The smallish coffins on the wall were a particularly creepy power generation choice.

Has anyone seen Sia and Tillerson in the same place at the same time?

Looking for a protective cloak of immunity to cover anything that might be ginned up against him. Not unheard of for those in the cross-hairs of a very political scandal, whether they possess scads of scandalous secrets or not.

If they were giving him immunity, it would be notable because it would suggest that he'd agreed to bring down someone above him in the chain of command.

I agree with you. However, the appeal for parents is usually not capitalism, but finding a way around a large barrier—the school or district, with all its inertia—that they can't budge. Parents can have abstract beliefs about improving all schools while wanting a solution for their second grader, now, that's in place…

This "Look out, GOP, Trump will work with Democrats!!!" still mystifies me. The dude has an approval rating in the 30s—amongst Dems, it's in the low single digits—and the Democratic party is going to rush to embrace him and move his policies through Congress?

The Veep has to be from a different state, for EC reasons.

Nunes needs a costume. This "chair of the House Intelligence Committee by day, caped vigilante defender of the president by night" schtick works better with a unitard and mask.

I thought it was interesting how bad the soup analogy was—carrots cannot extract themselves from the soup, though I can extract them whether they like it or not. (And there will still be some essence of carrot in the rest of the soup IF it was there long enough to infuse, but I don't think Lennie was planning to leave…

I loved the dinosaurs-birds line, because I had never made that connection to her name. But it fit perfectly.

I thought it was the mutant in the sweater, down by the water. Or more broadly, the power of a background character in the fight.

I thought this episode fell down on a bit on the tight plotting that has driven the rest of the season. This show has been really good at playing confusing details by either addressing them within a few scenes, or providing a slight tip of the hand that conveys 'yes, we know this is off, it's a deliberate choice that…

She might be learning, based on keeping the con on Malcolm going for 24 hours. Quite a contrast to her feeling about being the feint a few episodes ago.

My husband observed that scientists can probably work around this (terrifying 1984 bullshit) by using slightly more syllables.

At least not chairing the committee. States are not gerrymandered, and this stuff plays best to a narrow audience, not a broad one.

I read a few days ago that her character was initially envisioned as a 50 year old man, and I cannot fathom it.

That bothered me, too. He should be well aware that "a whole bunch of armed guards in scary black outfits" is barely going to be a blip at this point.

Yeah, at what I thought was the ending I was perplexed that they were sending in the whatsit and then no massive bomb or transport ship or anything arrives. So stands to reason this is the whatsit.

I know Tony has a lot of fans, but voting him out before he could find too many idols was the smart move for everyone else.

I agree that Varner is playing her earlier shrug-in-the-background game. But I think the aggressive queen strategy is a deliberate one in this third round. Hiding in the background doesn't work when you're a two-time winner against competent players. So she is making herself look like the perfect meat shield—the…