There are three episodes left: no one is too essential to the plot to die.

Another small moment later overshadowed—Root and John casually slamming the student with the B–. Reminiscent of John and Shaw confusing perps by taking on the roles of bad cop, badder cop, even badder cop, and so on.

What real perky receptionist does that?

I loved the hair scrunchy detail. I wish women of action were more often allowed to put their hair up, as any rational long-haired person engaged in a vaguely-athletic endeavor does.

I can see talking trends a lot more in cases where characters are thinly drawn. So if you have a team of people introduced in a movie and they quickly kill off The Only Black Guy, it helps if the writer is aware of the trope and subverting it or something.

I'm pretty sure the Machine could do nothing but observe, and send its operatives a number: "Look at this person closely." Shutting down power grids and opening every door in the prison is a complete flip—it's allowing her to be active in the same way Samaritan is, even if she doesn't have an endless stream of guys in…

Just noting re upthread, he doesn't know that Root is dead. He knows that Elias is dead, and that she's injured and likely in a hospital, a sitting duck for Samaritan, and so setting the Machine loose may save her.

For those of us who don't watch The 100, "In the context of someone dying on a completely different show this week, over on CW, this is an outrage" is really perplexing. Could we maybe consider Root's character in the context of POI, too? In which she was an excellent candidate for martyrdom from the moment the…

It's a small note, but that perky receptionist at Temporary Resolutions was terrifying. You expected her to shoot them at any moment. Or drop them through a trapdoor to a tank of sharks.

I thought the kiss just before Shaw dove out of the elevator to save them all—and its immobilizing effect on Root—suggested that they hadn't gotten beyond weird flirting.

The thing is, if Harold didn't have all those rules, didn't stick to them even when it was tough to do so, then he wouldn't be the principled man we and his friends admire.

You could add in another step—answer "a dating site." Then if they were going for "online like dating, or online like the Trekkie forum?" everyone is happy.

We've speculated for a while that the Machine would somehow incorporate a human judgment element into its ASI, and that would be the key to beating Samaritan. If that human judgment is an algorithm of later-season Root… I would definitely bet on a Root/Machine hybrid taking down the rigid Samaritan.

Watching him proceed 3 blocks west on foot and so on reminded me of a video game. But then I realized that is what The Machine did with its analog interface so often—go here, put on a bear costume, approach this person and say "butter," now go upstairs to room 314E and climb out the window…

Gah. I was thinking at the time how this episode pulls up the previous one a bit—that we needed the small scale Voice as an example of someone who should just ruthlessly be put down, even if that crosses lines you think are important, leading up to doing that to Samaritan. You're right, it's also one more victim or…

I think it's going for a really beautiful version of merging, where it's nothing physical—physical Root is gone—but the shapes she traced in the external world and in the development of the Machine are going to affect the future. That the Machine will incorporate the best parts of Root into its future form.

Re second letter, that does seem a normal bit of small talk you'd encounter more than once. The problem with sleazy answers is that sleaze—by being sleazy—is ideally kept out of light nonsexual social interactions. You should have an answer that is safe-for-work, safe-for-nine-year-olds,…

This seems like a weird reflection of the LW who is waiting for her boyfriend of a decade or so to grow up and want to get serious about life and marry her, not grasping that "irresponsible, flighty, not interested in marrying you" is who he is.

That struck me as a distancing mechanism. That they could be 58 and 40 and he would be "the kid" "too young to know what he really wants" and "too young for me to take seriously."

So before reading Dan, I believed that dementia—or anything else where your spouse doesn't remember who you are—was a reason to remain legally married (so you are in charge of their medical care, honoring your vows to care for them) but move on emotionally, including sex. Reading him years back, I was introduced to a…