It was a fakeout; you're meant to think she's having an abortion, but really she just hates needles.

What does a convincing gay look like?

Did you actually watch the music video? Are you really unable to see the care and intention that went into that clip and how the images play off the words and vice versa? "Some asshole threw clips together?" It's MASTERFULLY edited.

I think that's sorta her point, though? The song really depends on its imagery to work, and that's what makes it so brilliant and subversive for me. Paired with its music video — which I highly recommend if you've got a few minutes and have any interest — https://www.youtube.com/wat… — the song becomes a critique of…

Regarding Rihanna, personally I think her "American Oxygen" song and video is one of the most brilliant things to come out of pop music in a long time. You're right — the lyrics are repetitive and clichéd, vacuous and insipid, but that is actually the point. Paired with that imagery in the music video, she's pointing…

Really? I thought this episode tackled a single theme (women's perceptions of their own bodies and self worth), with different variations on the theme in each sketch. The doll was about commodification of a woman's body; the strip club was about willingness to objectify other women to please men (skewered at the end…

I liked it too. Really set the tone for an episode about female self-worth and Amy's willingness to degrade herself for a laugh (which the stand-up bit, the cop sketch, the street interview, the strip club, the music video, and the body-rapping boyfriend skit also dealt with).

I really loved this episode. Like, a lot. I thought all of the sketches dealt with the issue of women's perceptions of their own body and self-worth in varied, interesting ways. And even more than that, I thought some of the sketches were very much about the double standard for how women in comedy are criticized…

Um, lol, it's definitely two-pronged approach.

Last season, or maybe even earlier this season, that would have sent Alicia into a tailspin. But she didn't even notice. She's gotten so ruthless.

Julie White and Laura Benanti sharing a scene together… I miss Go On.

They pretty much blackmailed the show — admit to the defamation, or we'll have Chumhum sue you for breach of trademark because they used the gopher in scenes of murder, which would be super easy to prove as degrading use of trademarked logo.

Can we talk about the fact that Call It Murder Alicia stood up and walked into the other room AND THE GUY WHO WAS SITTING AT THE DESK LOOKED JUST LIKE WILL? My heart leapt into my throat… but Alicia was looking at the Chumhum gopher on the computer screen :'(

I think it's an interesting way to show us just how far Alicia has fallen. Not that she was ever REALLY "Saint Alicia," but Season One through… like… Four… Alicia would have told him to shove it. She's pretty much an antiheroine at this point.

I don't think Hannah ruined it. I think she found it weirdly touching, but of course she's not going to jump right into "AWWW thanks Marn, we totally like, ARE soulmates!"

This wouldn't be a true bottle episode, technically — that storage unit set was completely new. Bottle episodes are supposed to be entirely on an existing set.

There are frequent references to "The New Founding Fathers," so presumably there was some kind of mild revolution / coup d'etat that left much of the country the same, but with this new Purge thing going on. Presumably the American government does not function the same in the Purge-verse as it does now.

Wasn't Valerie called away to hair and makeup and she just never went?

Exactly. Sure, she's cripplingly insecure and obsessed with micromanaging how people view her, but she's at her core trying to be a genuinely good person. She really, truly doesn't have it in her to storm the HBO Offices and flip a conference table or three for ratings.

See, I thought the same… but I'm pretty sure by episode 3 of Asylum we'd had evil Nazi surgery, aliens, cannibals/mutants, and an exorcism… Bodes well for next week?