Was it really? Well, the stunt of Britta (or Gillian Jacobs' stunt double, I guess) staying on top of the orb while Troy and Abed rolled it down the hall was actually pretty impressive. I was watching it going "Wow, that looks dangerous!"

It's the Emmys' inferiority complex about the medium they award. Any time a movie actor makes the leap "down" to TV (not down in my opinion, mind you, in the Emmys opinion), they are automatically at least nominated.

If there's one thing Emmy loves more than anything, it's movie actors making the leap to TV. It's an inferiority complex thing. Ergo, McConaughey has about a 90% chance of winning. The other 10% goes to Bryan Cranston. It is not Hamm's year.

Hell, there was never any hype over Episodes or House of Lies in the first place… yet there they are, Emmy nominees! Jeeez.

1984 is good, but Blade Runner, ET The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek: Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist, Rocky III, and John Carpenter's The Thing all opened within the space of one month in 1982. Now that's the ultimate summer movie month ever right there.

Heller is a Republican.

That said, if they do season 10, Old Tony should definitely appear!

This season actually passed the Bechdel test in the first minute of the first episode! I don't expect every episode since has, but it was good of them to pass the test quickly.

I agree; I normally defend 24 when people accuse it of being right-wing propaganda or whatever (especially seasons 2 and 5, which I think actually have a left-leaning worldview give or take a little torture), but if someone accuses season 4 of right-winginess I pretty much just have to shrug and go "Yep."

I would focus that even tighter to the last eight episodes of season 3. I find much of Jack's adventure to Mexico borderline-terrible, but S3 is still my third favorite of the nine seasons (behind 5 and 1), because the last eight episodes are pretty much perfect, right down to Jack's breakdown at the end.

I'm thinking the only reason they're letting Mark live is because they don't want the death of Audrey's husband to be on Jack's head AGAIN. If he wasn't Audrey's husband, this would have been a Lynn McGill-esque sacrifice episode for sure.

In a world where Chloe spent a season sharing main character status with Dana Walsh, this cannot be.

Seeing "Spartacus" under TV reviews was a surprising but very welcome thing when I hopped on AV Club today! The first three episodes are rough, but once we hit episode 4 ("Thing in the Pit"), we're officially off to the races, and once we hit the end of episode 6 the show is officially fucking brilliantly nuts.…

They shall be sent to the afterlife!

I hate to think of people's first viewing of the show being the bastardized Syfy cut, but as someone who has seen the show a whole bunch of times I would still be interested to watch Syfy's version once myself just for the bizarre novelty of it.

Whoa now, "The Thing in the Pit" is episode 4 and is when Spartacus officially starts kicking ass.

Ironically though, I've always thought of Wind Waker as perhaps the most mature of the Zelda games - not in the blood 'n' guts sense (though Link's climactic skull-impalement of Ganondorf IS pretty badass), but in the sense that it explores relatable themes of loss, and longing, and acceptance of futility in the…

My ranking is close to yours, with just a couple swaps:

Great mini-essay. The driving energy of 24's closing credits theme always puts the perfect capper on an episode, and I sit through it every time. The Wire's is great too. I also really love Friday Night Lights' closing credits music, which is versatile enough that it can cap off a happy or sad ending and work equally…

Agreed. Sean Callery is as key to 24 as John Williams is to Star Wars and Howard Shore to Lord of the Rings. His music is the heartbeat of the show, and has been since season 1 episode 1.