Helgeland's work is been very (very) uneven, but I don't think he usually downplays violence.

I mostly remember him from The Master, where he had to square off against Joaquin Phoenix in those sadistic role-playing games, and he came off looking like a terrified rabbit.

I'd take the first half of Daredevil, which fizzled in the home stretch, and the second half of Sense8, which only got better. Can we do that?

Continuing the spoilers…

Nothing productive to add: this was a very good episode, and it does a good job setting up the next episode, which is fucking great. In the meantime, just adding an appreciative comment so that it the editors know there's more of us watching and reading than commenting.

I mean, every single thing about this interview is great, but this:

Is this the sound a recurring feature makes when it's drawing its last breath?

Whatever else this show does wrong (and there's a lot), I have to give major props to them for taking such a complex action mechanism - one person who is really multiple people who has to fight his/her way out of some situation - and making it smooth and easy-to-follow. Almost too smooth: it's easy to forget just how…

"I'm feeling very Whitney Houston right now!"

Right, but I'm asking something different: if they can share thoughts and memories among themselves (e.g. "I know without asking that Wolfgang has a friend named Felix and I know enough about him to spin a plausible story on the spot, presumably because I am sharing Wolfgang's brain"), then why (e.g.) can no one else…

That's fair. It was just odd to me that he's basically in the hot tub with everyone, but looking like he's afraid to touch anyone. The character reasons for that seem a little off when looking at someone like Nomi, but again, I may just be reading too much into it.

Also… I envy teenagers of today! I had to rely on scrambled channels and the Sears catalogue to get anything remotely gay growing up. This would have made my brain melt.

Yeah, I've been interpreting scenes like that as "this is a visual approximation of two people occupying the same brain, so what I'm seeing is metaphorical"… which isn't exactly true or consistent of many of the scenes, but whatever, right?

Not spoilers: I appreciate that the show's approach hasn't been to define a rigid set of rules - sometimes the two people in the cluster seem to "know" what another's thinking without having to ask, and sometimes they have to ask - and heck, the brain is weird and it's easy to imagine this evolutionary effect to be…

Possibly alone on this, but: even in the hot tub scene, Will (or the actor who plays Will) looks so damned uncomfortable. There's a perfectly plausible character reason for his hesitation, but it doesn't read like that at all to me, like the actor wasn't sure what to do, and they decided "Yeah, that works in context.…

Another way to watch it (my preferred way) is as an apology to his sister for not taking better care of her. That includes the "irresponsible youth" angle, but in a way that I think makes more dramatic sense, given how unlikable the aunt is. This is the author's own explanation, by the way.

Heh, thanks - not about needing more action, I just didn't care enough about what was happening. I'll check these out, though.

Laughter in the Dark is definitely one of his lesser novels, but I think you'll find many Nabokov critics consider The Gift his masterpiece. After that and a few short stories, you're right, it's generally not as good as his English-language output. (Invitation to a Beheading may also be worthwhile, if a little…

There's quite a cult of Bulgakov in English - he's not a mainstream author by any means, but you'll always find people who've read, and loved, Master and Margarita. Less so his other works, unfortunately, with the possible exception of Heart of a Dog.

I think it's Umberto Eco and "Dan Brown if you've been concussed enough times", which makes more sense.