I can't tell if this is clever irony or disappointing honesty.

A+ isn't a score that works with the system we're using, since we're hemming as close to the old system as possible. Should I put you down for an A?

I find this episode so gruelling. I normally enjoy television like that — there's a near guaranteed catharsis just by virtue of the episode stopping — but this ranks up there with 'That's My Dog' (the never-ending hostage episode from Six Feet Under) for utterly grim television.

Ack! A Krynoid!

Are they going to hook up the two probation workers? Please please please?

Well Tim Minear helmed that season, structured it, led the writers room and wrote the opening and closing episodes. Due to its unpopularity though, Ryan Murphy's clearly taken back the show. Shame.

I dunno. I've read a lot of theory — not naming names, don't want to be pretentious — that speak to us using historical drama in order to play out contemporary allegories and to disavow uncomfortable truths. The point of the works is never to accurately evoke historical periods or to conduct excavation. Rather, the…

It's just Noel Clark doing that — and only in 'Rose', which was shot third of the Boak episodes. The other actors are about as grounded as you could be in something like this.

Which, incidentally, was its original title.

Why 'Fear Her'? RTD didn't write that one.

Yeah, I'm really not a fan of Sleepy Hollow. I'm not that interested in its aesthetic and I feel like it's not really about all too much beyond its own mythology (mythology I'm not invested in).

Keith Boak gets a bad rap for nothing. The toilet humour (was that really him? Where'd you find that out, I'm sure it's Davies) is pretty inoffensive, and occasionally funny. The work he does here is fine.

Kinda. I'm no shipper, and I'm not hearing any wedding bells in either man's future, but I feel like Monroe's settled on Miles as his soulmate (for want of a better term). I don't see it as particularly healthy, particularly because Monroe isn't ready to acknowledge it, but it's pretty much the only way I can…

Monroe's great. I think the show's a bit squeamish to actually make the subtext here text, but I enjoy the actor's performance none-the-less. I like that Lyons really goes for the role, and isn't afraid to get physical and shakey.

Rowan, I respect you and your reviews, even when I disagree, but this one really frustrated me. Hence the annoying thing I'm about to do where I pull quotes out and question them.

so it’s nice to see the writers repeating the process on another weak link.

That's what I thought as well. I generally really enjoyed the press and propaganda aspect to this episode, no idea why Phil was down on the reporter chick. She was lively.

I’m slowly coming around to Emma Rigby’s performance—she and Jafar aren’t threatening, exactly, but they both seem to be enjoying themselves, which is something.

I love that Keira basically amounts to being a likeable, heroic fascist. Not because I love fascism, but because it makes her a fairly watchable and slippery central figure. That no character has brought her up on this is either because they don't know how problematic her time really is (Carlos) or they're in some way…

Yeah, but she'd refused to challenge her sentence because she feels she deserved to be there for her stronger crimes.