I second all of these sentiments.

Nuh-uh.

It was after the credits; same thing Showtime always does — "James Bond will return," with a little montage of clips from the season that's just ended. Nothing specific.

You know, despite the fact that Game Of Thrones, my favorite series, came back on the same night, I think this was my favorite show of the night.  The Bates scene was perfect, and fuck if I didn't immediately miss the guy when he left.  The scene with Becca was really good, too, and I too had missed those walks of…

I wasn't "telling you not to criticise" Game of Thrones — do you understand what the word "suggestion" means?  It means "take it or leave it," not "Do this!"  "Fascist," you say.  One of us seems to be more subtle than the other.

Was Karen a daddy's girl?  I never got a sense that she liked her dad at all, even before he discovered her blowing Ian and flipped out on her.  The only sweetness I can think of her expressing towards her father was when she thought she was going to get a car out of it.

That was a good line, and it's really gratifying to hear Jody acknowledge Karen's horribleness like that.  For the longest time it felt like he was just too dumb to realize how mean a person she was.  Apparently he did eventually put that together though.  Good for him!

No crying is a huge plus.

Yeah… :(

This episode really worked for me bigtime.  Even despite the somewhat anticlimactic ending, with the reset button seeming to be pressed in a lot of ways — Monica, Lip, Frank, etc. — I loved so much of what happened, I still feel compelled to give the episode an A.

What was the reason for Karen's behavior?  The only thing I can really remember from the first season is Eddie calling her a whore, and then I guess Lip called her a whore too, after she'd already kind of gone off the deep end and put that chain in her face and shit.  None of that seems to justify her behavior in…

I dunno, I think he's kinda cute.  And smarts and attitude like Lip's do count for something, I'm told.  Mind you I'm a straight guy, so my opinion might not be valid.

Yup, very common.  You usually hear it shortened to just "Good riddance," but that's the full version.

You know, both the Lip-Estefania scene and the final Lip-Mandy scene cut away with Lip just barely looking back (towards Estefania and Mandy's house, respectively), like a tenth of a second before the scenes ended.  I wasn't sure, but I thought that meant he probably had sex with both of them.  Which disappointed me,…

Emma Kenney is the actress's name.  She really is extraordinary.  Her reaction shots in this episode were hilarious, and she's always very affective when she cries, or acts otherwise unhappy.

I can't name a single type of cactus. And I live in a desert!

It is quite a nifty story.  It felt a little auxiliary in the first season, as it didn't really get interesting until that one walker went after Jon and Jeor (that and the first scene in the first episode, of course), but I imagine it'll get much more interesting in season 2.  Which, I also imagine, probably parallels…

@scottiedo:disqus I understand rolling your eyes at it.  I tend to do that myself.  I just don't think such scenes have any impact at all on the show's overall strength, which seemed to be what you were arguing there.  I don't think it should affect one's "good will" towards the show.  The occasional scene like that…

Ahh, good point about the population differences.

2) I don't claim to understand this anywhere close to fully, but I believe winters on earth vary only slightly, because there's very little wobble in the earth's rotation.  That is, the rotational axis (Y) mostly stays in the same place.  If, however, that wobble were more pronounced, and/or slower, then winters could…