Yup! I really like James, and Mehcad Brooks has brought it for most of the series, but there's more of a big brother/little sister feeling to the James/Kara pairing which I can't shake. I mean he basically came to National City to play that role in the first place, and I don't know that they ever made the role switch…

I enjoyed this little wink so much.

Yup, although they've also gotten some less than stellar actors too so it's probably somewhat of a crapshoot given the sheer number of characters. This seems pretty much right up Witwer's alley, and it also is a network show with a million plus viewers. I think Witwer will be able to bring a lot of fun, but the…

I concede, I would love to see that last moment play out. Like kind of a lot. Maybe the only saving grace of Henry's character is he clearly inherited his overly preachy, super awkward, lost puppy persona from his maternal grandfather.

This season was pretty bad in terms of the dynamic, with some nice moments here and there, but they still beat the heck out of the Charmings and Robin Hood.

I definitely would have preferred Henry failing in the first place (always), but I'm pretty happy they didn't drag out the how do we get magic back to be honest. That might have put Henry at the forefront of another terrible mission and I don't know that I could have survived that. It's infuriating the way they…

I actually think their relationship is one of the better "love" matches in the show. This may not necessarily be a high bar given I thought Robin Hood was pretty dreadful, Belle and Rumble have zero chemistry, and the Charmings are sort of not great people being shoved down our throats daily. Personally I'd be fine…

Yeah, but it sort of works better when they play fast and loose with their own rules. Otherwise they get so wound up on how things work that they spend a whole season walking around a green-screened jungle talking about whatever it is they talked about.

Didn't love the episode as a whole, but for the first time in a while I'm sort of interested in what they've set up. Sam Witwer seems like a fantastic addition, and while battling Regina's inner Evil Queen got tiring, there's no denying she's one of the most interesting aspects of the show and Parilla is great. With…

Oh absolutely, but this show defaults to true love in a sexual nature to such an absurd degree—with exceptions in Regina/Henry and Belle/her father—that based purely on this it would have been nice to see Regina struggle with loss of genetic, platonic love over once again losing a man.

Arthur turned down the chance to move on and Zelena is still alive so it's hard to know whether they would have been rewarded.

Yup, the new thing really is people using MLK to call black people the real racists. Irony is deader is than God.

Yeah, the little inside jokes, nods, and actors are parsed out really well so it doesn't feel like a sequel but a sort of alternate reality reward. That said, I'm hoping for a Michael Muhney sighting soon, and Ken Marino showing up as Frost's PI sometime would be great.

Rob Thomas does fan service better than possibly anyone out there and I don't hate it.

I loved this meta moment so much. It's what makes this show great. It wasn't cheesy, but still very powerful. The whole wink and nod to the audience while making a comment on home and family was amazing.

Abby is becoming unwatchable but so is Delia, albeit in a different way. Abby's actions are raw, fluctuating manically between nice and awful, honest and reserved. They're hard to watch, but they occasionally hit on something important or truthful. Delia has, conversely, become everything she always hated. I think…

To me JD makes total sense in some ways for Phoebe, because, as is occasionally shown (when not totally changing her character just because boys), she's pretty emotionally stunted. It's in a much different way that JD, but with the photographer storyline, Phoebe clearly carries a ton of social and emotional baggage…

It doesn't change my connection, but it has very real implications for the actors, artists, directors, etc… who are involved with the film. Oscar nominations are tremendous currency in the industry, and the recurring nominations for certain roles and films, most of which either typecast or ignore people of color, the…

I think that's a fair point. I guess my cynicism is also driven by the second point, that a lot of it seems so divisive at least here in the States. Like either you engage in social media solidarity or you're a bad person who doesn't care about the French people.

My cynicism asks whether for many this is actually solidarity or a way to inject oneself into tragedy to refocus the point. Does a smiling wedding photo with a French flag overlaid on it show true empathy for (all) French citizens, or does it make us look empathetic? I think people truly feel awful for those impacted,…