If you want to get really cynical, Tony Stark having significant character development and status quo shakeups in his solo series only for all of it to get completely shat on by some other writer who just wants to make a big dumb crossover event, is actually peak Marvel Comics.

Let us not forget when the hero classically outwits the snobby villain.

I went to a film festival screening of Computer Chess (which I did not like) where the UW professor asked the director what he was thinking when he included a certain theme in the movie. The director replied that he hadn’t thought about it at all and that he really wasn’t sure that the theme was there, but the…

I finally finished The Americans after putting it off for a while, and the finale was great. I really felt bad for Stan. Philip leaves him with “You were my best friend... Oh, and your new wife might be a Soviet spy as well” and at that point Stan is doubly crushed and you know it’s something that would eat him up…

Not gonna lie - I still enjoy watching Happy Gilmore. The Waterboy too, in once-every-year doses.

I heard that Shooter McGavin will be the Big Bad in Avengers 5

Right. It’s a cute take, but it’s not like there weren’t a million other snobs-vs-slobs movies before and after Sandler’s hits. Spoiler: the snobs aren’t the heroes in those movies, either.

None of this is invalid, but the triumph of the decent working-class man in Hollywood films is nothing new. And it’s often pretty phony.

I’m reminded of those college ‘film studies’ professors who would do lengthy treatises on bad 1950s drive-in monster movies, claiming their social relevance in the context of Cold War doomsday hysteria of the era. Yeh, and if you look at a door knob and key hole closely enough you will start to make out a nose and…

I think Lindelof was careful, after Lost, to not leave us hanging.  The finale left you to decide the ending, but it was effective.  Loved the entire last season and how it gave every character an arc.  Still, though, ‘International Assassin’ of season 2 is still my favorite episode of any series.

Isn’t that the sort of behavior that got Joe Biden into trouble?

As is my custom, I’d like to take a second to inform you that Alexander Siddig is THE nicest man, and wanders around Star Trek conventions hugging people whether they like it or not.

The fall of Winterfell dealt the Starks a crippling blow in prestige and strategic outlook back in Season 2,

LOST lost me at the end when the creators were like “The Island doesn’t matter”. Fuck them, the island was the whole point of the show.

Many people complain that the seventh season moves too quickly, and at its great pace, sheds logic and some of the show’s better nuances...and those people aren’t wrong. Then again, it also takes time for some delicious character moments like this. The Queen of Thorns/Jaime discussion felt like a beautiful pause, and…

The real waste of the Dorne storyline was getting Alexander Siddig to play Prince Doran and then making him be an actual cuck, instead of pretending to be a cuck like he is in the books.  

Oh, for fuck’s sake, with the goddamn polar bear already. Why is that always the default question when someone brings up all the things they missed on the show and/or didn’t bother looking up? I know this stuff isn’t obvious, but come on. It’s all been readily available online for nearly a decade.

Leftovers would be a good candidate for this list and one of the reasons it actually stuck the landing was that its central mystery (“what happened to the people that disappeared”) was never really a priority for the show like it was on Lost. Nora explains what happened, but whether you believe her or not is up to…

Leftovers was outstanding

The final season of Lost was sort of like the Star Wars Prequels, where the creators seemingly had no idea what it was that people enjoyed about there creation. The entire series of Lost was about the mystery, the happy ending with all the characters going into the beyond together felt unearned and completely out of…