For the sake of argument, let’s say the critics-of-the-critics are right, and politics should be left out of the 24: Legacy discussion. Fine with me: Put aside the Islamophobia, the xenophobia, the misogyny, the fear-mongering, and the glorification of the all-powerful security state … and there’s still so, so much dislike.

Following hot on the heels of its post-Super Bowl premiere, tonight’s episode offers evidence aplenty. The worst offense is the doughy, first-draft dialogue. Whether they’re spouting tech jargon, spilling their guts, or trying to make someone see we don’t have enough time!!!, every character speaks in boilerplate. Some examples:

• “Let me out of here!” “I can’t do that. Not until I know that I can trust you.”

• “Killing the Rangers is only the beginning. These people are planning attacks against our country.”

• “Will you be able to find the leak or not?” “Yes, but I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

• “We’re here to finish what my father started.”

• “I don’t expect you to believe me, but if I don’t get that money, a lot of people are gonna die.”

Sure, we could talk about the characters who uttered each line, but why bother? You’ve seen those characters and heard those lines in dozens of movies and series. Nothing here distinguishes them, complicates them, makes them clever or unexpected.

Just for fun, I spent most of my second 24: Legacy review for Vulture focusing on the show’s many artistic failures, as opposed to its political ones. But don’t worry, I kick the shit out of its politics too.

The climax of Oliver Stone’s 1994 film Natural Born Killers takes place on Super Bowl Sunday. Wayne Gale, the tabloid-TV sleazeball played by Robert Downey Jr., has booked an interview with Woody Harrelson’s mass-murdering media sensation Mickey Knox, airing live from prison immediately after the Big Game. The killer’s Zen-nihilism ramblings and the host’s how-dare-you-sir platitudes are interrupted with soft-drink ads and shots of happy families watching at home. When the show cuts to commercial, the inmates riot. Mickey slaughters his guards, rescues his wife, and escapes, leaving literally hundreds dead, including the host of the interview. All of it is broadcast live to viewers nationwide.

This is only a slightly less responsible programming decision than the one Fox made when it chose to put 24: Legacy on the air.

I reviewed the absolutely abhorrent pilot episode of 24: Legacy for Vulture. This show features a teenage Muslim girl who immigrated to the United States for the express purpose of blowing up a high school. Ghastly, irresponsible, dangerous television.

The Light may or may not be real, Doc Meyers may or may not be a fraud, the Meyerist Movement may or may not be a gigantic scam, but one thing’s for sure: Eddie Lane’s life would be a lot easier if he could control THE VOLUME OF HIS VOICE! The third episode of The Path’s second season (“The Father and the Son”) is like an object lesson in the the evils of shouting. Eddie shouts at his son Hawk. Eddie shouts at his ex-wife Sarah. Eddie shouts at his rival Cal. Eddie shouts at his new girlfriend Chloe about the man who’s stalking him. Eddie shouts at the man who’s stalking him. Apparently, none of the Ladder’s 13 Rungs teach that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, because Eddie’s ladling that shit out by the spoonful, and no one’s swallowing it.

As such, his behavior in this episode — culminating in a fistfight, a forcible ejection from a casino pool, and an allergic reaction to booze — is a solid demonstration of what the show is doing wrong at this point. Like Sarah nonsensically barking at Cal to dig up the body of the man he murdered in the premiere even though she’d long suspected him of the crime, and like Cal picking a fight with all his rich potential donors before slugging one of them in the stomach during the second episode, Eddie spends this hour needlessly ratcheting up the conflict in his life, to diminishing returns with each subsequent confrontation. The Path is hardly the first prestige-TV project to mistake raw hostility for drama — Halt and Catch Fire Season One springs to mind, as do the later seasons of Masters of Sex — but the sheer repetitiveness of Eddie’s fights with other characters in this installment makes this mistake stand out all the more. Forget the Light and the Ladder and all that shit — my dude needs good old-fashioned anger management.

I reviewed today’s episode of The Path, which continues the show’s worryingly precipitous drop in quality this season, for Decider.