By coincidence, I had this on my screen concurrently with the scene in which Kate draws the crayon version. It couldn’t have worked out any better.

I don’t remember the last time I had this much fun watching a TV show, this episode was an A for me. Awesome action, creative direction, great emotional moments, funny moments, I really fucking loved this episode. 

It’s interesting, because the way you describe the DS9 model is I think probably a 90% match for a memo somewhere at CBS headquarters for their procedurals, since maybe ~2010. Like NCIS, Person of Interest, Elementary, etc.., all incorporate serialization as a kind of ongoing C-plot to all their episodes, with a shift…

The degree of serialization in DS9 is, as I said, nothing compared to modern prestige TV, but almost no one was doing it, even to that very limited degree, in 1993 when DS9 launched. It was a tenant of network TV (original cable TV shows weren’t really a thing yet, it was all re-runs and movies) that every episode be…

I think Enterprise was in a very different situation when it went serialized. It came on the heels of 21 seasons of TNG/DS9/Voyager that were each 26 episodes long, and mostly episodic in their storytelling (DS9 was relatively serialized, and actually somewhat groundbreaking in that respect, but not nearly to the same…

Sounds like you’re a friend of De Soto’s.

I love Dorn’s performance, but all he had on was forehead ridges and nose ridges. His could act with basically his entire face that had muscles, except for making frown lines on his forehead. And since he had frown lines perma-printed on his forehead and was in a frowny mood all the time, even that wasn’t much of a…

This episode, and this review, elucidate a core truth about Discovery, which is that it revolves first and foremost around its characters, rather than its plot or its universe-building. There is a plot, but it exists in service propelling the characters along a certain arc, and generating emotional drama. I think it…

On the one hand, yes, clearly.

I have two alternate theories on Jones’ role.

I clicked into this slideshow with my typing fingers jittering to angrily disagree, but didn’t find a whole lot here to be mad about. The bottom chunk of the list is all either crap I that I agree sucked, or never even knew existed. I live in Canada, and I think a half dozen of these shows originated on U.S. streaming…

I am a long time Keanu fan, so picking his 3 most essential movies is probably almost as hard for me as it is for him.

I think that was the high watermark of hammy Pacino. Like, he was most effectively hammy in Heat (2 years earlier), but then he just kept turning the ham knob past 11, and that gave us Devil’s Advocate. Thereafter he kind of flatlined and started to lose some of his spark. Although I haven’t seen all of his movies…

I’m not exactly a Hollywood insider, but I’ve watched my share of behind the scenes featurettes, and my understanding is that if you can’t see an actor’s face, then like 90% of the time you’re actually watching a stand-in / stunt double. That includes scenes when a character is being filmed from behind, or they’re…

In whose book was Burton the “favorite” or the “frontrunner”? Not the AV Club’s, which had rankings and did not rank Burton anywhere near the front. He wasn’t among the initial guest rotation, and was brought in very late in the game as a cave to public pressure, and then by all accounts he wasn’t that great as host.…

I guess a bad example, he was the first person that came to mind as a flat (no slapstick, straight-man delivery of jokes) performer in a successful sitcom. I wasn’t aware of his standup career, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him tell a stand-up joke.

Carrey’s brand of slapstick comedy hasn’t aged that well, it’s kind of a time capsule of the comedic sensibility of the 90s that we “grew out of”, perhaps because its fans literally grew up, or because they grew exhausted with it and it lost its luster as something fresh and surprising, or because 9/11 made everyone…

But Hanks was not a stand-up or sketch comedian, which is the kind of hard comedy that defines you as a comic performer (rather than simply an actor doing a comedy), and makes it kind of a surprise when you show up in a drama and aren’t playing for broad laughs. I’m also guessing (because they were before my time)…

I’ve started to delight in hearing Gaal’s inane narration at the start of an episode, because I take it as a sign that she herself will not be appearing in the episode.

I actually quite enjoyed this episode.