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I read a few articles about it. Apparently it took an insane amount of effort to get the ABA to even look at online/remote law degrees with any seriousness. There are other paths--you can get law-adjacent degrees or certificates and then be "sponsored" by a practicing lawyer in a closely scrutinized fashion and then sit for the bar in a few states, but it seems that the ABA has had a stranglehold on education approval for some time. And even the Minnesota degree, which was approved just in the last few years, requires six or eight weeks of intense capstone study at the end of each semester on location at the campus. I actually had no idea this was a thing--it's not terribly unusual for doctors and veterinarians to get medical degrees in other countries and then get licensed in the US, but it seems that the law is quite different. Obviously, the University of American Samoa is fictitious, but I always assumed it was code for remote study. Apparently this isn't actually much of a thing in law degrees.

I think I'm more inclined to view Jimmy with empathy than many people I've seen on tv show forums, reddit, etc. I'm not a lawyer, but back when I started working in corporate jobs I learned very early on that it's usually easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, and there were many, many occasions where I just did the thing and told the bosses later. It didn't always work, but sometimes the only way to get things actually done is to just do them without having 823 meetings. It seems to me that Jimmy is between a rock and a hard place--he's in charge of client engagement, not allowed to solicit (obviously), and required to rely on tepid mailers that everyone throws in the trash the moment they arrive. If he can't actually acquire new clients, he will be fired. And Jimmy's desire to do a commercial was even somewhat well-received. In his situation, I can't say for sure that I wouldn't have just tested the waters to see if a perfectly legal, cheap, and engaging commercial would get results. And, honestly, Jimmy knew that the old bats weren't going to pay any attention to a "Do you or your loved ones have mesothelioma" style commercial, perfectly tuned gradient background swirl or not. Where Jimmy is slimy in this situation is his lies to those close to him. He wanted to maintain the illusion that he was a golden boy at his new firm and show that he was willing to follow the rules, so he outright lied to Kim to keep her from chastising him for not working on the commercial with the partners. But I even have some empathy for him there--Kim explicitly told him she didn't want to hear anything more about his shady dealings. The one thing I can't really forgive him for is the con he pulls when he hangs up with his very angry boss. That was the moment to tell Kim that he'd lied so she wouldn't be blindsided at work. He knows her well enough to know that she refuses to appear weak and she'll always protect Jimmy, so there's no way she was going to tell the partners that Jimmy had lied to her. So I'm still in "fuck Chuck" land. Hypocrisy drives me absolutely insane. While he's screaming at Jimmy that he's like an alcoholic that doesn't know when to quit he misses the fact that he literally controls the behavior of everyone around him with his "sensitivity" to EMF. Every last one of his enablers knows that he has OCD and phobic anxiety, and his refusal to see the truth about himself makes me far less empathetic towards him. Jimmy is exactly right when he asks if his partner can still drink water with Chuck's hand up his ass. Chuck's manipulativeness strikes me as far more pernicious than Jimmy's because very smart people fall in line for him and Jimmy's shtick is really only effective against the naive and/or chemically altered. One thing I'm curious about, though. Recently, a friend of mine said he tried to find an online law degree program and came up with nothing, so he asked me to use my google-fu to figure out if such things exist. It turns out that there is exactly one ABA approved online law degree program (in Minnesota), and that there is only one state in the US who will allow lawyers to sit for the bar without a degree from an ABA approved program. That state is California, not New Mexico. Didn't Jimmy say he got his law degree from the University of American Samoa via correspondence and sat for the bar a couple of times? I don't know how Jimmy is even a lawyer in New Mexico.

I love Fiona. I think Sherlock is attracted to her unvarnished honesty. She's brilliant but incapable of playing mind games, and as much as I think Sherlock enjoys sparring with people on an emotional/intellectual minefield he also recognizes that it's unhealthy for him. It's probably very restful for him to have an intelligent, attractive woman just say, "Sure, kissing would be great. But not now. Now is the time for caffeine." I thought the case was really interesting this week. Normally I don't care too much about the details of the COTW, but I got sucked in enough to figure a couple things out ahead of Holmes and Watson--first, that the "shooter" was the victim, and second, that the computer forensics woman was involved somehow. I didn't peg her as the shooter or anything like that, but her mentioning that the $5 million was gone and untraceable tripped my lie detector.

It was extraordinarily satisfying to see Campire get outplayed. Yes, Cammy, you can run Klaus, but you are still too babyvamp to understand the all the stakes. For once Klaus was completely correct when he said, "You should have trusted me." And I'll never get tired of looking at Elijah. Or listening to him. "Sh-shh, grown-ups are talking." And even now he's getting outplayed by Marcel/Ava. Good times, good times. This show is much more interesting to me than TVD even though the characters are somehow more loathsome from a strictly moral point of view. I just like Mikaelsons, as crazy and violent as they are. They're witty, smart, fun to watch.

I'm no lawyer, but as an American citizen I want good defense lawyers to keep the police and prosecutors on their toes. I don't know for sure that the police took, ahem, shortcuts with the OJ Simpson case, but if they did they got the verdict they deserved. (And, slightly off-topic, imho the Casey Anthony prosecutors overcharged based on the actual evidence they had.) I would have no problem sleeping at night if I were a defense attorney who truly believed that the police/DA's office were being unfair to my client to the point of behaving illegally or were failing to meet the burden of proof.

Can I just talk about the carton of eggs for a minute? Because I had to pause while I got over my hysterics. And it wasn't just the ridiculousness of the threat. It was Emily's gasp, toss, and whirl back into the apartment, her $176 Bloomingdale's polyester pajamas fluttering in the wind. That girl has some serious cash to spend on jammies. Maybe instead of selling her eggs she could curb her enthusiasm for overpriced nightwear. I still love watching this show because it's just nuts. My cousin and I play a game we call "Of Course" after every episode, where we just text each other with crazy things that happen that no one would ever do in real life. Of course Hannah flies all the way back to NY just to quit her job. Of course Spencer would immediately search for a golf club in a dresser drawer. Of course Charlotte has rows of perfectly matched glove trees.. except for one, the one with The Clue. Of course Aria just climbs down into a hole in the wall without mentioning to Spencer that it exists. Of course she does.

I think faceless man is a Leyland parent and one of his kids uploaded photos/video from the party to the laptop to edit/disseminate. Kids are usually craftier about tech than parents are, so keeping it hidden from casual prying wouldn't be too difficult. Another option is that faceless man had child porn on his laptop and computer guy blackmails people with CP. However, if he were doing a booming business, his kids would be getting more than de-crusted grilled cheese and 1/4 cup of canned veggies for dinner. In a crazy world, it might be both--computer guy finds a jackpot of CP and video footage that discredits the richest school around and he's looking at a big payday. But the words he typed sounded so personally invested--it wasn't something like, "Pay up or everyone will know" or anything like that. It was something like, "NOW YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE TO BE ASSAULTED." So I think he's the one threatening, and he's threatening Leslie. And, because of the way this show works, I'm fast forwarding in my brain two or three episodes down the road and envisioning him in a bright shade of orange and his kids being dragged off by CPS.

I think computer repair guy used to work at the school and got screwed over by Leyland somehow. It's completely a guess, but he looked so smug while he was making the IM threat that it was the only explanation I could think of. It would also make his sad little dinner for his kids and pretty poor living situation make sense in context. The guy's a smart man and clearly not living up to his brainpower, so there's something in his background that put him where he is today. And he obviously cares about his kids, so I'm not willing to immediately put him in the "bad guy" category. Desperate, angry, probably not inherently evil.

I don't really care about the Kardashian Kid inserts. If this seemed to be some super cereal attempt to tell the unvarnished truth and reveal Deep Thoughts about the state of America, racism, the justice system, and class privilege, I'd be more ticked, but the acting and costuming is so incredibly hammy and corny that I can't take anything about this show seriously. Instead I will just be continuously mesmerized by Travolta's eyebrows and reminisce about the 30 days my dad took off from work to consume the trial in the comfort of his own home.

I wish they'd tone down Ellis' eyeliner. I've never seen him in anything else so I looked up some of his photos--he definitely doesn't have distichiasis, and it's weird to imagine Lucifer rolling out of bed, showering, and then carefully applying eyeliner and mascara before selecting a bespoke suit. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course--I just feel like Lucifer wouldn't care about makeup, especially given his line about being perfection already. I think this episode was something of a step backwards. There was nothing to chew on. Lucifer easing up on punishing "himself" after his therapy session was just obvious and hokey. I mean, it's fine for a silly show, but I was hoping for more out of this series. Like some other posters here, I can't help but wistfully wonder what Netflix would have done with the Devil. I didn't really get Chloe gripping her mouth in shock while zoomed in on Ellis' normal face. If his eyes were black or his expression particularly thunderous I could have bought the shock, but she was there and saw what happened. Nothing about the zoom and enhance (lel) added new information unless I missed something obvious. I kind of wished that the therapist had pointed out that Lucifer's decision to punish evildoers "at his own discretion" on earth is just another version of towing the party line, but I guess he isn't ready for that epiphany yet. I really like Chloe's interactions with her daughter, but they feel sort of alien to me. Do most parents interact with their children with such positivity, patience, and cheerfulness? My parents talked to me like I was an adult for as long as I can remember. So is this tv land parenting or are actual people like Chloe?

I completely agree. But when the work product becomes weird and inconsistent, they've failed to shield me from internal set disputes or real life actor drama. If I can become aware of it without reading gossip, they've made a mess. (When I was watching Buffy, I had no idea that she was basically over the show and the part by season 3 and was vehemently opposed to pretty much everything that happened in the show's darkest season. I only found out some of these things long after Buffy was over. Maybe I'm dense and don't pick up on such things, but if that's true the Kings really failed to shield their viewers from set shenanigans.)

Hah hah. Yes, Viggo's Lucifer is one of my favorite portrayals of Satan. Part of it, though, is that the dialogue was delightfully insidious with a touch of humor here and there. He goes from "I will lay you out and fill your mouth with your mother's feces... or, we can talk." to "For while heaven may be closed I am always open.. even on Christmas." This brings up an interesting point. The Stakes with a capital S in The Prophecy are pretty dire. Lucifer arrives on the scene and is pretty much the only angel who tells the truth about those stakes, and his creepy demeanor seems to make people in his presence feel physically nauseated. On this show, we don't know what the stakes are, so there's no context for our reactions to Lucifer. He's just a devilish little trickster in a party hat until an angel shows up. Then everything gets super cereal for moment and they have a mysterious conversation about their Daddy issues coupled with some demands for him to return to Hell. So far, the show has given us zero clues as to what the actual effects of an anarchic hell really are. Thanks for reminding me Viggo. Haven't seen that scene in years, but I remembered almost every word of the dialogue because I found Viggo to be something of a shining star in that generally B-grade movie.

I've always been fine with Phoebe Tonkin, but it's cool to see an actor mature in terms of range and subtlety. I think she did a fine job this episode. I'm sure that years of playing an American has made the accent much easier to deal with, and I've noticed that she has far fewer slips now than she did on TVD. Even pretty great actors like Damien Lewis and Hugh Laurie have a weird quality to their voice that isn't present when they use their natural accents. That said, she is so incredibly slim that I find some unintentional hilarity in scenes where she is holding her child. That giant infant bobblehead with 900 layers of blankets contrasted against her tiny frame just look funny to me. Personally, I'm loving Campire. I think the actress is doing a fine job of selling Weak BabyVamp with psychological warfare powers. Is it believable that she can snap an Original's neck after being BabyVamp for two minutes? In my opinion, yes, because she is using Klaus' expectations of her character against him. She's certainly not physically strong enough, but what's physical strength when she can use the element of surprise? Now that she's broken Klaus' neck and callously fooled everyone in the family, though, she's tipped her hand and lost that element. The Michaelsons will be wary now. If she can continue to just physically manhandle the Originals I will cry foul, but she still has room to psychologically manipulate them even when they're wary.

They're definitely playing up the "trickster god" mischievousness. He sort of reminds me of Q from Star Trek. Not inherently evil, per se, but likes to throw a wrench in the works and see what happens. I think his objection to the street preacher is that in this universe, his primary role seems to be exacting punishments on those who stray. (Whether he also tempts people to stray when he is actually in residence in Hell remains to be seen.) This is a sort of long-term torture inflicted by his father, right? His whole thing when he fell was that he opposed God and now he's spent millennia doing his dad's dirty work. Joke's on him, though, because even though he's abandoned his kingdom as an act of defiance he's still punishing evildoers in the mortal plane. I'm glad this week's episode was a touch darker. The Father of Lies came across as much more psychologically menacing, which added the edge I was missing from last week. Unfortunately, Chloe's character is a victim of lazy writing. Writers, stop having Lucifer tell us that she's so different. Just show it, let him react. We're not idiots. Let us figure it out. It's a hell of a lot easier for audiences to accept shades of Mary Sue when they aren't being bludgeoned over the head with anvils.

I stopped watching TGW because this mess was just so shoddily handled within the context of the show that I couldn't be motivated to put my annoyance away while watching. And I agree with everyone saying that actors should be professional enough to put their personal gripes aside in order to get work done--people do this in regular old white and blue collar jobs for much less money and with less visible stakes. You go along to get along unless we're talking major safety issues, illegal activity, etc. Something about the way this was handled makes me think that, for whatever reason, the Kings were basically on AP's side. If they thought that JM was in the right they would have canned AP immediately regardless of any fan uproar over the loss of a popular character. As it was they put her even further in the background and jumped through a million hoops to satisfy their lead actress and keep AP employed. Otherwise, none of this makes any sense. There's literally no reason to piss off your lead to save a support, even a popular one, unless you have some empathy for the support or you want to stick it to your lead for other reasons. And since the Kings were so acquiescent to JM's demands by using 232334 phone scenes and changing the trajectory of the show's storyline to suit her requirements, it doesn't seem likely that they were deliberately tweaking her. Otherwise they could have just said, screw you, you have a contract, you will act in scenes with AP as the script demands, but in deference to your strong feelings we will try to reduce the number of those scenes. Personally, I'm not pro-JM or pro-AP because I don't have access to the facts behind the gaping chasm that erupted between them. For all I know I would have strongly disagreed with the Kings' assessment of the situation. But I just can't imagine what could be so awful that JM couldn't be arsed to do her job (acting with other actors) but not awful enough to fire AP.

If this season is anything like the first season, there won't be a nice, neat bow wrapped around the case in the final episodes. I don't actually know if I like that or not. I could accept it in season one because there was a sense of finality to many of the character arcs, but something about this season makes me concerned that they won't deliver that for these characters. I can't quite put my finger on it, though.

They aren't trying to get her name and/or title right. They're trying to annoy her. At least, that's how I read it. Sort of like Han calling Princess Leia "Your Worship" and suchlike.

I'm always a fan of this sort of take on Lucifer. There are a bunch of traditions involving the devil, but my favorite has always been the one that puts God in charge of him. He falls and goes through all this craziness only to still basically be working for The Man, just in a new capacity. Good fun. I find it kind of funny that the name Lucy gives out is redundant. The word "Lucifer" means Morningstar (or Dawnbringer), so it's like his name is Sol Sun or Luna Moon or something equally ridiculous. Details amuse me. I'd like him to have just a little more of an edge. He definitely seems to be an "all in good fun" type, which is fine, but I thought the scene where he was dangling the ex over the balcony would have been more intense if he was less physically forceful and more emotionally forceful. He's already displayed this incredible power he has that makes people want to tell him the truth. It would have been interesting to see a scene where telling Lucy the truth seemed to be emotionally difficult to the point where it seems almost physically painful. Almost all of the other truth-telling was played off as being a shock to the truth-teller, but everyone seemed to respond to their revelations with a vaguely amused air. I want to see the truth hurt the teller once in awhile. So is Lucy intrigued with Chloe because she's apparently immune to his aura? Meh. There's always room for a Mary Sue I guess.

If you read diaries, letters, and collections of slang and catchphrases from the Civil War era, the speech is not nearly as formal as one might suppose. Some phrases that can be traced to this era include things like "Let 'er rip," "hoofin' it," and "high muckety-muck." Letters home might be more formally written but a lot of this depended on the education of the soldier in question.

I just quoted this part, but the point out her being a doctor is also relevant to what I want to say. Liv is ostensibly quite bright. It never occurred to her that she could use her extreme pallor and listlessness after being scratched to support her decision not to give blood? It's so obvious that the more dramatic and interesting route (mom and brother hate her) seems forced. And, related: Smart Liv cures Blaine in the finale only to turn around in the premiere and essentially give him the means to create as many zombies as he likes (without being a zombie himself) by giving him a roadmap to zombie creation? By telling him that zombies were creating using this mysterious cutting agent, that's exactly what she did. How can she not *see* this? It doesn't matter, really. This show is hilarious and I can look past plot holes, but dumb characters do get more annoying over time. What's shruggable today might be obnoxiously annoying 10 or 20 episodes from now.

This is what bugs me more than anything else. Even if they had the whole conversation, it would be very difficult for me to believe that the discussion wasn't a cover for actual advice. It has a winky-wink flavor to it. "So, uh, lawyer guy, I was watching this movie and I was wondering about x, y, and z." "Oh, a movie you say? I see. Well, in this totally hypothetical situation..." It may be technically legal, but Carey isn't stupid. He's hanging out with three known drug dealers working for a cutthroat kingpin and they want to discuss hypotheticals? Just, no.

I totally read it as sarcasm.

It's a fairly common complaint about TVD that African American characters, who are usually witches, get murderized with alarming frequency. Only the white characters have ongoing, focused storylines, whereas the black characters seem to exist only to be murdered or to assist the white characters. I'm not sure that it's deliberate, but it is somewhat mind-boggling that it is continuing into the 6th season of the show.

I must be a weirdo because I thought this episode was generally poorly acted, vaguely campy, and badly written. That doesn't mean I'm giving up. I always give genre shows a generous five episodes to straighten themselves out, and I think most of the problems with Gotham can be resolved by not doing so much in an episode and giving the actors some time to get used to their roles. I thought Fish, Nygma, Oswald Copperpot, and Harvey were all either wrestling with the scenery or strangely stilted. The conversation between Major Crimes and the regular detectives in the diner was particularly cringeworthy. Cat-tween was mostly a non-entity, but I really enjoyed Lil' Poison Ivy's performance. Loved the apartment full of plants and the poor girl's unbrushed hair and whispery countenance. Those plants were the only thing getting love in that dirtheap of a home. I found Alfred's "Head up, don't let them see you cry" admonishment to young Wayne to be interesting. He's always been portrayed as being a bit soft-hearted in most of the films. The costuming, make-up, and set design were fantastic with the exception of E. Nygma. He basically looked like Copperpot's twin. I agree with everyone who said that this first season will probably chart Penguin's rise to prominence while documenting the development of other villains and heroes.

Brigham Young wasn't particularly opposed to violence if my memory of American history is correct. He engaged in a war against federal troops (the Utah War) and has been implicated in a massacre. Historians argue about the extent of his involvement in the massacre, but there's no doubt that he sent his militia after federal troops arriving to install a new governor in Utah. After the massacre (by LDS people), he allowed a bunch of dead people to just rot in the prairie, leaving it up to the feds to bury them.