Skye being a bad character doesn't in and of itself make her an example of this trope. She was basically the central character in the first half of the first season (or at least the second most central character after Coulson), with most episodes designed around her dealing with conflicted loyalties or learning some…

It's kind of unavoidable in long running shows though. Your biology professor is already part of the main cast and needs something to do every week, but this episode is about abberent weather patterns and anyway do you want to take the time to introduce a supefluous guest character just to exposit whatever bullshit…

Possibly I'm missing some nuance here, but this really feels like a complaint that can't be legimitately satisfied. According to the author, the shows mentioned feature women with power and angency, and geeky women, but it's a problem that none of them happen to occupy the specific venn diagram space between the two?…

The funny thing about Loras in the book is that he's this tremendous warrior but *also* a total ponce.  He always came across to me as some unholy combination of catty club queen and surly teenager, so I've seen his casting and portrayal as pretty spot on in that regard.  The big problem is that I'm pretty sure he's…

I concur.  The vagaries of my work/school/life schedule means I end up reading the reviews/commentary well ahead of seeing the episodes themselves, and as a consequence I was going into this one with a fair amount of trepidation.  But it was mostly great.  I can understand why everyone didn't care for the thought…

Chang as Jeff as Dean as Tina Turner.

I wasn't a huge fan of Social Psychology, but the Jeff/Shirley pairing turns absolutely magical in Foosball.  The look on Shirley's face after Jeff remarks on her calling him a turkey is just incredible.

This would actually be a really neat idea. I think you could either do a straight up US homage where, like, Abed is telling a story about how Jeff did something to annoy the Dean and then, after the climax, reveal that it was actually Abed (or, you could put Jeff in the Abed role and maybe Pierce in the Jeff role and…

I agree with the last sentence, but suspect Britta probably walked her talk a bit more at one time in her life.  She seems reasonably well-traveled (she's spent time in New York!), and clearly has social connections from those circles.  But I also think that:

I have a working theory that Jerry Seinfeld being such an obviously poor actor is actually part of what makes Seinfeld work for me.  Curb is a show I will watch an episode of, decide "hey, that was pretty good", and then have no desire to watch any further.  It's funny, but also kind of unpleasant as an experience.