We are notoriously unforgiving of tongue-in-cheek humor

I am sincerely, non-condescendingly amused at how endearingly dystopian these comments are. Not in a hyperbolic or outraged way, but between the evil-movie-corporation name, the missing-the-point buddy-buddy response to cutting sarcasm, and the transparent corporate spin (so much glorious room for improvement!), this…

Especially because this site, like most sites, and with great, genuine respect to everyone who works here, works hard, and turns stressful, possibly unfulfilling work in on time, is maybe 40% high-quality writing and 60% negligible. That's just the nature of the beast. The comments are where I find most of the fresh…

He seems well-intentioned in the sense that most people can be generically said to be well-intentioned but boy does he not know he's saying all the wrong things

Alright, I'll miss my days of coming to the AV Club, good luck with this!

"Ample room for improvement." Now that's what I call spin!

This seems like it will definitely kill off a large part of the commenting community, and they probably know that and are okay with it, not in a sinister way, but for whatever reasons. I'm not mad, but it is a shame. At least half of my AV Club visits involve scrolling past TV and film reviews to look at the comments,…

In some movies it doesn't work but she was BORN to work with Lynch. Janey-E is fucking amazing.

I think a lot of people gloss over how beautifully fucking tragic every Dougie scene is. I haven't seen Being There and a lot of people have been mentioning that as a comparison, so maybe this dynamic was first or better illustrated there, but after all that Cooper has been through, all that Twin Peaks and David Lynch…

It's framed that way but it doesn't really feel that way while you're watching it. It's there on paper but the show's having its cake and eating it, which has always kinda been its deal, but now more than ever. I see what the episode is going for and get the structural gambit of total one-note nonsense/explicit…

Ooh, I forgot about that one, it does look promising!

Worried this show is starting to become the show it was pretending to be and implicitly deconstructing in the early goings. The season 3 premiere is one of its very best episodes and we're only three deep into the season, so I could easily turn out to be wrong, but more and more it feels like it's pandering, playing…

At first I was so excited for an episode where Rick would actually be significantly challenged and not in complete control. That changed fast. Shame.

The show has done intentionally numbing ultra-violence before to great effect (the Purge episode). It used to at least have a kind of knowing sadness and self-criticism behind a lot of it. It felt purposefully deflating and awful. In this episode it was just pure entertainment and sight gags. In a bad way. And it's a…

Ben asking if Harry would like the key made me tear up out of nowhere precisely because of what a, well, not quite monster, considering how many actual monsters are on this show, but very bad dude Ben used to be. In a weird way I find his mellowing out as believable and natural a progression as Audrey's…

That scene somehow played as both "Lynch/Gordon is a dirty old grandpa" and "stop judging, slow down, and enjoy yourself." Simultaneously self-effacing and a bit defensive, both sincerely.

My favorite too! And I was so surprised to see in the recent interview that it's the last-minute "filler episode" Harmon came up with when they got stuck on doing the season 3 premiere as the season 2 finale (as was planned) and changed it up. I think it's the ultimate Rick and Morty because its storytelling is…

Tfw you fall in love with a manifestation of nihilistic chaos and unrepentant brutality and then he turns out to be a pale, neurotic blonde guy with an undercut and dweeby mustache

This is definitely a top-tier "not top-tier" Rick and Morty episode, I think. If there are ~4 amazing episodes this season and the rest are roughly of this quality, it will have been the best season. But yeah, I'd call this a high B/low B+ considering what this show is capable of.

The long-term storytelling started getting notably sloppy in season 4 and wasn't terrific in the first three, but what made the show was the scene-to-scene writing. It felt like a show written by playwrights, where even small scenes starring characters we've never met before could be lively, believable, have an arc,…