Hi there! I should be at work because Hanukkah is only a holiday for school kids, but instead I'm sick at home and getting rather annoyed with that. So how about some thoughts on stuff I watched in the last week?

I'd move "Men Against Fire" up a couple of notches, on the strength on the central performance and the fact that I think it makes a valuable point about how the dehumanization of certain groups happens. But otherwise we're in agreement.

Please tell me the grave that Lito and Alejandro are standing over in that picture is Daniela's.

Though in that case, there was a conscious effort to "reinvent" The Muppet Show in a way that absolutely nobody asked for or wanted once they saw it. Netflix basically remade Full House as it always was, which is what I imagine they'd do to The Muppet Show if they ever got it.

The first season, I thought, was pretty solid - mainly buoyed by a strong cast playing kooky characters, but still worth watching. I enjoyed the genuine benevolence that underpinned the show's writing, the fact that it took seriously the weirdness of all the characters, whether in the main cast or guest characters,…

Ah, liberal smugness on the internet, the most powerful force in the universe. That is absolutely a better explanation for Trump's election than a well-documented, gleefully-admitted, centuries-old tradition of racism and white supremacy.

Right, because free college tuition, raising the minimum wage, expanding the ACA, those are all "civil rights" policies, not economic ones. Not to mention raising taxes on the rich.

I think that's going a bit too far. My sense is that MbtS is trying to be the grown-up, adult (and also working class) version of a very familiar Lifetime movie, in which a broken person is healed through the power of parenting a troubled child. In Manchester, Lee really tries to be there for his nephew, but…

True, though most Israeli vineyards are owned and operated by secular or modern orthodox Jews. It's more a matter of finding a creative way of getting around the orthodox establishment, since without a kashrut certificate, the major supermarket chains won't carry your brand.

The reason that Israeli wine is of "surprisingly" high quality despite meeting kashrut requirements is very simple: it isn't actually being boiled. The wine is passed through a double pipe, the outside of which is heated to boiling temperatures, while the insulated inside pipe remains cool. This is considered enough…

I think calling this film a meditation on the failure of a system is slightly off the point. From what I've read, ordeals such as the ones described in this review don't represent the system failing. They represent it succeeding, at its purpose of placing so many hurdles in the path of people who need help and…

I actually agree that Very Bad Things will happen if the media becomes even more compromised than it already is - just look at Russia and Turkey for examples of how bad things can get. But it's possible for that to be true even as we acknowledge that things are already quite bad, and that it's been a very long time…

Points 3 and 4 conveniently elide a major criticism of the media, which played a huge part in making point 2 happen: the problem isn't fake news, but fake equivalence. A news media that spends more time on the fake scandal of Hillary Clinton's emails than it does on all policy issues combined, that reports a story…

Yeah, I'm pretty sure there were a lot of things that could have gone on this list above "too many surprise album drops" and "Bryan Fuller bows out of the new Star Trek show". Hell, that Star Trek thing would be an exaggeration even if it had included this year's actual Trek-abomination, Star Trek Beyond.

The Hamilton cast made a respectful, generous statement to the vice-president-elect, after spending hours entertaining him. Trump went on twitter to cast that action as an attack and call for banning the musical. He absolutely picked that fight.

And that is what makes them not good people. Because the thing is, to believe that all of these things are imminent, you have to choose not to see the world as it is. Its not stupidity or blindness. It's a conscious choice to shape your entire worldview so that you can see yourself as the victim, and never ever…

I don't have any problem condemning people who didn't think Trump's racism, admitted history of sexual assault, and constant bullying were deal-breakers for the most important, powerful position in the world. Not caring about the damage you're going to do to women, POCs, and LGBT people - or not being willing to use…

My friends and I watched the first episode on Friday and came to the same conclusion. Aside from everything else, I think if you've spearheaded two different projects in the space of five years in which you just happen to play a New Agey cult leader, it's perhaps time to start worrying about you as a) an artist, and…

This is, unfortunately, a trait of a lot of Peak TV series. Very well-made, top-notch actors, some hints of interesting ideas, and absolutely no justification for their existence.

I didn't really understand it in Breaking Bad either, but at least there he had interesting dynamics with Walter and Jesse. What BCS is doing with him is completely pointless, especially since it runs completely current to the conclusion that BB finally came to with regards to him: that for all his pretense of…