And Pesci gave him the anti-oral sex monologue. Pesci actually explained - unprompted - to Louis that men shouldn't give women oral sex (the speech Alan Alda ultimately performed) while Louis was at Pesci's house, pitching him the role of Uncle Pete. Pesci liked the script but thought it was too good. Evidently, Pesci…

What is with AVClub commenters these days? Of course it matters. It's the history of our nation and our world. The dynamic would be entirely different were this the story of a bar owned by a black family or asian family or latino family. Furthermore, the interplay of class and race and gender has been a central issue…

Someone may have pointed this out, but Dmitri Shostakovich is a composer. Sure, he wrote his fair share of prose over the years, but calling him a writer totally misrepresents his place in history.

If it were based on the Fraction and Aja run - and especially if the directors tried to push the art of television as innovatively as Fraction and Aja pushed that of superhero comics - a Hawkeye series would be destination TV. Renner definitely has the chops - his work with Louis C.K. is amazing, and it certainly…

The more homoerotic would be Batman V Superman: Dong and Just Tits. (No lady parts below the waist, we promise!)

Is that line an homage to Alan Moore's The Killing Joke or just a straight rip off?

Can we really be sure Louis didn't get input from others before writing? He certainly seems like the kind of writer who would do exactly that.

Exactly. To condemn the author for writing a character who uses outdated terminology - when it's perfectly appropriate for that character to use such terminology (it'd probably be more appropriate for Horace to say "transgendered") is to misunderstand character and persona at the most fundamental level.

I'm sure Alan Alda is just too high profile for a long term commitment. From what I understand, the actors are working for scale - and while Alda was kind to work for peanuts for a few episodes, it makes sense that he'd bow out early. A shame tho.

Actually, it wasn't a body double. Johansson has talked about how she was wary of the shot at first - evidently she felt bloated from all the udon she'd been eating - but Sophia tried the outfit on for her, to make her feel more comfortable, and SJ then agreed to do the shot.

Or sung in the voice of a beer swilling robot! That'd be classic! @insaneinthemainframe:disqus

I was thinking the same thing: less "subtle, hidden allegory" than "overt, surface meaning." I mean, sheesh, that's literally what the film is about.

I can't tell if you're joking. But you've convinced me either way: Saul is a true, courageous hero!

That's certainly one way to look at it. But one of the big questions of BCS is whether the ends do in fact justify the means: writing off the complexity of that question (and the many, conflicting answers) does the show a disservice. Writing off the cavalier way Saul suggests murdering people for expediency's sake…

I'm with you, Cigarette.

Because Odenkirk is such a beguiling actor, it seems that many folks forget what a loathsome character Saul was, how often, for instance, he suggested Walter White murder someone just because they were an inconvenience. He advised they kill Badger, for example, and later - in season five - he suggested they put down…

"People of the female gender"? You mean women?

I read it all - you missed the argument (or, rather, the assertion) that Christensen's delivery is akin to Christopher Walken's. Now that's something new, at least.

Yes. I'll sleep better thinking that. As should you. You've done a great service to us all.

This is a really wrong-headed essay. Just about everything about it is wrong. I get there's some value in the "universally-maligned-piece-of-art-X-is-better-than-conventional-wisdom-holds" argumentative approach, but - fuck - I'll be damned if this article from the once-sublime AVClub isn't the nadir of that sturdy…