I think it's bad luck and just the economics of the industry. Television has an institutional problem with diverse casting, and while each show can and should buck up against that to the best of its ability, each show also has to, y'know, put an episode on the air each week. So, there's only so much TGW can do,…

"It feels more like this review wants to be negative about it simply to be edgy in claiming that."

It's a good point of demarcation, but it's not really a causal factor.

One of the most impressive things about Golden Era Simpsons is how they established (or at least hinted at) so much with so little. For example, the Van Houten's- this article reminded me that we'd only really seen them a handful of times before the divorce episode, and almost all of those sightings were for very…

It's INCREDIBLY depressing.

Yeah, but your "using the phrase 'upvote to comment ratio' to comment ratio" is also sky high. You really wanna keep that thing around 0:X.

That's true!

"You don't think a pundit influences people?"

"He was the only person talking about that legal pot on TV for a long time."

"till doesn't change the fact if Bill Maher wasn't so damn awesome at his show John Oliver would never have gotten a show in the first place."

"He was an atheist during the Bush years. You remember, the years when religious persecution of gays was used to win elections?"

Yeah, and the bullshit talking points come so fast that neither the host nor the semi-honest guests (usually that 4th player they bring in halfway through) can swat them all down.

There was a lot of liberal antipathy toward Maher in the '90s/early 2000s, as well. It's not like ANYONE tried to save him after his post 9/11 comments. But somewhere around the Iraq War, he just started hating George Bush so much that he reflexively embraced the mainstream liberal position on almost EVERY issue. He's…

Yeah, I'm surprised that people are discussing pop culture in the comment section of a pop culture website, too.

Maybe, but I doubt the larger movie-going public knows/cares who Frank Miller is.

Beverly is such an interesting character to me; she's got a lot of Peggy Hill-esque unlikable qualities, but so far, she's never definitively stepped over the line. She still only annoys me the way the show WANTS her to annoy me. Lying to Murray is a bad step. It didn't ruin the character, or even the episode, but I…

Wow, I didn't like much of this at all. The Ciaire/Mitchell story was just too much of the show's least likable characters, the Hayley/Alex story was too much dumping on the marginally-less-pretty girl, and almost none of the stories ended, they just cut away from them.

I think that makes sense. I'd also suggest that it goes to Jake's kinda simplistic, childish worldview. Police are the awesome good guys, Holt is police, so no one should be mean to Holt because he's awesome. And then, when it's OTHER POLICE being mean to Holt, it's even worse because it shatters his illusions about…

Yeah, it wasn't really played as a farce. There was very little, like, rushing back and forth between the parties- or at least, the joke wasn't in the running back and forth. It was in the juxtaposition of the two parties, and in the character traits that informed the parties. I mean, it was still a gimmick, but a…

Goodness, if you're so sensitive that one comment represents being "shouted down" and 9 comments about Alias and Lost represent "Marvel Zombies" coming "out in force", I think you'll be better off to just cut bait on this discussion. Who cares what we think, anyway?