Johnny is just so darn jolly
It's really hard to dislike him, even when he is being evil or a smelly homeless drunk.

Ah, Bon Jovi, that sounds right. Matthew just proves that when your elders are punks, the only real punk thing to do is to listen to super mainstream music.

I enjoyed that Dave objected in stereotypical angry-parent mode "I will not have you listening to this garbage!" when he found out Matthew was listening to Stryper.

ESPN's Fox News problem
Something Noel touched on but that I think has really become a problem for ESPN is its conflict of interest problem. When a network has a vested interest in getting people to tune into a particular broadcast (say the NBA finals, or even Arena Football, which ESPN did try to promote briefly),…

Other good lines
"Beth _is_ one of the wolves that haunts the mean streets of New York City."

Just remembered this
But "The Lam" has a nice call out to "Lolita" when Johnny proposes to Lisa. Something like "Lisa Miller, light of my life, fire of my loins, will you marry me?"

Some other good lines
Johnny Johnson: All right. Lisa, have you ever noticed know how really good-looking guys with really nice cars get lots of dates? Now imagine: a really good-looking guy, nice car, and an empire. You do the math.

Some other good lines
Johnny Johnson: All right. Lisa, have you ever noticed know how really good-looking guys with really nice cars get lots of dates? Now imagine: a really good-looking guy, nice car, and an empire. You do the math.

Public radio bashing
This is late and probably no one will read it, but I just remembered something else from "Flowers for Matthew": it features the second instance of prominent NPR bashing on NewsRadio:

"The elusive homemade smart drink"
I was wondering how many other TV shows have done a "smart drink" episode. A few come to mind: Seinfeld ("The Abstinence"), where George forgoes sex and becomes wicked smart); Star Trek TNG ("The Nth Degree") where Barclay's brain is taken over by an alien race; the Simpsons (when…

Why not _no_ replacement for Bill?
I wonder if they ever considered just leaving that spot unfilled after Phil Hartman's death. There were enough strong relationships between the remaining characters to sustain the plot, I would think. The only problem is that it would really make it difficult to keep up the…

"Pour vous"
Am I wrong, or is this what Homer says to Marge when he gives her the onion ring wedding ring? If so, I always thought that was a nice call back to Homer's original scheme to get Marge to hang out with him — French tutoring.

The camera angles
Did they drive anyone else insane? I know they get to break out the fancy new toys at the big games, but the constant switching to an overhead shot made me seasick.

Just a sidenote on the ticket fiasco
I kinda thought this article would be about this: http://blogs.reuters.com/fe…

Dangling modifier watch
"Pay attention, for example, to the camera's insistent focus on Mildred's hands, as they expertly crimp a pie crust or separate an egg, or later, as they practice a multi-plate carry with pie pans filled with pebbles, and later still, in "Part Two," when dashing California playboy Monty Beragon…

It kind of was a dig at The Office/Parks & Rec though
I thought the documentary format really was meant to be a pointed critique of those shows: the way they shoe-horn in exposition, their tics ("You'd better not splice in footage of me freaking out!"). The funny thing, though, was that it really worked to make the…

A musical question
I know nothing about drumming, but one thing I always liked about the White Stripes was the slight lag between the rhythm of the guitar and the rhythm of the drum. Like, the guitar would hit a beat at x, and the drum would hit the beat at x+.1 second. My guess is that musicians would say "that's…

I wouldn't say I'm "bothered" by amoral people, but I think there is a strong element in noir of the good man being sucked in by the amoral person (frequently a woman — the "femme fatale"), with the whole destructive process usually viewed as unavoidable but tragic (The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Postman…

Is she evil, or just a woman?
I had a professor bring this movie up as an example of a movie that bothered people because the woman won in the end and suffered no comeuppance. My take was that it bothered people because the woman was an amoral psychopath who pulled a particularly heinous trick to get away with…

And he directed an episode of Terriers last year ("Agua Caliente"). Plus, just looking at his IMDB page, he's done a lot of TV directing recently, for some other pretty good shows: Battlestar Galactica, Breaking Bad, Justified, Dexter.