The closest ancestor is probably McNulty from The Wire, but yeah pretty much.

Yeah, she's mostly been a fount of free-floating non-sequitur at this point, which is the laziest kind of "random" humor. The one or two times she's actually had something up her sleeve (like this episode), I couldn't get past the fact that Chief would have just been like "You need to explain to me what you are doing"…

You're right, I haven't tried it on a smartphone. I was just inferring from everyone's comments about how it looks like a design intended for tablets and speaking generally about the reasoning behind responsive design.

I think it's a safe bet that they wanted to launch the new design in time for selling ad space for black friday promotions

It's a website that is funded by ads, that launched their new mobile friendly design in time that they can charge for ads to users on mobile devices for black Friday promotions.

I searched for "Felina" and it was the first result, then I clicked on the title of the show to get to that page. Hopefully the return of the subscriptions and stuff will come with a more obvious user interface for finding individual show pages.

You mean like this?
http://www.avclub.com/tv/br…

They're already coming… http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…

I'm with you there — I don't have a smartphone and I don't plan on getting one until that fateful day when my phone breaks and they're the only option. I'm just saying that there's data-driven reasoning behind this kind of design, which is why they're becoming so widespread.

I guess I don't really use the homepage, as I have the RSS feed subscription or I just go to TV Club or whatever right away (I miss My TV Club, but apparently that's coming back soon).

You said "You've lost a TON of functionality" and "One could access nearly every article from the homepage before, but now we can't".

Install Firefox or Chrome.

Probably something to do with needing the new design out the door so they can sell ad space in time for the holidays (Black Friday is next week, y'all).

I actually really like that they've created a heavy focus on the article you're reading rather than bombarding you with a zillion columns of "Related" and "Featured" shit like those Buzzfeed style listicle sites.

The bad mobile experience of the previous site was undoubtedly the reason. Like it or not, but most sites are now experiencing almost 50% of their traffic from mobile devices, with that number climbing consistently.

Wait a minute.. what's that behind that rock?!

VanDerWerff said in a comment below that notifications and the My TV Club stuff are coming back soon.

More Features != Better Than

The fact that you think every redesign ever was for the worse should tell you something. To quote The Simpsons: "This is everyone's fault but mine!"

Thank your ad-blocking software for that.