I marathoned all these seasons all at once, so when I was watching them, I didn't really give myself the chance to be quite as critical as I would have watching them week after week. Because of this, I kind of…got Dobby!Doctor the first time around. I would never claim it wasn't ridiculous and a huge misfire, but the…

No, but Buffy was still small enough and little-watched enough that it could get deeply, deeply weird and occasionally subversive, and still had the rubber monster charm. I don't think "selling out" is really the best way to put it, but there's definitely a difference between making Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers.

Nice that he's using that Avengers money to keep making small, weird projects like this and Much Ado. If you have to sell-out, this is how you do it. (Not that making The Avengers is selling out, and I'm glad he's making those movies because they're way better than they would have been otherwise, but, okay, yeah, I'm…

They seemed to be doing some work this episode to rehabilitate what they've been doing with Larry all season. April being nice to him shows that she really does care, him telling the story of the wedding ring brings him back to that bumbling fool who really does kind of deserve his treatment (rather than just a…

Wasn't that the plot of the entire first half of the season when he ran Tom out of business?

For awhile, it looked like Arrow was doing that with Laurel, and literally no one was disappointed.

I'm sorry to see that Seth Gabel is in this. I hope he doesn't become another of those genre actors who makes a living giving a brief whiff of class to terrible shows which are way beneath him.

Annie finally got something to do! I'm frequently frustrated with Community when it comes to her, because she's probably the character I relate to the most, and I love the plot lines that lean into her Type-A overachiever-ness (versus her endless romantic entanglements, which is the well it always seems to go to). So…

The only reason I'm holding on to optimism for The Flash is that I find that, frequently, characters meant for another show don't really work until they're on that show - slightly different example, but just think about how much better Angel was once he finally got off of BTVS.

I feel like that was all but confirmed this episode - he definitely knows who the Arrow is, but it's easier to pretend to everyone including himself that he doesn't. As The Great Laurel Flashback Brigade demonstrated, you have to be a fairly substantial moron to not see it.

It was funny the first time around, but the addition of Jess to the gag really elevated it to excellent. Good to know that the cutaway isn't a dead art.

I agree with you, but I think that the problem was just that the things that ultimately made them break up were alternatively presented as strengths and weaknesses of their relationship, and so when the spinner finally landed on "weakness," it felt kind of arbitrary. That being said, I definitely know how different…

I wonder if there's a thing about this being the definitive album for theater geeks going through an emo-ish phase, because switch out "eighth grade" for "high school," and this was one of my favorites too. Add in some Panic at the Disco, 30 Seconds to Mars, My Chemical Romance, and All American Rejects to your list,…

I adored Starbuck from her first cigar-smoking, superior-punching scene, but this was definitely when she really solidified her awesomeness. One thing I thought these episodes did really well was sort of lay out what they were doing with the Kara/Lee relationship - you fall in love with them during the adorable helmet…

I agree with you in theory, but in practice, my impression while watching this kind of story is that it just never actually works.

Eleventh Hour is for people I need to convince they're going to like it, and Rose is for people who I know are going to like it but who I need to convince to just sit down and watch the damn thing already.

I still get irritated over the fact that RTD (or, if you want to be fair, his era) apparently thought that "seasonal arc" meant "obnoxiously drop an anagram all over the place and then be really pleased with yourself when you unscramble it in the finale."

Slightly OT, but that "holding the Doctor prisoner for a year" thing is one of my least favorite parts of the two-parter, mainly because, at this point at least, it reminds me of my least favorite thing about the Matt Smith send-off. I absolutely can't stand Who stories that spend an extended amount of time in one…

Wasn't he going to do a commentary on the S4 DVD? I sort of want to hear that really badly but also I don't know if I want to witness the utter emotional implosion of another person.

So, the How I Met Your Mother Method, then.