He never really believes in the powers that be. His first act as Captain America is to ignore orders and go rogue.

If Season 8 returns to that sense of realism and focuses on gamesmanship and betrayal (as the final and best episode of S7 realized), then it won’t matter who dies so long as it’s natural, logical, emotionally resonant, and satisfying. Which, I’ll admit, is a tall order, albeit one that the show has risen to…

Pretty much what I was gonna write, with more stuff on top.

Punching holes in the narrative to surprise viewers is what season 7 is all about, baby! And season 6, for that matter. D&D aren’t quite skilled enough to properly reverse-engineer a story.  

Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous and even Vanilla Sky disagree!

I saw this movie three times as a teenager and never realized that Diane was the main character. I associated so closely with Lloyd’s alienation from adults and comfort with peers. It took me 20 years and some maturity to realize that he’s the love interest.

I think you may underestimate just how many people will run something like that as background noise, even with it being decades past its prime.

The problem for me is that the last two Iron Man movies had Tony going up against corporate war profiteers who he knew he was in the right taking down. The trailers suggested that the Mandarin might be a villain who would challenge Tony’s sense of morality or personal philosophy, and I was really intrigued by that.…

Straight-up stalker behavior. It’s like they’re all too bamboozled by Michael’s face to see the red flags. Would’ve been interesting if Jane had talked to Petra about it before the boat date, since she’s more cynical/was way less close to Michael than the rest of the cast.

Season 3 didn’t really do a whole lot of anything.
Honestly that entire season could be condensed and then folded into season 4.

Re: Lost

Their brains were warped by too much exposure to bad pussy.

This is the wrong take.

You didn’t like the airport battle in Civil War?  That was the equivalent of an entire issue composed of double-page spreads.

This — “it was about the characters” is such a cop out. The purpose of a good mystery, which Lost clearly sold itself as, is that it highlights deeper truths about characters and setting in the story you’re telling!

Tommen didn’t name her as heir on the show either.

People seem to have really liked the episode and I enjoyed the experience of it, how well it was crafted in the moment, but to me, The Winds of Winter will always represent the stepping of point from when the show really attempted to maintain an air of plausibility. There is just no way that what happened in the…

Yeah, I’m going to make my call, and say that this is where the post-book section of the show came into its own, for better and for worse. Better, because in isolation, it’s a masterfully-edited and choreographed scene with a shockingly brutal payoff even by this show’s standards.

It would be lovely, and yes, I will cry. But I kind of hope it doesn’t happen for three reasons:

sssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh, the supposedly rich world building the show can draw on from the books only matters when the writers want it to, sssssshhhhhhhhhh.