The entire point of this episode was seeing all of these different characters interact with each other. So yeah, without knowing who these characters are and their histories this episode would be boring as hell. It would be like starting off Breaking Bad with the final season.

I’m an old. I remember when Olivia Newton John went bad!

I think the GOT death rule is that nobody’s dead until you see them die, and even not then. Light a candle for my ginger prince, tho. He needs to make those giant babies with Brienne!

At 28 years old, a person should have a better sense of personal responsibility. She basically rewrites the same song over and over again. A person she knows upset her in some way so she writes a song about it and everyone talks about who she is singing about this time. Taylor has shown very little growth as an…

She’s a successful singer/songwriter in an industry where you don’t see that very often.

We are not required to like her. Why bring up beyonce, can we not defend women without bringing up other women.

What era? It’s the same old Taylor

Not really. I like to think that from the beginning, each decade had it’s sound. Hard to ague with that weather you were a fan or not, they had a sound that defined their 10 year span. Once 2000 hit...... it’s just been a blob of randomness.

Nah. She’s clearly commemorating the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. (Nov. 10, 1975.)

As a cerified old black lady. Yall are reaching.

Indeed. Like, years too late in this instance. Taylor Swift’s entire damn career seems to be built on diss tracks and ex-boyfriend drama. I really dislike her music but if I were a fan I’d be getting pretty tired of what appears to be the same old nonsense ad nauseam.

Some kitty litter has crystals! It all makes sense now!

I don’t want Kelly to fix it. I want the shitshow gone. All of it.

I grew up in a family who believed in reincarnation, it was just accepted.

I am not someone who believes in...anything, really. But I think everyone has that one thing that makes them wonder. I have two. Both happened when I was a small child (so beginning when I was maybe 3 or 4), and both were ongoing.

Nobody should mock my new devotion to Scientology.

“The dead outnumber the living, in a ratio that could be as high as 20 to 1,” a demographer, Nathan Keyfitz, wrote in a 1991 letter to the historian Justin Kaplan. “Credible estimates of the number of people who have ever lived on the earth run from 70 billion to 100 billion.” Averaging those figures puts the total…

The Root has been a nice addition. As a white dude in his 40s, I’m finding that there’s a lot I don’t know.

Great piece, Madeleine! Very interesting to hear your thoughts on it.

Two theories: