Spilt Milk, by Jellyfish. It’s an album that uses nostalgia and childhood imagery to discuss disillusionment both with religion and with pop music (or are they the same thing?). It’s incredibly dense with wordplay and music allusions, and takes a few listens to really take in.

Almost every song on the album is a stylistic homage to one of the artists who inspired Jellyfish, and not all of the pastiches are flattering; “He’s My Best Friend” riffs on Harry Nilsson but turns his famous “Best Friend” ode to fatherhood into a sarcastic tribute to chronic masturbation.

There’s also the fact that gradually we discovered the gang on HIMYM were all unreliable narrators and (mostly) endearingly scummy. The characters on HIMYF were a little too… okay in the first season. They weren’t unhinged or morally ambivalent.

Season 2 has washed the bloom off the characters in an appealing way. Sophie’s no antihero, she’s clearly a protagonist, but she’s gone from a hopeless romantic in S1, to a hopeless romantic who happens to be a bit of a loser with a drinking problem and zero self-awareness.

To use an obscure Disney analogy, kids were bored with Doug Funnie because he was just slightly better than you. But kids naturally latched onto Pepper Ann because she’s just slightly worse than you.

I’d love to see an Oingo Boingo documentary, better than the one on the Farewell album DVD.

Devo will usually record their own cover versions since they’re getting made anyway so they might as well get paid while doing ironically insincere corporate shilling. Nineties kids will remember the commercials for Pringle Packs, which were a Devo-created parody song of “Whip It.”

Vampire Erik now has a familiar who is a strange, effeminate redneck buffoon, so that Alexander Skarsgard’s best friend Jack McBrayer can join in the fun.

There’s an obscure musical called “Clowns” and to call it bad would be heaping praise on it. A direct quote from an actor I’ve known: “I’ve had cancer, and I’ve done Clowns. Clowns was worse, because they have drugs that help with the cancer but nothing could make Clowns bearable.”

It’s based LOOSELY on a very old public domain musical which was explicitly set at Christmas and had a big musical number called “Hail to Christmas.” But every adaptation since has cut that song, so the connection becomes negligible.

If you get the chance, check out Bricusse’s additional songs written to pad out his version of the Willy Wonka stage musical. They’re so weak, it’s no wonder the eventual Broadway version threw out everything but “Pure Imagination” and started from scratch.

She had some mild reputation as a diva during that run because she would just drop certain numbers from the show some nights for an easier run. People didn’t realize how she was struggling behind the scenes; it wasn’t like she was being lazy, it was that if she didn’t do it nobody would do it. The show was running just based on her continued presence while they tried to line up a healthier celebrity to fill in and keep it running. But negotiations with Britney Spears fell apart, leading to a premature closing.

"The streets will RUN with Razzy-Zazzy!"

Community had some level of romantic or sexual ambiguity in almost every possible pairing in the study group. It wasn't until the final episodes that the official canonical pairings were established, and most of them didn't wind up together anyway.

The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is mostly a big commercial for NYC tourism- note that Broadway gets the full first hour, and Broadway performers and NYC landmarks or fixtures are mostly featured throughout. The parade coverage itself is nominally the star, but it's the city itself that actually is the point, as is hinted by "New York, New York" being the official theme song instead of "I Love a Parade."

Yes, the Drewish Princess is a pun on “Jewish Princess.”

Midge Maisel, besides her involvement in the very Jewish comedy circuit, is embodying the mostly-forgotten archetype of "the Jewish Princess." Upper middle class to upper class, materialistic and pop-culture savvy, not especially interested in ethnic or religious tradition or history beyond a superficial level, somewhat apolitical, thoroughly Americanized and "white" despite her parents being much more entrenched in a lived traditional Jewish experience.

Remember that it's been over a century since the Jewish diaspora hit America in its biggest wave, and nearly a hundred years since the Holocaust. Jewish culture in America has become extremely secularized and mainstreamed, so the notion of "Jewish girl behaving like a white girl" doesn't really hold water anymore as a character archetype. But you get a lot of Jewish Princess jokes in the earlier works of Mel Brooks, Allan Sherman, Neil Simon (whose distinctive style is aped STRONGLY by Mrs. Maisel), etc.

Damage Control!

There is now a disclaimer “this is entirely a work of fiction” at the end. Adam F. Goldberg and his writing team from the show’s heyday are now working for Marvel Comics.

Auntie Meme began as the winner of a “contribute a joke, infographic or meme to Cracked” contest. And they kept winning over and over so the site started letting them do whole articles. And then even more articles became nothing but user submitted content… which led to staff writers getting laid off or looking for better work.

The more they began to rely on user-submitted content and the commentariat, the less vital they became.

Auntie Meme was a fantastic contributor, but what Auntie Meme represented was the death knell.

Everything from the moment when the killer is revealed, to the Tibetan Book of the Dead/flooding prison cell scene, is some of the series’s strongest and darkest moments. Making the reveal the way they did turned out to be a good choice, it’s just that the aftermath floundered.

But who got it with sweet dipping sauce versus savory?