See, this is yet another reason why topless restaurants are a really, really great idea. #freethenipple

NOT HOT DOG

The best? You must be forgetting the Japanese game shows with lots of jiggling boobs.

Comedians branching out into dramatic roles can often be great casting. Steve Martin as the heavy in The Spanish Prisoner, Martin Short on Damages, Louis CK in American Hustle (a comedy, but his character was the serious stick-in-the-mud)... And of course Jim Carrey in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Comic…

I thought Louis’ manager was an awkward, skinny teenage boy.

I’m glad they cut the scene from Louis’ first draft, where Uncle ’Lester invites Max to his workshop and shows her his ball peen hammer.

Wow. Talk about flaws: we know Naomi is very flawed as a person and a mom, and here again she does something terrible, yet we can see that she does love her daughter and tries a desperate tactic in perhaps the only way she knows how.

I believe the orchestra rehearsal was filmed at the classic Orpheum Theatre (1926), in downtown L.A. (The Philharmonic actually plays at the modern 2003 Disney Concert Hall, and formerly at the 1964 Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, also home to the Oscars for nearly 30 years.)

Loved the King of the Hill clip! Adlon and a slew of other awesome actors, plus top-notch writing through its best seasons, made that an all-time classic.

Actors have it tough, even in acting class...

I imagine Sondheim doesn’t watch television, but the fact that he liked the South Park movie makes me hopeful that he might learn of CXG and its rare status as a musical-theatre-inspired series. I’ll bet he’d get a kick out of scenes like His Status is Preferred, Where’s the Bathroom, and of course the fantastic…

Sondheim has described how he borrowed Porter’s way of sketching a song: writing a lyric and using rhythms of natural speech to find inspiration for a musical line. He loves Porter’s top work, but is lukewarm about the many unmemorable bits of that long career (most of which have faded away). He certainly relished…

Rachel Bloom proves that there’s no reason a serious feminist can’t also enjoy being naughty, in ways that probably appeal greatly to most 16yo boys and to, uh, certain much older guys as well. This is the fifth song in CXG, I think, where Rebecca does a striptease or writhes around in a catsuit or lingerie. (I know…

But you can edit, right? (On a computer, hover mouse to three dots next to the star.)

Multiple CXG songs were fully filmed twice, in Explicit and aired versions, and sometimes the censoring arguably makes the lyrics funnier. I loved Valencia’s line “butt stuff doesn’t hurt at all” (rather than “anal”) in I’m So Good At Yoga.

True, the sometime reliance on false rhyme would get a thumbs-down from Sondheim. A more carefully constructed lyric in the urbane tradition of Porter/Fields/Loesser (whom Sondheim admires greatly) was Paula’s song His Status Is Preferred in S1, a great little underrated number.

Woohoo! Strong episode tonight; I hope they didn’t shoot their proverbial wad with four songs in one ep, since the season is still so young... The songwriters were very much in their element here — old Hollywood song & dance, the jazzy Broadway of Kander & Ebb & Fosse, and good ol’ dreary Les Mis. “Strip Away My…

YES the acting class, my god, that was great. I’m also partial to the scene in The Sopranos where Christopher takes an acting class and gets in touch with his true feelings:

I loved this. I loved how Rich and Tressa and the girls created the mock-funeral, both to give Sam what she was needing and to make fun of her at the same time, as only people who really love you can do. I loved how the characters are vivid enough that I knew how the daughters’ eulogies would differ (that Max would…

Hmmm, by episode’s end I really thought we might learn what the kitchen disturbances were, but instead Larry created a new one, which also fits. His first encounter with the chef, though, looked to me like one of those bits where the editing (of the improvised takes) makes the actor seem overly exasperated and the…