I remember loving "Face on the Milk Carton" and its sequel in junior high. I read it not long after I'd discovered my mother had been married to another man before my father (far too long before for me to have any doubts about who my dad was, so no worries there), and it articulated a lot of things I was…

Hurricane is a good way to put it. I should maybe add that I don't disagree with the grade (though I found the elevator scene enough Actual Good rather than Lulztastic Good that I might've gone with a full B). I just don't think there's any hope of the show ever figuring itself out in a conventional storytelling…

Ah, Youtube comments. I'm sure that's correct. I also made myself stop reading Youtube comments a couple years ago, because it's where the lowest form of Internet life seems to dwell, so I'll take your word for it. I tell myself a solid 75% of the stuff there is just trolling by some sort of Offender Bot 9000, even…

I've also never seen this, and it's the kind of thing where I want to say: citation needed.

It's not that I don't think there's a difference between well-executed, smart soap and nutty, dumb soap. It's that I think the nutty and dumb elements are baked into "Empire" by design, and expecting them not to be is both setting the viewer up for disappointment and expecting something different of the show than…

I remember starting "The River" but never finishing it. Even in fifth grade, the idea of a "The Hatchet" sequel seemed bizarre.

I don't understand why critics keep expecting "Empire" to be prestige television, and then bemoaning that it's not. This show was conceived as a trashy, nighttime soap with big, operatic characters and some good music, and it's excelling at exactly what it's trying to be. It's ridiculous and fun, which is why so…

My reaction to "Across the Sea" is almost Pavlovian, even now. Just skimming through the comments and coming across the episode title made me sigh and mutter, "That fucking thing" aloud. It rages me still, to this day, and may be the "Lost" episode I hated the most (yes, way more than Jack's Tattoos).

It's interesting to me what a sci-fi direction the show went in (not that it wasn't always speculative fiction, but Season 5 just surrenders to it with no more apologies), contrasted to Season 6, when they took a hard left into New Age mysticism and pretty much abandoned the Weird Science of it all. I guess it's a…

The front half of Season 3 is always where my rewatch attempts break down. I can still binge Season 1 with pleasure and like the vast majority of Season 2 (even the mystery introductions that don't go anywhere), but the front end of Season 3 absolutely kills me, and I just put the DVDs away and do something else. …

Agreed about the Temple. It's probably the low point of the season, objectively speaking. I suspect I'd be more charitable to the finale if Season 6 hadn't accumulated so much bad will leading up to it, but it did, and I was not.

The search engined used by every TV character, if product placement has been honest with me.

I'm a feminist and I do not read her stuff because I can get better opinion pieces from writers I feel have more efficacy and aren't quick to engage in defamation. I also cringe a bit at prefacing saying I no longer read a blogger who participated in that with "I'm a feminist," but with this sort of thing I guess one…

Yeah, I assumed he was siphoning. Not just from gas stations, but from other cars that were now just abandoned husks.

I really, really liked it. Especially the opening half hour of just Phil alone in the vast wasteland of a world without people. It felt more conventional once Schaal's character showed up, but she's necessary to make the show more than just a one-off.

Watching any old TGIF show (with the possible exception of Perfect Strangers, which often achieves at least dumb fun) is horrifying, and makes me realize why my parents not only let me have a TV in my room, they bought me one as an unsolicited gift.

I kinda like Tucson. It's an armpit, but it's an armpit with some charm.

The movie and the book - which is the movie is far more based on than the show ever was - are both very good and I'd highly recommend them. They both deconstruct the culture of high school football in a way that I think is unique. I really appreciate the ambivalence with which all three treat the obsession with it…

I'd predicted that, but revealing that Mark Brendanawicz was Gossip Girl was quite the surprise.

What's remarkable about FNL to me is that, as good as "Always" is, I think "State" from the first season and "Tomorrow Blues" from the third are better FNL episodes, and all three function as perfectly wonderful series finales (they were all written with the assumption they could be, from my understanding). "Tomorrow…