Well, for now, to the Azores, it seems. I wonder at the loyalty of this merry band—how long are they going to stick with whatever plan James has in store for them?

I'm only still in this because of her character. Hopefully, the fact that it seems she's got it bad for James won't be her undoing.

I don't necessarily disagree with the reviewer. She makes a valid point: all these "colorful" elements can't just exist to add superficial interest and texture to a show. They have to eventually mean something. And I'm completely puzzled by James's curt dismissal of his sister. So hot one moment, so . . . pfffft the…

Agreed. Up to now, though, I wouldn't necessarily say he's chewed scenery. I think there's some nuance to his character. It's not yet fully developed, but he's more interesting than the other four brothers. And there's not much else left for Lagertha to do.

True, but if he's determined to participate, it at least allows him a fighting chance. Better than Floki carrying him on his back :o)

Yup. Although we've seen Floki fight in other battles, so often the show focused on him playing the joker or the zealot. This was the first time that I got the full sense of his imposing physicality.

I'm rooting for Ivar to be that focus. He's intelligent, ambitious, curious, and he inspires the same kind of love and loyalty that Ragnar did, but now with the added ingredient of also being terrifying. And his motives—beyond revenge for his mother's and father's deaths, obviously—are still unclear. Do his ambitions…

The job of a reviewer/critic is to make meaningful comment on the culture of the times, and that includes when certain segments of the culture reveal itself to be empty, meaningless, and unwatchable. Zack is not just saying that the show is shitty, he's pointing out why. Why it's bad storytelling and why the…

"This show is and always has been an exploration of what a world gone mad does to people, and the kinds of factions that emerge from the madness."

I'm out. The show is utter garbage. I know they're following the comics, but why? Seriously. Rick and Co. go from being the baddest ass m'fo survivors out there to these sniveling SLAVES? And we're supposed to believe that the default for human character post-zombie apocalypse is overwhelmingly…

Mmm, not exactly my point. I said I'm weary of the 1 percenters bad/little person good trope. The solution for most revolutionaries usually tends to be either total destruction, or yet another restructuring of a centralized power. Might be more interesting, given that we're dealing with a bunch of techno…

Look, all I said from the very beginning was that in spite of years spent trying to figure it out, government can't ensure economic parity. I don't see how that's necessarily a strictly political opinion. And I never discussed any other ways in which governments may or may not be effective—you extrapolated that.…

At this point I'm just going to throw my hands up and admit my own utter stupidity when it comes to knowing exactly what it is you're trying to get me to admit, and for what purpose. Yes, I don't believe government is a cure all for all of society's ills, just as you likely believe that it is, and if roles were…

Of course I have personal opinions, and I think I've made them clear. So, sorry, no, what I should have written was, "have I aligned myself or those opinions with a political PARTY?" because that's the convenient little nut-shelling we all need in order to engage with each other, right? Oh, you're a liberal, I know…

Of course government has a role in society. Where it FAILS is when it manipulates relationships between individuals and entities, including economic relationships. And I'm not being snide or denigrating when I say I'm puzzled by how, in spite of centuries of evidence against it, we still believe the government can…

Really? All I've done is state that the show reflects, for whatever reason, the idea that crony capitalism, backed by government, is conflated with the workings of a free market and that the solution is no market, because it will make us all equal at that point. And that's a very simplistic way of looking at the…

I never called anything perfect, nor, again, did I state any personal political opinion. There is no perfect, which is what I'm saying. I'm taking to task the revolutionary belief in the ability to return the world to some kind of idealist state of equilibrium–capitalist or socialists or whatever-ist.

Did I state what my politics are? nope. I was simply responding to what the show has posited already, and what McCowan spoke about in the first couple paragraphs of his review.

"Paranoid oversimplifications of how the world works"—nice. Hadn't looked at it that way, I was taking it more at face value, which is a mistake with this show, I know. Also, the 1 percent obviously has sucky taste in music, as witness the harp.

Exactly my point. The problem is government, not so-called capitalism, whose original free market connotations have been subverted by manipulated markets, which can only be manipulated with the sanction of governments (which is why I'm always so astonished that people continue to look for solutions in . . .…