At least the dialogue was heaps better than last week. I kept waiting for it to become unbearable, but it never did. The pacing was a bigger issue, though, and the character work is questionable at best. It was also... kinda dull? For a few stretches, at least. It just took too long to get to its first real action…

Oh, the first two have NOTHING on the third in that regard. But I love them, and really want them adapted for television properly one day (the Billie Piper TV films don’t count, for numerous reasons, two of which are in that very description).

They keep fucking with reality and it’s getting alarming. I swear in season five they’ll have an episode about how Nathan convinced the entire world that it existed, and we’ll know it’s true.

I’m serious - I love the Sally Lockhart books. His Dark Materials was fine, but didn’t grip me the way the trilogy+1 (it’s not really a quadrilogy, since The Tin Princess is more of a spin-off than a fourth Sally Lockhart story) did.

The hell with this, I want more stories in the Sally Lockhart line!

Oof, the dialogue here was BAD. I mean, it’s been bad so far, but kind of unobtrusively bad? The case could have been made for the first few episodes that it was just a kind of hackneyed seriousness that didn’t work for the show. They proved that wrong here; turns out Inhumans trying to be fun and witty is much more…

Yeah, the closing music can be just as distracting. So many wonderful things about the show - and the music can be great at times too - but those were bad choices for the kind of show it is more often than not.

I’ve sort of got used to The West Wing’s theme tune by this point, but I remember thinking it was really awkward to start with, because it was fine (if a bit mawkish) when there was something dramatic before the titles, but when there was a broad joke or a bit of slapstick the theme tune felt massively out of place.

Damn right. Give us our movie, Harmon! The prophecy must be fulfilled!

I sort of agree, but I think it’s reasonable to call someone out on it. You’re a different person as a teenager than as an adult, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take responsibility for what you did. People do say (and often do) dumb shit as teenagers, but I’m a firm believer that forgiveness is only for people…

Yeah, the comparison would have been a bit less obvious if they hadn’t just called it ‘Sad Girl’... but maybe they were anticipating the comparison so just decided to lay into it rather than hide?

Only a B+? This was a pretty terrific piece of television. I can’t even see any negatives in your review - how did it not warrant an A (or at least A-)? If every episode this season was this quality we’d have a second Simpsons golden age.

It got Sideshow Mel to be terrified of Millhouse. Totally worth it.

Yeah, but you could call him that to his face and all he’d hear is ‘king’.

And the words ‘President of the United States’.

You know, I’m liking the action on this show. The direction this week was pretty damn good, working through a lot of the problems with the script (like some dreadful dialogue).

As did a number of people, including the Emmy and Golden Globes committees. But it seemed to me (over the season and change I managed to sit through) to be ruthlessly avoiding being funny in pretty much every scene. ‘Matt Le Blanc’ was softly pandered to rather than brutally deconstructed the way the show seemed to…

Episodes. One of the least funny series I’ve had the misfortune to see in the last decade, but damnit that title sequence is absolutely spectacular, and perfect for the show it’s trying to be.

Quite possibly, and I do find it frustrating that I can’t name any female or POC screenwriters that I could include on such a list (there’s at least a number of women I could list who’ve written terrific individual episodes of series - Julie Rutterford, Maurisa Tanchoaren, Megan Ganz, Megan Amram, and Sarah Dollard…

The Adam & Eve episode features Leela and Zapp acting phenomenally out of character, a plot that is only half thought through, the continuing confusion over whether Fry and Leela are in a relationship (and the nature of what that relationship might be), and over all it’s just not at all funny (like the framing device…