I’ve see articles describing Lauer as ‘America’s dad’. Wow, someone must have a creepy friggin’ dad to make such a comparison. Going back 15 years,  I can recall Lauer coming off as a mean spirited passive-aggreessive (or sometimes aggressive-aggressive) creepo. Just what people want to see at 8am, amiright?

At the height of the Great Bush Real Estate Crash a mysterious Russian oligarch appeared and bought a Florida luxury home from Trump, paying three times or more what the home was worth - at the height of the real estate death spiral! That absurd sale saved ‘real estate mogul’ Trump from going completely broke that…

Have you ever had a friend who was suffering from onset schizophrenia? Its heartbreaking to watch - the growing anxiety, paranoia, the tendency to manufacture external reasons to explain their internal anguish. If just 1/3rd of one percent of the population was so afflicted that number would still be more than a…

I’m going back to 1979 for this one. Meryl Streep(!), Alan Alda(!) and Melvin Douglas(!) in “The Seduction of Joe Tynan”. The movie was soooo incompetently written and directed and edited and filmed and lit and paced that all the good intentions in the world couldn’t save the film from itself. One of only 2 or 3…

A‘guilty pleasure’ for a lot of the world these days is the UK podcast “My Dad Wrote A Porno”. A mild-mannered fellow and his two chums read out his sixty-something father’s dreadful ‘erotic novels’ to hillarious effect. The podcast has become such an unexpected hit that a world tour is planned for their stage show…

If you are expel from the hallowed halls of Feminism anyone who ever cheated on their spouse with another woman that list would include Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earheart

What was the name of that book of essays by Roxane Gay? Oh yes, “Bad Feminist”. The thesis if that book was women are messy creatures with libidos and bad habits and ugly histories like everyone has. Having a checkered past does not disqualify a woman from also being an intellectual and social justice feminist. Gay…

I’m reminded of ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ whose lead character is shown in season 3 to have a diagnosible mental disorder, shedding a spotlight backwards on two seasons of increasingly bad behavior. Is it possible to look back on this series and say Nola appears to be something of a cold-blooded narcissist sociopath? Is…

The ‘spoiler’ might actually kind’a help with the context for people.
Some initial viewers were turned off after a couple episodes thinking it was a mere cringe comedy rom-com. It helps to know up-front that the series seeks to actively subvert tropes and trueisms. If you see them setting up a cheesy rom-com trope in…

It should be mentioned Bae is very much the second lead in this series, not merely a cameo. So there’s lots of her to see.

I didn’t watch Sense8, I only realized she was in both series after the fact. Bae Doo-na (the Korean version of the name) is truly excellent in this show.

Don’t know if this is permitted, but I located a series preview with subtitles.

NOT covered by AV Club (for obvious reasons), I highly recommend streaming the Korean corruption drama “Forest of Secrets” (alt title: ‘Stranger’). 16 or 18 episodes, I forget which. I’ve never seen a crime puzzle series so flawlessly put together. Its a masterpiece. The TV review site for Korean series Dramabeans…

They tried to rebrand themselves themselves the ‘alt right’. I call them the ‘emo boyband Nazis’.

This news is a double-edges sword. On the one hand its “Eeew, not another crusty old revival!” while on the other hand its “Hey, Hollywood’s employing actresses over the traditional ‘too old to find work’ cut-off age!”

If we’re mentioning foreign-made TV, there’s the 13th episode aired on Friday January 13 of “The Lonely Shining Goblin”, the scene where the hero Kim Shin pulls the flaming sword from his own chest and uses it to cut down the demon ghost eunuch Park Joong-heon. ‘Goblin’, I believe, was the highest rated television…

Aging action heroes eventually suffer the same fate as aging femme fatales in the movie industry. If they can’t transition into smaller character roles they’re stuck. Actors we considered nobodys 30 years ago are still working in films playing police captains and judges and industrial titans. The ‘hot young…

That sounds more like a Gizmodo article.

Awh, you got me all nostalgic for Siskel & Ebert’s year-end worst film shows ...which I suppose was a full 18 years ago now. (Nobody gives poor Richard Roeper any respect despite soldier in with the show for 9 years.)

I’m reminded of that old daytime game show ‘Family Feud’. The object of the game wasn’t to have the cleverest answer to the question but to guess what most of the audience thought the answer should be. it punished originality and rewarded the ability to second-guess the crowd.