I haven't watched a traditional sitcom (besides Seinfeld reruns) in years, nor do I watch the single-camera NBC-type shows, but I decided to try out Cheers after seeing the articles here. One thing I like about Cheers eight episodes in is that the characters on the show smile at each other's jokes.  On another show,…

How would the show be at all about this child?  Television shows of this sort don't have time to introduce any sort of meaningful plot involving children, mostly because meaningful plots involving children are mostly about them getting sick and/or dying.  Of the 'big' dramas (Sopranos, Wire, Deadwood, Mad Men,…

yeah, i remember deciding to get up to new jersey/new york on an NES emulator.  it was like day 60 or something, i did it, and then i said odenkirk-ish-ly… 'my life'.

Radio is the least hermetically sealed thing there is in entertainment.  I used to read a radio message board 10 or so years ago (by the way, ladies, I am available), and the major complaint about music stations was that they were no longer playing songs from the 50s.  People would track which songs were being played…

beyond that, i thought it used the fact that anthony jr. was a pretty poor actor as a strength - he was a horrendous liar, and he spent most of the show lying to people.

'Again with the fuckin' vitamins!'

We don't know what Sleater was actually doing then, but we do know that Nucky thinks he was killing some Irish dude. I don't see how the show is really having it both ways here.

Yeah, Nucky seems to be quitting and letting the town go to shit under Darmody.  By doing nothing he will prove just how important he really was.

0, of course.

He also made sure to mention that the plots coming together in 'The Little Kicks' was nothing like the show's heyday.  Glad to see that Sims is sticking to the checklist.

whoops, i vaguely see that you guys have said that below.  but it's all been corroded with breaking bad spoilers, a show i am just now catching up on.

I've always contended that whether or not he's alive or dead is ultimately irrelevant for everyone in his life.  They've all been fully corrupted and there's no coming back.

I was hoping this was going to be about Kevin Corrigan's breakout character 'Goon' from Buffalo '66.  I'd watch 90 minutes of him dimwittedly trying to figure out the world.

But isn't this pretty much what happens to anyone who's been on TV (or radio) for this long?  Conan's been on TV for almost 20 years.  Whether you're talking about Letterman or Howard Stern or even Jon Stewart, the accusation of complacency and resting on one's laurels are usually going to be there.  Still, part of…

I think the boat Nugent might've missed is that talk shows don't take well to review like this.  They're there every night and the material isn't always going to be strong and the monologue is going to be a monologue and the interviews are often going to be uninteresting. People come on board and stay there because…

While O'Neal posits that the natural end is with a Super Bowl win and the BP oil spill, I don't really see it - how long are we going to be able to stick with these characters before the show starts either spinning its wheels (an accusation that the show has already had leveled at it) or inventing drama for people to…

I can just imagine a V.I.L.E. Henchman offering them around: You guys want potatoes?  I got a line on some mashed… primo stuff.

I knew I thought The Butter Shave was a great episode, and it's because of George's subplot, which to me is a classic.  The '9 to 5' montage, the cane fakery, George on the Rascal scooter - yes, it's very broad, but it gets me every time.

Ugh, another person missing the joke?  The above was not serious, and was a criticism of Sims who seems to be more interested in long-running Seinfeld plots probably more so than even the show's writers were.

If you read 'Live From New York', the SNL book, you'll see that the actors did have writers that basically wrote for them, even if they were 'SNL writers'.