I think it's more how he starts a play on words before he realizes where it will end. Like the beans beans statement. It did feel off but Richard was unraveling at that point so for him to free-associate stopping a truck with "stopping traffic" and what that phrase usually means works ok for me.

This episode was almost handled well, I liked the whole "going into darkness" route with Richard but his whole dinner with Gavin felt like it betrayed everything. Gavin hasn't been particularly evil recently and Richard has, so Richard standing up to Gavin feels totally disharmonious with the character growth we saw…

Upvote for just having the decency to spoiler tag preview observations. Seriously bravo, I wish more people were like you.

Yeah his run on stage and "I love this company" was definitely going full Ballmer.

I hope you are being sarcastic, but if not:

Well even California's probably don't deserve to be burned alive in a car accident.

There are some good comic bits they could've used longer like Ed Chambers. You can have long running gags inside a plot that is very dynamic.

Exactly, this played into something the show has done again and again and so my expectations were so solidified that it was building towards a full Richard-epiphany payoff that subverting it gave me the biggest laugh of the season.

Andy Daly has some of the best comedic acting in the world.

Great catch

Yeah, good point. Seems like a lot of people missed this.

This show could probably benefit from more Arrested Development type running gags. They isolate good jokes to a single episode and honestly I think they are worse off for it. About the only good long running gag is how Elrich yells "JIAN-YANG"

"And whatever the fuck Jared is…"

This show has many strengths but the single best running gag has to be how Erlich yells "JIAN-YANG!!!!"

So… was it a heart attack?

No comedies like the Big Bang Theory clearly have much better acting. </sarcasm>

Absolutely, the show wasn't racist because it had Erlich behave in a culturally insensitive way because the show wasn't endorsing his behavior. Many of them do morally questionable stuff all the time.

I think the premise of your working from though is that the book is always more right than the undergrad, their response is from a place of ignorance and they should keep that to themselves, and my point is that any material should not be treated as something you have to kiss up to, intellectually processing something…

I'm not shaming you, I'm hating my own brain for not having an awesome memory like others, and taking some comfort in knowing that many of you have rewatched it so I'm not that subpar.

Whether or not you liked a book is almost entirely a function of the book's merit and meaning and how that resonates or not with you. It would be odd to insist that personal reception of the thing being discussed be strongly discouraged. People are adults, they can understand that your taste or reception is not the…