Stowaway

Tina Fey has always gotten a pass on shit she doesn't deserve a pass on. Consider: two shows on the same network, the same night, and the one about small-town government in Indiana had more queer recurring characters/stories than the one about the entertainment industry in New York. Only one of those shows had a main-credits cast member who had a bit in his standup routine about how he would kill any son of his who turned out gay, yet both of them won GLAAD media awards. /sjwmodeoff

The outro music only plays over the preview for next episode, which seems to me exactly where it should play. Also: rude.

I think it's probably a combination of "fun to say" and "people have heard of him, but not many actually know much about him." Making him the philosopher equivalent of belladonna/deadly nightshade, which shows up in pop culture disproportionately to its actual usefulness as a poison. (I know this because I went down a rabbit hole when I realized it was the most common weed in my yard, not because I was trying to figure out how to kill someone, OK NSA?). That, or one TV writer settled on him and all the rest fell in line, making him the philosopher equivalent of the 555 area code.

FYI: the embedded episode is different from what the page advertises (though the Google Play link does take you to the right one).

"Tara, if we ever get divorced I'm just going to jump in the ocean and die." "Same." Early entry for Most Romantic Exchange of 2018.

But you guys, Jason Priestly furrealz punched Harvey Weinstein in the face! With his right hand! Doesn't that mean we love him now? Also, Daniel Dae Kim was the hot one on "Lost." You can keep Josh Holloway with his stringy hair and weird, slopey shoulders.

I stopped watching "Supernatural" after the original five-season arc ended, but I maintain that the good episodes of that show are so good that they're worth wading through a sea of mediocrity for. Though most of them were written by Ben Edlund and can be tracked down that way. When I saw y'all's twitter chatter about "Nightman" I couldn't believe it was happening. I saw ("watched" would be the wrong word) more episodes of that show than I care to say. . . mostly because I had the hots for Matt McColm, despite his terrible 90s hair. I could still tell you more about his career than anyone but his mother has business knowing.

You had a chance to get a gift from Leslie Knope and you didn't take it, which means none of you are living your best life.

I always appreciate a prerecorded episode when you take weeks off. But I was so looking forward to finding out whether Jason Priestly was going to be declared a winner or loser for inserting himself into the #metoo movement in the most aggressively Brandon Walsh way possible.

God no. Can you imagine a more selfish lover than David Silver? As gross as it would be to have sex with Brandon, he's at least going to ask, "Did you come, babe?" after. David does not care.

Since we're sharing, Berkeley's commencements were by department. UCLA has a larger student body, so I doubt they would have done it differently. Evidence that CU was really USC all along? Let's delve deeper. . . "That's what a hundred-thousand dollar education sounds like," eh? In the 1990s tuition* in the UC system was just over $4,000 a year. Gag on that, parents of today. (*The University of California has a long-standing tradition of claiming their tuition is free, and then charging "registration fees" that are functionally no different from tuition. And yet every generation they are surprised anew that their students have an equal and opposite tradition of rioting.) And finally. . . Like I said: USC. (Sorry Trojans, I kid because I love.)

I guess you better be iconic enough to go by one name.

I'm biased by the fact that mine comes to "Jake Railroad," but I firmly believe that first pet plus street you grew up on is how you get your porn star name.

This seems like the perfect spot to thank Heather and Jessica for their recaps of "The Crown," which I'm enjoying greatly, and also thank Tara for converting them to broadcast form. Apparently podcasts have been the friend who reads recaps to me all along, and I'm only realizing it now. It's a great compromise for those who missed the recaps (me) and those who enjoy the expanded podcast offerings (also me). I hope plenty of others agree, because I'm not quite egocentric enough to think it's worth Tara's time reading them if I'm the only one listening.

Most men's coats have tiny pads to square off the shape of the shoulder a little. They're not supposed to give shoulders to someone who doesn't already have them.

Why is Parker Lewis styled like a sharecropper on his way to town to meet with the manager of the Building and Loan?

That's the Horta (AKA "puke pile") from the original "Star Trek" series. Dave married it.

Okay, where can I find Horatio Hornblower/ Richard Alpert slash fiction? (Joking aside, I did not realize Viola Davis was in "Century City." What a nutty show.)

Would 100% download a "Smash" podcast (a Smashcast?) featuring the four of you.

Dave's time on "Two Spotted Dicks" has had a lasting impact on his analogy making. How long will it last? "Hack" filmed in my neighborhood when I lived in Philadelphia. Production was constantly towing my car out of their way, because apparently they could just do that. I was not sad when it was cancelled.

I love the running gag y'all have, where you can't show up on a new platform without shading it.

WoW posted the first episode of "The Trixie & Katya Show" to its youtube channel here. I have mixed feelings. But I did laugh a few times, which is more than I get from most sitcoms.

I liked the new Nonac music, though I'd be sad to never hear the old song again. By the same rules that made Leo DiCaprio the answer for "Growing Pains," shouldn't Hilary Swank be the answer for 90210?

I watched the first season of Better Things as it aired, so my memory of the episode may not be perfect. But I remember getting super hung up on the way the guidance councilor talked to the daughter about college. The community college system in California is so much bigger, and well-established, and more respected than it is anywhere else in the country, no one talks to a high school student in CA like college is a lost cause. And high school students don't feel that going to a community college is shameful the way they seem to everywhere else I've lived. Kids go to community colleges just to save money, or with the hope of trading up to a better school than they were accepted to; I even knew people who got letters from their University of California campus of choice that basically said, "Consider yourself officially accepted, but we're a bit over-enrolled right now, so go to a community college for your freshman year." It felt like literal truths were being sacrificed in order to get at emotional truths. Really important emotional truths. . . but also kind of important literal truths. I felt the same way about the Mormon character who's floating around during these episodes. On the one hand she was a refreshing pop culture take on Mormonism, but on the other hand the show got so many basic things so completely wrong it made me pull my hair out. It's frustrating when an excellent show disregards the way things really are in order to punch home some point; it shows the seams, and makes the show feel manipulative. I'm not usually one for long comments, but it turned out I had opinions! Sources: I grew up Mormon, in California, was one step shy of being a high school dropout, graduated from Berkeley.

I'd like to see Manilla and Latrice get a proper shot at the All Star title. Why not bring former AS contestants back? They're making up the rules as they go along anyway. My personal take is that I'm delighted to have Drag Race twice a year, but they should alternate "All Stars" with some other gimmick -- like an all early-outs season, or an all comedy/fashion/music/dance season. That way they don't dry up the all-star well too quickly.