I felt like the writers really punted on Khomyuk. I understand (though I don’t like) painting Dyatlov as this mustache-twirling villain, and Fomin as a half-wit lackey was fine. I can even deal with Bryukhanov as a benighted, small-minded bureaucrat. But I think the series lacked creativity with Khomyuk’s character.

Fan heads get cracked on the daily by foul balls in baseball. Hockey pucks have ended lives, and despite the netting now used, continue to pose a danger to fans. It’s part of the game. Always has been. 

Yep. The robots (both Soviet and German) worked as intended. The team knew the lunar rovers wouldn’t work on Masha (the most irradiated area of the roof at 12K+ roentgen), but those rovers did work on the other two sections. And of course, the Germans weren’t informed of the actual conditions on Masha. Had they been,…

The release of the China Syndrome has to be one of the most amazing, cinematic coincidences of all time. Like you said, eery.

There’s a chilling parallel between TMI and Chernobyl as well. Both events were preceded by mirror-image failures that didn’t end in disaster, but the lessons from those were never shared.

The series opens showing the event silently, in the distance, and from the perspective of an outside character. It’s almost casual. The series ends, putting us in the room, with people we’ve already seen what happens to them, and somehow still manages to evoke tension and dread almost to the point you hope there will…

There was a lot of mouthing off to authority in this series that just didn’t happen in real life. Especially the early episodes when Legasov repeatedly cuts in on conversations between Gorbachev and top ministers, and even berates the head of the KGB. I mean, yikes. And don’t get me started on Watson’s character and…

I thought that touch of using Russian for the loudspeakers was brilliant. The cadence of the female’s voice calling for attention “Vnimanye Vnimanye...” was perfect for the scene.

Yes, that’s the crux. If it was Dany’s ego and rush to King’s Landing that resulted in the loss of Rheagal and her fleet, it could have worked. And it would have served the larger themes and arcs of the story.

Put Lindell on the Group W bench.

And here we go.... Six months of relentless bitching about unwritten rules.

I just read a theory that what ultimately brought the flights down wasn’t the MCAS down trim. Rather, it was an overspeed condition at low altitude that overpowers the elevator hydraulics and causes the rear stabilizer to deflect down. The phenomenon is called blowback, and it’s described thusly:

This is great. Yes, pilots are trained to recognize runaway trim and shut off the motor, but my understanding is that MCAS was producing intermittent trim. So pilots would get authority back via the trim switches, but then MCAS would reactivate a few seconds later with re-doubled down trim. I’m guessing this delayed…

Man, I’d not be so quick to throw the pilots under the bus. Those MCAS failures happened at low altitude, right after the takeoff, when the planes were slow and heavy. It’s the worst possible moment for a loss of control event. 

Very easy. You shut off the trim motors and hand fly the aircraft. And this is a documented procedure to resolve runaway trim, when the motors invoke uncommanded nose up/down attitude.

But MCAS wasn’t a runaway. It was intermittent uncommanded trim. They would get trim authority back, only to have MCAS redouble the downward deflection. If this happened at 30K feet, the aircraft likely survives. But at 3K feet...

Or even better yet. You died because the crew that saved the plane the day before NEVER BOTHERED TO REPORT the MCAS upset, leaving the plane to nosedive to its doom the next time it was flown. I mean, WTF?

Exactly! Boeing essentially snuck MCAS under the table in order to get the grandfathered type rating and support a no-training-costs sales pitch to the airlines. That pilots never got trained is a feature, not a bug.

Boeing deserves full blame. But the pilots who failed to report the MCAS upset should be freaking fired. 

That last bit is very important. The FAA requires that any automated system that can produce a hazardous condition (and full nose-down deflection is certainly that) must be supported by redundant sensor inputs. So not only was MCAS spec’d improperly in terms of its stated impact on flight, but it’s design violated a…