For Our Consideration

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  For Our Consideration Why understanding and embracing easy pop-culture targets beats deriding them

  Why Scott Aukerman’s failed attempts to embrace Phish beat Vice’s recent snotty 30th-anniversary piece about the band.

  March 15, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration What we talk about when we talk about Girls

  The show is remarkable—unless you don’t think it is, and that’s okay!

  March 14, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Has the vinyl revival gone too far?

  Ahead of Record Store Day, a reformed vinyl addict wonders if LP collecting has jumped the shark.

  March 13, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration From Journey to Jack White to James Hunter: What makes a singer “good?”

  Range and power can only take a singer so far.

  March 8, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration If documentaries want to be treated like movies, they need to behave like them

  Accepting docs made in tired, cut-and-paste formats only encourages more like them, and less like the new Leviathan.

  March 7, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration The Neighbors is funnier than it has any right to be

  The ABC alien sitcom suffered early poor reviews but has turned itself around as season one has gone on.

  March 6, 2013 | 10:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Why every great TV show needs a Xander Harris

  The past season of Enlightened shows the importance of secondary characters.

  March 5, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Will Donald Trump’s real-life idiocy sink The Celebrity Apprentice?

  Maybe not, now that the show has evolved beyond his influence.

  March 4, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Sure, Community has changed… but it’s aging like any other sitcom

  If Dan Harmon weren’t Dan Harmon, would people be cutting Community a little more slack?

  February 28, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration No accounting for The Taste: The taming of Anthony Bourdain

  The punky iconoclast of Kitchen Confidential has become everything he used to hate, but there’s hope on the horizon.

  February 27, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Enlightened is TV’s best show right now—and it needs more viewers

  The HBO comedy has hit another level in its second season.

  February 25, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration How Oscar’s Best Picture nominees rub viewers’ noses in America’s dark past

  Five out of the nine nominees look back at the evils of the United States’ history, while offering only occasional hope for the future.

  February 22, 2013 | 12:20pm -

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  For Our Consideration Songs That Saved Your Life: The Smiths’ small, precious discography

  The pain and pleasure of loving a non-prolific band.

  February 19, 2013 | 12:00pm -

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  For Our Consideration Why shows like The Following cheapen violence and diminish its power

  Shocking murders can be powerful when used occasionally—but too many shows have made them stock in trade.

  February 18, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Why Scandal beats House Of Cards at its own game

  The ABC soap’s embrace of emotion over intellect has resulted in great success.

  February 15, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration How Person Of Interest captures the national post-post-9/11 mood

  The CBS series has evolved into one of TV’s best action shows, but regret lurks at its core.

  February 14, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Does the experience of watching voice actors change animation?

  Archer Live! reveals that some members of the cast have recognizable voice-actor brands; others disappear into their parts.

  February 13, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Remembering when country music wasn’t so white or so conservative

  Country Funk 1969-1975 is much truer to the genre’s roots than today’s hits.

  February 12, 2013 | 12:02am -

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  For Our Consideration The Office shows the pitfalls of fake reality becoming “real”

  The series’ documentary crew lost its status as an audience surrogate when it appeared onscreen.

  February 11, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Could Netflix’s programming strategy kill the golden age of TV?

  The company’s innovations seem driven more by when content is available, not quality.

  February 8, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration It’s time to embrace the “indefinite hiatus”

  Bands don’t exist in a binary world, so there’s no need to force it.

  February 6, 2013 | 12:00pm -

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  For Our Consideration What clubs and comedians can learn from the raging UCB pay war

  An angry Internet debate about New York’s Upright Citizens Brigade theater highlights the schism—and lack of understanding—in stage comedy.

  February 5, 2013 | 1:00pm -

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  For Our Consideration New Girl’s kiss was thrilling, but it kills another “friendship ’ship”

  TV has abused the will-they/won’t-they dynamic so much that even one done well has some sadness to it.

  February 4, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration How 30 Rock’s well-plotted final season echoes The Mary Tyler Moore Show

  The ’70s sitcom set the template that nearly every planned final season of a sitcom has used since. 

  January 31, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration The “gentleman’s F” and the scourge of deliberate mediocrity

  Why a fiasco is preferable to a failure.

  January 30, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration When should a band break up?

  With Mars Volta breaking up and Guided By Voices soldiering on, The A.V. Club asks when is enough enough?

  January 28, 2013 | 12:40pm -

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  For Our Consideration Why George Saunders (or anyone else) can write whatever they damn well please

  Gawker is absolutely wrong to command a celebrated short-story writer to produce a novel.

  January 25, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Is the Frank Ocean coronation premature?

  Considering the short- and long-term effects of hype.

  January 23, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration How Adam Ant made the ’80s his bitch

  He became a pirate and broke every rule in the pop-music playbook.

  January 22, 2013 | 12:00am -

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  For Our Consideration Can bipartisan comedy ever be truly satirical?

  The Capitol Steps, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and the soothing banality of bipartisan comedy.

  January 21, 2013 | 12:00am -