Sure. But almost all good shows after they decline will still have the occasional good episode. Even The Office had some good episodes in the midst of the post-Michael Schur/Greg Daniels years. Even after Carell left.

Again, that was my point. Though in this case, no, I disagree—season 13 of the Simpsons was worse than the Zoe season of HIMYM. Season 13 of the Simpsons is when it started becoming terrible.

I'm a huge Frasier fan, but I think it started taking a pretty big dip in quality right around when Daphne and Niles got together. It was sweet to see them declare their feelings for each other, but the show as a whole started getting much worse, in my opinion. Less a jumping the shark sort of thing and more just the…

Not sure how the question is invalid when that was exactly what I was saying: Simpsons wasn't as amazing in season 1, 2, and 9-11 as 3-8, but still pretty damn good; that's because a drop off from what the Simpsons was at it's prime is still a whole lot better than where most other shows were even at their best. That…

Mad Men I think had a deep drop in quality once they really started tackling the 60s as we think of them. I loved seasons 4 and 5, but 6 had some real big problems and I thought 7 was, mostly, lousy. Part of the problem was that the show was never as deep as it thought it was. But the main culprit is that they ran out…

Oh, I completely agree about that too. It's bizarre that a show, 20 years in, still be as consistent as it was when it started—as in it's still and always has been insanely inconsistent, alternating truly brilliant comedy with awful horseshit on a week to week basis.

Yeah, I thought about South Park, but as you say, it's a whole lot easier to be good for longer when you're producing 10-15 episodes a season than it is 22-24. Maybe a better thing to count it by isn't number of seasons but rather number of episodes. I don't know.

Cheers is a funny one. I recently had a job (I work in TV) where I had to watch a whole bunch of the entire series in order to pull clips. Season 1 and 2 have some great character moments, and some stuff that has aged TERRIBLY. Season 3-5 are pretty great. 6 and 7 are not good at all. 8 is fantastic, 9 and 10 are…

I can't think of a single show of any kind that was good for 9 seasons. Seinfeld's doesn't count, as it's first season was all of 5 episodes long, it's second season was only 12 episodes, and both seasons were pretty bad overall. I guess the Simpsons was GOOD for over 9 seasons, even if was only truly at it's peak for…

Yes it was in Houston. Got that wrong. No, they weren’t down by three:

As a die hard Mets fan still traumatized by a) last year’s loss, b) 2000's lost World Series and c) The 2006 loss to the fucking 83-79 POS Cardinals before they could face a very beatable Tigers, my answer would be...

That was rumored for a while, but eventually they decided to open the Tubman musical at the theater that formerly housed Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.

I stopped playing in my teens because of the money (right around when Visions came out). I've started watching matches in the last year as a way of getting back in. But when I want to play a strategy card game that heavily involves deck-building, I play Dominion. Magic is too damn expensive.

They do this as a half-measure to appease speculators. If they included the cards people actually want but made the box and pack price points lower, that'd mean the potential value in each opened pack would vastly exceed the msrp. That would, in turn, cause prices for the individual cards to crater, and cause massive…

The one thing that makes me question WoTC's actual interest in keeping these formats healthy and making them somewhat affordable for larger groups to play is the continued existed of the reserved list. I understand that collectors would be horrified, but as more people are interested in playing legacy and vintage, the…

Same here. I've actually regained interest in the last year. It's still too expensive a hobby for me to jump in again and play, but I have been watching some online matches on youtube. This article was a surprise, but not an unpleasant one. I mean, I clicked the link.

To be fair, they weren’t three straight years. He missed a year in there. But yeah, otherwise I’m with you.

That’s more or less true in New York, except that with all the papers there you also have some bad beat writers thrown in for good measure. Most of them are pretty good, though. I especially like Mark Carig from Newsday and Anthony DiComo of mlb.com. Andy McCullogh used to be pretty great, but he’s since moved on…

Dorne: I agree in terms of AFfC. As I said, though, I liked Quentyn's story in ADwD. I've already said how I feel about the Iron Islands.

If it’s truly getting great care and in a habitat big enough to suit it then great. Nevermind. So many of these animals have shit living situations. It’s true the situation in the wild is awful. I’d hope for a wildlife preserve somewhere—a good and humane one. Just not a situation where a wild animal is abused and…