I don't share the certainty that Herr Starr's instructions for obtaining prostitutes were misinterpreted, and I'm not sure one can be certain. After all, how would you expect him to react to getting exactly what he wanted, if what he wanted was to play out scenarios where he was raped? Unless I missed a particular…

Seconding all of this. It also has an arc akin to Kat's insofar it's about a young woman discovering she's into a girl and diving into it with little angst, and which is in some ways more satisfying (bisexuality is mentioned! It's treated as important and valid)!

Descendant.

So was I the only one mildly disappointed that Reign's version of Elizabeth's Tilbury speech didn't take a cue from Kate Beaton and Hark! A Vagrant and end by having her declare that she had THE WINGSPAN OF AN ALBATROSS? It's the first thing that came to mind, and if the series can have witchcraft threesomes, having…

That seems to be the fate of choice a certain kind of CW show. Nikita and Hart of Dixie also managed to hang in there for four seasons, despite low ratings, and they're a couple of my favorite works on the network, so it it felt right to me that it was how Reign ended as well. Better this than lasting for too long, I…

My elation at the episode—despite how distasteful Shinwell's role in all this turned out to be—is currently tempered by my fear of what the writers intended for it all to mean. My nightmare scenario is that the writers intended to suggest that Joan was off-base with her accusations, and that Sherlock would have never…

Aside from a brief moment when I feared the series would kill Rizzio, I loved this episode. You'd think the series, as it heads to the end, would, you know, try to tie things down, but nope. A million things are still happening, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Yes! The Luisa / Rosa trap is one of the most frustrating elements of the show, because they are both incredibly fun characters, and incredibly wrong for the narrative, especially with Michael dead. It'd be one thing if they were both, say, in a spin-off, being trainwrecks outside of everyone else's orbit, but since…

It's been noted several times that this show is a fundamentally optimistic one, showing, as it does, that our government can work even after a catastrophic national tragedy. After watching this episode, it also occurred to me that the corollary to that message is a much darker one: the suggestion the that the only…

I really like how Plot Device, The Death Horse's appearances on TV have acquired their own form of shorthand. Pretty soon, you won't even have to see her get free and run wild; she can just appear on-screen, BAM! people are conveniently dead.

I rarely think of Reign as a comedy, but when everyone reacted in horror at Charles' declarations of Protestantism, I fucking cackled. Totally worth the not-a-vampire shenanigans.

It occurred to me after Kiera reappeared that she seemed a likely candidate for the Loyal Watchman, and on second though, I'm not sure how much I like it. On one hand, it makes little sense for Kiera to warn Mary about Darnley by publicizing how terrible he is. On the other hand, I would actually be super-impressed…

I realize the Rob Morrow character was probably conceived some time before the writers decided to add "writes for Teen Mode" to his background, but I really wish they had chosen to either abandon that detail, or use it to re-conceptualize the character from the ground up (including, yes, making Leonard a woman). As…

While I'm still not sure how well Reagan works in the New Girl world without specific roles (new tenant, Nick's GF) to buoy her, this episode made it clear for possibly the first time that I actually really like her, as a person. I'm going to miss her, if she ends up being completely gone after the inevitable break-up.

…ooooorrr, you could say that Genevieve Valentine is merely asking for the character whose point of view we follow through most of the original stories be given that same subjectivity and prominence here. If we're talking accuracy and faithfulness, we should be getting lots more Joan than we do. Observing that we do…

My dream Elementary crossover is still with Nikita—based, largely, on both shows' differing explorations of drug addiction; Nikita and Watson's extremely different Asian heritages, which under the right writer would be fascinating; and their shared New York setting—but this episode gave me loads of PoI vibes, what…

I will forgive any and all manner of crap Reign tries to pull between now and the finale if it also manages to actually turn Leith / Claude / Luc into a functional polyamorous triad. That they came so close this episode, makes me somewhat optimistic; that it was all ruined, for now, by Leith being Leith, makes me…

I think optimistic drama is perfectly accurate, given what we've seen. Given all the possible ways the series' inciting incident could have shaken out, that we've gotten a POTUS that is willing to work with others and has a government apparatus willing to work with him despite his inexperience and fundamental…

Before this season, I had watched, at most, a dozen assorted Elementary episodes, none of them featuring Kitty (I missed last week's due to a power outage), which I guess might be the sweet spot for being able to enjoy this episode as much as I did. Kitty was interesting: I wasn't sure what to expect from her, given…

As I argued earlier, a case can be made that they're not really similar, aside from both being part of the larger woman-centered action series super-genre. Alba may have been a teen at the time, but she wasn't playing a teen the way Gellar was—Max got written as an adult, and her concerns, aside from her family, were…