But I think that idea is mitigated somewhat as an overarching theme by the fact that it's also presented as Mr. Incredible's most fundamental weakness. He essentially sets Syndrome on the road to supervillainy because he wrongly believes that he's uniquely special and a mundane kid like Buddy would never have anything…

"'Fighting about facts,' my mother calls it. We do it all the time. Argue over something that's actually one thing or another."

Yeah, but it's not like Spike was just, like, a biker who's too edgy for any decent girl to be seen with. He was a blood-sucking demon who could never really understood why you shouldn't rape and murder people as long as you weren't personally fond of them. Coming down on the side of "You probably shouldn't be in a…

Well, S4 gets really dumb about Angelus for a while, but it does end with "Orpheus," which reaffirms that Angelus is indeed a part of who Angel is: "I'm deep in, Faith. Soul or no soul."

I think it was also a clumsy way for the writers to shore up their own mythology — to say, basically, "We weren't kidding when we said that a vampire without a soul can't be a good person." At the time enough people were clamoring for Spike to just magically grow a conscience or whatever that I think the writers…

It was especially stupid because the whole Angelus storyline in Angel S4 was the ideal opportunity to explore how Angel had changed over the years by showing how Angelus was different. Recall that Angelus wasn't all that interested in destroying the world until Buffy made him feel like a human being. So would a…

To me the biggest problem with season 4 is that they completely lose the plot on the Initiative halfway through. In the early going, the group is pretty clearly a metaphor for the world of a college freshman. You graduate high school and you think you've learned all there is to learn, but then you get to college and…

But it wasn't ambiguous, because the main actor concerned was unambiguously portraying the wrong thing.

It's certainly not scrupulously historical, but I'd argue that it's as much a Nat Turner biopic as Braveheart is a William Wallace biopic. It's not like that film was particularly accurate, either. Nor did, say, The Imitation Game miss out on awards season because it turned Alan Turning into some celibate morality…

Yep, it's his first movie. That was part of the original narrative Fox Searchlight shelled out so much money in the hopes of capitalizing on — the discovery of a new writing/directing/acting dynamo who had to go outside the typical studio system for his opportunity to prove himself.

It was probably something like "writer of Barney Miller wants to do another socially conscious urban comedy, but it's the mid-'80s now, so it also has to be wacky and risque and feature witches and literal cartoon characters and Groucho Marx glasses on the Statue of Liberty."

I remember that Night Court episode very distinctly from when I was a kid. It's actually surprisingly progressive for the time — instead of it being about how Charlene is a weirdo or something, it's all about sexist pig Dan coming to accept the fact that his old randy college buddy is a woman.

And Adam mouths back "I love you too."

I rewatched the series on DVD years after it aired, and not all of it holds up — there's a fair amount of faux-edgy crassness — but what's great about the show remains great. I still adore the scene in the last aired episode in which the poor screenwriter has to come up with an on-set rewrite when the lead actor…

There's no more perfect combination of actor, role, and hilariously baroque character name than Gillian Anderson as Dr. Bedelia Du Maurier, Hannibal Lecter's psychiatrist.

Yeah, there was a lot of hand-wringing in the '90s about these shows with sex or violence that were spreading immorality to our children, but you'd be hard pressed to find one that provided such an enticing view of narrow-minded, materialistic sociopathy as Saved by the Bell.

Yeah, the adaptations seem to have progressively toned down the really creepy stuff, and I can't imagine TNT will be the one to return the franchise to its "pedophile rape zombie" roots.

So they're going to cast an ageless preteen vampire in a ongoing series . . . how, exactly?

Yep, and even among people Cosby didn't rape, the behind-the-scenes buzz has always been that he's a vicious, entitled asshole. It's easier to hide criminal actions than your basic character, so it's rare for someone who truly seems decent to actually be a serial rapist or what have you.

"Because it turns his wife into a fridged woman who exists for no reason but to be raped so as to develop his character and give him reason to act."