I definitely saw Un-American Graffiti at the time as the show running out of ideas: I mean, they did an episode in the first season where an African-American girl secretly gets together with a Jewish guy, despite her father's disapproval.

Agreed that this episode is clunky and not particularly funny, although I still think it works as a reminder of how small-minded and self-absorbed of a decade the '90s were.

Great article, but there's one problem I have with your arguments. You claim that if information from the book is left out of a film adaptation, then we should assume that it's canon within the movie. I feel like both works of art should be able to stand alone, and that if something is unexplained in the film, the…

Every television show about high-school students faces a choice when they graduate and head off to college: the writers can either drop most of the characters except for one or two leads and create a whole new cast around them, or arrange it so that the main character and all of his or her best friends (and even the…

Cool, thanks for looking into this for me, Noel.

Hey Noel, I've heard good things about Brandon Graham's King City, which is being released as a complete trade paperback by Image later this month. Any chance you'll be reviewing that? Or would that be considered a mainstream title?

Watched The Tree of Life and Chico and Rita - liked but didn't love both (Malick has an amazing eye but isn't much of a deep thinker, Chico and Rita looked fantastic but the start-stop rhythm of the plot - they keep getting together and then immediately breaking up due to some coincidence or misunderstanding - began…

One of the things I always really liked about Cowboy Bebop was that it took a fairly common setup for a TV show - lone wolves fight bad guys and do their best to avoid civilization - and put a more melancholy spin on it.
 
Look at Firefly. That show was also about a bunch of loners out in the middle of space, but they…

I'm kind of stunned to say this after the last few weeks, but the Sybil-Branson plotline was the strongest element of tonight's double episode (hell, he didn't even mention a Socialist cause or revolution-related historical event ONCE). I ragged on this show last week for showing instead of telling (worst example of…

By the way, what's the definition of a soap opera these days? I've seen multiple people online claim that Downton Abbey and even Mad Men are soaps. Downton I can see, but Mad Men? I always think one of the defining characteristics of a soap opera is that they're really plot heavy and full of twists; Mad Men's glacial…

Something I've always wanted to mention about your theory about the HBO Holy Trinity, Todd: I think that The Wire and The Sopranos are both taking place at the same point in a story about America's decline, it's just that The Sopranos is about the haves and The Wire is about the have nots (which makes the latter seem…

I feel like the writing has gotten way worse this year. It's that whole problem of "show, don't tell" - everybody keeps walking up to someone else and saying exactly what they're thinking and feeling at all times.

They managed to produce an entire season last year that was full of melodrama and yet remained grounded in believable human behavior.

I wasn't trying to imply that being outed as a sex-abuse victim is equivalent to your standard dose of high-school bullying, although I'll admit my original comment wasn't clear enough about that and I apologize for sounding inconsiderate. What Beaver would have went through if he was revealed as being molested by…

You're right, Beaver's text message to Veronica to get her on the roof was pretty lame. That's something else that could have improved the whole final confrontation: if Beaver had written something longer and more convincing rather than just "Meet me on the roof."

I'm kinda surprised that you were fine with the confrontation between Veronica and Beaver, which is usually what fans harp on as the least believable part of this episode (I'm a long-time defender of this season of VM, and even I find it ridiculous that Veronica was able to text Logan when Beaver wasn't looking).…

I can't wait to see Beasts of the Southern Wild. The reviews coming out of Sundance had me intrigued, but nothing really sold me on it like your description of it as "a live-action Hayao Miyazaki film." As far as I'm concerned, "a live-action Hayao Miyazaki film" = ticket bought.

I hope you're right. I agree that the series as a whole has been building towards Raylan becoming a better, more responsible man, one who's able to control that anger that Winona mentioned at the end of the pilot. But at the same time, the show might be suggesting that that anger is what drives Raylan and makes him…

Re: the domestic drama, there's a part of me that's terrified that the show is going to kill off Winona before she gives birth. I trust the writers of Justified to a certain extent, but I fear that they're going to reach a dead end where they realize they don't want to see Raylan in a permanent relationship or raising…

Good call… I didn't even think about that moment when she told Lord Grantham that Bates' leaving on bad terms must have been his own fault. You're right, it's a perfect example of how little she knows about the servants.