After stabbing Joe with a FORK, Claire picked up the razor-sharp STEAK KNIFE that Joe had dropped and cut the ropes that bound the hostage couple. Now, she could have just as easily used that STEAK KNIFE to slice Joe's throat from ear to ear, or at the very least just keep stabbing Joe repeatedly in the torso. End of…

I had forgotten about Gioffre, but the sea of characters had rather overwhelmed me during the first few episodes. In reality, Gioffre was the fourth child of Alexander VI, but I always believed he was meant to be Juan on the show (apparently I was wrong, since Gioffre actually existed on the show).

@avclub-0c9de7fbac44fdcea080c61e55772199:disqus  @mickeymammoth:disqus I really didn't even consider the "delegating secretarial stuff to Dawn" to be first prescursor to Joan's ascension to power. To me, it comes before that, when Kate tells Joan how much she "admires your executive status" and eggs Joan on with…

Weiner showed off his mastery when he built the elegant foundation of this lustrous episode. It resulted in so many superb surprises and deft developments that there's just no way to do them all justice in a single post.

Well, to paraphrase Chappell's observation, Holliday Grainger's cat-who-ate-the-cock grin could inspire an apparition's pecker to full salute, so we can hardly blame François Arnaud's mirror for showing a little steam.

I was a late-comer to this mini-series, power-watching the first five episodes right before watching the last two On Demand. And I must agree with others that Top Of The Lake was more like a 7-hour movie than episodic TV serialization. It greatly benefits from viewing as a complete, epic movie rather than individual…

I don't mean to pick on Phil. Typos do bother me, because I'm a business writer and things have to be "just so" before we submit anything to a client. Whereas on AV, I kin git away w/saying stuff anyways I wanna!

As authentic to its 1960s era as Mad Men often is, the aura of the show this season evokes something even further back in time. This is partly due to the characters' personal histories (growing up in the '30s, '40s or '50s, whereas our youth was spent in the '70s, '80s or '90s). When they show flashbacks with period…

Yes, I was actually going to point out that I found the Mad Men depiction of Roger's trip (which I saw in its entirety on the show) one of the most pragmatic depictions of my type of experiences. I only decided not to because my original post was already bordering on the too-long side.

The problem with drug experiences on screen is that they attempt to depict something that is very hard to depict to a universal audience. Every person has a different chemical reaction to different types of drugs and they span an enormous range of influence; from beautiful to nightmarish.

"Week after week, Game Of Thrones is stealthily one of the best directed shows on TV, not because it calls attention to itself in a flashy way but because it simply settles in and figures out the best shot compositions and cutting to tell the story as elegantly and as visually as it can."

"Rainey has publicly accused her rapist and Twitter,"

Well, she didn't talk to Charlie on the phone in this episode. In the preview for next week, they showed Charlie's picture on Jackie's smart phone, but she wasn't talking to him then either. But maybe she does next week (I haven't got around to watching the 2nd ep On Demand). I thought Charlie was dead?

I had avoided The Borgias for two seasons because the last show I thought I'd ever get into was a historic melodrama centered on the Pope. But since I subscribe to Showtime and the third season was imminent, I figured what the hell and power-watched the entirety of the episodes in the last two weeks.

Well, it wasn't so bad, I thought. It was a bit disappointing to see so many puzzle pieces rearranged back into their original picture, but I'm holding out hope that the season will escalate in quality and the new characters will prove worthy additions. Edie Falco remains interesting in a role that gives her a chance…

I'll chime back in to agree again with @avclub-26c0eb74eb2e815d15918a4ac46473ec:disqus  It's not that I don't think this kind of stuff happens. As @avclub-920530cb8744c679e3a2ece84f1d5ce4:disqus said, we can bottle up emotions and then some little artifact of life can trigger a sudden release. It's happened to me as…

Yes, you're right, it was the photographer scene. He was looking at the lighter, but it was in his office, not his bed.

I know lots of people complain about scores being distracting, so I sympathize with you and with them, but I can't empathize. I rarely find accompanying music to be annoying unless it's drowning out dialogue. And in most cases, Mad Men has employed music very effectively from day one, so raspberries to your complaint.

Sally is NOT the worst. She barely holds a candle to her mother, but her flame will burn brightly in the years ahead. Which makes me think how much I would love to see a follow-up movie that takes the cast twenty years into the future and shows their life outcomes in the '80s. Alas, Weiner is almost certainly going to…

I think he knows what he's trying to portray. And he's trying to portray Betty feeling confident in a healthy relationship. But you have to remember, Betty is a cold, narrow-minded woman with sociopathic tendencies (and a "perverse person" as Weiner states) but still teetering on the edge of embracing social norms and…