Mentioned elsewhere, but Royal Jelly is somehow ridiculous AND legitimately great.

Hell, Walk Hard deserves the title the more I think about it. And the full version of Royal Jelly is absurd and awesome at the same time.

“Y’all Are Brutalizin’ Me” or “Red Balloon” or “Why Can’t People Keep Their Willies Out of Holes?” or “Try, Try, Try Again” or “New Freeland National Anthem” or “Mouthful of Sores” or “I Was On the 18th Hole” or “Gettin’ the Shaft Again” or “Emotion Lotion” or “Oooh Girl, Ooooh” or “Indomitable Spirit” or

Also Colder, if you’re considering the wars of the time.

All things 20th-century are going to get vinyl’d. That century was just warmer, you know?

For real. Just because peasant fare was necessarily carb and calorie-dense does not mean it was flavourful, nutritious, or even artfully rustic. And “beer for breakfast” wasn’t badass or enjoyable, it was just that the water might kill you.

Good nutrition wasn’t even necessarily good nutrition! Browse a medieval cookbook or two, and the things the nobility ate and the things they did to it in order to signify scarcity and luxury will make day-old pottage seem like back-to-basics real food. Sugar was a spice, for god sake.

I was hoping someone would mention this. Average life expectancy was low because child mortality brought that average way, way down. It’s just not a useful metric.

Whodunit tropes also dovetail into contemporary social commentary pretty well. War profiteering : Blackwatery self dealing, colonial sins revisited : Brexit, social mobility upheaval : gig/tech economy, murder as gamesmanship : SWATting troll culture and so on.

I don’t think it’s noted enough how thematically it’s also more practical than transgressive. If anything it’s convenience porn—roommates, friends’ parents, young cohabitating step-siblings—the unspoken draw is the lack of effort required. What if, instead of having to rely on social scenarios and personal…

Max is so clearly supposed to have been played by Paul F. Tompkins, so that he and Paget could reprise the Beyond Belief dynamic. That he isn’t makes me think there must have been an IP issue that prevented it.

Haven’t seen this episode yet, but Neil Casey is reassuring. But he may make me choose to just re-watch Other Space instead.

We’ve made occasional inroads through comedy and music, but I never imagined home renovation and lifestyle porn would such successful vehicles for Canadian cultural imperialism.

The Roys seems to be an amalgam of several dynasties; they’re at times Murdoch, Disney, Redstone, Kennedy, Hearst, and/or Bronfman, all at once.

The “I radicalized my own grandfather” time paradox was the only real groanworthy note in the series to me. In comparison to everything else it was just such a lazy cheapening of Manhattan’s existential omni-temporality.

Honestly the more I think about it the more it makes awesome amount of sense. Craig could blend/hide as an old timey southerner, add in some slavery-was-a-long-time-ago white tourists, some ultrawoke folks, black protesters and a complex cast of ‘help’ and the topicality is baked in!

Let’s see ... settings, settings, settings. Where could someone get murdered where the survivors would have the patience to deal with Blanc, but the setting could allow for some social commentary?

In that case, the smart call is a Benoit Blanc take on And Then There Were None. Frame it as a dignified slasher.

I’ll allow the opinion that Rorschach is the most interesting character.

And do I detect a note of Gillan Jacobs?