You are so kind to take the time to comment, after all these years. And many thanks to Disqus, which faithfully notified me of your comment!

Interesting! Thanks for the clarification.

Actually: https://youtube.com/watch?v…

Yeah, poetic license and all that.

I laughed out loud at that line while watching the screener in my office. Luckily no one was passing by at the time.

Looks like Jimmy's going back to his old Cicero scam partnership …

Oh, I never thought he was faking it. The observation isn't meant to imply that.

He's in the main cast and his name appears in the credits every week, so yeah, he should be back in a big way.

Obvious comparisons are obvious? Actually, I almost didn't use that analogy because it's kinda the opposite — the world stays put instead of disappearing. But it still seemed apt.

We don't watch Big Brother — that's why it's missing. So I appreciate the insight from someone who does!

Check the Stray Observations, dude.

That's a Gene Rayburn microphone, good sir — a fixed version of a mic originally designed to extend. (I may have thought too much about this microphone over the years.)

Yeah, I understood that when I watched it the first time, but didn't take notes about it. Then when writing the review, I slipped up because of my lack of notes. Should have caught my mistake and changed it upon rewatching as it aired live (a practice which allows me to catch many mistakes, but not this one.)

No doubt.

Oh, thanks. I'll fix.

Yeah, the stagger after he leaves the bar is one of the most convincing I've ever seen. And if course Bernstein frames it so well, so we can see his whole body.

No, you're absolutely right that the final twist, and the way Banks plays it as I mentioned, were impeccable.

I'm really not trying to occupy that non-fan perspective. But I see aspects of the episode that I forgive because I do care so much about Mike already, and I know that I would have no reason to forgive them if I weren't.

Beautiful defense, John. I still think we could feel Jimmy's experience of that stretched-out interaction without having the scene be similarly stretched out, but there's no doubt that the scene accomplishes what you describe with appropriate means. My main issue is not with the way we experience that particular…

I respect that view, but I thought the tiresomeness could have been conveyed in a different way than making us sit through it. I think we could have seen it in Jimmy's demeanor in a much snappier scene.