Another suggestion: a super-parent feature. Let me explain.

Often I hit a comment from the recent comments feature that turns out to be in the middle of a big discussion. How do I get to the beginning of that discussion, i.e. highest-level parent that the comment is replying to? The default context is only 1 parent comment. I can hit "show more comments above," but I will have to hit it multiple times to get to the top level parent comment in a big discussion. And even after that, it only shows replies to the top level parent that the original comment is in reply to, and you will not be able to see the other comment branches in response to the top level parent, meaning that you don't actually see the whole discussion.

For example, let's say that someone runs into this comment from the recent comments sidebar and clicks it. The reader will now have to hit "show more comments above" 3 times to be able to view the top level parent. Yet to actually see all the replies to the top level parent, they will have to click its "permalink" (notice how many more replies to the top level parent there are that weren't showing as the context of the original comment).

So for a comment at level n, it takes n - 1 additional page views to see the original post that sparked the comment, and all its replies (and this is if you find it off recent comments; if you found it via a permalink from someone else, then you must go through n page views to view the top level parent and all its replies).

There is a way to cheat, and cut things down to two operations, but you have to manually edit the url. If I took the original url from the recent comments and edited the "context" parameter to something ridiculously large, like this, then the context is large enough that it will show me the top level comment, and all I have to do is hit permalink.

Does anyone else often find themselves wanting to easily view the original comment that sparked a reply that they found from the recent comments (or elsewhere)? If so, do you also want to see all the branches of responses, not just the ones that contain the recent comment?

At least, it would be nice to have a link on every post that enlarges the context of a comment to the max, and shows all of its parents. It could also be nice if that link just takes you straight to the super parent / top level comment (whatever you want to call it), and shows all comments in response.