Kevin Bacon

Damn, Jeremy Renner and the lady who played Louie's mom in "In the Woods" should have been shoo-ins for guest acting nods. Glad to see Fargo getting attention, though I'd have nominated Alison Tolman instead of Thorton as far as leads go, though Freeman is right where he belongs.Really, really wish Matthew Rhys could have gotten in for The Americans. I'd have him ahead of Spacey and Harrelson. Also, Aaron Paul>>>>Dean Norris in any season of Breaking Bad. Norris did his best work of the series in the last season, sure, but saying Paul didn't do anything is a disgrace. The last 15 minutes of "Confessions" alone should punch his ticket to a victory, and that's before adding in the "stop working me" speech and general awesomeness from the rest of the episode.

While I'd probably go with the majority opinion that "Cooperative Polygraphy" was the season's strongest, I will agree that the second episode was awesome. It's what really made me a believer in the show again. It was just so damn... funny. The first episode was mostly set-up, and then after the second in the one hour premiere block, all I could think about was how Community was back and better than ever. It wasn't quite, but that had to be one of the strongest "regular" episodes the show has had. "GI Jeff" had the potential to be a classic, i think, it had the laughs and laudable commitment to the gimmick, but they set it up like it was going to be really dark (as medium-bending episodes usually are) and what they came up with underwhelmed. I think they should've just gone ahead and made it a suicide attempt, which would've actually been dangerous new ground that would actually top the Christmas episode. Speaking of which, another issue I think is that the season was so short, and there wasn't any real direction. It was very much a collection of Community episodes (premiere and finale notwithstanding) where prior seasons had more development and direction within the characters. That whole attempted suicide thing would've been even more random than Jeff taking youth pills because there wouldn't really be anything to suggest he was depressed or upset throughout the season.

It's tricky putting S5 against 1 and 3, because those were both strange seasons and twice as long. Season 1 was consistently good and got great in the last few episodes, and season 3 had a handful of absolute classics surrounded by a lot of the show's weaker Harmon episodes. Season 5, at its worst, was better than the worst episodes of any of the previous seasons (even though the finale left something to be desire), but at the same time, it never quite matched the series' best episodes ever. It was stuck in very good-to-great territory.

Yahoo? What the hell? Yahoo has shows?

Beat you to the punch there, pal.

Well, I mean, it's not like he's misusing the word.

Is Transformers not doing well?

Someone on AV Club said that CK is becoming the artist Judd Apatow wants to be, which isn't meant as a slight at Apatow, but as a testament to how damn special of a filmmaker CK is becoming. I think it's a pretty solid comparison.

So this ends tonight, and I just caught up through "Into the Woods". Holy shit, Louis CK keeps topping himself over and over and over. Some people may take objection to the lack of comedy this season, but fuck those guys. These past two seasons, this one especially, have demonstrated that Louis CK, possibly more than anybody before him, fully understands how challenging life is, and that you can never truly understand it. Each episode this year has hit home in a way unlike the last. The panic of your kids being in danger, the guilt that comes when you realize that you're a bad kid, the double-standard against overweight women, the whatever the hell you want to call what happened in part one of "Pamela".

22 Jump Street is opening to 70 million? Fucking hell.

Could be good.

Anybody watch this? It's a new show on HBO from Mike Judge and it's pretty fucking great. It's like Office Space meets The Social Network meets a version of The Big Bang Theory that doesn't suck ass.

Magneto's speech being inter-cut with the future mutants getting steadily overpowered and killed was pretty amazing.

There will be a second chance to make a great Godzilla movie, but not to capture the type of human drama they could've had in this one. Now everybody knows about Godzilla and the other monsters, and the dynamic will be a lot different than it is when people are seeing a completely unheard of threat destroy cities, soldiers being faced by a 500-foot tall monster. That first teaser was so awesome because of that monologue to the soldiers, the general's concerned tone, admitting that this is something they never could have been prepared to take on. You can't replicate that once a city has stood up and applauded Godzilla. The dynamic next time will be "Oh, shit, monsters! Where's Godzilla? Oh, there he is, fuck yeah! Godzilla!" and while that can still be good, they'll need to be a lot more creative to make it interesting.

I'd say one of the most disappointing things about this movie's weak writing is that this had the best scenario for well-written human drama. Godzilla 2 may have stronger writing, maybe Edwards will even write it himself, but the story there will be one of a world that's already aware of Godzilla and that has already survived these giant monsters when Godzilla killed them the first time. No matter how good it is, the potential for sheer terror borne from this totally unknown threat, giant indestructible monsters destroying cities, was wasted and there won't be a second chance. You only get one first Godzilla movie (at least until the next reboot), and they wasted it in that regard.

You're going to need to help me out there. I'm not particularly huge on the Avengers (and from a quality perspective I'd agree that there is a big novelty factor) but its success was manufactured. Years of groundbreaking marketing in the form of other blockbuster movies leading to a monstrous opening, followed up by insane word-of-mouth and family appeal that kept it rolling all the way to its nutty gross. I'm not saying that that success WILL be replicated, but there was a formula for it and Disney's keeping it going and we'll see. Avatar was a lightning in a bottle thing and a sequel probably would've been huge if it came sooner but I think that seven years is more than enough for the general audiences to forget about it, because like I said, when you strip away how engaging and immersive it was in the moment, the substance of the movie isn't anything to write home about.

Bingo. I was around for that insanity. I saw the movie like four times and showed it to all my family members and everyone at school was crazy about it. I'm just saying (and there's no real way for me to prove this) that the movie didn't really hold up long term and within a couple years, where in March of 2010 everyone was crazy about it, every time I've heard Avatar be mentioned it wasn't in a "how about that amazing Avatar?" sort of way. I believe its run was a phenomenon that can't be replicated. I think The Avengers can maybe pull it off because it wasn't so much a phenomenon as a straight-up monster hit.

Don't you Wire me. I understand that. Like, bet what? That's a long time for a bet. I could be dead in two and a half years. Or I might just not come here anymore. And I probably wouldn't be horribly ashamed in the incident that you won, since I would have already been exposed to the incredible marketing and hype and probably would've known I was wrong long in advance. Especially considering that there really isn't any empirical data to show whether or not audience interest in Avatar has dropped tremendously like I say it has. But I'll listen. What's your proposal for this bet?

Bet what?

Everyone was high on it for a good while, but it kind of got completely forgotten like a year after its home video release. Any time you bring it up to someone now, there's a reaction of "meh". Because for as beautiful and well-done a movie it was, it really wasn't that memorable.

No way does Avatar's sequel even approach what it did domestically. Even ignoring the novelty of the impressive 3D effects that is now non-existent and crazy seven year wait, the WOM on that movie didn't last at all. Within like a year and a half of it releasing most people seemed to be hopping on the "eh, it was okay" bandwagon, and that effect's only grown since then. Unless the movie's got some holograms or crazy technological shit to hook everyone back in, I'd say it won't even sniff 500M.

So this totally ruled. Everyone and everything was awesome. Quicksilver and McAvoy stole the show. How are we proceeding in future installments? Is this farewell to the First Class cast, or are we going to be moving forward with them? Huge bummer if they're done, between this and FC I'm ten times more interested in 1970s X-Men than 2000s X-Men. 9/10

Hopefully exactly what they said would happen. She goes to the Soviet Union, faces trial, and is executed. Like, we don't even see her again, maybe Arkady tells Oleg during a conversation that it happened. I think that the Nina subplot reached a natural conclusion. She spent too much time playing both sides and was the most unlikely still-alive character for the longest time (a role now occupied by Martha). I was kinda hoping it would all blow up in a bigger way, with Stan finding out or something, but the scenario where all her efforts at redemption aren't enough and they still kill her works too.

So that was a pretty fantastic finale. The cold open might've been my favorite the show's had yet, the confrontation with Larrick was super-tense, the twist with Jared was genuinely surprising and heartbreaking, and the seeds planted for next season... holy shit. At first it just seemed like an exciting episode to wrap up the season without much of a hook for next year, but then they met with their old handler and all that changed. The Jennings' relationship with the center looked like its days were numbered, and then it turned again and it went back to the initial conflict from the pilot between militant patriot Elizabeth and family man Phillip. Add Paige into the mix, with all of the development she's had this year, and shit's about to get real. Conclusively, for the season as a whole, it was great. Less exciting than season one, but from a critical perspective, it blew away the first season. It was very slow and methodical, and didn't really bother holding your hand so you had to pay close attention and remember things (which I failed to do a fair amount), but the material was top notch. Lots of shows have slow burns, including my favorite ever Breaking Bad, but I think what made the slow-ness stand out was that the show wasn't really working toward any end-game. I mean they don't need to, since it's only the second season, but most of the plot advancement was centered on the ongoing war between the US and the Soviet Union. As opposed to the Jennings family's cover, relations, etc. You got a lot of Stan and Nina which ultimately just served to drive Stan to isolation and heartbreak going into season three, and introduce Oleg as a force on the Soviet side. You got a lot of speak about technology the countries were feuding over, which was usually what the Jennings were tasked with doing. Where the first season was focused on Phillip and Elizabeth's marriage, their cover, their relationship with the kids, etc, this was more focused on elements less vital to the series' narrative, like what the Americans are using for their stealth. So it's still strong TV, it just isn't quite as engaging. But the complete lack of threat to the Jennings family throughout the season made it hit that much harder when they find themselves in real danger in this finale, so it all pays off. Also, this show has more sex crammed into it than any basic cable show I've seen since Rescue Me. Granted, it has a much better justification, since it's about spies and sex is part of their jobs, but still. FX got the booties!

It's the contrast of Edwards' killer direction against the writers' lousy script. Did anyone look up who was writing this and take that as a reason to be concerned beforehand? I was very worried about DOFP early on because of who was writing it but I guess that was unfounded, but I never bothered looking at who penned this. I understand that Monsters was great for its portrayal of humans in a monster-driven disaster, but that one was written by Edwards himself and not a couple nobodies hired by the studio.