I feel there's 2 types of exposition. Necessary and Unnecessary. Unnecessary is always bad. But poorly done, uninteresting Necessary Exposition is also bad. I don't think people differentiate between these enough. What I find interesting is it isn't really the content of the information that makes it bad exposition, rather the CONTEXT. Two veteran police officers explaining the inner workings of the station to each other is bad exposition. Take that same dialogue, and now it's a veteran cop explaining the inner workings to a rookie, and it works. There's devices that actually help circumvent exposition as well. Harry Potter doesn't have to hear secondhand that Snape is plotting something--he actually overhears it because an anonymuos source gave him an invisibilty cloak. He's literally standing in the room. I often wonder if J.K Rowling came up with this device as a more interesting way to get out Necessary Exposition. NOTE: While the example yesterday was bad, it could have been worse. At least the Bionic Women overhearing it softened it (a little). Imagine if Steve Austin just came out of the blue and told her all that info. ROFL. I want to say it would be comical, but truthfully, it already was pretty comical.

Lee Childs on creating suspense. I think this article covers a lot of what you're talking about here, Scott. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/08/a-simple-way-to-create-suspense/

It's troubled me for a long time. If Kane died alone, how does everybody know what his last words were?