Unnecessary, and I say that as someone who is so caught up in Pacific Rim fever right now, i'm anxiously awaiting my chance to see it for a third time tonight, having just seen it for the first time last Friday. Part of what I loved most about Pacific Rim is that it tells a complete story. It creates a world, and…

The silly slides leading into the bowels of robot hell might be my favorite thing in all of Futurama, and I don't know why.

On the one hand, no, the industry is constantly evolving, and the continued ballooning of blockbuster budgets and receipts doesn't mean quality films of a smaller side will cease to exist.

How did it not get an Emmy nod for best effects? I can't even fathom how many hours went into convincingly CGI-ing Foghorn Leghorn to look like Kevin Spacey.

Yeah, "The Golden Age" (apparently the 3rd one in TV history, depending on who you ask) may be ending, but there's so much on the horizon that's promising, not just in terms of continuing series, but the variety of new ones popping up. I love that of the six shows I mentioned, 3.5 of them are female led (call The…

Better surprise: using "In the Air Tonight" -one of the most blatant "hey, it's the '80s" songs out there-, in the first episode, and it not being terrible

Tusk-iest Tusk:
The Americans, for Tusk

Best John Carpenter '80s Movie Crossover: Escape from New York, starring Aaron Staton as Snake Pliss-ken

The Americans, Hannibal, Orphan Black, Orange is the New Black, Rectify, and Top of the Lake are all in my top 20 for the year, which is to say that 2013 has been pretty fucking stellar. When there have been six great freshman shows in nearly as many months, it makes the prospect of soon losing Mad Men, and Breaking…

Between the fungal corpses and The Last of Us, 2013 has been a great year for making me realize how deeply terrified I am of mushrooms.

My favorite part of any episode is when the dome is referred to as though it were a person. 
-"The Dome's going to kill us all!" 
-"Do you think The Dome brought them here?" 
-"Maybe we're not supposed to tell anyone." "Why not?" "Because The Dome doesn't want us to!"

I was thinking more like a game of Trouble, where the hand pops the top, and everyone is shaken violently to death. The number of corpses equates to your dice role.

I'm finding myself less interested in the dome's origins and powers, and more curious as to how it's been covering a 5-mile tract of land in farm country for week, and isn't completely caked in bird shit by now.

Word, and come to think of it, a lot of great opening titles came from one-season shows. Luck, and Terriers come to mind, and Hannibal would have been in the ranks, but then NBC went and ruined that by renewing it. The nerve!

Look, it ain't worth a gold star, but this at least this episode improved on the last two. The secret: completely ignoring everything that transpired in the last two weeks in terms of character development. Now Jr. is sympathetic in some capacity? The preacher has a sudden heel-faith turn? Barbie can work with the…

SMOKEBOMB

Julia has officially supplanted Hannibal’s Freddie Lounds as 2013’s Most Superfluous Reporter Character of the Year. And now I’m thinking about a version of Under the Dome that has Hannibal in it, and I’m making myself sad over how that’s not a reality.

"What was it like being stabbed?" "It was the single most painful experience my life." "What was the second most painful?"

Then you're one lucky bear. You've got 4 1/2 seasons of great television ahead of you, and 1/2 a season of deliciously insane soap opera antics to mix things up.

Pictured: Two men trying arm-wrestling for the first time in their lives based on a vague description of the concept they overheard at a party years ago.