Lots of people are negative about the Ruby storyline, but I like it. I think Michelle Newman at EW did a good job of defending it:

Yeah, setting up a registry at that store would have been obnoxious.

So janitor's not a real job with a real salary?

There was a little line from Crosby on the phone that seemed to indicate that a lot of people were doing it on their own with PC software. Sounds plausible, like this could be a bit of a doomed legacy industry.

I think many kids would do well to get more practical in this regard. And this is the exact opposite position that I had when I was Drew's age; but age and experience and seeing too many people saddled with crushing debt and useless degrees has changed my mind.

I don't agree with this. Early in the show he was sidelined, but in recent seasons he's gone through multiple relationship dramas, an abortion, conflict with his roommate, being reintroduced to and then let down by his dad, getting involved with helping his sister with her problems, etc.

And I think it's something we should all cut expecting moms slack on. They are creating human life within their abdomens!

Fair enough. So I'm still curious: what was the deal with BB? Did you bingewatch the whole series after hearing the raves for "Ozymandias", or something like that?

I think I'm seeing it from a slightly different angle than you are imagining I might. For me it's not a question of whether or not Brenda's hostility is understandable, whether she was justified in feeling that way. You make a very good case that she absolutely was, at least at that point in time (I guess we are…

Oh, that's a really interesting point. You might even broaden that out into a theorem: if a show or its characters change noticeably in later seasons, it will usually be seen as a negative change because most of the people who would have seen it as an improvement already bailed out due to not liking it enough at the…

Huh, Ozymandias was first aired only barely over a year ago. When did you see it?
I guess I can see what you mean. Kind of like when you're watching a movie with someone who's seen it before, and they're like "ooh, ooh, this next part is SO great".
But I still think we need to concentrate our fire on real spoilers. I…

I thought as it went along, the characters (as happens with many dramas, at least the really good ones) deepened, went beyond their early sort of cardboard cutout types and got into serious psychological explorations that hadn't been seen in the first season or two, and aren't seen anywhere else on TV (except maybe on…

It's been about a year since my last rewatch, but I never thought it was fair to characterize it that way. Seemed like a two way street. Can you cite the episode or episodes where you think Nate was guilty of a "full-on betrayal of Brenda"?