Kel Varnsen

Except what was the percentage of people who saw the movie had actually read the books and were hardcore enough fans to actually be enraged. Like anything I imagine it would be a small minority.

In the show's world that is probably how it will shake down, but in the real world I am not so sure if that is how it would work. I mean he hacked and rob the bank not Cardiff. If you rob an actual bank I am not sure it really makes a difference to the cops and the prosecutors whose money you stole.

So I am curious, did you have the same problem with the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Because they basically did the same thing by saying that Thor and Loki weren't actually mythological gods, but actually extremely advanced nearly immortal aliens. I see your point about that one. Although at the same time, in Raiders the hanging on the outside of the submarine for 2 days was neither a set piece or CG. They just showed Indy grab on to the top of the sub, then it switched to the little animated sequence of the map for the red line as the sub traveled to the Agean sea. Then he hopped off and was still strong enough to fistfight Nazis.

I could live with that. I mean the fact that it would be a new crime would be a big one. I could totally see the prosecuting attorneys being like "what exactly do we charge him with?". Also I am not 100% sure of the details of what Bos did. I mean did he transfer money from one Cardiff Electric account to another without authorization (ie spending company money he wasn't supposed to) or did he actually take money from Old Man Cardiff's personal account and transfer it to the company (which would be a much bigger deal).

I want Bos back too. Although I am not sure how that would happen, unless his prison sentence was really short. I mean it is not like Old Man Cardiff can say there was just a misunderstanding. He hacked a bank, so the crime would be against the bank not cardiff, and it would be up to the feds if they want to continue with charges or not. If he did come back I could see him playing some kind of advisory role to Cameron's company. I mean she has Donna to help her out with hardware and actual people management, but none of them really know how to run a company (i am thinking of things like paying bills, payroll, marketing, taxes that kind of thing). If the company take off she is going to need to figure that out. Plus I really liked their relationship in season 1.

That is what I figured too, I also figured that they wouldn't eliminate someone and then make them ride the long ass flight from France back to Canada, but according to next weeks previews I was wrong. This really was a great episode, I am so glad to see that this show is not just sticking to racing in Canada. That challenge looked awesome. I think I would have totally rocked that challenge. The math didn't seem that hard, plus I homebrew my own beer so I am very familiar with taking specific gravity readings. As far as challenges go the Bayeux Tapestry one was really cool too. It would have been cool if they could have viewed the original after they put together theirs. What always amazes me about vets is that the phrase "fought for our freedom" gets used a lot. And while it is true, in a much simpler sense, especially say if you are an 18 year old kid in the 1940's, they were fighting for the freedom of countries they had never been to and people they had never met. To me that is an even more amazing sacrifice. And when they showed all those graves of basically kids who were yonger than Mickey and Pete, it is interesting to think that I was kind of a dumbass at 18, and these guys had it together enough to sign up and get shipped off to war.

So the show amazingly got renewed for a second season. What would people like to see for that second season. Personally I would like to see much less Joe. Have Boz come back and have him an Gordon run their company. If they have to keep Joe let him be some kind of supporting character advisory type. Then spend as much time with Cameron and Donna at mutiny. Boz coming back would be a big part of that for me, although I am not really sure how they would do that. I think it would be interesting to see the contrast between Gordon and Donna's work lives. You could have something where they both come home from work and she talks at length about the revolutionary new game that they tested. Then when he talks about his day it will be like "we managed to get the Giant version 2 to run 9.2% faster than the original Giant".

He was randomly assigned. But at the same time the way the season was set up with no reward challenges and redemption island he had a huge advantage compared to the new players. And I am not so sure he would have been voted off right away, he is a lot more charismatic than Russel plus he is a hard worker around camp, enough so that I could see them keeping him for a few weeks.

I remember years ago, I am thinking maybe amazon or one of the seasons just after that one where one of the challenges right before the end had a component that was filling a cylinder with water so you could reach a floating key. Of course this kind of challenge gave a huge advantage to a woman with really skinny arms. It is funny how there is all this talk about this kind of stuff, when I remember back to season 1 there was a kind of low level scandal about how they did some reshoots after a challenge was done to get some extra footage so it would look good for TV. It was something like an aerial shot of the teams swimming across water. CBS had to make a statement about how the footage was reshot after the challenge was over and it had no effect on who won. I remember because it actually made the news on Entertainment Tonight.

That is what I am sort of thinking too. They probably wouldn't completely fix an entire season. But fixing a tribal outcome by asking loaded questions, of course. Fixing a single stage of the game by either modifying or changing challenges so that one team or player has an advantage, probably. Fixing a season so that returning player have a gigantic advantage over new players, seen it happen more than once.

I would love to see them change up the challenges a bit. I am super tired of the run out somewhere and get some puzzle pieces and then build said puzzle. I get what they are trying to do by making the challenges more well rounded so that one team can't dominate. But I think you would get the results if you had it so that there were some challenges that were purely physical, and some challenges that were purely mental (like here's a puzzle put it together as fast as you can). Plus not knowing what type of challenges is coming next during the team phase could really mix up how voting is done. I mean you don't want to get rid of your smart guy if the next three challenges are going to be just building things. Also I agree with the above poster who said they should dial back the type of rewards they get. I am kind of ok with the individual rewards being a bit more lavish, since it kind of messes with the alliances a bit (especially when random teams go on rewards together). But for the team rewards make them just slightly better than not having them. I am talking like here is a blanket, or here is some toilet paper or here is some potatoes to go with the rice. Not here is a 7 course catered meal. Plus with the individual reward challenges, when someone wins they should take away the option for who he/she gets to take with him. Either make it random, or make it that they have to go with the 2nd or 3rd place person.

I wonder how much of it actually has to do with the typical reasons that they give for renewal (dedicated following, hope to build for the future) and how much of it is the fact that by summer 2015 AMC won't really have a lot of original programming. I mean by then Mad Men will have aired its series finale and Breaking Bad will be outside of most people's memories. Walking Dead appears to be a Fall/Winter show so unless AMC has some really awesome shows in development, they are going to have to renew/push returning shows, even ones with low ratings if they want to stay in the original series game.

My understanding is exactly the same. Linda Holmes (the former Miss Alli) wrote an article for a legal journal about the legalities of producer interference in survivor. From the sounds of it, it would seem that those games show laws are written pretty specifically so that cheating in a game show (ie giving someone the answers on Jeopardy) would be illegal. It is not as cut and dry for an entertainment show like survivor, especially when you consider how many different factors can affect the outcome of the game. And it sounds like as long as a season wasn't completely fixed ahead of time with the player winning being in on it, no one at the federal government would really care.

My unpopular opinion is that I didn't mind kingdom of the crystal skull. I think if they got rid of Shia (or replaced him with a more competent young actor, or got rid of Indy Jr. and replaced him with a grown up Short Round) and got rid of the bad CGI it would have been a really good movie. Roger Ebert said that Raiders is remembered fondly primary because it came out first and all three are just as goofy. Surviving in a nuclear blast in a fridge is no more ridiculous than surviving jumping out of a plane by riding an inflatable raft, or surviving hanging on to the outside of a submarine (with no food or water or protection from the elements) as it travels from the middle of the Mediterranean sea to the Aegean sea (which would have taken at least a couple of days) and then being totally fine when the sub docks. As for the Aliens, I didn't really mind using them instead of human mythology. I mean do people have the same complaints about the Marvel Cinematic universe and how they turned mythology into aliens (Thor)? Plus the use of aliens totally works for me since it is set in the 1950's.

Replying in unpopular opinions.

I don't really hate this trope but I think it needs to be retired: I am talking about the one where a main character comes to a realization that family aren't just the people you are related to but also the people in your life that really care about you. It is not that it is a bad message it is just that it gets used so often. And every time it does get used it is treated like some amazing revelation that no one has ever figured out before. When in reality, considering how often it shows up on tv, you would think the character would have seen it on TV themselves.

Unless they drove a dump truck full of money up to Jeremy Renner's house I am not sure what the point of having Mockingbird without Hawkeye would be. Although that could just be because I don't have a whole lot of faith in these writers, and I used to love the West Coast Avengers.

Best episode that is easy, the Olympic torch one. It has Bobby being successful at something, everyone of the main characters sort of contributes, and they show a flashback to hank's highschool days.

I liked the Avengers, although I thought the level of praise that Joss Whedon got for that movie was way more than what was deserved. I mean most of the heavy lifting creatively was already done. All of the main characters had been introduced and their characters developed. He was most certainly told who the main villain would be. And he had 40+ years of source material to draw on. So basically he knew that Nick Fury would assemble the avengers, to stop Loki from taking over the world before he even started writing a thing. Sure it ended up being a great movie but I am sure there were a lot of writer/directors who could have pulled off just as good a movie.

But is that any more ridiculous than surviving a jump out of a plane by riding an inflatable raft down a mountain?

This episode was like the opposite of the last one for me. In this one I found the plot really funny but the G&O song at the end (while good) didn't really bring the laughs. I also did find it weird how the show kind of just ended, not sure if I find that entertaining or now.

For a normal meal I would say that would be an awesome tip. But factor in the fact that they were basically shooting a television show it might not be so great. I mean they were probably at the table for longer than a normal meal would be. Plus factor in that the camera crew was there and all the other commotion and distraction it would have caused, I would have hoped they would have left a pretty awesome tip based on all of that.

My understanding is that for most of his career Tom Cruise's people (agent, manager that sort of thing) were some of the best in the business. The kind of people where even if you were totally crazy they could keep it under wraps. But then at some point he fired those people and hired someone related to him (I think maybe a sister in law or cousin or something) who was much more into Scientology but wasn't as good at controlling her client and the press.

I thought this episode was ok, although I was totally waiting for a scene at the end where Homer wakes up at the bottom of the stairs, because these future episodes usually have some kind of framing device like that to indicate they are not quite real. Also as much as I like Amy Poeler, Jenda has always bugged me. Maybe it is because her first appearance was in that high school future episode and the thought of Bart Simpson having sex always creeps me out. That said the Ms. Hoover joke was really funny.

This is sort of what I think Matt Groening was talking about in that comic I mentioned above. If I remember it was a simpsons/futurama crossover comic and his issue was that in his mind Futurama is the real world in the future, which is why the characters have more natural looking skin tones, while Simpsons is a cartoon. So I think his workaround was that the Simpsons was a 20th century cartoon that existed in the Futurama universe (although I think the opposite is true based on some simpsons episodes).