Man, this is wild. "Drew" might be worth a watch.

I was hoping "Exit Strategy" was on there (Ethan Hawke leads a CIA team that helps agents with blown covers escape bad scenarios) but no dice.

It can be a contractual thing, particularly in ensembles, to set a particular actor off from the others as a way of drawing attention to them and giving them an air of prominence in the credits.

Examples: Thomas Gibson and Paget Brewster both, at different points, were given "...and" treatment during the run of Criminal Minds to establish their status as the unofficial leads. If I remember correctly, Tom Selleck gets the same treatment on Blue Bloods.

For special guest stars, you're thinking of "...with" billing.

Genuinely interested to hear an explanation for this, because Season 1 was pretty much peak TV for a lot of people, myself included, and I fully believe it never recovered after the writers' strike.

I'm going to politely disagree here. For a show that was pitched on the premise of being about Gordon and the street cops of Gotham before Batman, it pivoted hard to "Batman Begins Lite" pretty fast.

Exactly. Like many long-running shows, the main cast members became caricatures, just one-note jokes to keep the punchlines flowing. Joey is dumb, Monica is controlling, Chandler is awkward! Yay!

Mine went up about triple this month. Older home, brick, not great insulation. Unfortunately, it's on par with February of this year, which was the coldest month of last winter.

Absolutely sucks, though. Christmas bonus is going right to the gas company.

Short answer: no one knows.

Showrunners have expressed their displeasure, specifically with Netflix, because there is no concrete information. We get bits and pieces from interviews here and there, but none of it is consistent. Some have said viewings within 30 days, others have said viewings within 60 days. Still others have said viewings within 28 days. Neil Gaiman recently said he was told completion rate was a factor for "Sandman," while other showrunners have mentioned how many people start the show but abandon it, tracked even down to the minute that people bail out.

Whatever the case, it's a moving target. A popular show or film one week may not be considered the same the next. "6 Underground was deemed a hit and a sequel was in the works, until suddenly two months later both parts of that statement were untrue. No one knows what changed.

The showrunner on "The Babysitters Club" gave a great, insightful interview that explored how little they were given by Netflix, but hints at how much data Netflix has, which has led to some wild shit. She mentioned an exec told her that, for example, shows that feature X in the first Y minutes are more likely to be completed

Which is complete claptrap, but it shows that a) execs have access to a fuckton of info but b) they don't know what to do with it except to make very broad assumptions. All we really know is that they don't share it with anyone, including the people making content for them.

As of last night, all this (gestures outside) is supposed to be wrapped up by 7. Keep an eye on the news or social media or whatever, but I'd bet on them staying open.

Great point. I was leaning on the "die before finished" angle, but you're absolutely right.

Yeah, he's angling to be another Robert Jordan - dead before he's even close to done.

Martin had years - literal years, over a decade - to finish the story how he intended.

The first three books in the series were published over the span of four years. If he had continued at that pace, the whole series would have been done well before the first season of the show dropped.

Even when the show first started in 2011, he could have finished the series well before the final season aired, and it could have been a more faithful adaptation of his intent.

He didn't. He has chosen to drag out the process. He has chosen to work on other projects, as is his right, but he had plenty of opportunities to get it done. He chose not to.

It's fine. I was there the other day, no issues. Didn't even consider that it might have been unsafe.

I feel like this is a side effect of "binging" shows. When you watch something week to week, you have a chance for some natural excitement to build up and give yourself a break if you didn't like a particular episode. Trying to power through so many episodes at once ends up feeling like a chore, no matter how much you like a show.

I'll often take a break from shows for a few days, or even weeks, when I start to feel things drag, and when I go back to them, I limit myself to one or two episodes at a time to keep from getting burned out again.

Single-male-driven action adventure (as in "solo," not "romantically unattached"). Typically procedural. This can take the form of spies, police, investigators, whatever. If the person is running or hiding from a much larger organization, or has some deep personal mystery to address, so much the better.

I grew up with shows like that, but the closest I've seen in recent years was "The Player" on NBC (gone too soon, RIP) and "Shadow" on Netflix. Before that, the first seasons of "Human Target" and "The Transporter" really nailed that vibe.

It'll hold the title for the foreseeable future, given the modern content development cycles and the fact that very few new shows survive more than 5 years.

The Flash went off the rails because the showrunner is terrible. The seasons were too long, yes, but made worse by the show being left in the hands of a terrible storyteller for three-plus seasons.

I don't watch regularly, but the pilot was amazing.

That moment where Clark gets the news about his mom... in that moment he's not Superman, he's just a man, scared and heartbroken, but with the ability to be home in seconds. Man, that just crushed me. So well done.

I really liked the Night Angel trilogy (but felt it also went a little sideways at the end).

I started the Lightbringer books way back when they first started coming out, but I quit after the second book. I forget exactly what bit was (it's been ten years) but it might have something that broke the rules of the universe he'd established because it was convenient to the point he wanted to make. He may have resolved the plot hole later, but I was already done.

When I saw the series had expanded from three books, to four books, to five books, I didn't regret my decision to bail out earlier.

Didn't see the date and got excited to go.

One closed a while ago. The one up by Target was a shocker (including to the people who worked there).

Theybused to have good burgers. I went to one in Nashville a few years ago and the quality had gone down a bit.

I know some folks who work in this space, writing and publishing books under 60,000 words. They're fond of it, because they feel it is a streamlined experience for both the reader and the writer, akin to a Netflix style TV season of eight episodes.

I personally am not a fan. As a consumer, I don't care for being charged an exorbitant price for what amounts to half a novel, and I don't feel I'm getting enough from the investment of my time. I feel like I'm just getting into the story and then its over. I get that it's in part a market decision, because there are a lot of people with limited attention spans who can't get into a longer novel, so there is an audience for it, but it's not for me.

As a writer, I came up under the 90,000 word rule for novels. At 60,000 words (or less) it's a novella, an extended short story. I don't have a problem with that. Lots of old pulps and stories from the '60s were shorter, blunter, and amazing for it. They were also cheap as hell; no one was charging me 20 bucks for two hours worth of reading.

Part of the longer format is giving people their money's worth, but also taking some time to live in the world and explore. In keeping with the TV seasons analogy, it's having a chance to have an offbeat episode and learn something new about the characters.

Woof. No, thanks.

I bought the previous one out of my local bookstore's clearance section for a few bucks, but I haven't cracked it, because I couldn't even finish "The Sentinel." It was such a joke.

Man, I used to wait in anticipation of the new Reacher books. I always had it in hand by the end of release day. I didn't even know this one was out today.