No, I didn't really think you were saying there was no such thing as a theme. Nor do I think that writers should necessarily set out to teach us something. (Though plenty of great literature does, in fact, have a message as its driving force; it's just that the message has to be borne out by the actual storytelling.)…

Mad Men had a number of themes, but it was primarily concerned with the toxic effect of misogyny on both men and women. Or, on a broader, more "philosophical" level, what it means to be moral in an immoral time.

Shows that would pause their climactic battle with the space villain for a dance-off: Farscape, Guardians of the Galaxy.

I was going to preface this by saying it's a nitpick, but the more that I think about it, the more I think it really isn't a nitpick: The pilot does, in fact, pass the Bechdel Test. At least seven times over: Rachel talks to her mother about her job; Rachel talks to her coworker about her promotion; Rachel declines…

"Peraltiago" is clearly the least horrible of the options.

It was Jake and Terry whose names she remembered. I feel this is an important character point.

I've never seen anything about Tony/Loki/Pepper, but Frozen Pizza makes perfect sense, so far as ship names go: Frozen + Pepperony.

Worse.

MCU ship names in general tend to be more creative/less awful, because the characters have a lot of alternate names/distinguishing features to work with. Even when they're not creative, I'll take the modular plug-n-play names—Hulkeye, WidowHawk, FrostIron—over the horrible portmanteaus any day.

I will hate smush names all I like. I'll hate anything that led to the atrocity that was "Hameron."

The anti-spoiler efforts on this have been so incompetent that I feel like "Someone's" continued existence may actually be an elaborate anti-spoiler. Like Game of Thrones is keeping him around and in costume just so that everyone will be really surprised when he turns out to be dead.

Todd wrote the rules, if that answers your question.

"Did you bring us here just to show us your Dylan Farnum collection?"

We're probably going to have to agree to disagree—like I said, this kind of thing never gets universal agreement—but I do think it's worth pointing out that there's a difference between something that makes sense in universe, and something that's explicitly spelled out in universe. That is, it would totally make sense…

Let's be honest, there's more between Korra and Asami than there is between Abed and Pierce.

There's absolutely more progress to be made! But I think that brushing off Korra's bisexuality as inconsequential because it was only confirmed at the very end discounts just how enormous a step that was, given the context of kids' television. That was huge. American kids' TV has a very, very slim history of…

Well, I mean, confirmation happens in the last 30 seconds, but it wasn't like it came out of nowhere; the groundwork is there, and anyone watching for the first time since it ended will see it.

I think they have different networks and different restraints, and that Steven Universe occupies something of a unique position that grants Rebecca Sugar a lot of leeway. There's also something particularly daring about having an LGBT lead character rather than just an LGBT character; network dramas, for instance,…

First: If there's going to be another show in the Avatar universe, it had damn well better be a sequel about benders in space.

I recall "House's Head" as being one of the episodes of TV that taught me how vital direction and visuals could be to narrative—all of the surreal, disparate imagery from throughout the episode slamming together into the hyperrealistic crash scene at the end. I think "Three Stories" performs better as a narrative, but…