Not that I necessarily disagree in detail, but what's your motive in choosing those two for comparison? Just that they're horror movies set in cold, isolated places?

And probably embellishing things substantially — That's one of the chief benefits of being a "last survivor". I bet Del Monte and Newman have some great tales to tell about the San Francisco earthquake.

Which looks suspiciously intentional.

I guess Apu would know it too, then, given how he enjoys singing "Dream Police" while washing his Firebird.

Philadelphia area:

I guess one could make the case that a lot of his seeming stupidity is really driven by simply not giving a fuck, and sincerely believing he can't die. Being drunk 90% of the time is probably also a factor.

Those should provide pretty clear precedent, though I think they were independent enough productions to not run afoul of whatever contractual issues might arise were Moffat to try to use any of his current production crew.

And in all of television…

The Fonzie statue looks like Dana Carvey, which makes it marginally less horrifying than a statue that looks like Clint Howard wearing plastic Devo hair.

"Smartest and most competent" might be pushing it — Granted the "smartest" bar is pretty low. Archer and Lana are both frighteningly competent when it comes to combat, though. Archer's also got driving going for him.

Except the passengers here wouldn't have been collateral damage; They'd have been the motive.

I'm sure Pluto will be reclassified multiple times over the next thousand years.

I think most still have lighter-type power jacks that you could plug a lighter into. I wonder if anyone out there has developed a USB cigarette lighter…

I more or less stopped watching the various late night talk shows in the late '90s, so my stand-up comedy awareness pretty much ended then. Watching this, I'm really sorry I missed Hedberg (though I guess I missed the heartbreak as well).

That doesn't seem like a very close resemblance to me, but I'm perfectly willing to pretend.

I don't think I'd agree that the song talks about "tossing fantasies aside" in favor of reality. I'd say it's more about recognizing that even as reality nominally displaces naive fantasy, it's the fantasy that endures more vividly in memory, and "worldliness" doesn't really bring wisdom.

Next on Maury Povich….

I see him as more like Doctors Bishop and Bell on Fringe — embracing all kinds of weird paradigms.

Much as I enjoyed this episode, I may have enjoyed a video of you explaining your splinter mission to your mom more.

I was just pointing out the advantages of basing a series on a centuries old, public domain, epic rather than an ongoing story being written by a guy who's an actuarial nightmare.