Setting this show in the past allows Sorkin to make all the right calls, thereby sending the smug factor through the roof, and Smug Sorkin is Bad Sorkin. And even if they had reported Giffords was dead, what’s the big deal? It’s not like the Cuban Missile Crisis and they’re waiting for Castro to blink – it’s a fast-developing news story. Nobody is going to remember and ridicule that like we will remember and ridicule the recent CNN/Fox SCOTUS debacle.

I cannot understand how a network like HBO, after airing a daring and groundbreaking show like Girls, would condone and promote this show and its portrayal of women. So far we’ve seen the ball-busting corporate honcho Establishment type, the best-in-the-biz producer who managed to stay alive in Afghanistan but falls prey to an email gag that wouldn’t be out of place on Three’s Company, a wide-eyed, well-meaning-but-clumsy former secretary who fell into a position of responsibility and can’t hack it, except when she totally can, and a parade of straw women who represent The Problems. It’s baffling how this kind of crap gets green-lit. Also, Dev Patel’s character should’ve been fired for his idiotic and repetitive Bigfoot BS.

Finally, while I actually enjoy Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head in the right context, using “Fix You” in any context on this show is some bush league, Pander 101. As Scott Tobias said in his review on the AV Club, using this song was “the cherry on top of a shit sundae.”