>SUPERVERBOSE

Paul O'Brian writes about Watchmen, trivia, albums, interactive fiction, and more.

>SUPERVERBOSE

The Office Season 3

I liked season 1 a lot, and I liked season 2 even more, but season 3 was where I came to really love The Office. The show does many many things well, and at the front of the line are plotting and characterization. The former takes spectacular advantage of continuity to provide some deeply satisfying moments, while the latter provides hundreds of funny and subtly moving gems. As a bonus, the whole thing also provides some fascinating food for thought about the camera-aware culture of Reality Show America.

*** Oompah-loompah-doompity-doilers. If you read on, then you will read spoilers. ***

I’ll manage

I don’t generally post about work here, but I do have both the time and the liberty now to announce the other thing that I couldn’t yet talk about when I was posting about some of the various hurricanes that are happening: I have become a manager. I’ve got one guy reporting to me, and a couple more on the way to doing so.

The promotion took effect on October 1, but it’s been effectively in effect (does that make any sense?) for a few months. In other words, I’ve been more or less acting as and being treated as a manager longer than I’ve been being paid for it. It has coincided with my assignment to an enormous bolus of a project that was supposed to go into production on October 1st, but has slid and is crushing us all. My work (well, combined with parenting) has taken over my life, and left little room for anything else, including, you may have noticed, blog posts.

I’m getting a brief respite this weekend, as my parents have taken Dante and Laura and I are up in the mountains having a retreat. It’s lovely — it feels like reaching the surface to take a breath before diving down to fight the kraken again.

Anyway, this is my first time in a supervisory role (well, of staff anyway. I supervised students, but that was like 10 years ago.) All management tips are welcome. 🙂

Aren’t you dying to know what I’ve read?

It’s meme time again here at >SUPERVERBOSE, this time with a list of books that have to do with something from somewhere, I’m not sure. I’ll bold what I’ve read. Other people have been italicizing what they’ve started but didn’t finish. I have this strange quirk — I always finish. I will finish even the world’s longest, most boring book once I’ve started it. I guess I keep holding out hope that the book will get better.

I have added comments here and there in blue as they occurred to me.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights (I found this dreadful when I read it in college. I might like it more if I reread it. Or maybe I’d like it less. Who knows? I’m not planning to find out.)
The Silmarillion (This always looked like the world’s dullest tome to me.)
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick (I think I would have broken my “no-quit” rule in the middle of this one, if not for the fact that I was reading it for a class and I had a fantastic teacher who helped me appreciate even the looooooong whale biology lecture.)
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey (I got one chapter into an IF adaptation of this, actually. I did it as a project for a comp sci class.)
Pride and Prejudice (one of my all-time favorites)
Jane Eyre (but I plan to read it before I read The Eyre Affair, which is on my to-read shelf)
The Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov (I love Dostoyevsky)
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods (it’s on my to-read shelf, though)
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver (I liked Cryptonomicon well enough, but I heard middling reactions to this, and my to-read shelf is already groaning, so pursuing the rest of the series is pretty far down on my list.)
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys (I don’t own this, but I’ll probably read all the Gaiman that’s waiting on my shelf at once when I get to it, so no doubt I’ll secure it then.)
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath (LOVED IT)
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons (It’s on the to-read shelf with the rest of the Gaiman)
The Inferno (I love the Divine Comedy. It was a big influence on me naming my child Dante.)
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde is a pretty big influence on Stevie Nicks. There are a couple of lyrics where she quotes him directly, albeit without attribution. I remember being quite startled as I stumbled upon one of those lines in this book.)
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse (I actually remember very little about the Woolf I’ve read. I found it pretty uninteresting. But I believe I’ve read both this and Mrs. Dalloway sometime during grad school.)
Tess of the D’Urbervilles (I did read Return Of The Native, though, and was not a fan.)
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Totally on the “to-read” shelf, though)
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune (I liked it, but not enough to pursue the bajillion sequel bricks. My parents, however, are big fans.)
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes : a memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon (I have distinct memories of reading this on the beach in Mexico.)
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita (easily the most upsetting book on this list, at least among the ones on this list I’ve read)
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance : an inquiry into values
The Aeneid
Watership Down (I still think “silflay” when I see bunnies eating at dusk. I get to see that a fair amount, as we have rabbits living next to the parking lot of our office.)
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood : a true account of a multiple murder and its consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Rilo Kiley in Denver, 9/11/07

I became a Rilo Kiley fan when I heard “Portions For Foxes” a couple of times on my Launchcast station. I loved that song in so many ways — it became one of my favorites of the year, and when I bought the album, I was delighted to find that pretty much the entire thing was great. I resolved then that the next time they came to Denver, I’d see them.

Well, on Sept. 11th they arrived, at a little theater called the Ogden. Unfortunately, they were touring in support of their new album, which I think is Just Okay. The musicianship is still good, and Jenny Lewis’s voice still sounds great, but above all it’s lyrics that I care about, and in that department this album is bland as bland can be. In addition, they seem to have shifted away from indie rock and alt.country to a more generic AOR sound, with disco accents. Not that there’s anything wrong with that sound, mind, but it’s a little less exciting than what they’d been doing previously. Just about any song on More Adventurous is more interesting than the entirety of Under The Blacklight. Really, any verse of “Portions For Foxes” is more interesting than the whole new album.

So their set was focused heavily on new songs, which made the show a little more blah than I wanted it to be. On the other hand, I enjoyed the old stuff quite a lot, and I thought the band in general sounded great and had a good stage presence. There’s a strong meme going around the rock critic world that Rilo Kiley is the new Fleetwood Mac (my taste seems to be consistent, if nothing else), and while I think the comparison is pretty overblown, I could see some similarities at the show. Blake Sennett is like a cross between Lindsey Buckingham and a movie college professor, essaying wild guitar solos into the crowd while dressed in tweeds and bow tie. And Jenny Lewis may not have much on Stevie Nicks lyrically, but she’s got a great voice and she does play an instrument.

The most exciting part of the show for me, though, was the first opening band, a San Diego group called Grand Ole Party (a terrible name, but whatever.) They set up with a guitarist and bass player on either side of a short drum kit. The woman who sat in the center playing the drums was also the lead singer (using a head mic a la Britney Spears), and wow, what a singer. Her name is Kristin Gundred, and she was like one part Moe Tucker, three parts Grace Slick. Her voice is just astonishing, and throughout their set I kept finding that my mouth was literally hanging open. I even bought their CD at the merch booth after the set, which is something I don’t think I’ve ever done before for an opening band. Gundred herself was selling them, and I asked her if she hears the Grace Slick comparison a lot. She said, “well, I was obsessed with Grace when I was 13-14 years old, so it’s not a big surprise.” Keep an eye on this woman — she’s incredibly talented, and if there’s any justice in the world, she’s going to be a big success. (Assuming she doesn’t somehow self-destruct, that is.)

Carquest: *** You have won ***

We have car! We went shopping on Wednesday night while my Mom and Dad took care of Dante. (I have the best parents EVAR, by the way.) A big group of dealerships here (GO, formerly John Elway) had a big event where they brought all their used car inventory to the Pepsi Center, so Laura and I headed over there to scope for used cars. Specifically: Honda or Toyota, under $12K, under 60K miles.

We bought one! It’s a 2001 Honda Civic. It actually has 66K miles on it, but we bought it for only $10,500! WOO! I am so excited about Laura having a new car. Her old one has been not-so-secretly driving me crazy for quite a while now. We had a 3-day grace period in which we could return the car for any reason, so we got it checked out by our mechanic during that time. The verdict: all is well! The car just needed new belts for $120, and now it’s ready to go! YEAH!

We were up LATE that night, because it took a really long time to close the deal. Not that there were problems or anything, it’s just that we asked our sales guy to pull a bunch of information (Carfax, safety ratings, interior space measurements compared to Laura’s old car), and then we had to wait in line a long time to get all the paperwork done once we pulled the trigger. Also, I had to drive back to my folks’ place in Aurora and pick up Dante, though when I got there they said they’d keep him and Mom would bring him up the next morning. Did I mention I have the best parents ever? I decided that night I would go into work late so that I could sleep in and enjoy the Dante-free house.

We brought Laura’s old 1992 Ford Escort in to trade on Friday, and the new era has begun!

Rear view of Laura's car.

Front view of Laura's car.

Carjacked

Well, not really. But we did have some annoying car shopping experiences. We had gone on Friday night to a Honda dealership across the street from us in Westminster, knowing what we wanted: a used Honda or Toyota, with under 60K miles, for under $12,000 (pre-tax & fees). These are fairly stringent requirements, it turns out, and they had exactly one on the lot: a maroon Civic that they decided to mark down from $13,300 to $11,800. We looked at it, we liked it, but we had Dante with us, so we opted to take our test drive the next day.

Trrish was booked to babysit for us that Saturday, in what’s supposed to be our monthly date, but we decided to use that time for this car-shopping instead. The across-the-street dealer was the first one we’d dealt with, so we decided to visit a couple in Boulder and then evaluate our options. One Boulder one had another Civic, but it was more money, with more miles, and unlike the local one, it wasn’t certified (meaning its warranty would last 3 days from purchase instead of 3 years.) The other Boulder one was an outright disaster. They couldn’t have done more things wrong. The salesman completely ignored everything we said, made an offensive comment, and kept trying to steer us towards things outside our requirements (starting with a brand-new Prius!) Plus, they had zero selection, and anyway they were playing country music over their P.A. All in all, we decided, it was time to go back and test drive that maroon Civic.

So we headed back home, ate a bit of lunch, and returned to the dealership… only to find that the car had already sold in the interim. Aaaargh! We were so disappointed. They didn’t have anything else on the lot that even came reasonably close to that car. Our salesman (who we liked well enough) told us, “You know, I debated whether to say, ‘You’d better jump on this, because this car could sell really fast,’ but I didn’t want your first impression of me to be as this high-pressure sales guy.” I told him that was still the right choice.

Then we returned to the Boulder dealership and drove the other Civic, and it turns out Laura felt pretty uncomfortable driving it. Now, she’s been driving her old Ford Escort pretty much exclusively for the last 15 years, so it’s hard to say whether she’d be uncomfortable in any other car. Consequently, our next step is for her to test drive some others, not necessarily within our cost/miles requirements, just to get a feel for some various models. Meanwhile, we’ll be watching the web for the arrival of the next car that fits our criteria, and scrambling to find childcare for Dante so that we can test drive it the very next minute.

It was a major bummer to sacrifice our precious childcare time and end up with nothing to show for it.

New term

In the spirit of “blog = web log”, I give you:

blush = blog crush

I’m not referring to a boy-girl, “let’s go on dates” kind of crush, but rather the feeling you get after reading someone’s blog who is just so so so cool and smart and funny and awesome that you really should be friends with them, except why would somebody as awesome as them be friends with a nobody like you?

My friend Trish has a blush on Derek of Penmachine. For a while there I had a little blush on Jefito.

The Office Season 2

After watching season 1, I expressed the hope that the element of pain and suffering remains in the show as time goes on, saying that “its satire would be pretty toothless if the characters weren’t actually in pain.” Well, in season 2, the characters are still in pain, but much work is done to rehabilitate our feelings towards those who inflict the lion’s share of that pain. By the end of the season’s first episode, it became clear to me that the show was taking a turn away from vicious, biting satire and into a softer, more traditional sitcom feeling, albeit with generous doses of that uncomfortable spirit that is the hallmark of season 1. All of the characters gain more depth; we gain more sympathy towards the “villains”, see flaws in the “heroes”, and get to know a wide range of quirks in the surrounding characters. And yeah, as a result, the satire loses some of its sting.

I worried when I saw this turn taking place. I thought that maybe the show would turn its back on the savage spirit that made it so dark and funny to begin with. That doesn’t happen, really — it just adds some sweetness to the cocktail, morphing from a straight shot of whiskey into more of a Manhattan. The writing stays sharp, the jokes stay funny, and a little grace is thrown into the mix to stop us from ever really hating any of the characters. And here’s the thing: it turns out that I enjoy a good story with ongoing characters and clever jokes even more than I enjoy razor-sharp satire. Thus, to my slight surprise, this season of The Office worked even better for me than did the first. So let the notes begin:

1) Obviously, the biggest share of softening went to Michael. Through several techniques, he goes from an utter incompetent and full-fledged jerk to a well-intentioned boob who, because he’s very good at one thing (sales) has bumbled into something he is very bad at (management). This isn’t as much of a stretch as one might think — even after season 1 I thought of him as well-intentioned and loving, though terrible on the execution. This season deepens our sympathies for him in several ways.

First, we see him attacked by people who aren’t under his thumb, like the Chili’s hecklers in “The Dundies”. Secondly, we see him display moments of competence and even excellence, such as his sales job in “The Client”. In addition to this, we see him experience moments of real vulnerability, such as his deep distress at having to fire someone in “Halloween”. We see his feelings of inadequacy compared to Ryan in “The Fire”. We watch him bullied and humiliated by the friend he idolizes in “The Carpet”. Finally, in the arc beginning at “The Client” and ending with “Casino Night”, we see Jan actually coming to care for Michael as… well, not a girlfriend exactly, but a lot closer to that than we’d ever expect her to become.

2) Jan herself gets a few good vulnerable moments in “Casino Night” and “Valentine’s Day”, which help round out her character a bit from being simply the hard-edged businesswoman. Even Dwight finds some redemption, especially in “The Injury”, where a concussion transforms him into Bizarro Dwight (i.e. caring and considerate.) His normal persona is as grating as ever, of course, but the more time I spend watching him sycophantizing to Michael and receiving mostly poor treatment out of the deal, I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him. Of course, the situation is of his own making, but the hints of desperation that occasionally peek through are enough to earn a bit of sympathy from me.

Also, his relationship with Angela is highly entertaining. I quite liked the way Angela got developed this season — she became one of my favorite characters, though of course not really one of the characters I like the most, if that makes any sense. Her supercilious primness, her certainty of her own rightness, and her devotion to her religion to the exclusion of all else (think of the books she chose in the “Desert Island” game) perfectly captures a certain workplace type, albeit a comedically exaggerated version thereof.

3) Where we have villains we also have heroes, the main ones of whom are Pam and Jim. I really loved their developments this season, both as individuals and in relationship to each other. The show does a beautiful job of exposing the real misery to their lives without ever storming in with Capital-D Drama. Even the final moment of “Casino Night” felt like something that could happen to real people, rather than just TV people. I liked the flaws that this season exposed in both of them. Pam, trapped within the choices she’s made to settle for less and bound by her fear of breaking out, comes across very poignantly in “Boys And Girls”. Jim’s moments of self-doubt, culminating in his application at the Stamford branch, were written and acted with a wonderfully light touch.

I was very happy, too, that he finally allowed himself to tell Pam he’s in love with her. At first, I felt a little mixed about it — my default value is to believe that you don’t try to break up somebody’s relationship, no matter how strong your feelings. However, this situation isn’t quite so cut and dried. It’s clear that Jim’s feelings for Pam are requited (though not clear whether she’ll be able to break fear’s grip on her and admit those feelings to herself), and it’s also clear that Roy does not treat her particularly well. I think Jim’s desire for her to hear his feelings, just one time, is quite understandable, and in the end, justifiable. Plus, from the audience point of view, too much more stretching out of that tension without a major turning point would turn from tantalizing to tedious.

4) I’m not sure I understand why B.J. Novak appears in the opening credits. As a character, Ryan seems to be right around the same level with Jan or Angela. It feels like his producer status is getting him a higher billing than he may warrant. Oh well, I didn’t think Charisma Carpenter deserved her billing in the first couple of seasons of Buffy either, and Cordelia certainly grew into a very important character, so perhaps I just need to give it time.

To try to pick out all my favorite moments would be ridiculous — each episode made me laugh many times. Instead, I’ll just go through the characters and randomly point to a moment I really liked.

  • Michael: “It’s for charity, and I consider myself a great philanderer.” (“Casino Night”) In general, I love Michael getting words wrong, and I also quite enjoy his habit of making a reference and then immediately identifying the reference. “I am serious, and don’t call me Shirley. Airplane!”
  • Dwight: “Do you think this is a reference to you boning Jan?” (“Performance Review”)
  • Jim: The way he immediately turns the tables on Dwight in the drug investigation. (“Drug Testing”)
  • Pam: “Finally, I want to thank God, because God gave me this Dundie… and I feel God in this Chili’s tonight.” (“The Dundies”)
  • Ryan: “What am I going to do with my award? Nothing. I don’t know what I’m going to do. That’s the least of my concerns right now.” (“The Dundies”) In general, I quite like the talking heads where Ryan is really stressed out. Also, I have to show some love to “What line of work you in, Bob?” (“Christmas Party”)
  • Kevin: The way, in the Desert Island game, he can’t contain his amusement thinking about Weekend At Bernie’s and Weekend At Bernie’s 2. (“The Fire”)
  • Angela: The moments where she just cracks, such as her talking head about the Christmas party, and her ornament-stomping rampage. (“Christmas Party”)
  • Phyllis: The way she won’t let Michael off the hook about the fact that they’re the same age. (“Sexual Harassment”)
  • Meredith: Her jaw-dropping come-on to Michael and the way he takes a beat, then takes a photo. God, that was funny. (“Christmas Party”) Maybe that’s more of a Michael moment, in which case I’d have to nominate “My name is Meredith and I’m an alc– I’m good at supplier relations.” (“Boys And Girls”)
  • Stanley: “This here is a run-out-the-clock situation. Just like upstairs.” (“Boys And Girls”)
  • Kelly: “What about ‘second base’? Like, if Michael said he got to second base with you, does that mean, like, you closed a deal? I mean that’s a baseball term, right?” And then the wink at the camera. I think that was one of the funniest moments of the season. (“Boys And Girls”)
  • Jan: “Please don’t smell me, Michael.” (“Performance Review”)
  • Toby: His grin on the line “Guess I shouldn’t have stopped for dinner.” (“Booze Cruise”)
  • Creed: “Which one is Pam?” (“The Secret”)
  • Oscar: [Referring to Angela’s poster] “I don’t like looking at it. It’s creepy, and in bad taste, and it’s just offensive to me. It makes me think of the horrible, frigid stage mothers who force the babies into it. It’s kitsch, the opposite of art. It destroys art, it destroys souls. This is so much more offensive to me than hardcore porno.” (“Conflict Resolution”)
  • Roy: [Pam’s Valentine’s Day gift] “Let’s get you home, and you are going to get the best sex of your life.” What a perfectly ugh-worthy line. (“Valentine’s Day”)
  • Darryl: “I taught Mike a few phrases to help him with his ‘interracial’ conversations. You know like ‘fleece it out,’ ‘going Mach 5,’ ‘dinkinflicka.’ You know, things us Negroes say.” (“Casino Night”) I also love him patiently explaining to Michael in this episode why it’s a bad idea to have fire-eaters in a paper warehouse.

Opportunity kicks

“Sometimes it seems like I’ve been here before
When I hear opportunity kicking in my door.”
— Marillion

My goodness, this has been quite an overwhelming couple of weeks. Opportunities and events have been hailing down on me, some of them great and some of them challenging. In fact, some of it I can’t quite talk about yet, because it’s not quite official. Here, though, is a sampling of the rest of it.

* I’ve agreed to design a game for a startup interactive fiction company. This company is taking a pretty unusual approach to game creation — it splits the design, writing, and coding duties between three different people. It reminds me a bit of the way some comics are created by collaboration between a writer, a penciler, and an inker. I have no idea whether it will work — it could be an awesome way to expedite game creation, or it could be an utter disaster. I really hemmed and hawed over this decision — the pros and cons felt about evenly balanced, and in fact they still do.

What finally tipped the balance for me was that after sitting with it for a while, an idea came to me that I really wanted to use, and given the current structure of my life, I couldn’t really hope to actually design, write, and code it. If I can just design it, perhaps it will be able to see the light of day after all, maybe even better than I could have made it on my own. The writer I’m teaming up with is somebody whose work I definitely respect, so it’s possible that we’ll hit a creative synergy. And if it turns out I make a few bucks off it, hey, that’d be great.

* Laura and I have agreed to participate, with Dante, in a local research project focusing on speech-delayed kids. Basically, once a month for six months, we outfit Dante with some clothes that conceal a device a little bigger than an iPod nano. That device records how many words are spoken to him, how many words he speaks, and how many conversational “turns” (i.e. alternating speaking with listening to another person) occur in his day. In addition, he gets evaluated at the beginning and the end of the study period by one of their speech therapists, and in a couple of the months we do two extra recording sessions.

Our motivation is not altruism in the interest of science: we’re well-compensated for our trouble. If all goes well, we should earn a little over a thousand dollars by the end, which should make a nice addition to his college fund. He just had his first recording session last week.

* Laura’s car is a 1992 Ford Escort, with over 100,000 miles. This car was not designed to go over 100,000 miles. We know this because after 99,999 its odometer rolled back over to zero. Tons of little things on it have broken over the years. Its gas gauge doesn’t work. One of the doors won’t open from the inside. One of the doors won’t open from the outside OR the inside. The trunk also won’t open from the outside. The little plastic piece that holds the driver’s-side lap belt in place is broken, so you always have to fish around beside the seat for a few minutes to snag it. Et cetera.

Well, recently she reported that a few times she felt like the car had hit a pothole, when in fact there was no pothole. We took it in to our trusted mechanic, who reported that the front struts were just about to break, and the back ones were deteriorating too. All in all, it would be a $900 repair, which is a bit ridiculous on such an old car. It was the death knell. Time for a new car for Laura. The only question was whether we would try to leap into action and get one immediately, or get the front shocks fixed and buy ourselves some time.

We opted for the latter, partly because of all the other craziness that’s been going down. It feels a bit silly to do a $450 repair on a car that we’ll soon be getting rid of, but to me it’s worth the trade-off for not having to frantically rush through a big purchase, and not having to try to dispose of the car while worrying that the wheels are about to snap off.

* Oh, and today, Dante fractured his arm. Sheesh.

The Office Season 1

I’d always heard that the British version of The Office was hilarious, but I never got around to watching it. When the American one premiered, I heard great things about that too, but I didn’t really make the time for it, basically because I already had enough shows to watch. This was to the mild chagrin of my two closest friends at work, who are big fans and would love to share it with me.

Well, now that a member of my family is working on the show, I figure it’s time to catch up so that I can fully enjoy season 4. Towards that end, I’ve bought the DVD sets of the first two seasons (no idea yet what I’m going to do about season 3), and I’ve just finished the first one.

I have to say: I really, really like it. I’m shocked at how different it is from what I think of as a sitcom — no laugh track, very naturalistic acting style, mostly handheld camera. It’s so refreshing, so dark, and so funny. I find it heartening that a show like this can actually be a success on network TV. I also kind of can’t believe for Ryan’s sake that he actually gets to work on a show that’s really good. The odds of getting a job as a TV comedy writer seem long, but the odds of getting a job on a good show seem EXTREMELY long. I’m still kind of stunned.

Anyway, here are a few semi-spoilery notes:

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