I love any and all attacks on the Telecom Act of 1996, so good article, but the quote from Common Cause referring to "AOL, owner of Time Warner" is bizarre since AOL was spun off from TW a long time ago (and AOL is actually now owned by Verizon!). Maybe this was a quote from Common Cause in the year 2001 or something?…

Cool story bro: My aunt (RIP) was in Pink Flamingos. I kept hearing about this chicken-screwing scene for years and years. When I finally saw it, I was pretty nonplussed. It's pretty lame. I really don't understand the appeal of those early John Waters flicks. Maybe you had to be there in the stuffy, stultifying…

This is why I laugh my ass off at the crazy conspiracy theories that Hillary and Bill convinced Trump to run or tricked him into running to destroy the Republicans or that it's all a set-up so that Hillary can win. These theories make it sound like it was a certainty that he would do well in the primary all along.…

There's all kinds of interesting things bubbling under the surface out there, mostly never played on shitty commercial radio but spread via social media, etc. I'm not sure if "the kids" listen to much of this stuff but I hear lots of great new indie rock on streaming stations like SomaFM's Bagel Radio and Altrok…

I thought that was a nicely grim and realistic touch. A little taste of something Freaks and Geeks-ish; a nasty jolt of reality that made the show's world seem more tangible and less artificial. Nancy evolved a lot through the course of the show, but in the real world people often go 5 steps forward and 4 steps back.…

I think its main problem is more of a sort-of-standard long-form modern sci-fi TV problem: Based on what we've seen so far, the bad guys seem too powerful, the good guys seem almost completely helpless, and for that reason, mainstream audiences are likely to find the show to be too fucking depressing (so far). If the…

Holy shmow, •Breckman• wrote that one?! That explains a LOT.

Sad upvote.

Agreed on all points. Earlier today I was joking that Dark Matter is what happens when you have some Stargate SG-1 writers/producers who had probably been watching more ambitious shows like Person of Interest and various things on HBO and FX in recent years and said, "Hey, let's do something like that!" but they……

Careful, you probably just gave Chuck Tingle an idea for another short ebook.

Classic Doctor Who: How do you choose between season 7, season 12, season 13, season 14, season 17, season 25, and season 26?

This is a really good point. Around here I give X-Files lots of shit for its horrible failed mythology, but it was an excellent lesson for other writers in what not to do, and without it, we may never have gotten Fringe, or Person of Interest, or maybe even some elements of Farscape, among many others.

I agree on Farscape. And probably on ST:V too, from what I can remember of it.

I liked a lot of the ideas and themes behind Buffy season six. It's in the execution that it flopped. It's one thing to be darkly realistic, but it's another thing entirely to be grim, morose, and not much fun at all. The writers seemed to be just as depressed as Buffy.

No way — season 2 starts by slowly picking up the pieces from the cliffhanger at the end of season 1. Season one's finale is the first episode that really piqued my interest and made me realize the show was going to be more than just an X-Files knockoff. Plus it's just an excellent episode all by itself. I'd say start…

Although I agree that Angel and Dollhouse had excellent finales, the build-up to those finales was important and paved the way for them. Writers can't just completely pull an excellent finale right out of their butts. Groundwork has to be laid. By the time of the finale, or heck, even by the time S6 *started*, it was…

I had that same experience, but for me it was in the 90s, with the mythology of The X-Files, even in its early seasons. I was absolutely baffled that people seemed to be falling for it. It seemed blatantly obvious to me that Chris Carter & co. were just throwing shit against the wall to see what would stick.

Given that it's actually (currently) the other way around — they get all their Marvel shows from ABC's production house and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt from NBC's production house — I don't see why Netflix would be in any hurry to start moving things in the other direction. Netflix's main goal is to have exclusive…

I can understand that. On the rare occasion that they did a short film, especially an "educational" film, it was always great, probably because it couldn't wear thin like that. I often flagged towards the end of the two hours.

I agree that there are a lot of great episodes in season two and a few in season one of DS9, but there is also a lot of boring and asinine garbage in season one. It shouldn't all be skipped, just truncated severely.