"My name is Luka, I live on the second floor. Aaaaah!"
I love the incongruity of that moment.

The best part is after Milhouse accuses Bart of swearing, while Milhouse's mom is kicking him out, Bart says something like "But – damn – I wasn't – hell – swearing."

"I'm a shooting star leaping through the sky

I just got through watching the run of Deep Space Nine for the first time and thought Combs was always a lot of fun as Weyoun. He brought the perfect amount of toadiness and servility combined with arrogance to that character. Plus he really took advantage of the weird blue contact lenses they gave him — lots of…

Does anyone else feel like there is some violent explosion coming on the show? I mean, beyond the fistfight between Pete and Lane? The first five episodes seem to dwell on random violent acts (the Chicago nurse slayings, the Charles Whitman shooting), social unrest (the riots in Harlem, the protest outside the…

"Art made its final flight, climbed higher and higher in an ever-decreasing tighter-turning spiral until… it disappeared up its own fundamental aperture… and came out the other side as Art Theory!" Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word.

I don't know if the tank is supposed to be nitrous, but I did read (I think in "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls") that Dennis Hopper did own his own nitrous tank, which he got from some quack doctor. Also, he tried to attack Rip Torn with a knife, but Rip, a former Army MP, just told him "meet me in the alley." Hopper never…

"There’s an irony embedded in that streak that Moneyball can’t bring itself to acknowledge: Running off 20 games straight is a statistical anomaly, and should be tossed out along with Beane’s own lingering superstitions."

You're probably right, Kara, and that's a good diagnosis of why it will fail. And I loved this review, just to make that clear. Some of the best work TVW has done I think. It just seemed to echo other famous "Dewey Beats Truman" reviews like Kael's negative review of Star Wars.

"This is a shoo-in for the worst show of the year and maybe even the decade. I hope it’s ushered off the airwaves after one airing, and I hope that someday, you realize how craven, crass, and awful it really was."

I was also confused about the girl who was murdered sneaking back into the college, and after some searching discovered that apparently each PBS episode has 10 minutes hacked off to fit into the 90 minute run time.  I can only assume that the explanation for that murder was somewhere in that 10 minutes, as well as…

On the opening monologue - the comedy at the beginning always relates to the episode in interesting ways, and I thought last night's episode was particularly clever on that score.  You would think his comments on the self-absorption of young people would apply to the niece, but it seems to me that the monologue…

I only vaguely remember this episode, but does anyone else find it implausible that a White House press secretary would make those kind of remarks in a briefing?  It would be akin to calling out the Chinese for human rights abuses or calling the Russians mobsters.  It's not that it's wrong (or right), per se, but that…

Halloween monsters
This may not make total sense, but I thought the bullying monsters in "Halloween" were supposed to be _actual_ monsters. It was something about the way those guys talked — not like real assholes would have in that kind of situation — and the fact that the green monster kept calling the big guy…

NewsRadio and Spy Magazine
I was reading about everyone's favorite moments, which reminded me of Jimmy's reading in Super Karate Monkey Death Car, which reminded me of an interesting detail I learned about the genesis of that bit that I'd been meaning to share here.

A few ideas (not all of them quite fit your criteria, though):

Thanks, Donna
These recaps have been a real pleasure to read. I agree that the fifth season represented a falling off, which was probably inevitable given the circumstances. It felt like no one in the cast really wanted to be funny after the death of Phil Hartman, as if it was somehow inappropriate to engage in the…

The end of Lisa/Dave
Was anyone else a little sad to see the final nail in the Lisa/Dave relationship? I always thought those crazy kids would wind up together. The fact that they didn't reminded me of what Julia Louis-Dreyfuss said somewhere (I can't remember where) about the dynamic between Elaine and Jerry in…

I agree, Flaubert, and to address Hyden's speculation, I think it's no mistake that the Eagles scene comes right after the "Stay the hell out of Malibu!" scene. Both scenes are about how an easier-going, nostalgic idea of America won out over the more radical, revolutionary ideas of the '60s. The connection between…

But do these bands Rot, Rock, or Rule?
I agree Dylan only rocks, as he had a few bad albums, and therefore didn't have the extra "oomph" to get into the "Rule" category.