You see the stuff with Barry in reverse order, timeline wise. First you see him being defended by Bob Loblaw attempting to reach over the fence and undo the latch, then you see him buying the stepladder, in a flashback. Then, several episodes later, you finally see him - spoiler alert - talking about getting a better…

The first episode is actually really great, and much funnier after watching the whole season once. The second and fourth are decent but suffer a little from focusing on building the wall and getting the signatures for the movie, neither of which really ever go anywhere.

Is that the basis of the running gag of him quitting indignantly after doing the gas-pump news thing and stuff? I was wondering where that came from.

I thought the joke was supposed to be that John Beard is an alcoholic so he stashed them there for the stakeout, but I could be missing something as well.

I think it mostly suffered from containing a lot of business about whether the borderline wall was or was not going to get built, which the show never really made me care about, (and also flipped flop back and forth on so much that I pretty much lost all interest in that plotline). Same with everything relating to…

Yeah, it is pretty much every other one alternating between A-/B+ and B-/C+ episodes until "Smashed" throws off the rhythm by being a weaker episode in the stronger episode spot.

I think that GOB, despite being everyone's favorite character, works best in small doses. His episodes kind of tip into flopsweat because the character is just too manic and broad to sustain focus for that long.

Senioritis, It Gets Better and Off The Hook are all better than Colony Collapse  IMHO.

At first GOB references it by saying "My diet has become INSANE" for losing weight to play Jesus, but I didn't really understand why any of the other characters would be eating those two same ingredients, other than I guess being broke and the incestuousness of the Bluths.

I assumed it was related to Howard knowing the true nature of the lunar landings or whatever

The "loophole" thing in the Lucille episode is the worst joke they've ever done.

Yeah it's weird how he talks about hating his one thrift shop item he ever owned and how nobody should have to ever shop at a thrift store because it's apparently the worst thing in the world.

It is kind of odd how utterly pervasive explicit sex stuff is nowadays. I was recently at a Milwaukee Brewers game, which they won, so they played that "All I Do Is Win" song over the PA. It's weird to be with your in-laws and surrounded by a bunch of kids and hear "My hands go up and down like strippers' booties go…

I hope all your teachers growing up dropped Mary Tyler Moore show references and then got mad at you for not catching them

I hope all your teachers growing up dropped Mary Tyler Moore show references and then got mad at you for not catching them

I'd be fine if they just kept doing a short 6-8 episode season every couple years for the foreseeable future

@John89:disqus  Exactly. It also kind of became the only joke for certain characters. In previous seasons, Troy and Abed were nerds about all kinds of different movies and stuff. In season 4, they pretty much exclusively talk about Inspector Spacetime, and in almost every single episode.

That and all the army guys who tell Buster they're gay aren't played as queens. Usually the flaming ones are just the people Tobias tends to surround himself with, who are often times transvestites rather than just flamboyantly gay dudes (or else strippers like the Hot Cops, in GOB's case).

It just seems silly to argue that an aspect of a character didn't show up until later into a show's run when it's in the first episode of the series.

It's just the law of diminishing returns, really. The more times you repeat a joke, the less impact it has. Having GOB say "Taste the happy" isn't going to be as funny the 10th time as it was the first time.