I agree, it was better to end the episode this way.  He doesn't have his crown on at the end when he refers to Marcy as "Gunter".  So this was still a small step towards his madness.  Plus, this leaves the door open for an even more gutwrenching final scene where Simon finally does lose it all in a future episode.  If…

"I made you breakfast.  It's mostly pine needles and deer guts."  This episode wasn't big on huge laughs, but there's a ton of little moments like that surprisingly dark joke embedded in one of the episode's lighter moments.

Also, Jake's reaction to Marceline saying "I love him," was hilarious.  Even in an episode where he literally only has one line John DiMaggio manages to shine

Tom Kenny was pretty fantastic tonight.  His line readings on all of Simon's silly little jokes about watching VCR tapes and dead rats were all perfect for portraying a guy who's trying to keep up the spirits of a seven-year-old girl in the face of his impending insanity in a "The Road"-esque post-apocalyptic…

I like the way that it seems to be building up to Simon being touched by the kind gesture of the sentient bubblegum, but then he just makes a grossed-out face.  That was a good moment.

"CLAMBULANCE!  CLAMBULANCE!  CLAMBULANCE!"

Keep your stupid comments in your pocket!

But in all seriousness, that's a cool story.

"So, I mean, uh what's the interesting part?"

Let's go eat, huonnhh?

Speaking of which, how'd you ever meet @avclub-022199896b1f52952c180b60caa681bd:disqus , you never told us?

"What a wonderful party, @avclub-022199896b1f52952c180b60caa681bd:disqus , you invited all my friends.  Good thinking!"

Yeah, these commercials tend to utterly fail to provide a compelling promotion of the product, by the virtue of the fact that I forget almost instantly that the ads are for AT&T.

True, but I legitimately did not remember what these commercials were trying to sell before I read this article.  They are far more engaging than your average commercial, but they kind of suck tremendously at promoting their product.

I rather liked Reznor Karen O, and Atticus Ross' cover of "Immigrant Song" for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo".  I'm probably not about to go and listen to his entire soundtrack for the film outside of the context of the film itself, but that was pretty good.  I would normally expect an electronic cover of Zeppelin…

It's not even that small of a role.  He shows up in quite a few scenes.  It's more than just a cameo role, really.  Outside of the lead roles/their love interests/Michael Caine, his is pretty much the most important role.

On the tangentially-connected subject of perfect fantasy, I would like to submit "The Golden Compass" for consideration.  Not the whole "His Dark Materials" trilogy, mind you, just the first volume.

If you just incorporated the first four or five chapters of Book V into Book VI, I think the narrative structure would have been better.  Although maybe it would have been too narratively inconsistent to abruptly shift things like this, I dunno.

4. I feel like the anti-technology stuff is just as much a much more respectable pro-environmentalism, and against the oppressiveness that comes from a profit-squeezing laissez-faire kind of industrialism that led to a ton of people living absolutely squalid lifestyles to promote the industrial machine that was much…

@avclub-173af0430bc192b8a027af7cdba82cd7:disqus Tolkien was at worst unintentionally racist in his depictions.  I believe he was a reasonably progressive dude on race back in his day.  I certainly wouldn't call it "super racist".