Maybe not THE Devil, but Billy Zane gave a career-best performance in Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight. He leaves no part of the scenery unchewed. Channeling Hunter S. Thompson in one of the temptation scenes was inspired.

I was surprised they captured so many of my favorites: Ray Wise, Peter Cook, and Elizabeth Hurley, especially.

But Tom Ellis is coming up fast on the rail. Next season is set up to be batspit crazy.

Tilda Swinton's Gabriel is one of the sexiest performances I've ever seen. Magnetic.

In interviews, the Duffer brothers said their biggest concern was not being able to cast Elle. She really is the lynchpin, like Scarlett O'Hara, Dorothy Gale, or Harry Potter. If the casting weren't just right, this thing would fall apart.

Yeah, the producers/writers are definitely aware of how it all looks, especially to a 2016 audience.

One of the adults makes a comment about this in a later episode that made me laugh out loud.

Well done. Well done, indeed.

Those convention rosters don't fill themselves, y'know.

Excellent points. I think the expanding cast definitely contributed to the ending of The Stand. But I've always felt that the monster reveal in It was more a function of King's "the monster disappoints 99 times out of 100, but I'm always going to shoot for that one time" theory as expressed in Danse Macabre. But the…

Fair enough. Even the implication of who's daughter she might be is never 100% confirmed. That said, if she is Modine's daughter, then he's even a greater monster.

Yeah, I definitely didn't mean to imply his endings are all terrible. Like I said, I think I read everything he wrote from the 70s through the 90s, so I obviously enjoyed him. I guess it's more the fact that his really awful endings always stand out for me, particularly on novels I liked so much up to the end.

Interesting story about the Norway pavilion. When a pavilion is built, the host country (usually some government tourism board) contributes a lot of the money. They also sign a contract to contribute money for the ongoing upkeep of the pavilion and have a say in how the pavilion is run.

A few years ago, Norway's…

It does seem to become more of a problem the farther along he's gone (and the longer and more complex his books become). As you said, Salem's Lot has a great ending. I also liked Pet Sematary. And Carrie has one of the great endings of all time. But when he drops the ball, sheesh.

During the time embraced by this show, I was obsessed with King and read everything he wrote until his near-fatal accident derailed him. He's always had trouble with endings. Either he telegraphs them way in advance (The Shining), he uses a deus ex machina (The Stand), or they just plain suck (It, and again, It).

I…

Since a lot of this season is a clear homage to It…….

No, she's not his daughter. But she doesn't know that, and he uses the surrogate parent thing in a "carrot and stick" kind of way. The manipulation turned my stomach, especially as the show progresses.

Sadly, Arex's voice actor (the amazing James Doohan), has also passed.

Lieutenant Arex it is.

Well, that title is really going to cut down on the middle school market for those $75 tour t-shirts.

This does seem like it could have become one of those "national obsession" type shows, like Twin Peaks or Broadchurch, had it been given a more traditional rollout.