SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY

That's as may be, but was the episode itself as excruciatingly bad as Profit and Lace? It's a horrifically unfunny "comedy" episode based on a what-the-fuck-were-they-smoking premise that seems determined to strip Quark of any dignity or resonance as a character after all the progress he's made 6 seasons on. It's like…

Season six seems to bear that out—it's got two of the absolute best episodes of any Star Trek series ever, "Far Beyond the Stars" and "In The Pale Moonlight", plus "Inquisition", "The Magnifcent Ferengi", and a few other highlights. But it also has "Profit and Lace", which I'm pretty sure is worse than anything…

That is linear.

Well, since I'd lay even odds we'll see Richards again on this show, this presumably allows them time to stick him in a glass box in the Evil Basement of SHIELD.

Not good enough! You should be thinking about Machine Man at all times!

It's all opinion, but I really disagree with the idea that a show is necessarily "better" if it's a single unbroken story that goes from A to B with no digressions. Obviously there are some great shows along that model, though even the tightest TV narrative (and I would give Breaking Bad the trophy on that one) is…

Breaking Bad starts very strong and compelling, in my humble—I actually love the whole first season. But that's unusual. Even the best shows often take a few episodes or even a season to really get good.

Fitz and Simmons were working on a way to stun Super-Gunn non-lethally while also neutralizing the Extremis effect. Right after he got shot, they cut back to them standing next to Hero Dude with a weird looking SF gun, as opposed to the sniper rifle he had trained on him at first. So the implication is that they…

The part that showed the most promise was the climactic conversation between Coulson and Richards' character. Despite what Sava says, the themes they're outlying there are kind of intriguing and potentially links this show to the current trend of soul-searching, morally adrift, identity-crisis television. I doubt a…

Prediction: either Fitz or Simmons will croak before the first season is out, to give the other a note of tragedy. Plus, J. August Richards will almost certainly be back as at least a semi-regular. This will improve the cast immeasurably.

Yeah, Sleepy Hollow is from a team that has a track record of delivering exciting premises to start with and then tapering off. SHIELD is from a team that has a track record of bumpy starts that turn into greatness.

SOME-body needs to read Nextwave.

And as much as I like Whedon, most of those are examples of why you should NOT kill off and then resurrect a character if you don't want to completely destroy the stakes on your TV show. Or make it seem like the writers are just throwing shit at the wall.

The family of Jack Kirby still hasn't seen a dime of that money. Just sayin'.

No joke, I actually love the idea that this new Coulson is an LMD and the real one died. And yeah, that does sort of set the stage for The Vision, though a big part of Coulson/Gregg's appeal is that he's a regular dude, so I don't know if turning him into a superpowered android is going to be a good idea.

Well, one leads to the other.

And then there's Profit.

I think animated TV was generally on the way up when the Simpsons premiered—I haven't seen Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles since I was a lad, but I remember it being surprisingly funny and sophisticated for a kid's show, and there were quite a few now-largely-forgotten gems in the mid-to-late-80s. Remember the John…

You can argue Game of Thrones was actually part of a wave of historicals and pseudo-historicals (remember Camelot?) so we've sort of already seen a hint of people copying GoT.