arc

I don't think that matters as much as the damage it does to Nina's character to get that fooled in the first place. I'm not sure, off the top of my head I don't know how to write a jail "field trip" for Nina that's any better.I liked all the stuff that happened once Nina got to jail. That was great. I just wish the premise had been a bit more solid. The Phil/Carlos story was less problematic. There's something inherently pathetic about a guy his age aiming to "rage his face off", so the turn was a little surprising but definitely felt real. He also plays a pretty funny drunk. (And a pretty high functioning alcoholic, I guess, between Boring Larry offering him drinks at the office and how not hungover he was the next day.) Carlos's wish to be back with Rosa on their couch was lovely and specific. I wish they'd just roped Maria Bamford's character into Carlos's night out instead of creating Boring Larry, who so far just makes me think someone cloned Toby from The Office.

I feel like Nina would have known Phil & company were obviously lying, but other than that, it was a fine episode.

I talked about it a bunch on TWOP, not that that helps much now. But yeah, this was instantly one of the top sitcoms around. Amazing work and I'm a fan for life of Ilana and Abbi now.

Paget Brewster and Keith David will be joining the show.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/11/why-legal-shows-have-such-fascinating-women.html Interesting stuff about gender on TV, on class, and what ties Benched to other lawyer shows as well as what distinguishes it: Nina would be at home in any high-powered lawyer show but instead she's a public defender now and the show really gets into that.

trailer for season 2!!! It looks great. I am really hyped.

I liked it. I'm always pleased to watch (the currently underrated) Will Hines on TV (Carl), and Holt was on fire the whole episode, but especially with the button on the cold open.

Maybe I just miss Happy Endings that much, or maybe the clever structure of the episode won me over, but I'm absolutely on board. I enjoyed this EP immensely.

Maybe this is because I've only seen the first three or four eps of Selfie so far, but it seemed to me like the writers might have understood internet slang - maybe some kid from Tumblr gave them a crash course? - but I rarely if ever felt like the writers understood internet culture. So if this exact show had gone on Hulu or Yahoo Screen, I'm not sure it would have fared much better.

On their FB page: Broad City returns Jan 14th.

I read some interview with Eliza Coupe where she mentioned that she's good at playing uptight yuppie types (Jane Kerkovich, Nina Whitley) but isn't like that in real life, specifically that she has a bunch of tattoos on her arms and so that's why costuming on Happy Endings ended up putting Jane in long sleeves a bunch.... Anyways, I guess this is a case where knowing too much about actors interferes with the show, because in this ep Nina was sleeveless a few times and I kept thinking about how the makeup dept must have had to cover her tattoos. But they did a fine job; if I hadn't known I wouldn't have thought about it at all. And now I'm telling all of you so this can bug you too.

I think that's mostly writer stupidity, or possibly a network or DC edict. After all, the same network pulled the same shit with Lana in Smallville, and she was a lead char too. But the reasons they give in The Flash are, if anything, even dumber than anything Smallville ever tried, and that's one of the dumbest shows ever. (The Flash is on the whole less dumb. So far. But WRT Iris... yeah.) cynic, I know you said primetime dramas... was that to not count Angela and Shawn from Boy Meets World? =)

I know Benched had a pretty long development time -- I remember reading about it a long time ago -- but still, it's far more sure-footed and sharp than almost any of the new network comedies this fall. The speech itself worked out very well. It could have gone into a full scale disaster like Nina's meltdown in the pilot, or it could have been a perfect re-entry into "money law", but both would have felt wrong (and the latter would have ended the show, I guess). Threading the needle to something where it's kind of a win and a loss for Nina at the same time, and getting a little political commentary in there at the same time was great stuff.

Oh definitely. If I had a chance to 'fix' the structure according to my desires, I wouldn't just end the movie when the son died and call it a day. As you say, there was other stuff to wrap up. But I think it might be possible to move a bunch of it around such that the son dies at the end, maybe together with the gangster father.

Snart is intrinsically evil: he's devoted his life to knocking over banks. (I feel like he could branch out, but certainly he's methodical about his career.) He's just not intrinsically super powered. But then again, neither is Lex Luthor (genius) nor the Joker (crazy) and they're the leaders of their respective enemies' rogues galleries...

Which will be John Gemberling's second bottle episode due to a storm in one year! (Broad City did one too.)

Yahoo has the CommuniCon panels up! https://screen.yahoo.com/community/communicon-town-hall-meeting-conversation-211411012.html

Andy Greenwald on the dire circumstances of the American broadcast sitcom, has a lot on Selfie:

Worst day-for-night shooting ever. Or else they totally forgot midway through making this.

via imdb: "An ex-hitman comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters that took everything from him." The action and world-building in this are great. For the action, I don't think I've ever seen such a seamless blend of martial arts -- in this case, mostly MMA style grappling -- and gunplay. The world-building is actually quite reminiscent of Looper: stylish assassins live the high life in a (figuratively) parallel world with elaborate systems built to sustain and support their careers and their recreation. (fwiw, I was actually thinking "hey, this feels kinda like the assassins' world in Looper" before I read the AV Club review that also referenced Rian Johnson.) I think the storytelling is a bit off, structurally, though. The tiny flash-forward at the start feels awkward. It takes a while to get to the inciting incident. And most of all, it feels like the story really should come to an end about when John Wick kills the gangster's son who started the whole thing, but instead there's a really long coda that wraps up Dafoe's character, gives Wick a SECOND bout of Needing Revenge, and finishes up Adrienne Palicki's character too, and finishes Dean Winters and Michael Nyquist off too. It's just all-around awkward IMO.

John Cho on his career and Selfie: I know, work is work and sometimes actors have to take what comes along, but I still think this is a very laudatory stance for him to take.

John Wick has some really excellent choreography, seamlessly melding MMA type grappling with gunplay.

Even without any comics foreshadowing about either her or her fiancé, I feel like it's a lot on-the-nose for someone named "Snow" to say "we were like fire and ice".

But that's exactly my point! Does May hate coffee, or does she hate the potential for a re-fling with Coulson? Because unless Coulson knows it's the latter*, it's hella flimsy for him (even if he was right) for fake May's acceptance of the offer to be how he knew that wasn't the real May. * and aw, feel bad if that's the case, Phillinda shippers.

So May might hate coffee, but... how did Coulson know fake May was taking "let's get coffee" literally? I mean, I don't like coffee, but if a kinda-more-than-friend invites me out for one with a vibe like that, I'll just get a hot chocolate or tea or something.