Season 5 30 Rock had Avery Jessup.  Season 6 of 30 Rock had Hazel.  While both seasons had both its problems and charms, Hazel embodied a Scrappy Do quality that the show seemed aware of in this past last season when referring to her in TV trope terms.

@avclub-394dc8be941678fb1dcfc647005e6af6:disqus Nope, and in fact, the moment the age difference was mentioned on the show, my mind went 'Oh… this will be an even bigger issue now for them'.   

@avclub-394dc8be941678fb1dcfc647005e6af6:disqus Of course not but I am fascinated in how that will work on the show.  Either he will let it slide believing she is 'young' and/or just blame himself or it really hurts their relationship.  If it hurts their relationship, where will he go since he lives with her as of now…

I am banking on a regrettable hook-up that will go just as well as Marnie and Elijah did.  I remember a clip of Season 2 with a close-up Shoshanna crying that I have yet to see again thus far, so I am definitely seeing Ray finding out at some point.   But yeah, I will not be in a good mood if those two break-up.  The…

There was also the time, and I believe it was in "Welcome to Bushwick", where Marnie mentioned that Hannah has this constructed 'mythology' of herself that she must sleep 11-12 hours a day no matter what, which Hannah counters she has done since the time she had mono.

**Sighs**  Oh, Shoshanna.

Oh, that song.  It is relentless.  The recording of the show available on Youtube with Betsy Joslyn as Johanna singing the sung is hysterical.  I swear at some point she goes cross-eyed as she reaches for those high notes. 

Oh.  Now I need to find that.  Thanks for the heads up. 

The one time I saw it on stage was a tour of the recent US revival that under John Doyle's direction stripped down the musical entirely to having the actors play the instruments on stage and minimize the ensemble to just the singing parts.  This was after the movie, but I was aware of the revival on Broadway with…

1.) Follies
2.) Sweeney Todd
3.) Into the Woods
4.) Assassins
5.) Pacific Overtures

Gateways to Geekery: Stephen Sondheim would make a fantastic AV Club piece. 

George Hearn is the definitive Sweeney Todd/Benjamin Barker for me but I liked Depp a lot.  Actually, everybody in the movie was fine for me.  Burton's decision to suck out the humor of "A Little Priest" and the rest of the musical under-served the material.

To each their own.  Showing emptiness (I think the film starts out as revenge but to me it just shows the emptiness of the whole concept) to that specific event to me is a pretty ballsy choice.  As far as length, I could see certain sections tighter but really not that cut down to where it is that much closer to 2…

I can definitely tolerate the show when there was much more diversity of opinions present on certain subjects or they are coming to a common theme among different parts of pop culture.  It is just that this was not the case in this one and when it is not present, it just comes off as this cutesy, middle-brow,…

I actually listened into Culture Gabfest this week again because I just wanted to hear everybody's two cents (and I still kinda like Dana Stevens as a critic even though her naivete on other subjects is pretty damn blown open on this podcast) on the telecast. While talking about Anne Hathaway, Jody Rosen goes…

I never listen to the guests unless they are talking to unless it is a non-professional/friend of the show. 

Greenwald gets way too declarative on loads of stuff and I say that as somebody who often takes his side on movies and TV. I mean, I didn't like Django Unchained but saying Waltz's performance was worst in the category, with Arkin and DeNiro there, was overreach. Especially when he was a lead. I thought Wesley…

I really had to re-evaluate how terrible my week was after I listened to the entire Oscar podcast of Pop Culture Happy Hour despite disagreeing with every opinion about the nominated films expressed by the entire panel that really loved Argo and was really dismissive of Lincoln on Spielberg terms than…

Post-production reactions though.  And her son was right next to her. 

Well, the Camp Chapman incident did really happen.  Including the cake detail.  Mark Boal's been explicit saying that character was a composite but it is based heavily on the woman at the center of that incident, Jennifer Matthews who was widely-respected among her peers did expose Camp Chapman to that attack.