Interesting to read some of the reactions. I was ambivalent about some of Kartheiser's comments as well during the interview and I wanted to try and preserve some of that in the finished piece. The exchange about gender politics was the hardest one to get right because it came out of a longer conversation. I couldn't run the whole thing both for space and also because he kept rambling and repeating himself so I cut to the chase. The thing he kept circling back to was this idea that while we've improved society for the better since the era the show depicts, there was a certain comfort in knowing what was expected of you based on your sex, which is a fair (and definitely arguable) point to make. I do believe him when he says that some of the actresses on the set talked about how certain things about that time were "nice," although whether they said this jokingly or not and whether he would have been able to tell the difference either way is also debatable. And while he was too quick to fall back on lazy cliches like bra-burning and modern men are pussies, he didn't seem like a total Neanderthal. He just wasn't adept at arguing his case on a more thoughtful level--that story about his friend was an attempt at humor that backfired even as he was telling it. But that lack of polish was one of the reasons he was an interesting interview. A lot of the young actors I've interviewed are deathly boring because they never deviate from the standard "everything was great" script. So it was nice to talk to someone who was willing to speak his mind even if it led him to put his foot in his mouth more than once--that only made it clearer that his answers weren't rehearsed. I was impressed that he talked candidly about Angel, both in terms of the show's failings and his own. Going in, I was sure he'd want to get off that topic as fast as possible, but we spent a good chunk of the interview talking about it. I wouldn't necessarily defend any of his opinions, but it made for a better conversation (and hopefully a better read) than if he had kept them to himself.