I don't disagree with the comedy selections, but the omission of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is unfortunate. There's thematic overlap with both Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and The Good Place (damaged and dysfunctional female leads) and… I'm gonna say Bojack Horseman, in terms of mining comedy out of objectively disturbing…

Aww, I love this. It's so refreshing to see someone genuinely express fondness for Wes Anderson, rather than atoning for any compliment with five criticisms and a Hail Mary. If Baby Boomers can unabashedly love anything from their youth, surely we can stop feeling obligated to beat up on things that significantly…

That's reasonable! I honestly didn't even realize they had split up the season until after I'd finished watching, because there's such a solid and satisfying arc to the episodes that are available. I hope more people will also jump on board when the second half comes out, because it's definitely worthwhile.

It's a bummer to not see The Get Down make this list. I understand (all too well) why Stranger Things utterly eclipsed it and became the definitive Netflix original of the year, but damn. It really says a lot about the potency and problems of nostalgia based entertainment.

I continue to be bewildered by how much it's overlooked and ignored.

Well, that's painting with a pretty broad brush. John Oliver's format delves into one particular topic each episode, and teaches middle class people about unpleasant but serious issues they'd otherwise be pretty oblivious to, like payday loan companies and debt purchasing. Samantha Bee likes to mount fact-based…

Outlander was discussed quite a bit downthread by me and a few others. You're not alone there.

Remember when Girl, Interrupted was supposed to be her epic career pivot into Strange Adult Alternative to Grown Up Hot Actresses, and somehow it accidentally let Angelina Jolie snatch that title AND an Oscar? I always felt kind of sorry for her about that.

In early western culture, a popular form of entertainment was forcing people to fight to the death in creative, exciting ways. ROMANS USED TO DO THIS. That's not really relevant to anything, but neither is your argument. If you want to take it to extremes and talk about censorship, you have to acknowledge the other…

Absolutely. It also had an interesting impact on our current cultural understanding of rape, since so many critics and fans in 2008 still didn't know how to define that. The way it was initially discussed, even in some professional reviews, involved qualifiers like "Joan was sort of raped." But that prompted an…

It's interesting that so many people respond to this kind of article by arguing the merits and purpose and validity of the Sansa rape scene. I guess I understand from a fan perspective why there's that urge to get in there and split those hairs and "well, actually…" till you're blue in the face. But it just seems a…

Sure, once Sansa married Ramsay, wedding night rape was clearly in the cards. Anyone could infer that. Totally agree about it being horrifying but not unexpected.

I completely agree and also relate to this frustration. I have far fewer triggers than my favorite viewing partner, so I'm often in the position of vetting things for us and going, "why the hell is that even in there?"

I just saw this cited in another article on the subject – in a study of college-aged men, about 1/3rd said they might coerce or force someone into sex, but most of those same individuals said they wouldn't rape someone. It's a small study, but it sounds about right to me. Most people understand that rapists can be…

I'd say it's markedly different from the show's other depictions of sexual assault due to Randall's very personal obsession with Jamie. While Claire's rape and Jenny's assault are both clearly acts of violence, Jamie's rape becomes increasingly eroticized as it unfolds. If you glance through the latter half of that…

The sister has a multi-episode arc starting in episode twelve, and we see exactly what happened in flashbacks as she recounts it to her brother. She wasn't raped, but it's clearly a traumatic memory for her, and handled as such. There's subsequently a lot of focus on the strain all of that put on their brother/sister…

I completely agree. The lack of outrage doesn't surprise me, since Outlander is relatively niche, but I still can't believe those episodes were even made. The penultimate one was bad enough, but the flashbacks in the finale were just gratuitous.

The presence of rape in a story, like the presence of anything else, should adhere to the rule of Chekov's gun – it should only be there if there's a reason for it. In most of these examples, it's simply another horrifying thing heaped onto an abused character, or it's a plot device that could be swapped out with…

Yeah, that was my exact reaction to those photos. I would have bailed on that IMMEDIATELY after entering, but given that a lot of the people there were 17/18, I'm not surprised they didn't stop and realize they were partying in a fucking tinderbox. It's horrifying.

All I could think when we hit minute seven or eight was, "Welp, I'm definitely not going to be able to convince anyone to check out Bunheads now." It went on so long I was getting secondhand embarrassment. There were many other ways they could have utilized Sutton Foster, and even just spacing the songs out throughout…