Persia—your comment reminded me how awesome "Magic Bullet" is—one of the highlights of Season 4. And part of what makes it so damn good is they show Fred to be so much tougher than you expect, so quick thinking on her feet. That episode, in many ways, shows even more than the last few season two eps just how Fred…

The whole season 6-goo-dor-bad thing has been gone over many times in these here Buffy threads, but I'm with Spicoli and Ripheus, who apparently is the only person in the world other than e who actually kind of likes "Doublemeat Palace." I think the season after "Tabula Rasa," other than possibly the aforementioned…

I found it very sad when she died of cancer. Such a great comedienne.

Agreed.

Yes. I hated her. SOOOO MUCH. It-it…the f—it. Flame. Flames… flames on the side of my face. Breathing, breath… heaving breaths… heaving…

As much as I love Pet Sounds, I get why some people can get turned off by it. But I don't know how anyone could not love their early stuff. "I Get Around," "Surfin' Safari," "Surfin' USA," Help Me Rhonda," "Fun Fun Fun"—they've get everything you'd want. Perfect pop goodness? Check. Great hooks? Check. Early punkish…

I'm all with the love for Tigermilk. Expectations and I Don't Love Anyone are two of my favorite songs ever, and are two of my four favorite B&S songs, along with Seeing Other People and Seymour Stein.

Add another voice to this chorus. Sunday crosswords are not that bad—Wednesday-level usually, Thursday-level at their worst, but are big and have a gimmick, which is what make them special. The Saturday crossword, on the other hand, is just plain brutal.

Why do people expect a sitcom to have the master plot of, say, Lost?

Who's Greg?

"Baby Shower" - Michael prepares for Jan's baby's birth. The rest of the episode gains tension from the fact that she gave birth without him. Another connected one.

I thought it was Willie Wonka circa Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

It's a lot to ask a program to pay $75,000 or so for the rights to the song for a throwaway gag.

It only covered one TV genre, but as a kid learned a hell of a lot about television history (at least purely on the creative side) through an old copy of The Great TV Sitcom. For each season in television history, the writer writes a long essay on the handful of classic sitcoms that premiered that year, plus capsule…

The racism on the show is casual racism. None of the characters would ever have the bad sense to come out and state their dislike for black people, or that they think less of them, or whatever. But it's there, and really I think that's been constant throughout the series. The aforementioned Roger blackface. The…

I'd agree, Rowan, except I think the ending of S6 is awful, worse than even the middle of S6 (the ending of S7 does, on the other hand, rebuild the show and make it watchable again).

5) Marvin

Count me as one of those who really, really likes Mostly Harmless. I think it's the third best of the books (1. H2G2, 2. Restaurant, 3. Mostly Harmless, 4. So Long, 5. Life, The Universe. I used to really dislike So Long, but it's grown on me). The dourness is, in my mind, understandable, and fits in with the almost…

I had an ex-girlfriend whose number I made it a point to delete from my phone—it was very symbolic. Then she texted me a couple of months later, and though I responded, I stil didn't save the number, again for symbolic reasons. A few months after that we for various reasons ended up seeing each other again and slowly…

Shame about Pavement
I saw them exactly one show earlier, at Thursday night's Hollywood Bowl Pavement/Sonic Youth double bill. It's too bad their last show had such problems, because that Hollywood Bowl show was awesome, and everyone seemed to be on the same page. There was certainly never a time here me and my…