Eh, conflict with authority and returning home are more archetypes than cliches. They can be used in a cliched fashion, sure, but there's no indication that's happening here yet.

Nah, Cs about right. It felt like half of the episode was spent on the Katee Sackhoff's Talent Misuseapalooza, and as Handlen points out, it's extremely unlikely even a second of that time is going to wind up being worth the audience's attention.

Funniest line of the night
Andy, re: vermin: They are bad at sharing but great at tag.

This was the first episode since LA X that didn't consist primarily of a painfully drawn-out build-up to a bunch of revelations/action in the last five minutes. So there's that.

Oprah's tribute also included a wince-worthy reference to Precious as "our movie", as if she had anything to do with Sidibe's casting or the movie getting made. She and Perry got involved months after the movie was made, and she had precisely dick to do with the creative process.

If I remember correctly, last year the conceit was that the presenters spoke directly to the nominees (i.e. "Kate Winslet, you have a nice rack"). This year, they were bizarrely split between talking to and about the actors at the same time ("Kate Winslet has a nice rack. Am I right, Academy of Arts and Science? Eh?…

To clarify: I didn't mean to criticize the first few episodes for being too nuanced - on the contrary, the Daniel and Amanda moments from 1-4 have been the most enjoyable for me so far. I'm instead pushing back against the idea that this episode was a let down, or a putting the pieces in place filler ep. It had more a…

I was less creeped out by that scene than I was by the dancing scene from two weeks ago.

Nuance only gets you so far.
The first four episodes were nuanced as all get out, laying out well-drawn characters in a thoroughly imagined universe. They were also sort of fussy, even boring. Everything was pretty and in its right place, but there wasn't a ton of forward momentum pushing one episode's story…

I've had ENOUGH of your Vassar bashing, young lady.

Yeah, the show returns to the "humorous Jim/Pam reaction shot" well too often, but it was those sort of shots that sold the entire second half of the hour.