We're currently in the fall sweeps period (October 29 – November 25), when ad rates for the upcoming quarter are set based on the ratings during these few weeks. Whatever anyone thinks about the sensibility of Michaels and the quality of SNL itself, he's got a deep understanding of the business of how American TV…

I think you're a scandal behind. The current penumbra of shame that Woody is walking under: charges from his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow that he sexually abused her between the ages of 7 and 28. Her age, not his.

It's time to accept that this show is just an experiment gone awry by a MFA student, maybe at the Iowa Writers's Workshop. They're sitting there with a used copy of "Perl in a Nutshell" writing horrible code that's generating plots at random. Every monday morning, the cast opens a thick manila envelope that is…

Because they had Gor-Don.

I can understand that and respect it, but can't get on board.

I never thought of it that way, but I'm sure that in many cases, that's true. The exceptions would be the truly pathological ones like Kevin Trudeau and his ilk who know that they're at best one step ahead of the law and it's just a matter of time. I guess it's like the 'psychics' who really believe that they have The…

For me, the problem with this show was that the repulsion of Nat Faxon outweighed the attraction of Judy Greer. (Seriously dude — get those choppers fixed. You're in Hollywood.) (and seriously — Judy Greer was enough to make me excited when those horrible Sprint Framily commercials came on.

Man, I let it play to the end and that FCKING TAI LOPEZ DOUCHEBAG came on and reminded me that I'd rather be poor forever than listen to him explain how he got rich.

*watches pilot at lunch* Yeah, this is what I was hoping wouldn't happen. Like my favorite parts of Flight of the Conchords and Wonderfalls had a baby.

*sigh* and I was hoping to avoid picking up any new shows that I had to watch this year. /goes to see if this is available on-demand/

There we go. I do believe that I'm coming down with the vapors.

I have a vivid memory of seeing an episode of Taxi where a braless Marilu Henner in a freezing cold soundstage taught me an important anatomy lesson and made me the man I am today. It's still not as vivid as hers would be, since she has eidetic memory.

We won't get into whether 'O Brother' was more influenced by the Joyce or Steely Dan retellings of The Odyssey, then…

Would you say that's true about Lebowski? Seems to me that they are taking such concrete and literal structural and plotting elements from noir (whether taken directly or taken and deliberately subverting them) that I can't buy this thesis. There's a great essay in a collection called 'Postmodernism and its…

Oh, come on. I was holding out for a gritty reboot of Pufnstuf from Ronald D Moore. Fingers x-ed that this appearance is a back door pilot for that exact thing.

I have to take exception to the characterization of 'Fox in Socks' in this interview. If that book were any shorter, the big payoff at the end with Tweetle Beetles couldn't have the impact that it does.

The only reason I watched the first ep of Terriers was that Alan Sepinwall wrote a column saying, "yes, the title is dumb. Trust me and watch this." 10 minutes in we were hooked, and it only got better from there.

That was AWESOME.

Does it have that Barton Fink feeling?

Oh, yeah — I managed to block that out of my mind overnight.