On the plus side, it's still possible that this is a multi-season arc of going through the motions before finally Barry realises he's actually gay…

Honestly, I could accept that as a motivation, if the rest of the character were written around it…

No, it's OK. She's not dating her brother, she's just dating The Flash, the fantasy superhero she's been idolising for years and who is now exploiting her groupie crush on him. So that's… wait, no, that doesn't make it better…

It's not even as though she needs to be that aggressive to work as a character. There's a wide range of personalities she could have. It would just be nice if she had one. The actress does well with what she's given, but her entire character is "supporting her boyfriend"; and sometimes "supporting her father" or…

Although only S5 and S7 really had a single big bad. Well, and S1 but that was half-length. S2 began with The Annointed, shifted to Spike and Drusilla, and ended up with Angelus. S3 started with Trick, but he wasn't that good so got thrown away pretty quickly. S4 there was only one big bad really, but the first half…

Vibe wasn't even in that scene!

Negga isn't always portrayed as black. One of the times I saw her on stage*, she was playing a rural Irish girl, and if you didn't know she was half African you wouldn't have realised it - she isn't much darker-skinned than a well-tanned two-white-parents Irish woman might be. Except that when we saw her on the flyers…

It's a cliffhanger in the 'sting at the end so they can justify coming back next year' way. Thematically, it's the end: his guys have learned enough that they don't really need him anymore, so the show ends. It's phrased in a "but what will happen next!?" way, but that's not a real cliffhanger because there are no…

I have never seen either Avatar or Ally McBeal. Strangely, I've never yet felt any need to rectify that deficiency.

Yep, the London episodes - end of season 4. Although looking it up I think there were some good moments in season 5 as well. 6 and onwards, though, the writers seem to give up and it becomes so obvious that lots of things are happening purely as a desparate attempt to create tension and reconfigure the characters.…

Well, people die and tragedies happen and good things are snatched away and almost everything goes wrong, so… that's what I meant by 'brutal'.

Well, I WAS a teen in the UK - just not a very cool one. And I did find it funny when I was a teenager - but I think it's wittier now, and I enjoy the setting more now. I think.

Never saw Brick. It's probably true you need some tolerance of the high school genre to love VM, although there's also a lot going on beyond the high school. A lot of the cases originating in the high school have more serious foundations outside it, and of course the show is constantly cross-cutting the bright,…

Take the miniseries, the first season with some of the fat trimmed, and the first half of the second season (likewise trimmed), culminating with Pegasus and the Resurrection Ship, and THAT would be arguably the best season of TV ever. [It wouldn't be the best, but it would be arguable].

To be fair, "in what fucking world is this considered charming?" is my default reaction to most romance plots…

Wait, are you saying there's a new run of Ally McBeal about to be released any year now that will run three times as long as the original?

But his speech in the church…

I suggest stopping at the end of S3, which really does feel like it was written to be the end of the show. You miss out on S4, which wasn't great but the 'apprentice' mechanic was fun, and you miss out on Amber Tamblyn's role in S7, but otherwise you're only missing a couple of good episdoes that way. The first 3…

I rewatched S1 and S2 and loved them, though maybe not quite as much as originally - you get more out of a repeat viewing, but the tension is much less, particularly around Billy in S1 once you know what happens.
Couldn't face S3 and S4, though - they've got good points, but so many bad ones.

I prefer it now that it's dated. Hip, topical 90s California rubbed me the wrong way. Quaint period 90s California is fun.