That is some tasty Russell dissection from you and @AC_Slater123:disqus: I just rewatched this (I always end up watching these twice because I'm the only one who stays up late for it on Sundays) and found myself really thinking about the way the camera lingered on Russell's reaction to Gamby and Janelle in the…

Yes, everyone should give in to the weird cuteness of the Gamby/Russell friendship. "Like, you know how with you, I go with the mustache? It's like that."

In retrospect, wheeling his bike down the school hallways while calling to a student that he's cool but he's not that cool was probably a sign.

I would probably watch an entire show that was just Gamby and Russell sitting on the floor eating tacos and talking about insult strategies.

Lee Russell wardrobe win gets temporarily transferred to Gamby (against all odds!) for burning Abbott for shopping at Nordstrom Rack.

Either Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives (a short story anthology) or the two-volume Library of America novel collection, Women Crime Writers (first volume is the forties, second is the fifties, and they can be bought separately if you only want the fifties)—both are edited by Sarah Weinman. (EDIT: Also, excellent…

"This is our orchestra teacher, Ms. Maldives, and her student teacher, East Timor."

I really wish Savages had gotten a better movie adaptation. The Coens could have done it: there's even a kidnapping! I'll settle for Sofia Coppola helming some sort of O-centric spin-off prequel, either Kings of Cool-related or not.

The complete American Vampire run to date (well, all those collected in graphic novels, anyway): I will happily let Snyder mash up vampires and Americana into an awesome mythos for as long as it suits him, especially now that he's got a rollicking high-stakes plot going on and I'm so invested in the characters.

Adventures in punchability: Bill Hayden continuously calling Snodgrass "kid."

This really was a great episode for making use of our empathy for all the characters. It's ridiculous how delighted I was to see the Gamby/Russell friendship as just a matter-of-fact thing: "I say margherita, what say you?" Say what you will about Lee Russell, but he knows it's his duty as a friend to rag…

Going back and looking at #701 now actually causes me a little bit of heartache. I've always been a big proponent of rereading/rewatching things, and moments like that—where the narrative is inflected differently because of something you (I, at any rate, given when I read SoD) learned later—are a big part of why.

That's reassuring. As terrible as Jackie was, I was actually mildly worried about whether or not his skull would stay intact after that.

Ruck recommended it to me a—how does time work?—few months ago and a) I'm loving it and b) it's been really fun to have someone to talk to about it. Feel free to jump in—I'm halfway through Blood Runs in the Family, but anything before that is fair game!

Even mentioning that scene makes me a little teary.

He does kind of go too far—I 100% expected him to kick Jackie while he was down, but brass knuckles to the back of the head is a different thing—but I, a terrible person, was not deeply upset by it. But while his mother-in-law seemed kind of impressed (at least by Jackie being on the ground to begin with), his wife…

Gamby softly saying the girl should start taking Creative Writing was a weirdly nice capstone on that scene.

He can clog! (Link to the Justified dance.)

He just sucked so much in such an everyday kind of way. I wanted to cheer when Russell danced his toe over the property line. And I actually did a little when, after several conversations of not-so-subtly blaming everything on his wife, he stopped smiling and told Jackie to leave his wife out of it.

Lee Russell wardrobe win of the week: the pajama pants in the second house scene. I have no idea what the living fuck that pattern was. (Honorary mention: Gamby coins “sassy-pants” as Russell’s nickname.)