Here you go:

I don't know if it's just a generational thing, but to me it's seems like there's a big - and enduring - popular divide between the 1950s and 1960s. Tons of people my age (mid-20s) and many teenagers I know love and listen to stuff from the '60s - The Beatles, The Stones, Dylan - but almost nobody I know listens to…

I thought this episode was one of the better ones this season - it was consistently funny and entertaining, and even Tom and Ann were fun together, mainly because the show actually showed them enjoying each other's company instead of hating each other's guts.

"DB Cooper"

Just over ten years ago you could still catch lots of '50s and '60s B&W tv on syndication. That disappeared extremely rapidly sometime in the mid-2000s.

My theory is that DVR/streaming/internet plus cable hurt the ratings of "quality" tv a lot more than broader stuff. The type of viewer who would have sought out more high-brow or challenging TV is the kind that's likely to be watching a cable or premium channel show or DVR'ing or catching up with it later on DVD.

It holds up perfectly fine as a well-made, pleasant family comedy.

Let's be honest though - they basically realized that in the modern, fragmented television landscape, the only way for a broadcast network to draw viable numbers was to offer the broadest, least common denominator type shows - derivative multicam sitcoms, hokey generic procedurals, and reality TV.

"And then there's Maude!"

It'll be more like 10 yrs from now - I think they're playing Home Improvement these days.

This could be the AVClub's own hela cell line.

For this history geek, this gets an A purely for the WWI Serbia flashback.

Eh - the humor is definitely somewhat broader these days, and it's been a lot more uneven. Plus, any show stops feeling fresh a couple years after it hits its peak.

Lucky you. You have five weeks to watch the last three seasons - and if you haven't seen them you're in for a treat because S2 and S3 are probably some of the most consistently great television in ages. (And a good deal more consistent than this season which, though good, has been much more uneven.)

Tom can still be quite funny, but it'd be nice to see some character growth. Much of the problem with the Ann/Tom pairing is that they're actually devolving Tom to a caricature of himself - and so quickly after Operation Ann, where he actually acted like a mature, sort of charming guy.

No it means that I accidentally pressed reply a second time and couldn't get rid of Disqus' box without typing something.

Yeah, out of the three comedies NBC debuted last fall, this was probably the one that was the fit best along the Thursday lineup. Maybe they should've given it the post-Office slot, instead of wasting it on Whitney.

@avclub-bca3531762af8a993c4f60c48fd5e33b:disqus Ottoman Lebanon?

Leslie's had a thing for Joe Biden for awhile - way back in S2 when Ann was trying to set her up, Leslie said she wanted a guy with "the brains of George Clooney in the body of Joe Biden."

Yeah, didn't they have that whole maybe-we-should-think-about-marriage thing just a couple weeks ago? They couldn't get him at all to do an episode down the road a bit?