Whether it’s true or not, it is a weird story. It’d be one thing if the scenario were that some racist, homophobic assholes happened to run into Smollett, recognized him, and decided to kick the crap out of him, but the charge here is that the attack was premeditated, since no one wanders around with a noose and a…

Ha, I don’t really recall many of the details. I know there was an ode that Hitler sang to his closest ally titled “Mussolini,” to the tune of “Let It Be.” And then later he lamented the failure of the Russian invasion, to the tune of “Yesterday”:

I actually knew a guy in college who had written a musical with his high school friends that told the story of World War II from the point of view of the Nazis via Beatles songs with repurposed lyrics. The excerpts he shared with us were pretty clever and not all that offensive, though apparently there was a song…

And that’s not even getting into the question of how anyone who was born after like 1960 even exists in the Beatles-less universe, since the Fab Four’s absence would almost immediately begin to disrupt the random and wildly improbable chain of events that led to every particular human being’s conception.

In my head canon, there’s only the original Matrix, plus the script kept the original explanation for the Matrix’s purpose, which was that the machines were using humans for their brains’ processing power rather than as a source of raw energy. For me that stitches up every nagging plot hole in the original film, from…

I agree. It’s not just cheap gags, it’s the same cheap gags every time Doug Judy pops up again, and that shticky repetitiveness it the exact sort of played-out sitcom BS that the show at its best is smart and inventive enough to avoid.

Yeah, it was a great gag, which is why I’m torn between thinking it’s a “Kill your darlings” situation and a “‘Kill your darlings’ is a facile film-school take” situation.

It’s even more clever where the show’s writers are concerned, in that T. S. Eliot actually is the author of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, on which the real-life Cats was based. They couldn’t choose an author to fit the joke; they had to come up with a joke to fit the author.

He was so messed up by his dad and never really had a childhood; I thought there was at least a possibility that it really was all innocent, that he was just stunted and strange and wanted friends who were childlike.

I enjoyed the episode, but I’m bugged by the writing choice to start the story with the “Kimmy’s anxious suspicions save her and Titus from the murderous cable guy” gag. If the whole episode is going to explore how Kimmy’s experiences in the bunker shaped her life, maybe even in a positive way, it seems sort of insane…

Yeah, even on the DVD commentaries on his films, he comes across as super prickly. It didn’t seem to be malicious, by any means, but I’d take it as a testament to his talent that he’s able to thrive in such a personality-dependent business despite apparently being such a grouchy-pants.

To me it makes about as much sense as most time-travel stories, which is to say none at all. Only in a time-travel story will a writer treat a “paradox” as if it’s a supernatural threat that would destroy the universe if it’s allowed to occur, instead of what it actually is—a thing that logically can’t occur, unless…

I’ve always thought that when we finally get a movie version of the Trump years, Phil Reeves would be the perfect person to play Roger Stone. So I found it interesting that his Commissioner Kelly was kinda Stone-esque—a cheerful creep who wants everyone to knows what a clever dirty trickster he is.

Oh, I didn’t mean to suggest that the difference is whether Donnie had the capacity to make a choice. When I said “I don’t think his death is necessary,” I meant that I think the key to saving the world is not “Donnie sends the engine back in time to kill himself” but just “Donnie sends the engine back in time to…

To me the biggest problem with the splaininess of the director’s cut is not that it gets incoherent but that it gets super prescriptive, turning everything that happens into something that had to happen based on the overly rigid nature of the film’s made-up time-travel physics. It has the effect of turning all the…

I know that’s the most common interpretation of the story, but I always read it slightly differently. To me the important thing is not that Donnie needs to die but that he needs to ensure that the time-traveling jet engine is not an effect without a cause, a cosmic paradox that would unmake the fabric of reality.…

I agree that the jokes are inept, I just think CK is too smart not to realize he’s being inept. He’s not trying to tell good jokes and failing; he’s giving up on developing solid material and is instead just trying to milk what Seth Meyers termed “clapter,” the empty affirmation that comes when audiences agree with…

I wouldn’t assume that this new persona is the “real Louis CK” any more than the old one was; as I mention elsewhere in the comments, I think a comic of CK’s skill and experience knows exactly what he’s doing when he starts sucking up to the “anything that sticks it to the snowflakes is inherently hilarious” crowd.…

I’ve assumed all along that we’ll see a “future” version of Tony who’s settled down with a family and relatively happy despite the deaths of half of humanity, which would add stakes to his decision to go back in time and undo the Snappening. So there’s certainly a nonzero chance that we’ll see a Tony-Pepper wedding,…

He framed it really poorly if that was his intention and there really probably could be a joke in there. His intentions are a tad suspect with this all.