I had no idea that AV Club had even bothered with what’s probably Apple’s best show so far - although then again, it took you two years to cover FAMU.

Oh, thanks for this.  Hadn’t been aware of the book and just got a copy from the library.

One that does properly qualify for this list (versus, oh, Blue Monday): I Go Blind by Hootie and the Blowfish.

Hope there was something in the budget this season for the main plot missing in Season 1.

That’s a very low bar, but I agree.

I’m glad that over the last couple of decades she was deservedly feted for her career when she was still around and healthy to understand how much she was admired and loved. Wish we still had her, but being pretty much universally acknowledged after all she went through to get there had to be a really good feeling…

I’m very, very glad you included Time and Punishment, since it was a truly inexplicable omission from AVClub’s list that was pretty much universally agreed to in the comments as a massive mistake. Just by itself, “it’s raining again” is probably one of the show’s top 25 lines, maybe even top 10.

The only thing negative I can say about the otherwise really revealing So Say We All book is that he’s completely omitted from it. A good part of the reason why the series often did well showing rather than telling were his cues, and what’s even weirder was that his blog explained quite a bit of it.  Really odd.

Probably fair on both observations. I mostly watched HIMYM here and there on airplanes and such so the underlying narrative may not have meant as much to me as those who consistently tuned in, but from what I saw I’d guess 80%+ of the series didn’t really depend on the mythical mom - except for the kid talks.

One thing that needs to be said about all of these (and a few that aren’t listed, like BSG) is that the common factor for most in making them terrible is not just how much they punted on the implied underlying narrative of the show, but how much that narrative mattered to its previous cohesiveness. In turn, this…

The juxtaposition of something like this with the linked and quite thoughtful 2012 AV Club article is a bit jarring.

Homicide’s movie also is noteworthy as it was not just a show wrap up but also burdened with the very difficult task of cleaning up Season 7, which is what the show would have been years earlier if NBC had been able to force even more changes on the producers; they certainly tried over and over.

I’ve always thought the show was first and foremost a semi-reasonable reflection of the late 70s/early 80s world that a Ralph-type character might live in; it just kind of fit with the weird state of the country at that point. Aliens wishing the superhero the best of luck and bolting out of there to let him try to do…

Plus the tens of thousands unleashed upon the universe by Star Wars Galaxies once they decided to make the become-a-Jedi cubes routine.

The statutory definition of negligent operation of a plane (or boat for that matter - IIRC the aviation version was originally more or less lifted from a much older definition of it in admiralty law) is a bit different than the civil tort you’re referring to, although your interpretation might be correct under the…

There are many idiotic parts to this.

Glad to help.

Not really.

And Tabitha Soren was simply cute.

A decent list. I’d put “Friday I’m In Love” quite a bit lower given, as you say, it’s a quintessential pop hit that doesn’t really reflect the rest of their repertoire and “Just Like Heaven” is a better representative of that. I’d also nominate the title track of Disintegration for inclusion somewhere in that list; it…