Two weeks ago, Saudi Arabia and the International Olympic Committee agreed to add two female athletes to the conservative Muslim kingdom’s Olympic team, marking the first time in Olympic history that women would participate under the Saudi flag. Two days ago, one of those women nearly withdrew from the Games.

Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shaherkani, one of the two Saudi women, learned this week that she would not be allowed to wear her traditional hijab during competition because the International Judo Federation worried that it would threaten her safety. Faced with the possibility of participating without her hijab — a decision that would violate her religious beliefs — Shaherkani threatened to withdraw.

The IJF’s eventual compromise, reached yesterday, to allow Shaherkani to wear a headscarf was always obvious, given the Asian Judo Federation allows women to compete wearing hijabs and top judokas said it wouldn’t cause safety issues, making such concerns seem illegitimate. But for whatever reason, this issue keeps arising in international sport, creating a needless tension between the ideal of increasing female participation in sports and respecting their religious freedoms while doing so.

Safety of athletes should, of course, should be a concern, but participation should remain the most prominent goal. The IOC has gone to great lengths to increase participation of women in the Olympics, particularly women from countries like Saudi Arabia. But those efforts also go far beyond these Olympic Games. Saudi women are still struggling to gain any (much less equal) participation in sports in their own country, and had the SAOC and IJF let an unnecessary hijab controversy get in the way of that fight, it not only would have ruined Shaherkani’s opportunity, it would have put another barrier in front of Muslim women who want to play sports. That would have been a tragic ending to an otherwise wonderful story, and though the IJF ultimately made the right decision, it came dangerously close to undermining the fight that got Shaherkani to London in the first place.

Deadline reported yesterday morning that Showtime is considering a show from Ron Howard that would tell the story of Hernan Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who scuttled his own ships so he’d have no option to retreat and eventually took the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán by siege. It’s not a story without risks—without making this a contest of equals and a genuine clash of sophisticated civilizations, such a show could devolve into a dull celebration of imperialism. But done right, it’s the kind of project that could provide great roles for people of color, and for women, including La Malinche, a woman born on the border between the Mayan and Aztec Empires, sold as a slave, given to Cortés as a gift, and who became his interpreter in Mayan and Nahuatl, and eventually the mother of his child.

Showtime president David Nevins, asked about the project, offered an explanation that was more non-commital than Deadline’s report—but in certain significant ways, intriguing:

I think there’s a very interesting show to be done about that has genre elements, has elements of supernatural and horror, really frightening, gruesome stuff, which is about the sort of encounter between these two very different cultures but were in a premodern time where magic and mysticism, I think, is in the core in the core of the belief system of the Spanish Catholics and the Aztecs. And it’s a very advanced civilization in a lot of ways, the Aztec civilization, advanced mathematics and science, but also really brutal and violent. So I think it’s got a mix. And it’s a kind of a period show that no one has done. So I’m always looking for something that feels like fresh territory. One of the reasons I hate talking about it is because other people can get the idea. But I think it’s it’s loaded with potential.

If Nevins wants to do a period drama with genre elements, he might consider eliminating the conquistadors from the equation. Showtime could adapt Clare Bell’s The Jaguar Princess, a fantasy about Aztec client states that involves a woman who can shape shift into a great cat, which the network could pitch as a mashup of Game of Thrones‘ feudal politics and True Blood‘s sex and magic. I don’t think Gary Jennings Aztec novels, in which Catholic invaders misread the civilization they were determined to destroy by sword and cross, have ever been adapted, and they could be rich territory as well. Ultimately, I doubt Showtime would ever ditch the conquistadors—a show this expensive would probably think it needs a Sean Bean-like famous-but-not-too-expensive white guy as a hook for an audience. But it would be nice to see a show about native peoples in the Americas that has the guts to treat its invading European as a villain rather than a hero, and to turn Aztec characters into rich and complex anti-heroes.

In January at the Television Critics Association press tour, Hulu, the service set up by the broadcast networks to provide streaming content supported by advertising and subscriptions, announced its first original slate of scripted and reality content. Yesterday, they were back with announcements that Hulu will air the new seasons of the popular British shows Misfits, about a group of unlikely superpowered teenagers on probation, and Armando Iannucci’s scabrous political comedy The Thick of It on the same day and date that they air in the UK, and a panel promoting its airing of the Israeli drama, Prisoners of War, that is the basis for Showtime’s critical and commercial hit Homeland. The news that American audiences won’t have to wait to see these shows through a legitimate channel—and that Hulu won’t be bleeping the profuse and wildly creative profanity that is a hallmark of The Thick of It—is the useful, practical news out of Hulu’s session. But these shows herald something even more important: Hulu’s found some of the tools that are starting to define its competitive advantage as something other than a subsidiary of the networks that created it.

The time lags between when shows air in their home countries and when they arrive everywhere else has is one of the major frustrations of engaged television viewers who hear about programming they’re desperate to at least sample, but have no legitimate way of acquiring for months, years, or even at all. Even when Netflix makes it possible for viewers to catch up on past seasons of a show, viewers may come up against even greater gaps between the episodes they can finish and the time when new ones are available. Hulu, which doesn’t have to worry about slotting something into a narrow number of programming slots, is ideally suited to do what networks can’t and Netflix has yet to pursue: get viewers caught up on programming they love and transition them smoothly into the experience of watching along with an international audience they may already be in conversation with.

Similarly, in signing up Prisoners of War, Hulu’s committed to an arena of programming that broadcast networks have essentially removed from consideration: subtitled programming. And it’s done so with the source material for one of the most buzzed-about shows on television. It’s a move to claim a new space, and in particular, one important to dedicated, smart viewers who, because they have to read the subtitles, will be keeping their eyes closely focused on the screen, something that has to make Hulu’s advertisers very happy. In a conversation after the panel, Hulu’s senior vice president for content, Andy Forssell said that the company has been trying to close deals on more international shows, including some deals to bring Danish programming to the U.S. that didn’t quite work out. But if those shows fail to find other homes on proper U.S. networks even as the Scandanavian noir trend continues with the news that FX is planning a remake of Danish/Swedish co-production The Bridge, Prisoners of War could give Hulu the track record to be best positioned to close those deals in the future.

Hulu isn’t giving up on original content, Forssell emphasized. He plans to make more episodes of Battleground, Hulu’s political show, which Forssell told me and The AV Club’s Todd VanDerWerff was one of the 25 most-viewed shows on Hulu when it was rolling out new episodes. He said he has ambitions to do smarter programs aimed at teenage girls and is looking to target under-served audiences, including African-American viewers. And Hulu will try to keep its productions lean, operating much like Israeli productions or the 10-90 deals networks like TBS and FX have set with Tyler Perry and Charlie Sheen, where actors shoot large blocks of scenes together and out of narrative order to minimize time and money on locations and to make sure they work more consecutive days.

It may take time for the network to find a mix of content and creators that make Hulu truly competitive. Forssell declined to release specific ratings figures, arguing that they were a distraction from the strategy Hulu wants to pursue of giving shows multiple seasons to mature and time to find their audiences beyond a specific ratings period. But he said that Hulu’s best-performing proprietary shows were attracting audiences roughly the size of basic cable broadcasts for each episode, and maintaining roughly two thirds of that audience for the full length of each stream. But its content acquisitions and partnerships should give Hulu time to flesh out its original content strategy, test strategies and business models to increase legitimate audiences for piracy-vulnerable shows, compete with BBC America and PBS for sophisticated audiences with a taste for international programming.

Unsurprisingly, given their constant classlessness, the Daily Caller reacted to the news that American women’s beach volleyball champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings planned to stick to the bikini swimsuits the wear to compete by declaring “They’re going to be the cheekiest gals in London this summer. Olympian Misty May-Treanor and her fellow competitors on the US women’s beach volleyball team vowed yesterday to keep wearing their sexy bikinis at the upcoming Games — despite a new rule that lets female players compete in dowdy shorts and T-shirts.”

Then, they decided to wear long-sleeved t-shirts with bikini bottoms in weekend matches because, shockingly, it is not precisely balmy in the British Isles and sometimes when you are an athlete, you might want to stay warm so you can stay loose, and play your best and avoid injury. Quasi-famous dudebros like David Spade are apparently irked that they didn’t get to see enough skin, and the Daily Mail has gleefully validated their deep and pained concern. It’s a hilarious and depressing illustration of sexual entitlement and the second-class treatment of female athletes. By what possible standard would you think that an athlete you’ve never contracted with, much less met, was required to fulfill your personal quota for ogling? Or that when someone is competing on an international stage, they’re obliged to avoid so-called dowdiness.

Because even if they had initially planned to wear only their swimsuits, even if they enjoy wearing them as a display of attractiveness and strength (which, given that May-TreanorJennings has kids, is super-awesome) May-Treanor and Jennings are under no obligation to wear bikinis for any given match. The only rules they’re bound by are Olympic regulations on uniforms, the only guidance they should feel compelled to accept is that of their coaches and their own senses of what their bodies need, and the only reasonable emotional demands on them are their own internal standards for excellence and the pride that excellence can give their nation. And though it can be easy to forget amidst all the coverage of tears, and uniforms, and so-called divas, being the World’s Greatest is just as sexy a look on a woman as a regulation bikini.

I’ve been enjoying animated superhero actions as much if not more than their live-action counterparts in recent years, so I was excited to see the trailer for The Dark Knight Returns, the animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s take on Bruce Wayne’s decision to come out of retirement as an older man:

Mostly, I think I’m excited to see Carrie Kelley as Robin, a self-made superheroine in glasses and with moxie to burn. I want grown-up female superheroes, of course, the female counterparts to Tony Stark’s midlife crises and Thor’s struggles to become a god worth taking seriously. But just as Spider-Man has given us superheroism as a metaphor for teenage awkwardness, and the process of self-definition through gadgets, costumes, and fights with petty criminals, it’ll be fun to see a girl take up the mantle herself. It’s been a long time since Rogue and Kitty Pryde in the X-Men movies, and there, they were a bit subsumed by the drama of the adults around them.

I’ll also be curious as to how the depiction of Carrie plays into some of the debates we’ve been having about the politics of Christopher Nolan’s Batman, and Batman in general. In Miller’s comics—unsurprisingly—Carrie’s parents are neglectful stoner hippies, representative of the rot of the activist impulse, and Bruce Wayne becomes her surrogate father, training her for adulthood. I’m not sure the production will stick with that, if only because hippie-punching isn’t likely to resonate much with the network’s target demographic. But this could be an even more cynical Batman than we’ve seen in Nolan’s movies, given that line about Batman’s having crippled a young man. How that hardbitten approach plays out in his larger battle with the mutants will be a fascinating question.