"Hargitay, the show’s center of gravity since its inception"—asleep for 12 seasons were we? Merloni was the center, and his character brought various other characters—his immediate family, including his mother—as irregulars in the ensemble. Hargitay was most certainly second fiddle.

Wow I haven't thought about Paddington the Bear in decades. I loved the books when I was young, never understood why—maybe just the endearing way a little bear tries to navigate London and adults resonated with me.

From the narrative that follows, I don't understand why this documentary doesn't get an A- instead of a B+. It seems to do the job it sets out to do and does it pretty damn well.

"only"? He was just the first apropos example that came to mind. I knew some top-shelf cellists, so the "Bartok snap" appeared in my cello quartet, a piece that received the most visceral positive response imaginable.

Experiences such as yours made me glad that my Bachelor's was at a school that just did Pass/Fail/Incomplete with ample room for comments. At first, the comments said more about the professor than the student, but in the last two years a few were profoundly important.

After my initial bitching, it's quite amusing to stumble in early Thursday morning to see not one but two episodes (the most recent Mad Men and Arrow) get an A.

Fair enough, though if that's the definition I'ld like the

Well slap me stupid and call me Judy. I thought I checked the AV club regularly enough to note when something got an A, but apparently I missed more than a few.

If a society didn't score it, we just don't have it on the historical record. I'm sure someone down the line went out and tried to record their traditional chants and such, but it never came up. (Bartok famously went to the Balkans to get inspiration from the traditional folk tunes, which employed a lot of…

Music Anthropology was required by performers and composers alike who wanted to get their Master's degree. It was basically Western music history fairly condensed with a tiny nod to ancient Oriental, Arabian, Jewish and Greek music, but provided the only instruction available for the pre-Baroque eras. I still have…

You mis-take; not only am I unfamiliar with him, he's spouted some factual nonsense about how the AV Club uses disqus.

Why can't any of the AV Club's reviewers ever give an "A" to an episode, at least occasionally? They probably dished out a few for certain Breaking Bad episodes such as Ozymandias (where IMDB users gave it 10/10), but otherwise it's always "not quite".

Many thanks for the recommendations, I enjoyed both episodes—solid plot lines featuring Frye, Lila and Bender with the Professor as a plot facilitator.

Beat me to the punch. He's never been entertaining in the least.

Did you catch the beginning of Colbert's show on February 27th (last Thursday)? It deals with an extremely interesting study whose conclusion is that racial self-identification and well as external identification changes over time, mostly due to the circumstances a person is in. I highly recommend checking it out.

Before anyone gets the idea that this is somehow novel, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…. The b-side of nursery rhymes solely employed instruments bought at Toys'r'Us.

I thought i already posted this before, but it never gets old:
"I managed to miss the o."
"That's what she said."

I noted more than a few hours ago that it was the first season finale (S01E16), but the avclub has a way of making certain Disqus posts of mine disappear. TVDW is quite the know-nothing apologist, insisting there is no moderator when the incisive Google query demonstrates he's on something I gave up a while ago or…

that's what she said :-\

Thanks for the research, though Bowling is S02E20… will check them out.