Yeah, that can't be the question. How far Boyd's willing to go in his love for Ava, how much of his own self-interest Boyd's willing to sacrifice, etc. — those seem like more plausible questions.

I really need to rewatch S3. I thought it was disappointing (by the show's own standards, anyway; it was still pretty fucking great by any absolute measure), largely because I thought Quarles crossed the line from pulpy into cartoonish. I also remember being shocked to discover that I was more or less alone in the…

Everything seemed sharper! The look, the characterizations, the jokes. It was super.

I thought all the characters were sharper & funnier than they'd been in ages (that probably includes S3 for me).

*checks to make sure there are no more ads for Low Winter Sun*

That's what I thought. And while it's not a terribly popular opinion, I think it's precisely because it was devoid of any pretensions to 'depth of purpose' (ugh) that Into to Teaching was such an effortless and enjoyable episode, and more like the episodes that got me to like this show in the first place. I like…

Who are these 'most people' that deny that 30 Rock was consistently funny, and where & when can I bare-knuckle fight them?

OK, AV Club, let's say I want to give Person of Interest another shot after having watched the first few episodes when they aired and decided that the show wasn't for me. Do I start at the beginning and press on, or is there some other point later on that I could jump in?

I'm not as high on The Americans as some others (I thought it started and ended strong, but there was a lot of wheel-spinning in the middle run of the season); that said, "Come home" was as powerful a line as I saw delivered on TV.

I had a few distinct reactions to that sketch:
1. Dread: "Oh, shit, this is going to be a lazy rip-off of other, funnier send-ups of the song's rape-iness, isn't it?"
2. Relief: "Wow, it's not!"
3. Disappointment: "But they decided to go with a tired clingy girl/caddish guy instead? Ehh, fuck this."
4. Acceptance: "Well,…

I get the thought behind "it gets better," especially as it relates to teenagers who, for all they may be suffering, genuinely might have no real idea of the possibilities the future holds.

Yeah, this is a good point. Maybe the long shadow cast by WFB over the right's intellectual establishment (har, har) has preserved a place for the public intellectual, even as that establishment's put forward a series of charlatans, blowhards, and hustlers to fill the role. (Exhibit A: Dinesh D'Souza. I mean, come…

The bit at the end is on the right track; there are no more public intellectuals (or none of the stature of the postwar period) because there's no more 'public' – not in the same sense, anyway. Seems to me that the phenomenon was marked by the highbrow performing for/lecturing to the middlebrow, but now those…

That was the absolute most distressing depiction of violence I've ever seen on television, and one of the most distressing I've ever seen period. It was gut-wrenching.

Do want.

And whatever my equivalent of sploosh is.

You think Limbaugh will greet the news of Mandela's death with anything besides unrestrained glee?

Sometimes, apropos nothing, I'll recall that Hannibal exists, is excellent, and is coming back, and I feel just a little happier.

As someone who listened to a lot of German industrial in the mid-nineties before actually learning German in college, let me say: Rammstein is not alone in this.

My heart sank a little when he quit that job (again). I'm sure the accounting firm would get played out pretty quickly, but I can't help but want to see Ben in his natural habitat a little while longer.