Wow, so with the next episode being the finale for S4, that brings us to a run of three eps in a row. Reading these writeups, I’ve realized that S4 was pretty pivotal for the show, resetting almost everything and transitioning into what the show would become the back half of its run.

It’s interesting you bring up TWD, because Neagan caving in the head of a character who had been on the show literally since the second episode turned us off on that show also. Guess we have a thing for cranial trauma.

I haven’t read the books but I remember the consensus from book readers at the time that this version was even more vicious and sickening than what was written. 

More than even the Red Wedding, this nearly broke my wife and I on the show.

At the time I said that Darth Vader with a Hitler moustache would have been a more nuanced villain. 

For as much flak as Ramsay caught in the comments yesterday for suffering in comparison to Joffrey, Burn Gorman’s Tanner, coming right after Joffrey’s exit, fares much, much worse. He’s just ridiculously over the top EEEEE-ville, like how did he ever even make it that far in life, much less the watch, without getting…

A good chunk of the one star reviews I encounter on yelp or google are typically complaints about carry-out, like they didn’t get enough napkins or ketchup packages or some shit. 

I’ve only seen it once, but I didn’t even catch (or maybe just forgot in all the shock) that Cait killed her hostage: I just thought she went limp and let the kids go, then her throat got cut so casually.

“Japanese car, huh? You know what I say about the Japanese? They—”

Yeah a few weeks ago there was a discussion of which year was best for superhero movies and I think 2017 pretty decisively clinches it. Wolverine, WW, and all three MCU movies that year were great. 

When Trump went after McCain like that, it was pretty soon after he’d announced. I remember thinking at the time, “welp, that’s it for him then.” In ‘08, an early Dem contender (Wesley Clark, I think?) went after McCain as well and basically ended their candidacy by doing so, because the media and republicans piled on…

Marcella shoutout! When I first started cooking in earnest, that was the book that set me on the path. I read it, cover to cover, like a book. I cooked from it for a year.

“ . . .[E]very component plays a role; there is no extraneous element.” This is something I’ve noticed and really come to appreciate about French cooking as well. Additionally, it’s the question of how to make each element taste best, contribute the most flavor, to a dish. There’s this real thoughtfulness to…

Usually I’m a one and done person with a restaurant; as you say, there’s too many other places to go to. But I’ve been burned at favorite places now and again. I usually go back, but it may be a while. The thing to look at is, is it a fluke, or something about the restaurant itself? A bad service night sounds like a…

I’m a horror wimp too, or more accurately a gore wimp, and one review I’ve read said it’s more scary than gory, if that helps. 

Given Brawl in Cell Block 99's languorous pacing issues—we don’t hear the words “Cell Block 99" until an hour into the movie—this will be 2 hours and 20 minutes of small talk and then 20 minutes of skulls caving in.

I guess I missed that they’re inserting this into the old chronology; I had thought they were moving forward with them at their new home from the end of TS3. This makes me less interested in seeing it, honestly. 

It was just for a month. Back to Amazon Prime, I guess. 

Beef in red wine had long been an ideal for me that was never quite realized when I’d make it. For my French cooking year last year, it was one of my earliest triumphs. Bourdain’s recipe was the backbone of that success; I too noted the austerity of carrots, onion and the bouquet and that’s it. I prefer it without the…

Last year I did a cooking project where I took a deep dive into French cooking. The Les Halles cookbook was a mainstay. About a month after he died, I was researching bouillabaisse and looked up his recipe, reading through his book for the first time since that awful day. I just started reading and laughing at his…