I quite liked Rebecca. That's why I found Paul so infuriating.

Paul also liked Rebecca! You had a common interest.

I loved Rebecca. Paul was annoying. Web was awesome. The Inside owned me.

Paul thought she was a project. Not a person.

I see that a lot.

Sadly, some of my friends married people who saw them as fixer-upper opportunities like that.

Paul's intentions didn't put her in danger as much as Web's, though. Web's either a crap boss, or a genius at his work, depending on how you look at him. Wonderful character, but a complete twat.

Anyhoo, the "(fictional) serial killer who isn't traumatized and severely fucked-up, just -- what, a well-adjusted sociopath" is kind of a staple-- I think you could arguably say it about Angelus, Tony Soprano, Omar from The Wire, and probably dozens of others from shows in the last 15 years with a season-long villain.

Angelus, for me, is the exception, and probably because when he was Angelus for an extended period of time, I still had a heroic protagonist.

I didn't like watching The Sopranos for too long, because I didn't want to root for the bad guys. I didn't watch enough of The Wire to make a judgment. I think the sociopathic lead is fine for me in a feature film. I can enjoy Hannibal for two hours, or the guys in Goodfellas, or The Godfather, or whatever, but I don't want my main character in episodic TV to be the bad guy.

In fact, I prefer it if my main character is a super-strong little woman.

(This is better than I'd imagine therapy to be. Apparently I have subscriptions to issues.)

Can't watch torture porn. It would keep me awake for years on end. I can barely handle psychological thriller type movies and tv shows. I liked the Inside because of the police procedural parts but even some of the more disturbing bits ghost up in my brain every now and then. I don't think I'd have been able to stick with it long term.

While I like some of the exquisite emotional pain Tim can wring from an audience, I have some sort of psychological line in the sand that I don't dare cross when it comes to my entertainment. I'll give my popcorn to Allyson.

I think I might like Dexter--it sounds like it has enough lighter stuff and comedy to offset the darkness. Pity, I just signed up for free HBO instead of Showtime (Sorry, Rome starts Sunday night). I'll get the DVD's from Netflix, though.

I like the Inside, but I think I can see how it was harder for people to take than CSI and such:

You are not just seeing the victim of the week who you never met before traumatized (or maybe even just see their corpse and never have to meet them alive). You see Becky who you know identify with each victim and suffer with them. So you have to watch the torment of someone you like and care about. And I don't get the feeling that Becky was going to catch many breaks in that department. She had suffered so much, repressed so much, she could have gotten through years of cases, and learning and getting better at her job, and bringing suppressed traumas to the surface without ever see her torment grow less. The light in it would be that Becky would survive and grown stronger, not weaker. None of the CSIs have a character as broken as Becky, and especially not broken in exactly the right way for each murder they deal with to be salt on that wound. In that sense The Inside was darker than CSI. It is also one reason why it was better.