Yeah she easily came across as the most sane person in the book, and she was pretty outspoken in it about the toxic environment. I’m trying to think of anyone else who was. I can’t remember if it was that book or a Farley bio I read, but Bob Odenkirk also seemed more grounded than a lot of the other people, and I…

That was the vibe of a lot of people quoted in Live from New York. What they were describing sounded absolutely awful, but they kept talking about how wonderful the experience was.

When I read Live from New York a few years ago, I came to the conclusion that pretty much everyone who was ever on SNL must have daddy issues that caused them to grovel to Lorne Michaels because a lot of the comments about him sounded like kids talking about their distant divorced father who bribes them with awesome…

Perhaps that is it because I don't think either actor played it as particularly menacing or villainous.

I’m also really baffled by how many people—not just this reviewer but on other discussion sites—are assuming that final conversation was the Soviets automatically being villainous. If it was solely a Soviet plot, there would be no discussion about telling Dani. And anyone who thinks that a Soviet commander isn’t going…

Maybe Philip and Elizabeth show up to bring her a better wig. 

Agreed! 

I was initially disappointed that they didn’t give Lev Gorn some more nuanced material to work with as Kuznetsov because he’s a damn good actor who has a lot of range when he’s allowed to do more than be a stereotypical Russian bad guy.

Just FYI but the USSR collapsed in 1991, not 1989.

Agreed. I probably have a bias of my own in that I really like the actor who’s been cast to play the Soviet commander, but he played a magnificently layered Soviet character in The Americans and did a wonderful job. I’m hoping this show gives him similarly interesting material beyond just token bad guy because he’s…

I have never read Where The Crawdads Sing, but I work in a library, and my library director hates that book so much that if I want to jokingly provoke a reaction out of her, I just have to mention the title.

Yeah she has a fascinating arc. Midway through the show, she’s a trainwreck personally and professionally—being awful to her wife and son and pretty lazy once she gets to homicide and the way she treats Bubbles is, at the very least, extremely ungrateful after all he’d done for her—but she ends up getting her shit…

Yes I really do enjoy the complexity of the characters! I knew I was in for a different show when pretty early on the cops are beating Bodie and Kima comes running up. Since she had been shown to be more mature and competent than Carver and Herc, I assumed “Oh an adult is going to shut this shit down.” Instead, she…

I love Bunk as a character and think he’s competent when he wants to be, but he is shown to be very lazy and unmotivated throughout the series. All he can think about while Lester is pondering the question of where Marlo is putting the bodies is the plural of pussy. He’s also frequently shown to be disgruntled when…

I’m rewatching the show after discovering it last year and just finished reading Homicide, and I’ve never gotten the impression either the show or the book glorified cops.

I’ve been accused of being a weird person before, so not sure how universal my thoughts are, but space has never held an attraction for me. Even fictional stories set in space have just never captured my attention or interested me--that’s actually about the fastest way to make me nope out of a book is to set it in…

Yeah I always figured there was some sort of story behind it being dropped and it wasn’t an entirely amicable decision since the column just stopped appearing here without any sort of notice. I can’t say that I really miss it because I actually think he’s a pretty shitty advice columnist, but I always looked forward…

This movie is being advertised incessantly on IMDB TV ads the past 2 days, and I kept trying to process what the fuck was going on, why Pierce Brosnan had de-aged, and if that was Nick Sobotka in a couple of scenes. The snark I’ve been reading about the movie is divine. Debating with myself whether I want to give it a…

Just piggybacking on his comment to agree. You’ve always been one of my favorite writers here. I don’t even watch this show or like it, but I always read and enjoy your reviews of it because I sincerely enjoy your work and perspective.

Agreed. And a big part of his fame was from being the quintessential wife guy, so the really messy divorce also seems to have made his whole persona—which was generally accepted as sincere—seem hollow. I think people basically feel like they were fooled by someone they thought was authentic, and it’s making them more…