Chicago Redshirt

A few ways that come to mind: 1. Low-income housing has less upfront costs for Falcone: Falcone (presumably) has bought up a decent portion of the land in the Arkham district for cheap through various proxies, shell corporations, etc. If he were to turn it into luxury condos, he would presumably have to finance everything himself. By offering it for low-income housing, he gets to have the government overpay him for the land it is going to use, as well as the actual construction of the housing. 2. Low-income housing is more stable long-term: The luxury condos' profitability depends on people being willing to move into a run-down section of Gotham and build it up, and those people may decide to up and leave the neighborhood or Gotham in general, and will have expectations of decent city services and from the property owner/managers. After the initial construction/sale of luxury housing, the benefit of luxury housing is going to mostly go to the owners. By contrast, there's always going to be a bunch of poor folks to fill out low-income housing. And there is always going to be rent from that housing and needs to maintain it. 3. Low-income housing is better if you've already got corruption going on: Because the low-income folks' rent is (presumably) subsidized, Falcone can charge an arm and a leg and get the government to pay the difference, without spending the money on keeping the place up. 4. Low-income housing fits better with the rest of the "Roman Empire.": The low-income folks are more likely to be active consumers/victims without recourse of the various criminal markets that Falcone presumably wants to bring to/increase in the Arkham district, including drugs, prostitution, gambling and guns. Whereas the more well-to-do would want these things out of their neighborhood, and might actually get somebody to listen to them.

Obviously, if you take a step back and look at Titus from our modern-day perspective, he's a slave-owner who profits by turning meat and bold into gold, as an ep put it. But from the context of his time, Titus only wanted what was best for Quintus. The berating, the ultimatums and everything else were all in the interest of Quintus, not because Titus is a bad person or dad. I don't think that TItus was dreamcrushing Quintus's desires for the hell of it. He just had a realistic notion of how Roman society was structured and knew that the patricians would never embrace Quintus with open arms. If you think about the prostitution, rape and murder it took to get Quintus in the position where he is in Blood and Sand, and that combined with having the undisputed No. 1 stud gladiator of Capua still didn't get him really accepted, it seems like Titus was right to try to dreamcrush. Quintus, sadly, was blind to that for the most part by his very own ambition. As to Quintus becoming a better son absent Lucretia, who knows?

There definitely is a little of the Smallville 3.0 (I might say Arrow is Smallville 2.0) vibe. But there are a couple things that IMO puts Flash above either Arrow or Smallville potentially for now: 1. Barry's pretty together mentally, emotionally and ethically. Unlike Clark, he doesn't seem to be whiny and angst-filled (despite having greater cause, what with a murdered mom and a lifetime of being treated as though he was delusional for seeing a yellow blur killing her) and is straight-up embracing the notion that he has these powers that he can use for good instead of basically backing into heroics. Unlike Ollie, he's not a multiple murderer who was scarred by five years in isolation, and who is a sister-swapping man-whore. 2. Although I worry about Iris turning into Lana 3.0, the relationship is inherently better in that Barry knows and cares about Iris and vice versa, and will presumably not interfere with her relationship (as opposed to Lana, where Clark had crushed on Lana for about 8 years without speaking to her and where Clark was trying to hook up with her pretty consistently). 3. Because they are clued in about Barry's secret -- and because they actually have skills -- Cisco and Caitlin are in a better position to help Barry than Pete and Chloe were to help Clark. 4. Detective Wells>Pa Kent 5. Eddie Thawne>Whitney 6. Lex and Lionel were, of course, great. But I think Tom Cavanaugh will meet their performance as Wells.

We don't know if she has no sensation in her legs. We just know that she can't walk. But assuming for discussion's sake she has no sensation, she still may want to switch position of her legs for circulation or appearance's sake.

Star Labs was never, as far as I knew, a part of Queen Consolidated in the show. Which in part is why Team Arrow could go to Star Labs for help in combating Deathstroke after losing control of Queen Consolidated. Since at least some of the viewers might be seeing The Flash without having seen Arrow, it seems to make sense to wait to bring back references to Felicity.

Off the top of my head, the comics have only rarely dealt with Bruce at this age. Usually when we see pre-Batman Bruce Wayne, he is already college age or older, traveling the world solo to get the skills he needs as Batman. There was a storyline called "Hush," in which a Bruce Wayne around this age had a best friend named Tommy Elliott who was also the child of a wealthy family. He helped Bruce realize to beat people he has to be able to anticipate his opponent's moves. Tommy, however, was a psycho and tried to kill his parents by cutting the brake line to their car. Thomas Wayne saved Tommy's mom's life, which had Tommy resentful. Tommy would later grow into the villain Hush. So I could see the powers that be introducing that character. It would be good to have Bruce have someone his own age to bounce things off of.

I'm sure the coochie is just that good. But I took it that we're supposed to believe that is a real breakdown. Which doesn't make much sense. As an established and expensive defense attorney, Annalise would have access to various investigators who could check something as simple as "was Sam at this public function when he said he was?" Heck, she could probably check it herself, or get one of her students to do it for her. Her sleeping with her husband while suspecting him of having an affair and murdering his partner in the affair is pretty ew.

The thing is, Titus seems like he was a great father with the benefit of all the information. He clearly loved Quintus, even if he wasn't the best at showing it. He thought Lucretia was beneath Quintus, and she in fact was not just because she was from a lesser family, but also because she was instrumental in debauching the house, in giving Quintus the wrong advice, in cheating on him with a slave and of course, in poisoning and then ultimately murdering Titus. And if Quintus was not so headstrong about striving for politics, he would still be alive and a rich, rich man.

A lie. I think the premise of the meet was that Olivia hadn't even been talking to Cyrus previously. Also, Olivia knows she could get in contact with Fitz when she wanted to if she wanted to. As portayed, the hero couple were horrible people. At least, I would consider anybody who stabs their husband with a corkscrew a horrible person and anyone who makes fun of his wife's disability. Which is not to say our gladiators aren't horrible people in their own right... In terms of the paparazzi pics of Mellie, I could totally see some elements of the press putting forth the ridicule and so forth that we saw in the episode. If we're to believe it's been three months since the death, for her to seem at odds with the glamour we expect of our First Lady, there would definitely be a backlash. Especially if people stood ready to spin this as "Fitz can't take care of his wife, how can he take care of the country" or "Fitz is too distracted by what's going on with Mellie to do what the country needs" as Lizzie stood ready to. I know it's not the same, but the recent hubbub about the "latte salute" illustrates to me that something like that probably would happen. You pretty much can't do a thing in politics without being criticized for it on this stage. Jake followed the receipts that showed the different places Harrison and Adnan had supposedly gone before ending up in Phoenix and being killed there. He got surveillance video from one of the restaurants. Charlie was sitting at a table alone and he had ordered two meals. So it told Jake that Charlie was involved in creating the fake trail of evidence Harrison and Adnan going to Phoenix. If Charlie's involved, then B613 is probably involved. If B613 is involved and Jake didn't know it, then presumably Eli/Rowan is involved. So now Jake has got a lead and will presumably be going after both B613's motive for killing Harrison and Eli/Rowan.

The thing is, she has already had two trials this one semester. If each of these trials takes a week, she has either had to cancel two weeks of classes (or I guess she could have made class going to watch her at trial, but that doesn't seem to be the case.)

The case happened in Switzerland, and so presumably he was tried there. Double jeopardy applies: http://www.admin.ch/ch/e/rs/312_0/a11.html DOTW presumably could not be tried for the same crime in Pennsylvania or wherever else in the U.S. because there would be no jurisdiction.

It's not mandatory, but my understanding is that most law schools follow the guideline of not allowing 1Ls to get assistance from career placement for the first half of first semester. When I went, my school wouldn't allow us to do anything with career placement until November. After November, things are fair game. But what I'd picked up from the pilot was that it took place during the first week or so of school, so that would be in August at many law schools, and probably no later than early September. On another front, it occurs to me about why most law schools don't have active criminal law practitioners be full-time faculty teaching classes like intro to crim law. Whenever the prof would be on trial, she'd have to basically cancel classes for at least the week of the trial. I mean, even if she is talented and organized enough to handle the demands of full-time academia and trial, Annalise can't be in two places at once. A high-profile murder trial (which seems to be all she takes) would take at least a week of 9-5 to handle. What is supposed to be happening with the other 95 students who aren't working on her cases in a hands-on way?

Rain meant that my Direct TV didn't get much of what happened after it came out that Defendant of the Week had previously been accused of but acquitted of murder. Anyone care to fill me in? Thanks in advance.

It's not the ABA but the National Association for Legal Placement that recommends that 1Ls don't spend time on career placement services at first. See V. D. 1 http://www.nalp.org/fulltextofnalpprinciplesandstandards

The thing is, I don't think that there was any thought in sparking any sort of discussion about the (im)moral nature of the act of breaking into the facility and killing two people. I think Coulson thinks it's A-OK because its' Skye's life at stake and we audience members are supposed to be right there with him.

The thing is, the law students aren't in her employment, if we're to believe the show. She is teaching. The law students are doing whatever they are doing and providing her with theories, facts, and so forth not as interns at her firm but students in her class. They are in an academic competition, and whoever does the best will then get to be employed by her. Seems like a small distinction, but at least in the world of "Murder" law, one that she can be reasonably expected to get away with. In real-world US law, there has been a general prohibition from full-time first-year students (or 1Ls) even looking for summer employment or getting counseling through career placement until Nov. 1 (which apparently was recently changed to Oct. 15), and I think different schools probably have different rules about how much/whether full-time 1Ls can work. The idea being that law school is so disorienting and busy that they don't want students to lose focus. So it seems extra-doubtful that Analise could kick off a competition for placement with her firm on the first day of school.

Taking it to the Law School thread

In fairness, I think there probably is an element of real-world law school profs (and real-life lawyers) often thinking their area is the best area of the law there is, or looking down on those who practice certain other kinds of law. And I would say that there's a big overlap between those with a criminal defense background and the public interest lawyers you talked about.

If the show explicitly established that he had doctored footage for her previously, I totally missed it.

The one downside of the Hydra reveal is that it gives SHIELD an easy out for every unethical thing it's done or may do in the future. Pretty much any decision that was made that wasn't done by Fury, one of our non-Hydra team, Hand and a select few could be either the direct work of Hydra agents who were moles or Hydra's influence on people who were bonafide SHIELD. And going forward, it's pretty easy to justify almost anything and everything when you are fighting people who think that a plan to exterminate 20 million people who might get in the way is totally reasonable, and who are moral descendants of people who thought the Nazis were too easy-going.

I could be misremembering, but the way the award was phrased was that they could not take a test rather than "this will knock out your lowest score." The latter would make sense (at least in a structure where there were, say 2+ test, which is very few law school classes). But Prof. Keating is a rebel so she might give a bunch. To me, this was the weakest part of the pilot. I do manage to put aside most instances of "the law doesn't work like this" because of dramatic license, but that one stuck out. I am not sure if we are supposed to believe that Prof. Keating and Officer Foine! were in cahoots from when she called him as a witness, or if she called him up there blind and just was hoping he would follow her lead, or what exactly was going on with that. That took me out of the moment, along with the "Let me just make this confession with potentially career-ending repercussions" and not bat an eye. If it's supposed to be the former, they really should have given us a bigger hint of that. If it's the latter, it was a terrible plan. The old cliche of never asking a question you don't know the answer to exists for a reason. She would have had no way of stopping him (as far as we know) from denying that he'd ever known the Philly police to alter video footage. There are probably plenty of people who get into law school without knowing a darn thing about common legal terms that even some laypeople have encountered. Mens rea and actus reus were not terms that I personally knew prior to going to law school, even though I spent a fair amount of time prior to going covering criminal courts as a reporter and was inclined to do criminal law. Seems to me that those terms are only used academically or by appellate courts. In actual criminal trial courts, they are just referred to generically as "elements" of the crime. (I would also say that there are probably those who don't like using the fancy Latin phrases like res judicata and res ipsa loquitur, even if they know the concepts behind them.)

Hypothetically, he could have the same sort of motivation as Black Widow -- the realization that he has a lot of red in his ledger and he wants to wash it out, spurred by acts of mercy and love (this time from Skye/Coulson rather than Hawkeye.) I think the dynamic is much different though -- BW did not personally betray Hawkeye, Fury or even SHIELD as far as we know. She was just working openly for another agency or agencies. Also BW is on a singular level of skill. There is a risk that she might be a double agent, but the fact that she is literally the best of the best might make that risk worth it. Not so much with Grant, who is obviously supposed to be very good, but would have to stop short of world-class operative. The pickings might be slim post-Winter Soldier in terms of people with his level of skills that they can trust, but they aren't that slim.

I think a show could be much closer to what actually happens in a courtroom and still be very dramatic. Obviously, week after week of "Your Honor, we request a continuance" or "Your Honor, we would like you to compel the other side to turn over this or that" would get boring. But you could structure something such that the actual trial is closer to what might happen in a courtroom and there'd be plenty of drama.It would just take a lot more work. To take the "Asprin Assassin" example of the pilot, we never really got to hear the defendant say a darn of relevance thing, either on the stand or in private. We never really got to see much of the evidence that incriminated her other than a) she had an affair with the victim that was broken off b) she bought aspirin the day before and c) a pill similar to the aspirin was seen on her desk. If they had spent more time on the trial part establishing why the prosecution was going to take this case to trial, that would be something. Or why it's such a high profile case. Developing better characters involved in the trial as well as better theories of the case on both the prosecution and defense side would be a big improvement. I think we were told that the person who gets it can cash it in to get out of an exam. (Which FWIW, doesn't make sense because generally law school classes are dependent on either an exam, an exam and a midterm, or one or more papers. One would not want to bypass an exam and then have their entire grade dependent on the other exams. It would make more sense to be able to turn it in to nullify one bad exam or some such). Anyway, the way it seems to be set up opens the possibility that it was cashed in, and it was thus in Keating's office/house. Of course, there are alternate possibilities like someone stole it from Walsh (or whoever holds it at the time of the murder) in an effort to frame the holder.

I don't know if you can go with just a single bit of ridiculousness. So here are some that come off the top of my head: 1. The structure of the law school class itself. The class is billed as an intro to crim law, which is pretty structured and narrow. No law school would allow a professor to use her students en masse to staff her real-world cases like Prof. Keating does. Nor does it make sense that she would hire second-year students when she has access (presumably) to more advanced students or actual lawyers. But putting that all aside... 2. The notion, as someone said above, you just roll into trial and there are surprises is a fictional one. So stuff like the videotape isn't going to be discovered midtrial or catch Prof. Keating by surprise. Even assuming that somehow the video was discovered at the last minute, the prosecution couldn't just spring it on the defense in court like that. They'd have to disclose it to the defense first, outside the presence of the jury, and there would be a fight over whether it was admissible. 3. Like on most TV shows, the questions from the lawyers are exaggerated and clumsy. You would never ask people questions as open-ended like how Prof. Keating accused the business partner of planning the murder so he could have the company all to himself. You'd ask him questions that lead up to that point where he'd have to admit things and then argue the rest in your closing. 4. If a single thing stood out for me, though, it was the detective admitting that he personally knew of instances when the Philly PD had altered digital pictures. Seems career-suicidal to admit that under oath (in addition to it being another example of something that would never come in to evidence that way.). I do give the show credit in one sense though -- as far as I could tell, the possibility is still strong that the defendant did it in concert with the wife. Most tv shows featuring defense attorneys have the defense attorneys representing only factually innocent clients. To compare it to Scandal, most of the lead characters have either carried out or covered up murder. And the central romance of that show involves an affair between the lead character and the very married president. So I think it shouldn't be too out there that Shonda and co. would go there. Rather than any/all of the four students being killers, my money's on the four finding the hubby's body at the office/home, jumping to the (wrong) conclusion that Prof. Keating did it, and deciding that since they idolize everything about her so, that they should cover it up for her.

I think that the premier did a few things that I wanted, a few things that surprised me and not much that annoyed me, so I'm pretty pleased overall. I'm glad that Coulson is apparently not going to be in the field much. I'm glad that they've (at least for one episode) toned down the special snowflake Skye (and for what it's worth, it looks like they purposely de-glammed her). I sort of like Hannibal Lec--I mean Grant Ward. But I figure that will get old after a while. I do wish he just spilled what he knows about ParentQuest. May: still awesome. Tripp: OK, but I kind of get a dead-man-walking vibe. New peeps, I'm not sure about. I will watch Lucy Lawless in just about anything (and it seems like she too was deglammed a lot too.) The mercenary who was like "I just care about getting paid" is getting a little old already. I like Adrian Pasdar too. They could have done more to make it seem like he's not just an antagonist for being an antagonist's sake. I mean, why chase Coulson and them when there are clearly bad guys out there? I know that he's known for hunting the Hulk but they should make him more gray IMO. (And I guess I'm not sure I get that he's married with a kid. The classic Glenn Talbot was, as far as I know, only interested/married to Betty Ross.) I'll join the chorus of people who are sad about Fitz and disbelieving that Simmons would just up and leave him. This, I think also remedies one of the issues the series had last season of not getting people to care enough about the stars. If you didn't feel something for how Fitz was, well, I don't know what to say. I do have to wonder about the cloaking tech deal, though. Obviously, cloaking tech exists in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The Helicarrier has it, as seen in The Avengers. The Quinjet that was stolen this episode also has it. So it doesn't seem like it should be that difficult a problem to adapt that tech to the Bus. Now maybe that's a deliberate choice to show that Fitz is so broken that he can't make a relatively minor modification.But why would Coulson and co. need Fitz to do it. Onto the villains: I still fear that the Absorbing Man will require the team to be punching above their weight class. But hey, they've already managed one takedown of him, so kudos on them. I wish they had the fancy electrogun when they were trying to take out last season's super-soldiers, but what can you do? The Hydra guy Dr. Whitehall is potentially interesting as a villain. I look forward to finding out more about what is behind him and the obelisk (the original 0-8-4!). As to how he's apparently so long-lived, he had access to any number of doohickeys in 1945 and the years hence that could have prolonged his life. It seems like one of the items confiscated by the Howling Commandos was a blue-skinned alien that could be the same torso that was milked for Skye's survival and such.