Seems to be threatening another sequel—to which you guys will presumably give lavish coverage, for some reason?

And Angel! I feel Angel isn’t sufficiently appreciated. Among other things, it turned Boreanaz from a weakish actor into a cash cow.

I have been consuming too much recent Stephen King output lately and my mind automatically goes to a scenario where children are truly being tormented in this way. I need to read/watch something else ffs.

This is total speculation but after Whedon famously had Wonder Woman and then lost it as a project, I could see him taking out some bitterness on Gadot and others.  

Pike herself may be responsible more than her agent—I could see choosing this Marie Curie movie and the one about the journalist with the eyepatch as dream projects, playing strong brave accomplished women. The problem is next to nobody wants to see these movies.

I think so too.

Could be three.  RBG is an extraordinary survivor of medical events, but nobody can do it forever.

“At worst, it’s a male author laboring under the misguided delusion that we could’ve had it aaaaaall if this MAN hadn’t fucked it all up.” Is that a typo?  You know Curtis Sittenfeld is a woman, right?

And rightly so.

Yet thinking about all those commercial breaks makes me happy because it evokes fun solo trips and staying in motels and watching movies (that I would never otherwise watch) on basic cable ...

I never heard the term “presentism” before, but that was what bothered me about the book version of the The Alienist, which I read a long long time ago when it came out. The female police detective character didn’t seem like a real human of the era she lived in, regardless of whether she had a real-life inspiration.…

MerMAN!

I see the fire between you and ME.  Grammar matters.

Quietly living as the things of which they are simulacra.

I was in elementary school when the Challenger disaster happened and I think they said something about it over the loudspeaker—they kind of had to because the whole thing had been so hyped up for kids: there’s a TEACHER on board guys!! 

I mean, it’s more or less a promo for NBC’s new streaming service, right? And conceived in the COVID climate? I didn’t so much get the impression it was a big attempt to cash-in while reliving old glories. Fey, Baldwin, and Morgan, at least, have other irons in the fire.

You said this so much more precisely and politely than I was going to that I’ll leave it at that.  Yours, a fellow fan.

It sounds more like the literary output of Sean Penn than the work of someone who’s actually been lauded for his writing in the past.

Basically, Charlie Kaufman has become Amanda M. Ros.

I think you nailed the issue here—he needs active collaborators (not just editor/agent) to enhance his talent and mitigate his worst tendencies.