Sadly, Scandal season two was the high point. Parts of S3 are pretty good, and the S3 finale was just good enough for Scandal to escape unwatchability and start S4 on a fresh slate. Alas, after the first third, S4 nosedives horrifically.

The last four episodes were easily Scandal's worst. After Lena Dunham's episode or Cyrus's fake marriage episode (not sure which one aired second), nothing was really worth watching. The reviews more than suffice.

I can pin point the episode Scandal went from "unmissable" to "um, what?": YOLO. Between the groan inducing title, Huck's tongue raping Quinn as foreplay before torturing her, and the awful ending with Sally Langston murdering her husband, that episode was the series equivalent of running into a brick wall. Scandal…

I get why some fans disliked season two, but I liked how the East Baltimore, middle class, Irish Sobotkas' problems heavily paralleled with the West Baltimore, inner city, black gangsters. Without season two, David Simon's epic would have been misconstrued as a story about socioeconomic racism instead of the class…

I love "The Wire", but I agree with her. Those first few episodes were very painful to get through. I believe much of that had to do with the detail overload and colossal number of characters you have to absorb, which sets up all the good stuff later. The series improves remarkably after season one's halfway point,…

In terms of story and universe building, Mass Effect eclipses almost everything from the last gen (except the Portal games). Mass Effect 1 had the best mid-game plot twist of any game I can remember. The conversation with Sovereign was utter perfection, and cemented my love for the series). Mass Effect 2 was 50+ plus…

I played through part of that game during my JRPG phase. Even compared to the PS1 JRPGs, Septerra Core was an absolute slog to get through. The battle system was interesting, but everything ran at such a weird, molasses inducing pace, I wasn't even sure how far I was into the game after a while, or whether the end…

I couldn't get through more than a few hours of Code Veronica. It was a shinier and prettier RE2, but I just remember being bored senseless with that game. Then again, I tried it a few years after playing the RE1 GC port, and MAN, the difference is night and day. Everything that made the REmake so memorable was sorely…

First of all, Rob Grizzly! Long time, no see. I guess most of us former EW.com posters eventually stumbled onto AV Club. :P

Prior to reading "On Writing" for an 11th grade summer reading assignment, all I knew about "Stephen King" was the horror movie stereotype. So color me surprised that his half-memoir/half-writing advisory guide could be this enthralling. Between that book and his Entertainment Weekly op-eds, I became a fan overnight.…

Some of the S5 criticisms are valid. The Baltimore Sun staff were easily the weakest characters of the show's run (not helped by the truncated 10-episode final season), the fake serial killer plot went against the true-to-life design of the previous seasons (though the subplot at least made some nice social commentary…

To be honest, I found S1 (of the first four seasons) to be the hardest to get into. Since the show was beginning to setup its long narrative and its characters, everything presented wasn't half as compelling as everything that came afterward. I wouldn't call S1 bad by any measure, but it tested my patience a lot.…

By the time I finished "The Wire" S4, I had to take a month reprieve to recover from that experience. Even with Namond's happy ending being a silver lining, I was emotionally exhausted from so many likable characters getting the shaft in such horrific ways. "Final Grades" was David Simon's version of the "Red Wedding".

Aside from the House-Cuddy ship at the end, the season six finale was also amazing and underrated. House legitimately bonds with the woman with her leg trapped under rubble, convinces her to lose her leg, so she won't be as miserable as him, stays by her side as her leg gets amputated by a buzzsaw (with NO…

I came to the comments to say the same thing. The last two episodes of season 4, even with Namond's happy ending, were emotionally BRUTAL. Even though I owned the entire DVD collection at the time, I had to stop watching "The Wire" for a month after finishing those episodes.

Yeah, I get the sense that if the detractors watched the other parts of the movie, the ending wouldn't bother them…or at least bother them much less. The last 15-20 minutes was really the exclamation point to all the over-the-top insanity that preceded the last act (i.e., spy genre tropes deconstructed, and then…

The problem with this outlook is that it doesn't fit with what happened in the movie. Eggsy didn't coerce the princess into anal. She was the one who brought that up ON HER OWN. Sure, Eggsy super excited by the prospect, but all he asked is if she could fulfill his more innocuous "to kiss a princess" fantasy.

*round of applause*

Indeed. It's 2D shooting at its most brilliant and minimalist. Five levels of meticulously designed insanity, and all you have is your basic gun, a chargeable super shot, and your ability to swap your ship's color. It's also one of the few "bullet hell" game that's fair instead of being sadistically relentless.

As a frequent twitch user, I tend to watch streams of mostly multiplayer games with pro followings, like Starcraft 2 and Street Fighter 4. High level play is really fascinating to watch, and while I don't need ultra comedic commentary, it adds to the fun and suspense of great matches. Even some amateur stuff can be…