The writers at Modern Family take the same approach with Cam and Mitchell, with much less success.

They are also the outsider characters, tomboy, bastard, dwarf, paraplegic, and child bride/pawn.

No, he and Eleanor were fifth cousins, once removed. (He was her father's fifth cousin).

It's pretty easy to add a lame weapon to a wedge though. Some of them had something like a (useless) hammer arm or a (useless) little saw blade even without such a rule.

I'll be a little disappointed if Arya doesn't stick with Braavos and tell those backward, inbred Westerosi hicks to stuff it.

They never had flamethrowers. Fire, chemical (e.g. acid), and electrical attacks and explosives were banned. You could have projectiles fired by compressed air, I think, but they had to be tethered, and were always lame and useless.

Apparently, it would be sufficient to do it in miniature with a laser attached to a lander. That's if we're content to merely match stupid ideas from other countries and not far, far exceed. USA!

The subject of the paper was more in Hawking's wheelhouse, I think.

While the Cosby show had numbers, it was kind of a one off. I don't know that it had many successful imitators. (My memory may be letting me down here). I would argue that Cheers, and then ultimately Seinfeld, and The Simpsons each had more influence in reinvigorating the form.

Turns out, nothing keeps the strong lead in from a BBT rerun like another BBT rerun. It's an Ouroboros kinda deal.

Gotta make room for another police procedural.

I look forward to their new sitcoms The Steady State Theory and Contemporary Relatives.

I appreciate your passion on this, but at the end of the day, any sufficiently complicated time travel story starts to fall apart. The only question is, is it still a good story.

Sure, the original was a well constructed causality loop. Time travel didn't change the past, as Skynet intended; in fact it set up Skynet's eventual downfall. You can conclude that this means the past can't be changed, and the future can't be altered. But that's not what Skynet thought.

The bookending premiere thing seems both new and dumb.

There's always a few Skynet fans out there, who have to have a happy ending.

I guess some of the "purer" types up there don't approve of pass(ing).

I don't think TV Jamie and Brienne really care what's in the next book. They seem to be doing their own thing already. (Not a bad choice, IMHO).

It's a sequel to Holiday Inn. Falling on hard times Jim Hardy (a CGI Bing Crosby) makes a deal with Satan to keep the place open. Hilarity ensues.

Yes the second season played everything about Monk's mental issues broader and more comically, IMHO. He went from having certain, fairly well defined hang ups to being practically panphobic.