I need help reacting to this.

I need help reacting to this.

Yeah, I don't think it was a stretch, really, and I liked having it as a centerpiece—I always like these singular, historically pivotal (or, in this case, just notable, or perhaps just memorable) anchors to episodes. I think it just felt a bit heavy-handedly here—the whole episode was laden in fairly obvious…

Sorry. But just to be sure, you mean sentence fragments, right?

Sorry.

I don't know for sure. I assume so, since other AMC shows are more revealing in their "Next week on" sequences, and because he's so famously reticent about these things. At the very least, it seems in keeping with his desires for how people see and approach the show. So maybe it's just someone at the network being…

Mad Men does things no other show has ever quite done, or at least better than most other shows have: It leaves gaping lacunae; it goes in fantastically unexpected, believable directions; it creates wonderfully sustained, woozy atmospheres. But I wonder—since the beginning of this season, but particularly in this…

It seems that that was—is—Matthew Weiner's intention: he'll begrudgingly give his viewers a look at the next episode, but only if it's an entirely meaningless one. The meaningless of their content was intended to serve a kind of nose-thumbing point—Weiner doesn't like these television conventions, of letting the…

Jeff is left-handed. Did you know that already?

Where's Dawn? In an episode in which two new characters are introduced—Dawn and Michael Ginsburg—something feels off, perhaps intentionally diversionary, in focusing more on Michael. We've seen him before on this show. We've seen overzealous go-getters with lonely and dispirited home lives; we've seen obnoxious men…

Most attention given "The Killing" treats the show as a once-adored cult hit that angered its viewers by not resolving the murder at the center of the series. I don't mean to just toot your horn here, but AV Club seems to be the only place that has a firm handle on what's truly frustrating about the show, what truly…

I think the show's remarkable—painfully remarkable; and sometimes just painful—flaunting of its deliberate lacunae found its finest moment yet in Megan referring to Don as Dick Whitman. Not only is it that this was the source of such tremendous tension in the first three seasons, and its revelation to Betty so…

It's ironic, and poignant—and condescending of me to say so—that what seems to bother Community's critics most is precisely that it leaves them feeling left out: Community is about trying, and often failing, to fit in. I wonder how much of the disdain people feel toward the show essentially boils down to annoyance:…