That’s the part that I thought was most brilliant. We expected a dramatic chase scene, instead we get what would actually happen in real life, someone slipping and falling in the dark. I do think Pia was killed off by Brooker for plot purposes, but I think the plot purpose was so that at the end of the episode, you…

I didn’t like the episode and gotta call bullshit. Maybe the writing was undercooked but I didn’t feel the commentary coming through. It really just felt like they pivoted towards telling this true crime story because it was more sensational, then ended up uncovering a deeper, darker truth. The pursuit of the true…

I think Shiv realized exactly what she said - she had no faith in Ken. She never has. Not only that, but he’d screwed her over so frequently that she had no reason to think she wouldn’t be screwed. Even if she wasn’t, was that the life she wanted?

Shiv took the sword by accepting her role as Tom’s wife. I don’t think it would have made sense for her to plot his takeover narratively. her ending felt the most complex by both ending the succession but also falling into the gendered role she’s been constantly battling against (even bad women still gotta deal with…

Where did Ken lost Shiv? Honestly it probably just dissolved over the course of the day after she woke up that morning and the glow of sibling bonding wore off. But if there was a moment, it might’ve been when Ken started talking in the board meeting and immediately behaved like an impatient little shit instead of…

You caught me, I clearly loathe this TV show I have written 25,000 words about and given uniformly high scores to.

I could honestly see it going either way. Tom could very well be entirely what Matsson genuinely wants, a friendly sycophantic guy ready to take the fall and do his dirty work for him.

As someone who has loved Tom from the very first episode, this all made me very happy. As someone also well aware that Tom is a pretty awful person, this made me extremely happy.

I’ve said it before, but the alternate ending of How I Met Your Mother works not only because it removes the mawkish shit about the mother dying and the lame shit about Ted and Robin but also because - in cutting out that shit - it get to the montage of “first season / last season” clips faster. Especially for a…

These are practically fighting words about Mad Men.

Joan earned that ending. She wasn’t that person but after seven seasons worth of experience, now she is. That’s life and that’s fitting for a time when many women were entering the workforce or starting second act careers in their lives. 

Not clear how their endings didn’t come out of who they were. Peggy is going to be a great creative director one day, and finally found a man who loves her for who she is because he gets her devotion to the work. (I wasn’t a big shipper of the two of them, but it seems like something Peggy would certainly want.)

You know it’s funny, for all the ways they failed the stick the landing. The one thing you might reasonably expect them to miss they absolutely nailed: After 9 seasons of hyping up the mother they actually managed to find someone who actually lived up to all those expectations as Ted’s soulmate.

I am not sure I understand your comment. Stating that there “is a massive population of people for whom GoT is the only show they watched all the way through...” is certainly a claim that I have no idea how you support. Also, what did they “fully expect to be spoonfed?” What did they “feel like they deserved”?…

It really doesn’t help that, as much as I love Colbie Smulders, Ted and Robin never clicked in 9 years of on-and-off-again episodes as much as Ted and Tracy did in just a single season.

Sticking to their original ending was kind of a dumb move, but it wasn’t helped by the fact that Cristin Milioti is incredibly charismatic

This is very brief, but you can hear it very clearly, which denotes to me that it’s intentional: In the episode after they find Javi, there’s that scene where Van/Akilah are trying to get him to talk. After Van snaps at Travis, you can clearly hear Akilah ask “Hey, Javi, where did you find that queen card?” They’re…

Despite what Jeff says, adult Shauna doesn’t exactly seem ready to bear any of her burdens. After revealing that a) she told Jeff about the murder, and b) Jeff was the real blackmailer, she lines up excuses. After all, maybe Tai did something to Adam in her sleep, or maybe Misty did the real dirty work.

In hindsight it’s crazy that one of the most significant events in 90s pop culture was Kurt Cobain’s suicide, but I don’t recall any particular emphasis as a teen on destigmatizing mental illness or promoting mental health (beyond overtly religious, unhelpful “concern”). My age group indulged in that awful “Romantic…

I hope you don’t take this as a backhanded compliment, but this is the kind of pop culture contextualization that I miss from this site. Great read, thoughtfully written, and a reminder of why I enjoy coming here.