The part that just occurred to me is that finding him doing coke was the perfect chip Jake could keep in his pocket to help Sophia if only he looked the other way. But he's a good cop and he just couldn't do it, even for the woman he loves. His "I shouldn't have come here" was more devastating than I first imagined it.

I loved that after the bit I quoted (from 30 Rock, of course) they immediately slagged L.A.

The pause thing was essentially break-up light. I have no idea what a person is supposed to make of such a thing, so it's not surprising someone like Jake, wanting to save the relationship, went proactive.

"You should go before they pod you and harvest your brain."

"Philly rules! Cheesesteaks, Bobby Clarke, Wil Smith! Boston sucks!"
"Boston is the greatest city in the world! Boston tea party, Boston cream pie, Boston Rob Mariano, birthplace of Benjamin Franklin…"
"Yeah, and then he looked around, realized it sucked and moved to Philadelphia!"

"Why is everyone looking at us? We're the ones who eat up all the crumbs."
"Yeah, we're the solution"

Yeah, "I Won't Back Down" slowed down sounds like an extremely generic gospel song.

I don't get it.. we stood him up at the gates of hell! That usually works.

"Now, at the risk of being unpopular, this reporter places the blame for all of this squarely on YOU, the viewers."

That took a little longer to come up than I would've imagined. Well, might as well finish it:

It actually seems that Sophia wasn't all that surprised her boss was doing coke, perhaps another reason she wanted to keep him away from the party and wanted to "pause" the relationship (maybe hoping her boss would soon screw things up on his own and be replaced.) Of course, she couldn't tell Jake all this.

Hopkins Lecter was good as far as scenery chewing goes, but then it became iconic for all the wrong reasons. The jokey-ness of the character ("fava beans and a nice Chianti") spawned a million imitations on homages, thoroughly blunting whatever significance the characterization could've achieved. The sequels then…

The best scene to me is between the one you mentioned and the end credits. End credits get the nod for the choice in lettering style and the fact that it meant the damn thing was over.

I am not a crackpot.

Quite right. It was clearly a nod to the character without being a out and out parody (for the voice Shearer smartly didn't go anywhere near a Cosby imitation.) Unless the gag was merely that Hibbert was upbeat as opposed to generally put upon.

It seems that many time travel films/tv episodes (where characters go to a historical past) have the characters bumping into historical figures, giving them the right suggestion or inspiration. Dr Who has probably done it a million times by now. It is a bit of tired trope, one might think.

If there's anything to hate this film for (and there are many things) it's that it popularized a certain obnoxious phrase. People who seriously say, "Life is like a box of chocolates…" should get hit in the face with a frying pan wielded by Rachael Lee Cook.

This one displeases me.

All good though I have to say I don't think I laughed at any episode harder than I did "The Fusilli Jerry." Jerry Stiller was especially hysterical. "Assman?! I'll give him Assman!!"

So just to be clear, you wanted everyone to go to the mall- today?