@avclub-ddd81c07bc56dcca3d820c4fe2d688c8:disqus — I agree; the non-Heisenberg characters in this story also have agency.  Hank also chose to physically assault Jesse in his home, which led to his suspension, which meant Hank was unarmed during his confrontation with the Cousins (something Gus did not anticipate — he…

@avclub-af8127a980a98471f696a5a395b9088d:disqus — The Cousins shot Hank because Hank shot Tuco, because he was tracking down Jesse Pinkman's car, which was out in the desert because Tuco had kidnapped Walt and Jesse and wanted to drive them down to Mexico and make them cook meth.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that.  Aaron Paul was very subtly channeling Mike's mannerisms, just like Walter became more like Gus Fring (wearing that nerdy sweater-and-collars combo, engaging in Fring-like customer service at the car wash, and placing a towel beneath his knees before vomiting, just like…

The thing is, if you're 6,000 years old, aren't you likely to be an ancestor of pretty much every mortal?  We all have eight great-grandparents and sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on and so forth geometrically.  It's not possible to walk the earth creating bastard children for centuries without eventually…

Honestly the damage assessment was all I could think about during the last 30 minutes of this movie, because Superman seemed to be creating a 9/11-level event every time he threw a punch at Zod.  And even though it's a work of fiction, this is distracting, because I kept thinking about the tens of thousands of…

Yup, that original draft of the opening crawl is a good example of the shit George Lucas will write before the money guys tell him "No fucking way."  Early in his career he would go back to his typewriter and edit it down into something filmable.  The problem with the prequels is that by 1999, George Lucas *was* the…

From a plotting standpoint, my issue is that the original series finale actually did a very good job of giving us closure for most of the Bluths, even though it was totally unplanned and rushed — and then Season 4 rips off all the band-aids by reversing or undermining almost everything that happens in the Season 3…

What about "No touching!" or "Say goodbye to these!" or "I've made a huge mistake" from the original run?  These repetitions have always been the Lego blocks of Arrested Development's humor — lines that aren't necessarily funny on their own, but become funny when the context changes or an unexpected character says it…

Definitely.  I think that when Don overheard Sylvia and Arnold fighting from the elevator, he realized just how fucked up the affair was on many different levels, and knew he had to get out of it somehow.  Obviously Don doesn't care much about the more obvious issues (i.e., that he's cheating on Megan and destroying…

Last night my girlfriend came up with the theory that the very last scene of the series finale will be a live-action recreation of the opening credits (minus Don landing on his feet).

It's kind of funny to re-watch the first season now and realize that they actually tried to stick to the real-time premise at first — at one point Jack spends almost an entire episode stuck in traffic, people get sleepy, there's a shift change at CTU, and Jack even eats a meal while in custody.  For every season after…

Most Kickstarter projects are meant to finance projects that have no real shot at monetization.  A young director trying to get money to shoot his or her web series doesn't expect to actually sell the web series at a fantastic profit — they expect to use the finished product to build an audience, demonstrate proof of…

Episodes happening on Walt's birthday?  The pilot took place on Walt's birthday in 2008 and Fifty-One took place one year later in 2009.  The flash-forward from the beginning of last season took place two years after the pilot in 2010.

They've actually mostly kept the action locked down to 2008/2009, with a few slip-ups (like Todd's uncle's reference to bin Laden's death).  In a season 4 episode, Hank watches a real-life 2009 ABQ city council meeting and the date is visible on-screen.  Everyone is still using flip phones and clunky laptops and there…

NBC's Classic Night lineup of Seinfeld/Cheers/Frasier/Friends episodes might work right now, in 2013, when there are still millions of people in the demo who grew up watching those shows and have a little bit of nostalgia for them.  But would Lucy or Honeymooners re-runs really pull in the younger viewers?  How about…

The thing is, even the "bad" movies in Tom Cruise's filmography are totally watchable.  I got dragged by an old girlfriend to Knight and Day, which is probably the worst movie I've seen him in, and it was still pretty entertaining.  If you compare the dark spots in his filmography to the lesser work of other movie…

Comic-Andrea was late-20's and really immature before the zombie apocalypse hit.  The starting point for the character is that she never really knew what she wanted to do with her life and had strained relationships with everyone in her family.  The arc of the character is such that she resolves her daddy issues by…

As disgusting as it is that an actor would receive death threats over a fictional character they were playing, Andrea's death was necessary for this show to move forward.

This episode felt like an hour-long excuse to bring more redshirts into the prison and make sure that AMC doesn't have to shell out for an expensive new set next season.

Yeah, I think the reviewer's take on this episode's opening is way off — though I also find it hard to blame him for zoning out during the extremely tedious prison drama.  The setting worked great in the comics but it's just so dull and flat on the TV show.  Things only liven up during supply runs and skirmishes with…