Just wondering: at just under 1300 words, it's twice the length of any other movie review I've seen on this site. Word limits might be relics of the print era, but unlimited storage doesn't spare us the choice of what to spend our time reading.

It's Pretzel logic for me. I might even like it, as a whole, better than Aja, though nothing on it can touch "Deacon Blues" or "Peg."

I don't want to brag, but I was anti-pode when most of mainstream America was still pro-pode.

Why is this review so long?!

@avclub-472d722b57a4ed37e41e70c9c9d7d0f3:disqus You'd think so, but I've had limited success.

Feast your eyes, a Nick! http://www.youtube.com/watc…

I disagree. People who think that something stupid and hateful is the right thing to do are the worst of the lot. Both their values and their intellect are screwed up.

Never was there a more appropriate "literally." Star Wars fans can claim all they want (perhaps they do, I haven't checked) that the prequels destroyed their childhood (sc. memories of the original movies), but the prequels quite literally destroyed this poor soul-patched young man's childhood.

Man, "classy" would be an insult to this guy. We need a new word to describe how much class Morgan Freeman has.

I have trouble seeing how this is any sort of issue. The main claim of the piece is that a saturated podcast "market" (has to be in quotes because they're all free) makes any given appearance by a comedian less special.

I had wondered about the vacuum-desiccated remains, too. Its lack of explanation screams "plot hole," but the scene contributes nothing to the plot of the episode, so it's not really a "hole" in anything.

"Not a bum scene in it."

Good point, and the comparison to gaming "journalism" is illuminating. So my analysis is too simple: we have to account for a certain cattiness of the industry, motivated by an independent desire to draw viewers.

Quick follow-up: This is not a criticism of the sort of ideal investigative journalism of the entertainment industry that Franco proposes. I would eat that shit up. My target was the assumption that anything like the current model could possibly ever have anything important to tell us.

"Legitimate journalists" made me chuckle. Entertainment "journalism" (which includes criticism, I suppose, though that activity seems more legitimate) is and has always been a propaganda device. Its sole purpose is to inform a potential audience about the existence of a product without charging the studios for…

So the piece is wrong philosophically and historically. It's a double threat!

This piece is built on the unargued assumption that blocks of programming must have the kind of structure dictated by the conventions of largely non-serialized media. The assumption is false, so the thesis (that the installment model is bad, or something) is garbage.

Is "Nashi" Russian for "Tea Party?"

The "secret satire" move is stock-in-trade among AV Club critics. Statements roughly of the form "movie M displays tendency T to such an extent that it becomes a comment on movies' displaying T" abound in various features.

Well, I can't really "thank" you for bringing Throbbing Gristle to my attention, but I'm glad you did.