This con artist twist in the story at least helps explain why he was such a terrible sober companion.  At first I thought it was just bad writing on the part of people with little knowledge of how addiction counseling works, but now it makes sense that he was making it up as he went along by tossing out a few therapy…

Judging by how she was able to cure her father they also seem to be running with the rumors of Lucrezia using poison as her chief weapon (when sex wiles failed).

Yeah, kind of ironic that anti-establishment types in Anonymous and Occupy use masks that are licensed by a major corporation.

Yes, I had mixed feelings about that name drop.  On the one hand, I was excited that a broader audience was learning about him on a network TV show.  But then when it turned out to be such a small, passing reference I wondered if the audience who hadn't heard of him before would think he was a fictional character and…

The pope's illegitimate children and their courtesan mother are grudgingly accepted within the Vatican palace, but c'mon, add in the pope's newest sexual fling to the mix at his bedside?  That's just poor taste.

The full episode is on the Showtime website, though I'm not sure for how long or if they'll keeping posting new episodes.

It makes total sense.  I'm guessing she was 17 and fell in love with a
punk rock anarchist dude who thought voting was for middle class liberal
sell-outs, and never registered so that anarchist dude would think she was a real activist rebel.  By the time she began to think that voting might be a Good Thing To Do, she…

I've thought about this as well.  I don't like the gendered insults about Thatcher (witch, b*tch, c*nt), especially when they come from folks who think of themselves as having left wing, progressive, and even feminist politics.

I prefer Elvis Costello's "Tramp the Dirt Down."  Slower tempo, but perfectly captures the sense of simmering, seething rage about all she did.  Gives me chills.

I think he was relaying a classic 12 step story along the lines of "I thought I Had It All, money, drugs, women, etc but in reality, My Addiction Had Me."  You don't need a top dollar addictions counselor for cliches like that, just go to a local AA/NA meeting.

I didn't care for the ballad, but I did like it when they got his name wrong and called him Avery Barksdale.  Quite a contrast from the Barksdales from The Wire.

So either chemical dependency counselor dude is so talented that he can afford to have just one client (Juliette's mom) and charge a huge fee, or he's so incompetent that he's the type to decide on the spot to go on tour and leave behind a bunch of other clients.  I know it's just a tv show, but for one that has so…

I'm no expert, but I assume that with the kind of remixing that was being done to Avery's tracks, the music was digitally recorded.  But I guess dragging and dropping a bunch of files to the trash and pressing "delete" isn't nearly as dramatic.

I'm guessing you're not familiar with the cultural impact that the Catholic Church still has in Chicago.  It makes perfect sense that on St Patrick's Day the local bishops and cardinals would show up to the fancy dress ball of the political elite (it wouldn't be much of a stretch if the archbishop's mansion actually…

I was under the impression that they brought up the drunk driver not because they truly thought a DUI in another county was to blame, but because they were trying to create reasonable doubt and divert attention away from the wife's probable guilt in running her husband off the road.

Good points  ^^^^.  I still think Stefan wins for skeeviest comment (just judging between the 2 in this episode), but overall I agree that Josh is the bigger douche.

My vote is for Stefan, because he seems to be actively cultivating this gross persona of the offensive yet charming foreigner ("oh it's just a European thing, you Americans don't get the humor.").  Um, no, your behavior is not a quirky cultural tic, you're just being an asshole.

But the storyline didn't involve emergency contraception, it involved a woman using mifepristone, which is very different from taking birth control pills to prevent a pregnancy.  As mentioned upthread, it's a charged topic, and it bugs me when medically incorrect info that basically echoes right wing talking points…

"which she terminated via birth control pills"

I was surprised as well.  Then again it's par for the course for the quirky genius that is Tom Waits to be upstaged by whatever mainstream sensation is soaking up the pop culture attention.