People can have some strange standards. But, given the 'quality' of Sparks' writing… eh, fuck it. It still doesn't make any damn sense.

Sadly, no. Barbour jacket instead.

IIRC, he did that with The Last Song.

All good points. I don't think the series would have ever been great like The Wire or Breaking Bad, or more recent thrillers like Utopia and Bron/Broen, without having to go into the ditch and not just keep hitting the reset button.

Thank you for the link!

Thank you! Most of my genre fare skews toward mysteries and crime fiction (I don't care, quite a bit of it is as good as any of the literary stuff), but I figured I should give sci-fi an honest go this year. The Handmaid's Tale, A Scanner Darkly, and a reread of Watchmen are all on my list.

Thank you! It may sound a bit strange, but your kind, encouraging words, both here and on TI, really mean a lot.

I used to religiously watch Veronica Mars with my parents back in the day. After watching the first couple of episodes, my mum said it was 'Twin Peaks crossed with My So-Called Life.'

That we do! And she's so good in eXistenZ. It's a great, deceptive performance: you, the viewer, really have no idea what she's up to. And goddamn, she looks beautiful while doing it.

My jaw dropped when I heard she was joining the series. It really did feel like a dream come true. Between her, Laura Dern, and Jennifer Jason Leigh, it's shaping up to have one of the best casts in… ever, really. I cannot wait to see what it's like!

This comment deserves to put on a plaque. 'Tis glorious!

And there is Werdup, to offer his two word refutation of all that must pass into yesterday, last week, last year. His errand is that of the fool, his rebuke a primal howl against the growing darkness that pursues us all. It is the very pinnacle of senseless folly, and yet I can only stand with him.

Poor, poor Charlotte Rampling.

Prison Break was a series that was a bit head of its time. Had it come a few years later when Fox would have been more open to 13 episode seasons, it could have been legitimately great TV.

You actually saw the Poltergeist remake?! Jesus, Dell. Hopefully you were enjoying it with a glass of gut rot.

'We have enough ice cream as is! We don't need any more foreign ice cream!'

Thanks man! The hot Jamaican is also a sweetheart, but it still feels like potentially fraught territory, but time will tell.

Thank you!

Hooray! I can't recommend it enough. It's my favorite novel of hers and one of the best, most intensely romantic yet happily unsentimental love stories I've read.

Even he didn't seem to like it very much.