Bismarck's proof of the existence of God: "There is a special providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America". It's the one proof I find almost compelling, because nothing other than an omnibenevolent deity can have preserved us from our perpetual and ongoing ignorance, idiocy…

In their defense, most of the Ahabs chasing that whale have died valiantly on-screen or gone to prison in the HR rollup.

Folks noticed over in the Agent Carter episode comments as well.

I do have to note in the showrunners' defense that one of the immediate predecessors to the modern CIA, George Kennan's Office of Special Projects (later Office of Policy Coordination) was an appallingly naive and grotesquely incompetent mess that makes the boys in the SSR look like paragons of spyly rectitude. The…

The SSR boys don't just carry the idiot ball, they own shares in the company that runs the idiot ball factory.

Saying there were *no* freakish vigilantes or weirdos floating around before Iron Man would make the appearance of Nick Fury at the end of that movie kind of… jumping the gun. I think the implication was that it was getting increasingly difficult to *keep* the lid on the situation, which suggests that there was a…

I love that they have Russians using fake defectors. Historically it was the Soviets' favorite trick. Although the rigmarole with the sniper rifle illustrates why it works best with a mole in place. Where is the MCU equivalent of the Cambridge Ring to report response and feedback on the reception of their…

First rule of gun handling - all guns are always loaded.
Second rule of gun handling - never point a gun at anything you are unwilling to destroy.

As Angie's reaction shows, it doesn't fool anybody paying attention for long.

Ugh, really? One of the marks of a good action performer is that they *don't* break their co-workers. Damaged stuntmen is a sign of poor tradecraft.

It seemed like he was manipulating his target to walk into traffic, not explicitly kill himself. Which I can see as bending the "rules" of hypnosis enough to be good enough for procedural work. And was that just soundtrack futzing, or did the ring actually make a singing noise? He may have been rubbing a two-part…

Spider, for instance? Although he was kind of a man out of his time. Speaking of which, I didn't realize the influx of Southern blacks to NYC mostly occurred after 1940, it's kind of hard to reconcile the famed Harlem Renaissance with a population base circa 1930 of ~230k on an island housing 1.6 millions. Although…

Yeah, the Machine has amazing powers for something in direct competition with an officially-sanctioned bete noire opposite number. They better be preparing the ground for an awesome explanation of the Machine's continued omnipresent technological puissance.

Imagine my surprise to find that this was the first of two episodes last night to feature sniper rifles being used to communicate in morse code to an undercover operative. Second one was Agent Carter.

@bit.net

psuvm.psu.edu

That's what they've said about Grimms, but it isn't what they've shown. Nick is currently more of an agent of a Royal than his mother ever seems to have been, although Renard isn't exactly a paragon of Royal rectitude. And there's no sign that the dying Grimm was tied in with the power structure, either. None of…

It was a very hexenbiest way to draw blood - it's bloodletting *and* cupping, all in one single, barbaric package!

I forget the name of the trope, but in Greenwalt shows it's the "Leprechaun exception". Any fantasy series needs some anchor in reality to hang healthy skepticism off of. And the mourning really are exceptionally vulnerable to the standard cold reading and other scam techniques.

The potion pulling an Alien blood-through-the-deckplates moment possibly threw her off her script.