Or Jacques Pepin. Love Jacques. I’ve never been a fan of either Fieri or Flay, although I do have and like some of Flay’s cookbooks. I would also watch Beat Bobby Flay from time to time. But I was never under any illusions about whether Flay or Fieri were nice in real life. There have been rumblings about Flay being a…

Yeah, I use MyFitnessPal to track calories and it also does macros and sodium. It takes a little bit of time each night (I like to pre-enter at night what I’m going to eat the next day so that I have a plan and stay on track) and if you haven’t tracked using an app before you’ll probably have to poke around a bit to…

10/10, would watch and subscribe to your newsletter.

Ha! I think my sister and I actually had some version of that exact conversation while season 3 was on. It was like willingly subjecting yourself for an hour each week to every tool from your college intro philosophy. I suppose it doesn’t help that I find philosophy incredibly tedious to begin with, but The Sinner did…

I finished it, but man was it a slog. Sooooo much bro philosophizing. It was all so boring. If I had to listen to one more character lecture about the nature of being and what it means to be alive, I was going to scream. 

There is a Bob Evans by me that has had a sign out for months advertising signing bonuses of up to $200, as if that is going to lure anybody. Some restaurants must think people really are that stupid that they’ll accept a one-time, $200 “bonus” in lieu of actual, livable working conditions. And a fast food place by me…

I’m so torn on whether to watch the new season of The Sinner. The third season was dreadful and dull, despite having landed Chris Messina and Matt Bomer for supporting roles. Maybe it’s just that I find the character of Harry Ambrose exhausting at this point. He’s like the detective version of House without any of the…

I don’t do jelly, either, because the gloppy texture of jelly isn’t pleasant to me when mixed with peanut butter. Honey is good, too, but only if you’re using natural peanut butter. Store brands like Jif and Skippy have too much sugar added, so they’re too sweet to work well with honey.

This is the correct take. 

I generally pick up two bottles of bourbon (a midrange one to give out to strangers and a better one for me and my family). When it runs out, it runs out. So yeah, it’s not the cheapest of traditions, but I like doing it. 

I give out spiked mulled cider to adults walking around with their kids. I started a few years ago, when we weren’t getting many trick or treaters coming up our street. I love Halloween and I’ll do anything for more foot traffic. The first few sets of parents didn’t believe me when I asked if they wanted their drink “w…

Yeah, I don’t have a huge problem with it, all things considered. There were far more substantive issues in S2 and in the finale that this minor plot contrivance doesn’t really matter. 

I definitely don’t think they’re philistines, either. I don’t yuck someone else’s yum when it comes to pop culture (except people who watch the Kardashians. I’ll never get that). I personally gravitate more toward sincere comedy than cynical comedy, so I get the appeal of the nice comedy in Ted Lasso. I just felt like…

Perhaps our paths will cross at an academic conference one of these days and I’ll get to express my appreciation in person! (I never thought I would be so deprived of travel and socializing that I would long for an academic conference, but here we are!).

I would be totally fine if Nate doesn’t get redeemed because, quite frankly, that’s more realistic. I think the show ultimately will redeem Nate because that’s just kind of what they do, and in the world of Ted Lasso, the irredeemable people are people like Rupert. But I would like to see Ted make peace with being…

I think that Nate’s tirade at Ted is a sort of Rorschach test for viewers and for the actors themselves. I’ve been fascinated by the ways in which the people involved in the show talk about Nate’s tirade as though it is a moment of honesty from Nate about how he’s really feeling, when the show takes pains throughout…

I’m obviously not one of the reviewers, but I would answer your question by adding an additional possibility. I wasn’t disappointed in the conflicts being unbelievable or that the show seemed less fun. Rather, for me it was that so much of this season’s plotting felt unearned. That speaks to a problem of structure and…

I don’t get the Rupert/Nate connection, either. Rupert is, at his core, a snob. He would have been one of the people mocking Nate’s “wonder kid” comment and rolling his eyes at a nobody like Nate puffing himself up like that.

That was such a perfect little character moment. 

If Ted Lasso is shooting for the objective correlative (and given the tight plotting of season 1 I don’t think that it is), then the question becomes whether it has succeeded. Eliot’s essay argues that Hamlet fails in this regard, while Macbeth succeeds because it establishes that vital connective tissue wherein the…