McCain used to have integrity. He earned the name "weasel" long ago, when he foisted the ignorant, illiterate, unprepared bubblehead Sarah Palin on the nation. Without that piece of crass opportunism, we probably would not have the Tea Party today, or Donald Trump. This is a former prisoner of war who endorsed the man…

Agreed. For-profit prisons are horrible enough in real life to provide plenty of more likely examples. The people who run them, and who make decisions to feed inmates slop and provide no education or medical care or mental-health services, are bland, normal people. Their awfulness would be shown more effectively on…

Suzanne was in a delusional state because she had been forced to fight another inmate and had been incited to go postal on her. She had a psychotic break. The guards who stood around and took bets on that event were responsible for her condition.

She was sleazy and on the take, not trying to make things better., and he knew it. I took his apology as a sign that he has completely lost the last shreds of real decency or perspective he might once have had. He's a craven man, trying perpetually to save his job. Even his effort to save the reputation of the young…

Did anyone say "White people can't write for black characters?" Besides you, I mean.

Good examples, well-expressed. But it's just frigging mind-boggling to me that this even needs to be spelled out.

Did anyone say the show is devoid of insight? No. Did anyone say that the black characters are not written with skill? No. You're inventing straw men to knock down.

Nice job: your comment hits all the shallow, mindless poutrage buttons, the automatic whining about affirmative action, the blind assumption that there's no topic a white writer can't cover as well as a black writer, the blind assumption that the only reason to hire a writer of color is to satisfy some imaginary law…

I do wonder about the people who come into the area from elsewhere—the engineers, soldiers, whoever sells food to the Helping Hand (the supermarket in the next town over?). It's a sort of Chernobyl situation—the town itself is closed off and evacuated, but a few people are still living there, plus the crew up at the…

All the returned have insatiable appetites for physical things - they are hungry all the time, and they are filled with sexual hunger — Camille in s1 with Lena's boyfriend, and then in s2 with Virgil, for example.

Every time someone says "he came back," or "when will you be back?" or "let me know when you'll stop by again" the verb is revenir, to return or to come again. This is used for both references to the revenants and in normal comments. It's partly lost in translation, but it's a constant echo. So making the title "The…

In English, "passage" suggests a hallway or tunnel, but the French really does mean "way through" or even "trip, means of travel." So the subtitle is good. Overall, the subtitles have been much better than the usual. They rarely skip things, for example.

Right … because that's never been done before, and turning a story about grief, loss, and loneliness into a grand guignol sensationalist gorefest would fit just perfectly.

Deep down is farther than most of them are able to go. Shallow is their natural habitat.

Also, not really an accurate definition of a Mary Sue, which has to do with authors inserting themselves into their stories, usually as the hero or heroine.

We could have an interesting discussion of what makes good noir. We could probably discuss the range of what viewers find interesting in a sex scene. (Hint: cunnilingus is not "just tv sex" though hope springs eternal.) We could even debate whether the show treats male characters as seen through the experience and…

Speaking as a person who has watched and enjoyed a lifetime of shows in which the tone, protagonists, and style are all centered on men, I can't fathom the narrowness of this perspective.

At the same time, Jessica is uniquely unafraid of dark alleys, ill-lit hallways. She walks through dangerous doors almost without noticing, because of her powers. Her office door is broken, and she scarcely bothers with it. Contrasted with Trish, who has a safe room and lives in a high-security apartment with a…

I'm hoping when his own series airs, it will take this on directly. A black man in contemporary America is someone whose skin marks him, endangers him. Not for nothing is the character's name Cage. But for this guy, black skin is also his armor and his power. The show could rip open TV's tendency to dance around race,…

Or this: