Reminds me of when, improbably, ABC greenlit two different shows with the word “Bitch” in the title and then decided that actually they weren’t that kind of network, leaving us with just the “B”. (I assume many remember “Don’t Trust the B,” which was good; the other was “GCB” which started life as “Good Christian… Read more
This scene is the only thing I remember from this movie.
Yeah, I would read it as a kid when my parents were done with the magazine, I think she would talk about interesting puzzles sometimes. I know there was a long discussion of the Monty Hall problem (I just checked, and she was explaining it correctly).
Yes. The average person’s perspective on the medieval period is shaped by the perspective of intervening centuries which were very pleased to look back on the era with a great deal of self-congratulatory condescension. (Plus just genuine ignorance from a lack of data.) I think this basically holds true today; everyone… Read more
I don’t trust Martin’s sensibility about sexual violence at all (and yet the show managed to not improve on it!), but there’s a nuance here that gets lost because we don’t have a great vocabulary for it. Daenerys suffers rape because she’s been put in a situation where she’s not in control of her sexual consent unless… Read more
Since Robert Durst’s trial has been postponed I assume Jarecki is continuing to not comment on the various questions the finale raised about what exactly happened when and when the Jareckis had what on tape, though if I recall correctly he assured us that anything relevant had already been shared with the police.… Read more
See, I think that’s one of the strongest things about the comic. But I appear to be very unusual in that I quit Preacher for roughly the same reasons people quit The Boys, but I read all of The Boys and liked it, with reservations, until the end.
Oh, this is also the episode where Bartlet plays a bunch of chess games. I have mixed feelings about the plot/character decisions behind the Toby-Jed dynamic around this time (basically Toby thinks Jed is afraid to be his authentic self while campaigning and keeps poking him inappropriately about his abusive father),… Read more
“Halfway through the series”. Aside from Bartlet’s approach to using the military in foreign policy, which is a pretty steady ramp-up over the course of the seasons, what you’re talking about happens after Sorkin left. There are three eras of the show: pre-9/11 (when I think it was good), post-9/11 (when there were… Read more
The bits I’ve seen of the show all seemed very mean-spirited to me, but I know somebody who’s appeared on the show to talk about living with a serious medical condition that is also ... easy to imagine being made fun of? ... and apparently they had a great time and felt really supported. <shrug>
Increasingly? I mean, that’s half of why I quit the show in the second year of Matt Smith!
I agree. From what I’ve seen in other roles, Michiel Huisman is probably a better actor than Ed Skrein, but Skrein slid perfectly into the “vacant but lethal pretty boy” mold in a way that Huisman didn’t. Part of it for Dany is probably that Daario can be seen as a hollow echo of Khal Drogo, and part of it is that… Read more
I thought about using Tyrion! I pivoted because the thing is that while book!Tyrion’s supposed ugliness (and eventual facial disfigurement) is easy to gloss over in print, it’s neither unimaginable nor unrealistic. You can make a calculated decision that a television audience won’t want to LOOK at that for 80 hours,… Read more
Right. Part of this is that books can slather on details to cement an idea in the reader’s imagination without needing to live with the consequences of a literal representation. (One example on the top of my mind - Daario from the A Song of Ice and Fire books dresses very flamboyantly, and George RR Martin describes… Read more
OK, so a couple of weeks ago I went through the first and most of the second seasons again, I haven’t gone on to the third, but I guess I’ll say that when I was watching the third season I felt like the show crawled up its own ass and started rotting. Like Brian Fuller threw all restraint to the wind and wound up with… Read more
