Fair enough, but at the same time you seem to be conceding the point that they exist simply to be demeaned villains - even if the depth of their villainy ends up doing disservice to the people and ends held up in contrast to them.

I'm thinking the review meant it as one trope that displays a general flaw in the film even in its set up.

I think you're missing your own point here.

Setting something hundreds of years pre-Marx is no prophylactic against it being a communist film. The man grounded his theories against a grand backdrop of history. There is an explicitly Marxist take by Marx on Bronze-Age Sheep Herding practices out of which one could certainly make a movie.

I believe the point of the last sentence is that if your movie is working so hard to just make that one point - your movie isn't doing good work both in general and in making that point.

Sadly, for that particular set of purposes, saying "I'm a Jesuit" is actually MORE likely to mark you as a non-believer than as an evangelical Christian.

There's Lost Girl. The main lead has some standoffishness written into her character, but that's far from her only dynamic and the secondary lead is a lady with none of that going on at all.

Hmm, maybe my head canon is cherry-picking episodes.

Actually, I think it's super cool that the connotation turned completely around and still made perfect, if opposite, sense.

Does Janeway count? She was technically standoffish but compared to Picard she was Mary Poppins.

I really feel like it's more that America got that award for finally acting like we were listening to the helpful notes Sweden kept sending us about our behavior.

"Run afoul of Sondheim" sounds like one of the worst results from a random encounter table.

What a wonderful find! Thank you!

It's my first time reading it - though I followed the Azzarello Wonderwoman about as much as I followed anything - my kid picked it our for the cover and because it was at his eye level. I'll certainly be keeping an eye out if it has this level of quality consistently.

I think it was more… the 'Club' had reservations about the King of Silicon Hills, but none whatsoever about McVeigh - so Diane benefits from her husband's pass where the King gets what they give him.

Well, Grace's kids.

I did admire that their set-up did appear to actually take safety appropriately into consideration - in contrast to the bird hunting set-up I'm certain we all have in mind.

Didn't it? I don't think the show has shut the door on a potential romance plot there, but to have that arc start with the shooting go to the soup kitchen and then end on Halo?

He's also more 'doctrinally conservative' on labor, class, justice, immigration, military, refugee, and environmental issues than most American Catholics have overwhelmingly supported in the last 20 years as well.

I can't tell you how often I'm rooting for the squirrels in those interactions.