I'm speaking in ignorance of everything past season 12 here.

Director cameo: Bob Anderson is the guy in a white shirt and ponytail when Flanders says, “But if any of you ever need a favor, just look for the happiest man in Springfield!”

ETA: Whoops, sorry, I replied from the Disqus dashboard and didn't see your reply to your reply.

On the other hand, we also cracked the case about why numbered lists are largely quarantined within The Clickhole.

Not exactly, but it's a common mistake. "Serial" actually refers to reporting a single story over multiple serialized installments. The next story they do isn't even going to be a crime.

It's the industry term for those not-quite-subtitles that tell you who's talking, or where you are, or what the date is. It comes from the varyingly-spelled company/machine that made the machine that allowed them to be burned on to video footage back when that was difficult.

I remember when SG-1 was cancelled. They had barely any warning. I think "Family Ties" was just about to be shot, so they shoehorned in the line in the article, and another reference at the beginning of the show where we overhear two characters in the corridor talking about how a favorite TV show just got canned…

I wanted to find out what "going chicken killer" was a reference to, but the answer seems to be "nothing," so I'll just have to remember it as a delightfully inexplicable bit of wordplay.

Since I moved to California, I've really gotten a lot more oomph from everybody hating L.A.

The second one reminded me of one of those gems that you'll never understand if you didn't catch it first run.

Yes. Just like you're supposed to remember that Leia has memories of her mother who died when she was a few seconds old, and who only actually held Luke, so you can't even fanwank some kind of Force-contact memory or something out of it.

Was this the first time it was suggested/established that the Imperial March is, diegetically, the national anthem of the Empire (or, at least, a more foreboding arrangement of it)? I want to like it, but I'm also wary of score being incorporated into the narrative. It doesn't always work as well as it did in…

I, for one, was shocked that he actually killed someone who wasn't part of his own crew.

Of course, since it's filled with monitors showing classic Simpsons clips, it's the best fucking line in the park.

I thought it was weird for Lisa to get a can of soda in the middle of the night. Maybe I was just a boring child, but I don't think I would've gone for that if I woke up feeling thirsty. Juice or water, probably.

It's not just politics. The end of "Christmas Invasion" bothers me because the Doctor had the Sycorax captain "swear on the blood of [his] species" to leave Earth in peace. I know that construction is mostly used beyond figuratively in the modern day, but I'd imagine the old-fashioned honor-bound Sycorax and the…

I remember seeing an Arby's commercial just once that was testimonials from people saying, "Yeah, Arby's sucked, but they had me try it again, and they've changed it so it's good now!" Now, that's the restaurant desperation-move. Lower than even mentioning your more-popular competitor by name.

*Cries bitterly at the reminder that RTD doesn't understand that lofty-sounding words actually mean things*

That seems more like a "Fortunate Son" type thing. Danny was supposed to do a job, and do it well, but the people who gave him his orders screwed up, and left him holding the bag. Danny's point of view is that he wouldn't have shot a kid if the people who gave him his orders weren't too busy patting themselves on the…

"The Wilkins Score" is the name of my "Big Bang Theory" spec-script.