At certain times, I think this show sacrificed character work for cringe-comedy moments that didn't seem grounded in how these characters would behave.

Somebody mentioned in the comments a few episodes ago that they thought Jessica Walter might be ill, because Mallory has been sidelined so much this season and her voice sounds weak, and I am starting to think there's something to that. She sounded really hoarse and soft tonight.

I think Bubblegum is a villain, and her own people are going to turn on her.

It looks like he was able to use the assets from the South Park video game to make his own South Park cartoon. I wonder how he was able to unpack them like that.

I think Arya is going to lose herself to the "I am no one" ideology of the faceless men. I think she's going to wind up doing something terrible, like killing Sansa. If she kills Dany, it won't be at the end. it will be in book 6, before Dany ever gets to sail for King's Landing.

With Littlefinger and Sansa holed up in the Vale, and the natural defenses of the keep there so carefully described, there's a 100% chance that somebody is going to try to take that by force. I hope it ends up being the White Walkers. Littlefinger needs to face an enemy he can't scheme against or manipulate.

That's a really happy ending for a series that's really not about happy endings. I think Arya might be the one who kills Dany.

These kinds of theories are inherently defective. Martin isn't writing this so that people who dive deep into the lore can figure everything out. He wants to fuck with those people at least as much as he wants to fuck with everybody else. Maybe even more. If you think close-reading for clues about Jon Snow's…

I was a little frustrated with the Peter Gregory subplot. If a venture capital firm hired a PR agency to create the most flattering possible narrative about what VCs do, I think it would have looked something like this. They want to be seen as guys who use their vast knowledge and genius intellects to spot…

There has to be an element of truth to the central observation, or the joke doesn't land. If you make a joke about how Chris Christie is fat, that might be funny, but if you make a joke about how Obama is fat, it would not be funny, because Obama is not fat.

If arguing over which week was the cutoff for an abortion was something people actually did in the Democratic party, then this might have some relevance. But people do not do that. Democrats support abortion rights.

I don't think so. If you're vice president, you have a position on abortion, and it's your party's position. This is really fundamental, Abortion rights are protected by the Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. So there are two ways to prohibit abortion in the US:

I've got to say: this was a huge miss for "Veep." It's completely unbelievable that a former US Senator and sitting Vice President would not have a position on abortion, and it's a very fundamental misunderstanding of American party politics to think it would be a difficult political calculation for a candidate in a…

Yeah, it's called DON'T EVER GET OLD.  Won the Macavity award at Bouchercon this weekend.

I like GIRLS. But Dads could be interesting. AV Club isn't recapping it, though.

I am going to try to convince AVC to hire me to recap DADS, since they didn't assign it to anyone.

Shit, I actually meant to say something about that. It would have been cool for the last shot of the series to be the Deb bench next to the Laguerta bench, with Angel and Quinn sitting on the benches and crying.

1. In the final hour, it all comes down to Saxon and Elway. Almost as good as Colin Hanks and Imaginary Adama.

Rituals are generally not as important as people think they are. The only thing that has to be said a certain way is the Miranda warning; a confession may be ruled inadmissible if a suspect isn't informed of his rights.

1. The writers of Dexter are all like: "Look at us! We killed Vogel! We made you sad, because you liked her so much! OMG! Ur tears! They are delicious!"