Love love love The 39 Steps… You can totally understand why Madeleine Carroll would fall for him after that whip-smart conversation in the bedroom.  Donat was smoother than Cary Grant.

I'm glad you pointed out the deliberate banality of 'The Purple Testament': it's the main thing that's stuck with me about that episode, the total resignation toward death on the part of those who are about to die (morituri te salutant!)  The episode has the odd effect of grinding you down as you watch it, so you're…

Agreed, for the most part.  I guess the fact that I could say, at least once per episode, "Wow, I've never seen that on television before" is some kind of small victory at least.  Another consistent pattern in the weirdness I enjoyed: turning figures of speech into reality (e.g. "You're not pregnant, it's in your…

Yeah, I think this is a pretty fair assessment, and probably explains why I've been mildly disappointed with this season as a whole.

Fair enough. I didn't mean the term derogatorily, just that these episodes hang on a particular high-concept hook.  So maybe that's it, then: tonight was my favorite of the season's "non-high concept hook" episodes.

"…and maybe because I’m sick out of my mind with a cold."

So just to recap: 
- you attribute unwarranted motivations to the critic; and
- you attribute inaccurate motivations to me; but
- you don't want to get in a point-by-point discussion.
That last bit is probably for the better.  I'm talking about responsible and irresponsible criticism, you're making weird claims about why…

No, the review is a review, nothing more or less.  You're free to disagree with it, but the poster accusing the reviewer of not having read it is out of line.  Frankly Williams' review isn't that far off from what some of the other negative reviews have said during this novel's very mixed-bag reception, and again, it…

I didn't mind the first half of the episode, because it was a pretty accurate take-down of the History channel.  You're right, they didn't cut to the core of the likely cynical motivations behind their programming, but they nailed the tone and content so perfectly that that didn't need to exaggerate (sorta like their…

"The common defense of this from American Horror Story super-fans is that this is true of all horror movies, but, no, it’s not, and as a horror fan, fuck you."

For what it's worth, most surrealism doesn't have a point to it, and isn't supposed to. Surrealism begins with the avant garde and is deliberately pointless.  As much as I like Murakami, his work is much more conservative and usually coheres into something comprehensible and safe by the end.

Nah, immature comments on bad reviews aren't limited by medium.  If the AV Club reviewed fine art we'd have the wine and cocktail crowd here throwing down with the best of them.

Agreed: Nietzsche and Keane go together frighteningly well.

What are you expecting to get out of it, though?   If you're talking about the stuff on the radio, sure, but the hip-hop landscape is pretty huge, and you can find just about anything out there.

Which sort of calls into question his whole thesis, no?  The problem is lack of ambition/talent, not hard edge.

Hip-hop has gotten too soft, he misses that hard edge, so he buries himself in… André 3000 and Kanye?  Am I reading that correctly?   I'll agree with him (somewhat) if he's talking about ambition, but in the next paragraph he seems to be talking about "the streets" and safe subject matter.  Neither André 3000 nor…

There are a lot of Smile-era decisions I don't understand, but why they turned such a beautifully-constructed song into half-dirge, half-WTF? I have no idea.

"Lee specializes in mid-tempo, melodramatic, melismatic, heavy riffing balladry that manages the singular feat of sounding ridiculous and joyless simultaneously."

True fact: "Wonderful" is the most perfect little pop gem they ever recorded.

I have to admit, you made this sound worth watching, which is not an easy feat when it comes to any LOGO property not stamped by RuPaul.  I'm happy the network's been rerunning Buffy and Absolutely Fabulous, but it's not exactly known for its original programming.  Now I think I'll give this a chance. Good job, Herzog.