I gotta support Nathan Fillion too. He's got the right amount of warmth, charm and talent, plus as much as I love him, I don't even think we've seen his best yet.

Sorry for confusing you. Not to confuse you further, but why don't you go call up Matthew Weiner or David Mamet and ask them if they think their work is pointless.

This episode didn't do a lot for me.

That's bang-on: the whole conceit of Don Draper - and the entire point of the first season - is that he's literally a 'self-made man.' An identity stolen and personality invented by Dick Whitman to create - via this fantastic new image - the ultimate ad-man, confidence and all.

I think that's bang-on, loyal A.V. Club reader. I was thinking exactly that when I was watching, and I'd even forgotten the $400: I just thought she might've wanted something from her bag, or wanted to take it to bed - as I've read girls do - and got caught up in the white guilt loop you described so well.

Take heart, Fandango - at its best the show deliberately avoids scenarios that can be entirely, literally 'interpreted,' if you follow me. Sometimes this works and the various elements - scenario, music, evocation of period or a particular kind of night - combine into something that is greater than the sum of those…

David Carbonara: the unsung hero of Mad Men. He can go straight from that bubbles-in-the-champagne-cartoon-creeping-around stuff to those lovely, dark, open, string pieces that let us know we're about to go for a walk inside Don's head.

Course, that ad campaign was bullshit, given they're two completely different shows: one's an incredibly slow-paced, dialogue heavy, overblown soap opera with no guns or zombies or anything… and then there's Mad Men

Damned straight, close-watcher. She was perfectly cast, and I think that's part of what gives people a lot of trouble. In Season 1 - before the show abandons the character - you see her do sweetness, vanity, vulnerability and poorly-concealed girlishness in a 0.5 second expression.

Well said, sir. I've been telling that to anyone who'll listen (ie, no-one) for a while, now.

I was about to weigh into this thread to say how unbelievably nerdy everyone was, then I remembered this (entirely genuine) dream I had recently.
 
Bruce Banner's in it, and there are - seriously - invisible zombie elephants. So far, so-hum, so subconscious, you might say. And you might be right.

I'm genuinely not trying to be argumentative, but Fincher is wildly overrated in these parts particularly. I can't even seriously address the concerns of the author of this piece, given the throwaway nature of the film he's discussing; Alien 3 is the worst non-Predator related entry in the series; Seven is brilliant;…

Holy Fucking Shit! 31,000 people can't be wrong - that fourth season is in the bag. That's a shit comment, for the numbers only, I admit. I'm sorry, but I'm very tired. I'll have a real zinger for the 50,000s.

You should - it's less devastating the second time around, but just as good. After that Ladykillers-shaped bump in the road back there, the Coens have slipped right back into their role as America's greatest living filmmakers, and A Serious Man is as strong an argument for that as any of their movies.

Bit pointless commenting at this late stage, but I bought Shadows Of The Damned on the strength of this list, and I am vewwy angwy indeed - it's an absolute piece of shit, which I would urge anyone to avoid. Dull, dated, vulgar, aesthetically clumsy and ugly as all hell (not in the way it intends) and incredibly…

I have never agreed with every single word Tasha Robinson has said…(dum dum DUMMMM!)…until today!

This is damned serious - that was one of the show's best ever episodes. It's on fire this season.

Jesus, people - is there no-one here at all that gives a tits about Emily Blunt? Has nobody seen the Adjustment Bureau? Yeah, sure, it was like a romcom for Philip K Dick fans, and didn't succeed overall, but was Blunt not a real revelation to anyone? Christ, she knocked it out of the park in that movie - if a dude…

In the Neighbourhood is nice.

It's one of the greatest things about him - he's always pushing forward. He's got his bedrock structures that come up again and again alright - everybody needs a foundation - but he's always fucking around with his voice a bit, or getting a little more melodic than you might think, or just hitting something with a…