It does, yes.

Oh god, can we make this his official names for the AV Club recaps? Please? Who do I have to call to make this happen?

We rolled our eyes at the Chinese moment, too. It's a basic cliché in film at this point, where a non-English speaker can apparently understand everything being said, but responds in non-English, as if just to confound us. (Yes, active and passive language is different, and people really do sometimes feel comfortable…

Yes! Incidentally, this is one of my favorite television moments, ever (thank you, whoever made the gif out of that. You're doing god's work.)

That's why she's the best thing on the show. Cersei and her goblet of wine. I'd watch her sneering at people for hours. (Although: how diplomatic [and out of character] was her thanking Loras instead of shoving all those awful platitudes about Tywin right back in his face? Give the lady another drink or ten: she's…

I agree that's what they're going for, but like I said above, this is a very broad-brush, American way of treating class that reads as not particularly observant to me. They want the characters to hang a cardboard sign on the door as a signal that they're "struggling", only to have Foggy go downstairs and take a taxi…

Honestly, as much as I like the show so far, one small thing that'd been bugging me (until this episode) is that it pays lip service to being a neighborhood-y, working class view of the streets, but it doesn't really feel like a neighborhood-y, working class view of the streets. Wet streets and steam coming from the…

He's very good in The Nines!

Yeah, McCullers is easily my favorite of the southern gothic writers (of the ones I read). Her south is the one I recognize most.

It has some pretty broad swings from strange to conventional (you'd never guess the above-mentioned "Heavy Metal Drummer" was part of the same album), but somehow it all holds together fantastically.

The whole album is fantastic (and easily in my top 5 ever). Definitely check it out.

I've always been super uncomfortable with the Herod scene, where "decadence" is portrayed as fey men, a few of them in makeup and drag, swishing around in a way the film seems to portray as comic and grotesque. I suppose there's a way it can be reconciled - after all, musicals aren't exactly a queer-unfriendly genre -…

Robert Graves (the I, Claudius guy) pushed this theory pretty hard. It's the major theme of his book King Jesus, and it comes up (if I remember correctly) in The White Goddess, as well.

I haven't read the books, so Clarke's inability to sound fully authoritative is playing like gangbusters on my end: whether intentional or not, it's contributing to the sense that she's not really ready to be a ruler, once the heady rush of conquering cities is over and the hard work of maintaining her empire has…

Oh, without a doubt, but do you think the song is endorsing it? It's a song about paranoia and mental illness, after all (barricaded in his bathroom, clutching his gun for protection). I think Sufjan is actually wrestling with the implications of Jesus' command that his followers should be willing to leave their loved…

Can you expand on "preachy" here? One of the reasons I love the track so much is (what I hear as) its terrifying ambivalence, so I'm curious what's leading you to "preachy".

You know how The Avalanche had all those alternate versions of "Chicago"? "Impossible Soul" sounds like what would happen if he strung all the versions together into a single song - it'd have lots of great musical ideas (seriously, each of the versions is interesting in its own right), but with so little thematic…

There very well might be, one day. I don't think anyone expected a hushed instrumental track from his Michigan album to be the germ for an album by the Roots, either.

I dunno, I have a hard time with it. There are some nice moments, but it sounds (to me) like a b-side to the noodling around of ADP (which I also don't care for) (Heck, the focus on "delight" is right from ADP, too, so I think it may have started as part of that LP instead.)

I love how the upper lines - the voices, the bleeps - get increasingly frenetic and ecstatic as he sheds off his worldly duties ("I know I've lost my conscience, I know I've lost all shame") while that synth-brass line keeps descending deeper and deeper into more terrifying blares. It captures the song's ambivalence:…