She's great in JB, but I think her best role is probably A Simple Plan where she manages to play against type and a sort of typically bitchy Bridget Fonda character at the same time. Great performances all around in that underrated classic.

I think she's semi-retired at the moment, maybe for the kids or something.

S5 is the best - with you there. The most seamless interweaving on arc/standalone eps (Drac is a standalone in one sense, but so much about setting up Buffy's own arc ("rooted in darkness" and all that).

Yes, S6 is amazing - a bumpy ride to be sure - but way better than most claim. And it's one of the seasons that most benefits from re-watch. Once the viewer knows it's an off-the-rails mess, it's easier to watch for why and how that all happens. It's atypically Buffy, which, to my mind, makes it great Buffy - because…

Giles, Anya, and Tara are quite good singers, and Spike is more than adequate. Xander's sort of loveably cute in his performance, mostly because the song he sings with Anya is so great. Willow is awful, but so doesn't sing more than two lines.

Didn't he do one album? Powerage, I think . . .

I got patches on the patches of my old blue jeans,
well they used to be blue,
when they used to be new,
when they used to be clean . . .

Is there anybody, anywhere, who thinks otherwise?

Bon-era AC/DC are not overrated - of anything, they're underrated because of the stadium / soundtrack act that the band would become post-Back in Black. Give the album "Powerage" a listen sometime . . .

Yes. And accept it as the norm. And point and make fun of the people who do complain.

How does one quantify a director's "ease with actors"?

Don't forget that he was sort of a joke for a while before Pulp Fiction, too. The 80s weren't all that good to him.

One day your kids will love "Thank God, I'm a Country Boy," no matter what you do to stop it . . . and secretly, you'll be a little happy about that.

man, I thought the break-up scene was incredible.

Well, to be fair, Page picked all of them as, as far as I can remember, the whole thing was his idea - he wanted an "elder statesman," a "mid-career" innovator type, and a young buck. With that in mind, having White as the young buck wasn't such a bad idea, and you'd expect such an attitude . . . or at least I did.

On an episode of The Guild (S5?), the creator of "The Game," apropos of nothing, says to Codex, "did you know Soundgarden is Classic Rock now?"

Yes, and it's one of the aspects of the show that really rewards a re-watch (which, yes, is time consuming, but sometimes you've got the time!). An episode like Walkabout, which is so damned triumphant on first watch, becomes completely different in the context of Locke's entire arc (then again, so does Jack's "live…

I think much depends on "when" Locke's time-travel loop started - which is one of the show's ambiguities that I actually appreciate. MIB seems to have gamed the system on so many levels that Locke's body coming back was almost an inevitability (which feeds into the show's whole free will/destiny dialogue).

Yup . . . there were definitely hip kids coming to grunge via late '80s alternative stuff like The Pixies, but I knew plenty of people whose Nirvana, GnR, and Jane's Addiction cds sat side by side.

hairy bobbin' man ass?