Hate to one-up you but it goes back before radio, too. Serial novels, published in newspapers and magazines, have been doing episodic cliffhangers since at least Dumas and Dickens' time.

I wanted to counter you, but you're right. That wasn't a polished review, just my thoughts on the show.

It's easily the best live-action video game adaptation. I really enjoyed it. If I had one critique, it's that I wish they had a couple more hours to develop the main story.

That lumberjack bar fight stuck with me.

People in this era of prestige TV don't remember how crazy that was when it first came out. Such a big production that the guy who greenlit it literally got fired.

I mean, "death of the author" and all that, you're welcome to interpret the movie any way you'd like. But you can't build a convincing case by saying that the director must have intended foreshadowing when they explicitly said they didn't.

A "coughing fit"? You need to watch the ending again. I can't even find a moment where she chokes or coughs, let alone a whole fit. She sits down, panting (from exertion and adrenaline), gasps at the explosion, gets out the burger, takes a bite, wipes her mouth with the menu, takes a second bite, and a clap signals the cut to credits.

Anyway, this is moot because the director said the fan theory was wrong. Margot survives.

The foreshadowing on the bad meat is to show how morbid the staff are and how close to death the customers are without knowing it. It doesn't need a physical payoff where it's used to kill someone.

Also, as someone else pointed out, you would never use aged meat for a classic hamburger. The difference in taste would be immediately apparent.

Yeah, it's crazy how many people missed the theme/point of the movie. Slowik didn't just enjoy killing people for no reason. He was obsessed with the idea of turning all the people who'd made his life hell into his magnum opus. He had no reason to kill Erin. She was the one person there who made him genuinely happy, and who had done nothing to deserve to be there.

That dramatic beat at the end of the movie wasn't there to hint at another twist, it was to convey the transformation that Erin had gone through.

Not just in bad faith, either. Psychology is weird. People can have half-formed hunches that multiple characters did it, and then only remember the hunch that panned out, claiming (and really believing) they "knew" who it was all along.

On the other hand, watching movies you don't like just in case they start making movies you do like seems like a poor strategy.

"Goodwife" is also an old timey way to speak of a married woman. Sometimes shortened to "Goody".