Nowhere do I say (or even come close to arguing) that the film is a secretly racist propaganda film. My argument is more that the era the film is set in was one of unquestioned white majority culture.

Don't everybody downvote cappadocius at once! They actually did a study that found South Dakota was! The governor tore it up on live television because he said he didn't believe it!

If you've read this site often enough, then you know that I grew up in a so-called fly-over state and get back there multiple times per year and also that we have a lot of writers who live in those states. It's you who's reading cultural bias into this, not me.

The first time I saw this, I was 20. It's never been my favorite favorite, but I think it's a good movie.

Yes. It's the "one-income" more than anything else that defines this. I mean, sure, my wife and I could probably buy a house and live just on one of our incomes in, say, Detroit, but we'd still be scraping by. And that's in a pretty cheap city!

No one who works full-time for The A.V. Club (least of all me) lives in New York City. Thanks!

While I agree with your general thesis, I think a lot of that is Oscar Isaac—a naturally warm and open actor—versus Laura Dern—a GREAT actress but one who reads as a little prickly even at her best. I'm trying to think of a similarly warm actress to compare to Isaac, in a role that's challenging and asshole-ish, and…

Rectify is in MY top three, and isn't that what REALLY matters? (No, there was strong support for it—above and beyond the other two Sundance shows—in our discussions, but also a few people who really didn't like it and thought it was kind of a poseur series. So we decided to lump it with the other two.)

Yet in most of those cases, the characters are ultimately punished for that desire, further reinforcing the "every man is an island" thing. Don't get me wrong: It's a really good show, and it's firmly ensconced in my top 20. I just don't think it really fits.

That's an interesting observation about Walking Dead, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's true. I find its unrelenting misery too much to take, but I suspect that undercuts it for a lot of folks.

Again, I really don't think that we pushed Girls all that hard in season two, though it's my understanding that there were nearly daily Newswires about it. I don't read a lot of Newswire, so that might have been the case.

The reason I was talking so often about Girls was because I was reviewing it every week. Brandon reviewed Enlightened every week, which is why I didn't talk about that!

Season three was also beloved of many critics, though that was slightly before my time, so I don't know if it made the top of as many lists as season four did. Regardless, for me, it's a bit of a toss-up between those two seasons for "best" season.

Documentaries can be voted for for Best Picture, yes. They just never have been.

So should we not rank documentaries against feature films in those lists either? Not rank country/hip hop/rock/etc. albums against each other?

For me, at least, the wind went out of the sails with Archer this last season, though it had plenty of good episodes. I just wasn't laughing as much, and the plots and character beats weren't as clever either. I'm hoping they do some major tweaking in season five.

Sad we forgot about that one.

It was nominated by one of our writers at the "name three shows" stage. No I won't say who.

Yep! New one coming next month.

I am aware of exactly no critics who have definitively called Breaking Bad the greatest show of all time. In the conversation? Sure. But we don't really work that way as a species.