Joe Reid left for another gig, and it was never that well-read.

There is a lot of 2014 left…

It's just too expensive. The best I'd hope for is MAYBE a 13-15 episode final season, in the event that NBC wants to pad its cable resale numbers a bit.

We review debuts and returns of notable series in advance of their return. We have done this since the advent of TV Club, and we will continue to do it. Which means we will do the same for Sherlock in a couple of weeks.

If PBS made it available day and date like BBC America and Hulu do, we'd be all over that shit, screener or no. But they don't, so we aren't.

For vaguely legal, vaguely contractual reasons, we are bound by U.S. premiere dates and will be for the foreseeable future. So you can look for our Sherlock write-up Jan. 19 and our review of the full season a couple days before that.

It occurred to me as I wrote that headline for a piece we've had scheduled for the better part of a year and could have moved at any time that we probably should have run it BEFORE everybody sat down with their families for hours of conversation.

I just found out I can watch it on my cell phone!

Tim Goodman of the Hollywood Reporter was also VERY hard on it. It's definitely a love-or-hate show, and HBO isn't used to be in in that position.

I'm immensely skeptical of the Eagles. I think they're a fun team to watch, but I also think they're a couple of seasons away from truly contending. We'll see how they match up against their round one opponent.

The main thing going against Getting On is that it doesn't have the huge critical acclaim Enlightened did by the end of season one. And HBO sent out five of the six to critics for review, so it's not a thing like where Enlightened got weak reviews, only to improve by the end of season one, as there are quite a few…

Pivot debuted it all over one night (or maybe a couple of nights), so for a little-watched show on a network most people didn't get, we kinda DID cover it.

My only real goal at Christmas nowadays is to make my wife cry with what I get her. It gets harder every year, but every year, I win Christmas.

Your brother is a thoughtful man.

What did you get for your year-end holiday celebration thread?

LAX isn't bad, particularly if your flight goes as planned. I get through TSA there far more quickly than any other airport.

We didn't do individual ballots.

I have been vaguely keeping up with it.

I pretty much never write on it. I am bad at Tumblr.

Here is my contribution to the Advent Calendar. I posted it off-site, because I am a bad person. http://vanderwha.tumblr.com…