Next is a family with a nine-year-old boy and a dead parakeet. They aren't just dropping off the carcass for deactivation and disposal, they've come to have Gerry, a professional, explain death to their son. Gerry talks to their son about what happens to the bodies of animals when they die, and points out to him the things that make it clear that his bird is dead: the uncoordinated motion, the abandonment of normal behaviors, the lack of interest in water.

Going to war was the most masculine activity imaginable, and men who failed in battle were thought effeminate, so women who entered the fray broke the predominant pattern in a grand way.

Last time, I covered some recent entries in network television and comics that managed to get just about everything important wrong. Shows and stories that managed to elevate the stupid to a plot point that the show couldn't live without; eliminate the people acting brainlessly, and the story either collapses or comes to a dead end, because actually behaving reasonably undercuts the narrative engine. This time, I cover one last show that's gotten just about everything wrong this season [. . .]

Some traits are too deep to excavate / or remold, / like the impulse to take wing, to jump / into the sky