Phil Plait has commented. He commends the movie for several things, but he does criticize the same problem Teague pointed out about the tether:

The thing is, they very clearly show that when Bullock’s leg got tangled up in the shroud line, both her and Clooney’s velocity relative to the space station was zero. They had stopped.

On Earth, if one person is hanging by a rope and holding on to a second person, yeah, gravity is pulling them both down, the upper person bearing the weight of the lower one. If the upper person lets go, the other falls away. But in orbit, they’re in free-fall. Gravity wasn’t pulling Clooney away from Bullock; there were essentially no forces on him at all, so he had no weight for Bullock to bear! All she had to do was give the tether a gentle tug and Clooney would’ve been safely pulled toward her. Literally an ounce of force applied for a few seconds would’ve been enough. They could’ve both then used the shroud lines to pull themselves to the station.

As far as I understand it, This Is The End is one of those quote-unquote comedies that makes it's home in that sort of joke.

Just from hearing it, it sounds lie they're trying to make fun the whole "men are monsters" thing, by pointing their spotlight at it and "flipping it on it's head". Not saying it works, but that's my gut reaction from what I know about the movie.

redxavier wrote:

Doctor Submarine wrote:

"Frustrating?" How do you mean? I think that season 4 is one of the best seasons of television ever, and definitely Breaking Bad's best.

I found there was a lot of repetition in the character dynamics going on, and felt that we were going over the same territory. Once again, our two leads are at odds with each other, in spite of how they start off having literally killed people for each other. And I found nearly all of the characters became so antagonistic towards each other that a lot of the drama seemed contrived. Walter, especially, vascilates between persuasive and abusive too often and seems to sometimes say stuff just to keep the drama going. Such that the split with Jesse seemed unconvincing to me, since it mostly relied on Jesse's stupidity and naivety (which comes and goes depending on the needs of the plot). Then it seemed to get even more improbable when the only solution a really smart person could conceive was apparently to poison a child and blame it on Gus, which is so batshit crazy I couldn't buy it.

I thought Gus was a good foil, but that he ultimately chose to go with the junkie he wanted killed over the master chemist that wanted to do business was a bit of a reach to me, especially since the only reason why Gus' relationship had broken down with Walt in the first place was due to this same junkie he wanted killed...

The fifth season also had similar problems. Once again, Jesse's going through a long bout of self-pity and depression (except this time I honestly didn't understand why) and again Skylar and Walt are back in the same space (which again gets reversed).

That's a good critique, redxavier, and all valid points usually lost in the orgiastic praise for the show. It fell a few notches for me when Walt blathered to Hank at the dinner table that Heisenberg is still out there, just when Hank gave up. And why would anyone leave the inscribed Walt Whitman poetry book on the can, when their brother-in-law is DEA?

It'd summarize my principle grief as 'inconsistent characterization'. Hank is both panicked blow-hard buffoon and hardened super-sleuth. Walt is ruthless criminal mastermind and stoopid idiot. Jesse is oversensitive EMO and willing gangster. Skyler is righteous with indignation and conspiratorial. Gus is uber-careful and then throws his lot in with the clearly unstable Jesse.

So much of the dramatic situations could have been avoided (were it real life) if people just talked. The entire Gus-Walt-Jesse-Mike dynamic, for instance. The minimalist dialogue is paired down with long pauses and intense stares. Who acts like that in real life?