Two has the highest number of highs in a single season, but I also think the first chunk of season 5 cooks pretty hard and gets dismissed too easily in these discussions. Ass Crack Bandit / Pierce’s Will Reading / Floor is Hot Lava is the kind of killer run I don’t think I’ve seen on a network comedy since.

While it’s definitely more Peter Gould’s show than it is Vince Gilligan’s, it looks like Gilligan was at least a little more actively involved in the writer’s room this season after stepping back during seasons 4 and 5.

Not that I want to create more angst here, but I maintain that Mother 3 is actually an improvement on EarthBound in almost every respect and an all-time great RPG. The fan translation is at least as good as EarthBound’s official one, which although outstanding for its era is by no means perfect.

I think they pointedly didn’t show him on screen so they could keep him alive. You don’t pull a beloved background character out of an unceremonious death by explosion just to give them a different unceremonious death by explosion 40 years later. Or, at least, that would seem to be conventional storytelling logic to…

What people overlook is that the penultimate scene between Tony and Junior would’ve been a pretty memorable conclusion in its own right.

I don’t know, those “Next episode” teasers could get pretty meta. One of them overtly criticizes the payoff of a storyline before it even begins. If the meta stuff is existing outside of the text then that seems like a similar spirit to me.

Hello, it’s me, the only person in the world holding off from buying a PS5 until they announce a new Everybody’s Golf for it.

Yeah, I always clocked Spike’s confrontation with Vicious in the finale as being motivated in no small part by him knowing that Jet and Faye were next on Vicious’ kill list. A lot of interpretations I’ve read put it all on Spike being completely unable to live in the present or too broken by the death of Julia, as if…

There seems to be an oral history book of the show coming out this fall, if nothing else! Here’s hoping it’s 3,000 pages, with at least 40 of them devoted to the origin of “Bitch Hunter”.

Would you believe me if I told you that Michael B. Jordan is actually in this?

I still think about the surreal moment a few shows later where Tom, still making hay out of his purchase, improvised a slide whistle solo for the instrumental break in “I’m the Greatest” from one of Ringo Starr’s solo albums.

A Dalmatian shoots her parents in Crime Alley.

If a “movie” is the loophole it took for more Venture Bros., that’s a-okay with me. The handful of times VB has gone with a longer narrative its paid off tremendously, so I don’t suspect this will be as padded and messy as the Futurama movies often were (not to mention how hindered they were by the mandate that each…

One that I adore but almost never see mentioned is The Rebel Set. The “Johnny at the Fair” short that opens it is a banger, the movie itself is pretty watchable but not nearly as poignant as it thinks it is, all of the host segments have the Joel era warmth and specificity that I adore, and the callback at the end of…

Yeah, I at least think the season 7 finale works as a series finale better than any previous season finale (barring the masterful “Operation P.R.O.M.”). The downside is that it’s also evident from that episode that the show still had plenty more gas left in its tank.

Venture Bros. was a tentpole! A tentpole!

Whatever form Melissa’s Eugene Levy impression takes is now my most anticipated piece of media of 2021.

On the blu-ray they talk about their big plans for an opening dream sequence with Crow making a Great Escape-esque journey on a motorcycle (complete with Kim Catrrall cameo), and a segment where Forrester and Frank go to a mad scientist convention in Vegas. Just getting them out of the series’ usual settings for a bit…

His real form is said to be that of the creature on the cover of Diamond Dogs. I read it in one of Robert Christgau’s consumer guides.

All good points, though I do wonder what the balance between salvaged assets and stuff they scrambled to make in the last 9 months is. If the leaked script is legit (or even the “final” version of the original iteration), aside from the 99% different dialogue there are major locations, sequences, and characters…