What if Strong killed himself because he saw himself has one of Brandt's conquests. He had been shadowing Brandt for years raping the women Brandt had been with and then progressing to raping and killing them. Seeing himself as one of Brandt's conquest meant that he needed to die too.

So you think they're reacting to the content, in terms of what they're talking about? I think you might be right, but it's imprecise to call that gore.

I think it's the same effect as in Se7en, where the ending twist was so emotionally powerful that a LOT of people remember seeing Gwyneth Paltrow's severed head in the box even though it was never shown. You're touching people with charged scenes that spark little gory tableaux in their minds, and they remember seeing them rather than imagining them. Which I think is a sign of excellent storytelling, by the way, but I'm not terribly averse to gory mental pictures.

at the "I know," I got a tiny inkling that he might shoot himself, so it wasn't a bait-and-switch for me so much as a moment of suspense before we found out which one he had shot.

That's pretty much my experience. I wasn't sure if he was gonna kill himself because he recoginized he's weak, or kill Brandt as compensation for being weak, so it was suspenseful for me.

Mind you, head-in-a-box would have been somewhat anticlimactic, gore-wise, in Se7en. I still have spontaneous shudders based on bits from that film.

Mind you, head-in-a-box would have been somewhat anticlimactic, gore-wise, in Se7en. I still have spontaneous shudders based on bits from that film.

The amazing thing about Se7en is that the only on-screen violence is comitted by Brad Pitt - everything else is after the fact. It's the imagining of how the victims got that way that brings the creepieness.

The all-time king of essentially non-violent, shudder-inducing movies is the original Dutch VANISHING. I've seldom been so creeped out as I was by the final shot of that film (it was a literal flesh-crawling moment for me).

everything else is after the fact. It's the imagining of how the victims got that way that brings the creepieness.

Beg to differ. That movie blew its creepiness budget in the first 20 minutes, and started borrowing from the Grand Guignol budget.

Matt's ponit remains true, i.e. being primed to imagine awfulness is more emotionally arresting than if you'd seen the explicit awfulness. I think it goes double whenever severed heads are involved, because of how fake severed heads tend to look.

major understatement. I took a glance over there and the vitriol is spewing rather heavily. Even the people who don't hate it aren't showing a lot of enthusiasm for it. I don't get it.

I think it's more like THEY don't get it. I think they are just seeing surface stuff and not actually thinking much about what they saw. Maybe they are so used to shows doing the work for them, that they resent making the effort themselves?

TWOP tends to go in waves, everyone trashes something for a while, then someone pipes up and gives praise, which brings out more people who say positive things about it.

Yes. When sloth coughed, I jumped out of my seat so fast I left my skin behind.

I'm still broken about numbers and can't even start discussing the episode.

Let the record show I went to bed last night kind of messed up by the man-rape. It was one of those things where, you know, what they don't show you is scarier than what they do?

[Shudder.]

Yes. When sloth coughed, I jumped out of my seat so fast I left my skin behind.

You and me both. I have never been so glad to have a mostly undrunk-as-yet soda in my chair's armrest/cupholder.