Ok, I'm glad someone said this, because that's totally it. I got to the episode (Spoilers?) where Nucky and Margaret make out, and I realized that

Too bourgeois for you, Kinsey?

See, I think it's a nice way of avoiding redundancy.

Precisely. BWE is the one show that makes Ryan's argument make a tiny bit of sense to me, but the reasons I'm not loving it are attributible to problems that transcend format. On the other hand, I love Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones, all of which engage in long-form story-telling without much attempt to…

This has probably been said before, but I do love what this show does with Cox's character in terms of showing how his antagonism of Kelso is the product of BOTH his medical/ethical principles AND his arrogance and inability to make pragmatic compromises that might serve the greater good.

Perhaps it's because I'm one who consumes television on DVD rather than as it airs, but I don't have a ton of sympathy with this argument. I understand it, but I don't mourn the loss of the episode as a discrete narrative unit any more than I mourn the loss of the serialized novels of the nineteenth century. Nor would…

OFFENSE! That was rude!

It's been a long time since I watched, but I think I'll have to go with Season 3 as well. In addition to the New Caprica arc, which is also my favorite thing about the whole series, it showed us the awesomely creepy interior of the Cylon Basestars and introduced us to the hybrids, which, in my opinion, were one of the…

Yeah, wasn't a fan of the magic baby stuff, but the Roslin cancer-storyline resolution brought us the "Hera shoots you in the cancer" meme from TWOP.

Count me in as someone who likes the later seasons best. No, the show did not succeed at everything it tried to do, but I was awed even by the attempts. For the record, I enjoyed the boxing episode for the sheer catharsis and for the multi-level commentary on the bitter compromises we make because chasing what we…

I can't improve on anything Plumberduck just said. Galactica jumping into the atmosphere is one of the great HOLY FUCKING SHIT moments in television.

*slow clap*

I made it through 16 seconds.

I just started catching up with Louie (the show) this week. It's very well done, but I find that i need to take Louis C.K. in small doses. I'm a misanthropic depressive myself, but even I find his act pretty alienating (and deliberately so, I think). Gaffigan is a nice alternative for his sheer delightful oddity. I…

Combustion/Sparky-Sparky Boom Man/That's Not Really His Name is the weakest part of this season for me. He's there purely because the writers needed someone to chase the Gaang for half the season, but despite his menace, the peril never exactly feels authentic.

"The Painted Lady" is what happens when the network demands an Earth Day episode.

I agree whole-heartedly. I understand that from a structural standpoint, most of this season is "filler," but with only a couple of exceptions, most of these episodes do a lot of heavy lifting in terms of world-building and character development, and I think they're necessary to set up the real stakes for the "main…

Actually, I think if you look closely, The Duke is behind Toph directing her shots. I haven't seen this ep in a while, but I seem to remember that.

I don't know if it's maturity so much as the fact that Katara has had to repress and sublimate her emotions by becoming the "adult." Like you said, Sokka was left with an ennobling sense of purpose, and a great deal of that (not to put too fine a point on it) has to do with the fact that he's a boy. Katara had to step…

No one shows my Onji anything! Especially not…movement.