So so close.

So so close.

No, but he is there and he is gruff. I keep thinking he played Emma Stone's dad in Easy A, but I'm mixing it up with his very similar character in Juno.

I love this format! I love the fact that we get to talk about Top Chef again!

The schtick comes up twice, and all the other characters call him out on it, and even he realizes it's not interesting or funny. Most of the character's plot points are about how smart and awesome and necessary he is.

It does.

To me, it was a direct homage to classic African-American sidekicks in crime fiction who turn on and off that accent, often to make the white characters uncomfortable. Note Hawk in the Spenser books, or TJ in Lawrence Block's Scudder novels. It felt very much like a knowing choice.

You're aware that Revival came out like 8 months ago, right?

He's done female revenge movies. He's done black revenge movies. He's done Jewish revenge movies. TIME FOR A GAY REVENGE MOVIE, QT!

Plus, I've definitely seen them tattoo gays and lesbians on the show, and they've been super cool with them.

Agreed. Sure the reenactments are cheesy, and I don't get the weird filters they use sometimes, but I love that all three of them seem to be good friends and they are doing fun, positive work. They are the type of folks you don't see much on reality TV.

Agree to the nth.

I said yesterday that I would stop everything if someone would write yet another long post analyzing Mario games. I have an irrational love for articles talking about Mario. Then this happened and it kept me entertained ALL DAY. Thanks, Teti.

Or, weird thought, the review MIGHT be for people watching this show. This is a very difficult concept. Maybe someone read the book and wants to see where the series goes. Maybe a person like that didn't realize that you had to be conversant in a different television series to understand and like this television…

I watch Veep every week. I'm vaguely aware that the creator, whose name I kinda know, has older shows. I haven't seen them. Maybe eventually I'll seek them out. I think it's a little presumptuous to state that people that are fans of this one show have an automatic encyclopedic knowledge of the creator's past…

Being a gay guy, I've struggled with the same thing with the word "faggot" in his books. In general, I've discovered that it's mainly the bad guys using those words; the good guys generally don't.

Don't let the description mislead you. The kid speaks like that on purpose, occasionally, to irritate his older white friend. It's not how the kid speaks in general.

I read it as an homage to Robert B. Parker's Hawk - an educated black man using stereotyped dialect as a way of subverting the stereotype. He doesn't use it all the time - it's more for punctuation than anything.

But that actually did happen. On Lucky Louie, they told him they wanted nudity in the show, assuming it would be the "hot wife" character. Instead, he got naked and showed his pasty naked ass onscreen. And so people did talk about how subversive and thoughtful that was.

All right, apply this logic to the Harry Potter franchise, then. Or Hurt Locker.