I just realized I still haven't had a real first kiss. A kiss on the cheek, once. Hugs, from OKCutie. Plenty of digital 'kisses' from my first girlfriend. But I still don't actually have a first kiss story. Wow. .

Tell that to the incredible camera work in Becoming, or The Body.

In WHOSE folds?

You guys truly have a way of not making any of this stuff sound appealing.

I like the ever so slight modesty of only claiming to be one of the top ten, not top five or number one or anything.

That wasn't Mathis that Don stole "Life: Cure for the common breakfast" from, it was Danny, Jane's cousin/Jonathan from Buffy. I'm still wondering where Mathis came from.

ONCE AGAIN WITHOUT EMOTION THEY ARE DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD

There's no actual body switching, it's another "being wacky as a coping device" story, in this case about Troy being unhappy with his relationship with Britta.

Well, it's not quite comparable, but Cheers exists in universe. So they indirectly referenced the real world historical figures Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson and Kelsey Grammer.

But the original 60s gremlin is weirdly more furry than gremlin-y, if I remember correctly.

I thought it was pertinent to emphasize how long it had been since I'd started the shows.

Black is the absence of a shot. Yes, it is part of the presentation of the show, he doesn't dispute that. He's just saying it's not meant differently than a fade to black between scenes.

As far as outdatedness goes, the writing for the black characters, by and large. There you go. I don't think there's too much outdatedness generally and it doesn't really take away much from the show, but there is some.

Well, sure, the show misleads us towards perceiving it that way, but it doesn't take too close of attention to figure out what they're really doing either.

Patsy had done that six years ago, and wasn't capable of doing it then, plus their kids are going to be married now. The hatchet is buried.

It ain't a swerve, it's the climax of the main plot people didn't realize they were watching all along.

Seasons 5 and 6, but before that Weiner had only wrote for sitcoms and had written the pilot script for Mad Men back in '99, which got him the job on Sopranos. His time working under Chase is *hugely* influential on Mad Men.

Ultimately, for me at least, it does all of that better and in a more refined way than the Sopranos did, benefiting from Sopranos as laying the groundwork and dealing with the difficulties of being the innovator. In your last sentence, I'd switch the titles.

It's still very good, with "I have forsaken what is right for what is easy" being a very resonant, perfect thematic statement that I've never been able to forget, but it is considerably more straightforward than the rest of the series is, and the first four episodes are the weakest stretch of the show, I think.

I think it can be multiple things. It would hardly be the first time a great emotional/thematic moment is intertwined with a creator effectively addressing their audience.