hey-o

Apparently, there is a real DJ Davis, and there's a real blogger who Creighton is based on, and a real civil rights lawyer who Toni is based on.

Not screened for critics
"MacGruber" was not screened for critics. This is an increasingly common studio practice, and it's really contemptible. What the studio is hoping is that it will get its Friday night box office before any potential viewers see negative notices.

Midseason replacement
A theory that has been circulating on some entertainment blogs suggests that pushing Parks and Rec off the schedule for the fall premieres may be part of a plan to put the show in the coveted 9:30 time slot.

I've had a vague notion…
Sonny and Annie are based on Zachary Bowen and Addie Hall.

Here's what I think is coming:
Everyone we have seen in the "alterna-verse" dies.

David Lynch
Eraserhead… Blue Velvet… Wild At Heart… Twin Peaks… Mulholland Dr. … Inland Empire… Family Guy.

What is this?
I hung out at a game store when I was like 12, and I fondly remember those nights of Magic cards in that cozy space, redolent of man-stink and pizza grease.

Just the nature of things
Every long-run television show about mysteries ends up going off the rails. In the first season, the show's writers are just trying to pack in more trippy stuff and more threads that tease you along to the next episode, so they won't get cancelled.

Certainly possible that a Gus flashback is coming, although it will probably be a short-ish character-revealing vignette, rather than a full episode "Gustavo Fring: Origins" thing.

The point of the Cousins
There are a handful of roles for bad-ass characters, and the Cousins turned out to be the bad asses who get killed at the end of act 2 to show how bad-ass somebody else is.

Horse
Horse

Unless the cartel was burning the cousins, I don't know who besides Fring would even know that they were after Hank.

Not a vote of confidence in the audience. Sunday animation is one of the stronger pieces of the Fox primetime lineup, and McFarlane created 3 of the 4 shows.

Well, it wasn't just about trying to milk the characters for an emotional moment. It was sort of a complex meta-joke about form and structure. It was two characters on one set, written like a play, rather than a "Family Guy" episode. The dialog was written as if for the stage, with speeches rather than the usual…

I really liked the Family Guy episode.
The high-concept gag has always been one of Seth McFarlane's best talents. He is really fearless about doing things a big chunk of the audience won't get, and he's not afraid to really stretch something really obscure out into like three minutes.

Let's be real about this:
It's hard to do sequels to comedies artistically, because all the best jokes and situations you can derive from the characters are going to be in the first movie.

A pretty strong Simpsons episode
As hard as it is for the writers to keep coming up with stories to make "The Simpsons" feel fresh. Even episodes in these later, weaker seasons have elaborate, subtle and very funny gags, and excellent one-liners, so this show clearly still has a lot of talent in the writers' room. …

Gervais and Merchant should make…
Karl Pilkington: The Movie

Dunder Mifflin sells paper to local businesses. I can see how marketing leads might be valuable if you are a real estate agent in "Glengarry" looking for people with expensive homes they are considering selling, or if you are running shady investments and are looking for people with a lot of savings and limited…