There were certainly some takes, but virtually none of them came from mainstream critics. In fact, those critics were pretty defensive of ZDT in particular, deriding (mostly political) writers who rightfully critiqued it and saying that they weren’t in a position to critique art. And I still remember Matt Taibbi being…

Wow. Thank you for this. I personally think the whole handwringing over Joker is pretty silly regardless, but I actually was somehow not aware that the James Holmes Joker thing had been proven false, despite having grown up in Denver.

I think even if the James Holmes Joker thing hadn’t been proven false, this would still be a little tenuous. He was obviously not mentally all there, and would probably have attempted what he did regardless of what fictional characters’ moniker he happened to take. Sure, it’s theoretically possible someone could be…

I’d be able to take the handwringing about this film a lot more seriously if the same people had expressed these concerns about American Sniper or Zero Dark Thirty.

I wouldn’t want every episode to be like it, but it was still great on its own terms. And yes, it absolutely WAS funny, at least for acts one and two.

And plenty of comedy series win partly on the backs of more emotional episodes. Although that category isn’t really awarded solely on the basis of one episode (I think…

You may have a point about centrist liberals (who I often argued with around that time). But the tweet you posted, and more so some of the statements later in that tweet thread, would seem to defeat your overall point here. Immigration groups, lawyers, left activists, regular left citizens, etc absolutely WERE…

Obama was a massive piece of shit on this issue (among others), but that doesn’t exactly exonerate Trump, who has graduated Obama’s everyday villainy into cartoonish super villainy. 

To be honest I think I agree with you. It is extremely funny and entertaining, but if I actually look it at objectively and with the goal of minimizing harm, prison time doesn’t make sense. She’s not going to falsely enroll another child with that 14 days. 

It was also the very rare movie where the military actually are the bad guys. In the MCU and other big budget movies, the right wing conception of the military is pretty much always adhered to.

She might want to break it down a bit more given her ties to Jeffrey Epstein:

Like most people I’ve already read that ridiculous article, thanks. Why Jane Meyer thought that dragging one accuser through the mud would automatically invalidate the other 7 is anyone’s guess. The amount of time she spent bizarrely blaming Gilibrand (who I don’t even like, but any attempt to blame her for Franken’s…

See, I kind of interpreted it the opposite way. There’s a point that really bothered me in which one interviewee laments that you can’t knock a cheeseburger out of someone’s hand the way you could berate a smoker for their life choice. And there was no discussion of food desserts or anything. The film’s attitude…

Well, if I’m not mistaken Mad About You also attracted some criticism at the time. I didn’t watch a lot of Frasier, but if I’m not mistaken most scenes took place in a handful of interior locations in which it was more or less reasonable to only see the primary characters or other characters of their (upper) class.…

Man, I’m sorry, but there’s no way the best string of Office episodes is even as late as season 5. That was a series that peaked pretty early. As in, by season 4 it was already losing steam. 

It was certainly noticed and remarked on at the time; it was practically a running joke. Just saying. And I’m not even talking from just a woke representation argument or whatever. It was legitimately unrealistic, and distracting, how white the whole show was, even for a sitcom. How would there be NO other people, at…

1990s West Village and 2018 West Village are different things. It’s become more gentrified and wealthier over the years, but at the time Friends was set it wouldn’t have been nearly as white as it is now.

Just as importantly though, Manhattan is essentially a commuter’s island. The vast majority of people who are in…

That the core characters are all white IMO isn’t a big deal - even in a diverse city, that happens. But Friends went beyond that. Even the secondary and background characters (down to the extras lurking around in the literal backgrounds) were overwhelmingly white. In what was supposed to be New York City.

That might be the case but the phrasing still implies that she is actually “less American” by virtue of her status which is gross. Also, look at the way boomer Dems talk about “Russians” (not just Putin or the government), it’s dripping in xenophobia and this isn’t different.

So many terrible things about this, but an underrated one has to be the “we’re more American than your wife” dig which, while trying to criticize Trump’s xenophobia, just leans into xenophobia itself. (There are a lot of problems with Melania, her being foreign is not one.)

The older staff at The Simpsons are boomers. Besides, this is very boomer meme-ish.