(AV Club moved the below replies out of the order in which they were posted.) Not to give the critics on the comment threads last year too much credit, but I think Moore and his cohorts got their noses out of joint when they encountered even a little criticism from nobodies online. You give them more credit for…

Thank you for worrying about the condition of my soul and even my happiness. I assure you, I adore film, drama, and literature, so I am in my element writing about this stuff. You are welcome to visit me on Disqus, where you can find a compendium of some of my other comments on other television series, especially…

(AV Club has moved this comment so it is out of place, disconnected to the post to which it was, originally, a reply.)

IMO, the showrunner and writer diminish what is in the books by the way it is presented. Historical record on the king's toilette is pretty detailed: that it occurred every darn morning as soon as he opened his eyes, that it was an occasion for noblemen to deliver their petitions to the king only AFTER they had…

I didn't start watching "Outlander" in order to see the series implode, but it is and it has. I came to this expecting a decent adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's novels. If showrunners and writers get away with building an audience on an author's reputation and then essentially stealing her content and distorting it,…

If the emphasis were on Jamie and Claire as a couple, as it is in the books, they would have mentioned it themselves. Now that the epic narrative is driving the story, it's just downstairs gossip, nothing more—to the showrunner and writer of this episode.

Hold your horses. I didn't make the episode such a hot mess. Ronald Moore did. I didn't start watching "Outlander" in order to see the series implode, but it is and it has. I came to this expecting a decent adaptation of Diana Gabaldon's novels. If showrunners and writers get away with building an audience on…

This episode of "Outlander" was so bad it made me think the series is not going to be renewed. It seemed throw-it-in-their-face bad, as if to say, "Why bother?"

Agreed. Moore and Co. cannot decide from one episode to the next what year it is. One decent line from Episode 2: “Quite the appetite for the blades.” I think Moore and the writer for this hot mess of an episode, Ira Steven Behr, have on display their own “appetite for the blades.” Episode 2 continues the…

But Americans, maybe. In case you don't watch "Vikings" in the U.S. on the History Channel, Sonic is a throwback to drive-up fast-food restaurants, where you sit in your car and the server takes your order and brings it to you there, popular at the same time as drive-in movies. When I looked at your timeline, it…

Ils sont des bateaux trés classe. But it has to be a Sonic milkshake.

"Ship battle" it is. Just to keep boredom at bay, will Rollo have ships?

Not to be too picky, but by “sea battle” you mean battle for Paris on the Seine, right? Or is it the Marne, as it too flows through this region? If they attack from the Marne (combining several myths about Vikings in France), that would mean Rollo would be surprised by Ragnar's attacking from the east rather than…

Just try to think of it not as historical fiction but as Bonanza in the Viking era, and you will be fine.

I see the children in this episode as the key to where “Vikings” will go in the second part of Season 4 and Season 5. Fun Fact: Little Albert wears the pilgrim garb of a prince during his visitation with the pope—raw linen with edges not hemmed but frayed to mimic the dress of the poor, a straw hat for the same…

Thank you for your response. It suggests, rightly, that in picking the term “unlovable” I was in error. I was looking for a word to express my frustration in Hirst’s failure to make us feel more invested in the characters than we do. Since he’s given up on meeting the expectations of historical fiction, I suppose I…

First things first: What constitutes a character flaw in a work like “Outlander,” which does not fit neatly into any literary or dramatic genre? Do disadvantages count, like losing his inheritance and having to depend on his uncles, who would sooner kill him than look at him? What about being accused of a crime he…

SPOILER: Gabaldon's frame in the second novel also plays a little with the reader's expectation that Brianna is the child Claire is carrying in the first scene of "Dragonfly in Amber" that takes place in France. But note that Moore could have put more resources into the parts of Season 2 that take place in France and…

Abigail Adams had herself and her children vaccinated, an incident included in the "John Adams" miniseries on HBO, which was the adaptation of a respected biography of our second president: So this technique was being developed in the last third of the eighteenth century.

I’m in agreement with much of what you say. In fairness to Gabaldon (and Moore when he follows her lead), I wish to introduce another way to look at Claire’s character flaws as they manifest themselves on both sides of the stones during this episode. It is a disability perspective that occurred to me while watching…