Well, because as a nation the United States is petty, short-cited, and too often proud of ignorance, it's difficult to change high school curricula if the proposed changes aren't designed to make you 'job-ready'. 'Civics won't prepare you for the jobs of the 21st century' is the thinking.

I never watched this or read these AV Club reviews, but I agree that it sucks that this is being dropped, because my god AV Club is really becoming a shell of itself. I know the economics of web publishing are bad, but I think television coverage was a strength the site could really leverage, rather than dropping 20…

To be fair, by the end they clearly caught themselves and tried to walk some stuff back (to the extent that I think the headline is somewhat misleading)

With Jonathan Swift? It may be a rectum.

Your honor, we insist Mr Hammer's pants rise up. Rise up!

At the very least HBO execs need to dust off their copies of Six Feet Under and try to make a new version of that.

In retrospect, yeah, we have to add the lost season of Boardwalk Empire to Vinyl's history, much in the was John From Cincinnati cost us a proper conclusion to Deadwood.

Sure, but the preview seemed to put more chips on YOU CAN SEX UP THE ROBOTS than the moral/thematic bits. And I don't think that casting call that AVClub always refers to was meant to pass unnoticed. Between this and the production delays, I'm sensing flop sweat.

Yeah; Sopranos ending pretty much coincided with Albright "leaving", and *that's* what I'd point to as the beginning of the end of HBO's glory days.

Does it matter?

Indeed. The innovation isn't so much putting the high drama in the penultimate episode but leaving an entire episode to wrap things up/set up next season. It's a great way to tell a story and build drama without cheap cliffhangers.

I sort of think HBO might be better off focusing on miniseries rather than multi-season series. Show Me A Hero was the best new thing on HBO last year, and yes The Night Of indeed looks good. Vinyl without the mob/drug stuff and The Brink with 1/3 of the characters would have been excellent miniseries.

Yeah, I don't know. Every HBO show is well-cast. At the core I don't see how Westworld the property could sustain a series. It also strikes me that HBO is playing up the salaciousness rather than the story, which kind of worries me. I'll certainly watch it and I hope I'm wrong.

Tell Me You Love Me was also caught in the middle of a regime change; it was Chris Albright's show, and the people who replaced him weren't invested in it.

I think the internet 'angry mob mentality' is what ultimately sunk True Detective, starting late in season 1. It seemed to be an article of faith that the second season would be bad even before it started airing.

There's been talk that execs are starting to get more involved in production, when they used to be very hands-off. Vinyl did look like it suffered from following too many 'notes' from HBO brass.

Say what you will about Sex Drugs and Rock and roll, it makes Vinyl look like The Sopranos.

That's too bad. I thought they had the parts in place for a good second season. Such wasted potential, so many bad decisions.

Show me the characterization! WHERE'S THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

The penultimate episode of Season 1 of the Sopranos is the one with the attempted hit on Tony. I wonder if the 'big moments in penultimate episode' thing starts there.