Hot on the heels of his critically acclaimed and criminally rejected theme for AMC’s Halt And Catch Fire, comedian, podcaster, and A.V. Club favorite Paul F. Tompkins is back to having fun with theme songs. Only this time he’s brought some friends.
We eventually came to love Halt And Catch Fire, AMC’s examination of the rise of the internet age—and, more importantly, the human bonds, dysfunctional and otherwise, that made those techy connections possible. But while the show’s credit sequence has always lived up to those lofty ambitions, visually—offering up a…
A stellar cast gathers to narrate Stinker Lets Loose, the purportedly resurfaced novelization of a supposedly beloved ’70s trucker film of the same name. The story is part Smokey And The Bandit trilogy, part Every Which Way But Loose; the titular Stinker leads lawmen on a wild chase that apparently includes a chimp.…
We’ve been enjoying David Fincher and Joe Penhall’s Mindhunter a lot lately—give or take some arguments about Carrie Coon and Fringe favorite Anna Torv—but we have to admit that the show’s theme song leaves a little bit to be desired. There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with it; it’s just the kind of dull, vaguely…
Poor Teddy and Linda. Through the entire series of Bob’s Burgers, these two characters share the plight of wanting so badly to make everyone around them happy, but the harder they try the more things go off the rails. They are the two characters who are most free of cynicism and regularly embrace the simple joys in…
“It seems to me that you need a lot of courage, or a lot of something, to enter into others, into other people. We all think that everyone else lives in fortresses, in fastnesses: behind moats, behind sheer walls studded with spikes and broken glass. But in fact we inhabit much punier structures. We are, as it turns…
BoJack Horseman, you crafty evil bastard. You got me.
After a season where all of BoJack Horseman’s characters are trying to forge new identities for themselves—parent, candidate, blogger, asexual—“The Judge” represents a fair amount of backsliding for everyone. They’re falling off the self-improvement wagon, back into the bad habits and bad business ideas that they’ve…
You have to give BoJack Horseman credit: it’s hard to think of a weirder way for a show to be consistent. The previous episode “Stupid Piece Of Sh*t” was a journey into the deepest parts of BoJack’s psyche, and it was one of the darkest episodes the show’s ever produced. Now with “Underground,” there’s a journey into…
BoJack Horseman is depressed.
BoJack Horseman gets a lot of credit for juggling its various parts as well as it does. This is a show that should not work to the degree it does, a show about animated animals that can every bit as poignant as The Sopranos or Mad Men. It pairs some of the stupidest puns ever devised with brutally honest examinations…
“Commence Fracking” is more evidence—if we needed it—that BoJack Horseman has ceased to be one show. If it began as a show about this complicated individual with various friends and associates operating in his orbit, it’s now grown into a full solar system where the overlap of storylines is occasional rather than…
“I never know if I can handle anything. That’s what makes my life so exciting!”
After BoJack Horseman’s season three finale, I had a lot of questions about where things were going to go. BoJack had, at the final moment of “That Went Well,” lost everything that he cared about. His biography was an expose of his awfulness, his movie was a digitally altered reinvention of the story he cared about,…
Leading up to the release of season four of BoJack Horseman, Netflix released a promotional image illustrated in the style of Where’s Waldo? It’s a visually dense collage of the landmarks and residents of Hollywoo, with one noticeable exception: the show’s self-loathing heavily addicted main character is nowhere to be…
“That’s the thing. I don’t think I believe in deep down. I kind of think all you are is just the things that you do.”
“Um, I guess my question is, do you... Do you think it’s too late for me? I mean, am I just doomed to be the person that I am? The... The person in that book? It’s not too late for me, is it? It’s... It’s not too late Diane, I need you to tell me that it’s not too late. I... I need you to tell me that I’m a good…
Todd: “I know. It’s confusing. Not the bimonthly that means twice a month, the bimonthly that means every other month, and each time it’s a different box of snacks.”
“You know, sometimes I feel like I was born with a leak, and any goodness I started with just slowly spilled out of me, and now it’s all gone. And I’ll never get it back in me. It’s too late. Life is a series of closing doors, isn’t it?”
Todd: “Is this like the time you invited me to lunch, but then, when I got to the restaurant, you texted me to tell me you weren’t coming because you were at a strip club ‘eating stripper’ for lunch, and also, it was my birthday?”