The fringes is mostly parking lots and shopping centers. You have to go out toward either Manassas or Woodbridge before you find anything entirely undeveloped.

That also makes sense.

Hey hey hey! I know Alexandria douchebags, and those gentlemen were most certainly NOT Alexandria douchebags. They need to be wearing Capitals Jerseys and talking about how much better the Burger Joint is than Five Guys.

I'm going to do a "weekly Alexandria portrayal roundup" until they leave my hometown. I don't care if anyone else likes it; this one's for me. Ahem:

To me, 30 Rock takes a dip in Season 4, gets better in 5, and then is extremely hit-or-miss until the finale. The finale is incredible, though, and a few late-term episodes ("Leap Day" comes to mind) are stone cold classics.

Where's this idea that Parks' golden age was only three Seasons come from? I'd say the only weak spots are 1 and 6, but 1 is better upon re watch and 6 had its moments. But for a sitcom that ran 7 seasons, it's pretty damn consistent, I'd say more so than even 30 Rock.

I went to VCU, so the Richmond stuff bothered me as well, just not nearly as personally.

As a lifelong resident of Alexandria, VA, the geography of this episode pissed me the fuck off.

I liked it fine. I'll agree the multi-cam framing was weird and most of the first act didn't land, but the convention stuff was great! Jack was utilized just as well as he was in their original pairing: I.e., a whipping boy for Triumph to make do awful things.

Oh yeah. He directed School of Rock, which I love. So… apologies to Mr. Linklater?

This is my favorite reply to a thing I said on the Internet ever.

Oh man, I HATE Malick. Tree of Life was one of the worst filmgoing experiences of my life. You know how hard it is to make dinosaurs boring? But Malick sure found a way, by god!

See, but the thing is, I was already in a production of Our Town in high school, so I'm pretty much set on things telling me how great the boring parts of life are. And at least Thornton Wilder had the good sense to include ghosts!

I actually hadn't seen a Linklater film before. If they're all this dull and pointless, I can't imagine I'll be seeing anymore. Sorry I expected a storytelling medium to tell a story.

If the point is that he's SUPPOSED to be banal and uninteresting (which, good job, that is the first defense of the movie that uses that as an argument), then may I ask why we're asked to watch him? In a movie? That I paid $3 I'll never get back to see on On Demand? When I could've been watching something with a much…

Half of which it invented. And all of which it uses to great effect.

Not necessarily in quality. Just, in terms of how much it deserved to win.

America.

Boyhood gives its protagonist - a boring, static character with literally no arc other than "going from being a non-entity to sort of liking photography or something I guess" - TWO alcoholic abusive stepdads, one of which actually says such cliched and awful dialogue as "Your mother had an accident" and "I'm having a…

Man, in five years people are going to be laughing about how good everyone though Boyhood was for some reason. This ain't Crash beating Brokeback here, people. This is The Godfather beating Sounder. What the hell is Sounder, you ask? Exactly.