Blakeston

But in this case, Jimmy knew that the whole story about the robbery being related to squat cobbler videos was a lie. There was no plausible deniability there. Even without the video, it would be a major ethical violation.

I get that they gave the victim the name Charlotte so that the title could be a play on A Study in Scarlet - but it sounds like a pretty rare name for a German woman.

When Jodi first showed up, I called it that she didn't have long to live - but I don't think that required any great prescience on my part. I was glad they decided not to let Marjorie's wedding day be ruined for her. My fiance had a death in the family while his mother and grandmother were on vacation together (celebrating their 50th and 70th birthdays, respectively), and the family chose not to tell them until after they got home. They understood.

Maybe it's Bonnie's mother? Or maybe Regina? I wouldn't be surprised if Octavia Spencer wants off the show, and they might want to throw in a "alcoholism can't be wished away" message. It had better not be Marjorie.

You mean other than Etan Cohen?

No new episodes are being made of Professor Blastoff, but I heartily recommend listening to the archives. It's three comedians - Tig Notaro, Kyle Dunnigan, and David Huntsberger - who talk about a different subject each week (usually something related to science, art or human behavior.) They often have experts and/or celebrities as guests, and the guests are usually great. It's often hilariously funny, and very interesting at the same time. The episode "Cheating" is probably my favorite - the guest was Michael Creed, who was on a cycling team with Lance Armstrong, but was never found to have been involved in the blood doping ring. It's a really fascinating look at the world of doping in cycling. And when I was listening to it, there were times when I was doubled over with laughter, which undoubtedly made my coworkers think that I'm nuts.

Aviary and apiary. Chris guessed that the bee-related part of the clue referred to "hive," and couldn't think of something that sounded like it that would apply to birds.

The guy who wasn't Chris really lost me when he mentioned what he and his fellow bloggers call themselves.

SNL had a great Reagan sketch - the one with Phil Hartman playing him as an evil mastermind, while playing up the "forgetful, sweet old grandfather" image in public. Him yelling "This is the part of the job that I hate!" when he has to meet the girl scouts is one my favorite SNL lines ever.

The only way I can make sense of this episode is if Frank has mentally declined quite a bit since earlier in the series.

He was married. It's super-easy to miss, though, because IIRC it's only mentioned once, briefly. (One of the girls says something like, "We're talking about a married man.") I like the episode, but that plotline didn't seem very well thought out. It seemed like they threw in a reference to his marriage to explain why it was a scandal...and then ignored it, because he'd have to be a huge asshat to do that to his wife.

I interpreted the French scenes as flashbacks. Partially because of Penelope, and partially because walking through the streets in clown makeup smoking cigarettes seems like something that Chip realistically would have done there. I think his fantasies would have involved him performing, and receiving adulation. (Is it bad that I only realized now that Christine named twin boys Chip and Dale?)

The episode with Joe Maganiello (or should I say the first episode with him, in the likely event he comes back) didn't impress me very much. It was mostly two jokes - This Guy Is Hot, and Jill's Old Crowd is Snobby. The whole Jill thing felt like a huge sitcom cliche, with nothing to subvert it. And I might have appreciated the other storyline more if I didn't find Joe Manganiello's looks to be extremely overrated.

It could be worse - you could have guessed it for Friday night's FJ! I was rooting for Sarah, but when it came down to Sam vs. Niki, I was rooting for Sam, despite the Kanye obsession. I didn't have that much of a problem with Niki cutting off Alex - I just couldn't take her over-the-top reactions. A lot of people I know think Niki's histrionics were just adorable. And I suspect that Niki feels the same way. (I get that she was anxious, but I guarantee that virtually all of the contestants are extremely anxious. And the rest of them still manage to hold it together.)

It sounded like Tim was too eager to get out of the tattoo parlor to bother checking on whether the artist was doing it right. She should have asked him flat-out if he really wanted it to say "heater," just because that would be such an odd tattoo...but I can hand-wave that. I'm glad they went with the "doctor has horrendous handwriting" cliche rather than the "tattoo artist is an idiot" cliche. In my experience, the former cliche is a lot more true to life. Anyway, I loved this episode. I feel like the show just gets better and better. My one complaint was that I wish they hadn't established that when Tim met Heather, he was bald with a mustache that connected to his sideburns. The two of them together is enough of a ridiculous example of the "hot wife/slobbish-looking husband" Hollywood trope...did they have to take it even further?

I didn't even have a problem with Sam saying that he loved Kanye. But when he said that he loves the way Kanye "carries himself?" That was just taking it too far.

They went further than just saying that they were hoping to find people who want to celebrate Chinese New Year. Louis said, "I guess technically India and parts of Russia are in Asia." I know plenty of East Asian people who share the view that people from other parts of Asia are only technically Asian, so I'm certainly not saying it's unrealistic. But it felt like a pretty loaded place for the show to go.

I found it kind of interesting that they implied that the Huangs don't really think of people from other parts of Asia as Asian, considering that one of Eddie Huang's issues with the series was that the showrunner is Iranian.

Can we talk about the reasons Bergdahl gave for why he supposedly was motivated to leave his post? I was really glad that Koenig eventually said that they didn't make sense to her or Mark Boal, because I kept questioning if I missed something. The previews for next week mention that learning more about who Bergdahl is will put it all in perspective. Could she be suggesting that he was mentally ill to begin with? That would certainly put things in perspective for me.

i really, really hope they don't bring back Cousin Mikey. He wasn't funny, he was just unbearable. And I completely disagree with the whole moral of the story, ie "so what if he's awful, he's family!" If your relative injures you, and you tell him that he injured you, and he reacts by doing the exact same thing that injured you because he thinks it's funny, then you should get a restraining order against him.

I don't think the A.V. Club reviewer got that quite right. Wide Whale appears to have wanted to arch Dr. Venture, but I didn't get the impression that he wanted her to be his partner in it.

I thought she was going to say "female" or "femur."

If the purpose of the sketch was to subtly call out the sick attitude that it's okay for women to sleep with underage boys, then why did they go out of their way to show that the victim had no regrets? And that it improved his life, and that he didn't suffer from the ordeals typically associated with molestation victims? I get that the writers were having a laugh at how obsessed men are with fantasies about having sex with their hot teachers. But that doesn't mean that they weren't also laughing at the idea that boys are hurt by having sex with hot teachers. And if the goal was to mock people for not taking rape seriously enough, then that means they were mocking a victim for being in denial. And that's pretty messed up.

I don't think that's what they were going for - if it was, they screwed it up badly. If the sketch showed that Pete Davidson's character was really screwed up by the whole thing, but the men insisted on congratulating him, then that would have been mocking that kind of attitude. Instead, they went out of their way to show that the kid was just thrilled about the whole thing, and that he didn't suffer any negative consequences. It came across like they were mocking the idea that he'd been wronged in any way.

I've wondered about that, too. If the bachelor is required to let himself be stolen, I would think the "stealing" would be never-ending. I wonder if it's just that they only show us the times when the bachelor allows himself to be stolen.