen. She, for me, is the epitome of what's wrong with this show. She serves no identifiable purpose, but once you've been in the show long enough, you transmogrify into someone who must get a certain amount of screen time to service the character and cannot easily…

I blame Rotten Tomatoes and their ridiculously bad rating methodology for Terminator: Genisys' poor performance. I suspect virtually no one understands how they come up with their number, which is the percentage of reviews that recommend seeing that movie. People assume it's computed the way movie reviews are…

Don't be so quick to declare it dead. It still works very, very well for certain things. Consider the NFL. It's a ratings juggernaut. For content that isn't live, sure. For live content like the NFL, it's absolutely still thriving.

Does anyone really care what you're doing? It's not like you're Angela Merkel and have government secrets. No one's on the other end. There's not some douchebag sitting there waiting to hear you watch some porn. Your crazed ex isn't listening in to see what you're doing. For 99.99% of the population, you could…

It matters in terms of business model. You don't care, but people considering investing in Netflix certainly care. Netflix's business model is based on original content drawing and keeping customers. As of the 2015Q3, they had around 70 million subscribers. If ~7% of them are watching one specific original piece…

Is it really any more bullshit than any other survey methodology? Political polling data is generally obtained via telephone, and it's horribly flawed. Many/most people today screen their calls and won't take a call from someone they don't know. And those polls are generally +/- a thousand people, which is a much…

They weren't watching Netflix on their phone. The app is on the phone listening to the room and identifying what's on TV based on the audio (akin to how Shazam identifies songs). And 15k is a pretty large sample size. Polling data for the GOP/democratic primaries is an order of magnitude less.

The FBI EDTA testimony is what really sunk Avery. If you're on the jury and a guy from the FBI is on the stand saying this blood cannot have come from the evidence vial and must have come from Avery bleeding, and you believe it, you have a compelling case for a guilty verdict. If he bled in the SUV, it's virtually…

Avery, I'm not sure about. I can at least see a reasonable basis to convict, although I'm troubled by the excused juror's comment that the initial vote was 3 guilty, 7 not guilty, 2 undecided. It feels like 12 Angry Men in reverse - likely 3 strong personalities that wore everyone else down.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like it's going to be a difficult case to win. Even if the civil testimony makes it in, it appears at worst he's admitted to giving the alleged victim 3 half pills of Benadryl which presumably were taken voluntarily (I'm not seeing anything suggesting he drugged her without…

Though I will say, the difference in skills does further the possible argument for Luke being her father. Ren being force-capable basically says it's passed down from parents to their children (really lucky otherwise), and Luke is fairly clearly stronger in the force than Leia. It would make sense that Luke's…

I see that argument, it just doesn't feel right to me. To me, the logical conclusion of the scene would have been for Ren to almost have killed her and for her to have escaped via the earth splitting open. Then you maintain your big bad while giving a future opportunity for Rey to avenge Han's death in a rematch…

True, but didn't you think Ren's force ability was pretty impressive? Remember the "suspend the blaster bolt in the air" thing from the beginning? I don't think apprentice is a fair characterization of his ability.

See, I thought the design was to make us think she was Han and Leia's daughter. I think the ending was designed to be an elegant way to show, not tell, that Luke was her father.

Two things:

The only thing that really bugged me walking out was Rey effectively besting Kylo Ren in a lightsaber duel. I get that he was wounded, undisciplined, and possibly not a great hand to hand fighter. He still should have easily bested her. Everything we've been led to believe is that you need training to harness the…

I feel completely the opposite. I was so afraid they were going to play the immediate romance card. It wouldn't make sense. Rey is the abandoned kid on the streets. She's never going to let anyone in that quickly, and Finn is a huge dork so he's not going to make the move on her. I thought the one kiss on the…