I think it depends on the thing at hand. When it's some dumb cultural thing, like The Sixth Sense or the various familial relations in Star Wars, I'd rather just know what it is so I can understand all the references everyone's making. Normally I agree with VanDerWerff that quality entertainment is still worth…

To be fair, Walt dying at the end of Breaking Bad was kind of a foregone conclusion. I mean, he's diagnosed with cancer in the pilot. It'd be a pretty big violation of Checkov's Gun if it didn't eventually catch up with him.

It's closest cousin is probably Cast Away. If you liked that one, you'll probably dig Gravity as well. I think it'll fare quite a bit better than Avatar on the small screen since it's a much more personal story and the space stuff is mostly incredibly tense and not just "look at this lush CGI environment."

Well that's sort of my point. People like Neil Diamond. Everybody likes to sing along to Cracklin' Rose or whatever. But a lot fewer people actually go out of their way to listen to his albums.

It's somewhat true in regards to pop music because traditional radio is attempting to have such a broad appeal that you wind up with mostly stuff everybody kind of likes but not much that anyone really loves.

It's more the fact that you're attacking people for liking him rather than giving any reasoning as to why you don't.

Coincidentally, Jay Leno is one of the biggest offenders in terms of "just show up and do the same set for decades for drunken casino crowds who are just there to be near a celebrity" check-cashing bullshit.

I think I'm just slightly too old to be a "millennial," but I like Oswalt. He's fairly obviously in the upper strata of active comedians along with Paul F Tompkins and the rest of the "friends of Mr. Show" crowd.

The thing is that most comedy specials are pretty bad (seriously, look through the list on Netflix Instant), so even if this one is not up to the high standard of Oswalt's other specials, it's still certainly above average.

I have yet to watch it, but the pretty clear implication I got from the review was that these are all the topics he talks about in the special, which means it's not really "dancing around" anything.

Anybody who intentionally refers to themselves as a member of a generation that all holds one unanimous opinion on things is kind of terrifying.

I will admit I'm not being fair in the case of Berkman, I just don't like the dumb, vacant expression he always has on his stupid face. Also the fact that he was a total Brewer-killer that season.

Seconded on the Cards. Especially in the 2011 World Series year, when they had a murderers row of world-class meat head assholes in Pujols, Molina, Berkman and La Russa.

Fans of the Yankees or Red Sox who have never lived in New York or Boston, respectively. And fans of the Patriots, natch.

I assume everyone else also read the phrase "natural po-lice" in the voice of Lester Freamon.

Fair enough. I totally agree that animation should just be left to compete in whatever genre the film is actually in. It's stupid that a film can never with "best picture" at the Oscars or "best comedy" or "best drama" at the Golden Globes just because it's animated.

Care to elaborate?

Some guy eating pork rinds in an Adidas sweatsuit just grabbed whichever DAT cassette was on top of the pile and didn't check the year.

Rather than lumping musicals in with comedies, they should combine the musical and animated feature category, and then have separate categories for comedy and drama (and they should actually only include things that are really comedies in the comedy category).

Fremulon.