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The Geekiest ‘Game of Thrones’ Season 3 Recap: “Second Sons”

By Alison Herman on

The best and worst part of a show whose moral is that there’s no such thing as traditional morals is that characters we’ve come to know as basically good (or at least complex) end up on opposite sides by circumstance alone. We’ve already seen this through Game of Thrones’ famous odd couples — Arya Stark and Tywin Lannister’s conversations at Harrenhal, for example, or the growing relationship between Jaime and Brienne. “Second Sons” brings this point home with its emotional centerpiece: Tyrion and Sansa’s wedding, which gathers together the King’s Landing power players in one unhappy mess of rivalries and disappointments. … Read More

Television

Your ‘Mad Men’ Season 6, Episode 8 Talking Points: Body Horror

By Judy Berman on

No current TV show generates more Monday morning conversation than Mad Men. With that in mind, Flavorwire is recapping Season 6′s Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce drama by giving you a handful of talking points to spark your own water-cooler debate. Aptly titled “The Crash,” last night gave us this year’s equivalent of Roger’s Season 5 LSD episode, with the characters’ tripped-out perspectives causing barriers to break down and thin veneers of sanity and stability to shatter. … Read More

Television

The Best and Worst of Last Night’s ‘SNL’ with Ben Affleck

By Alison Nastasi on

It was an emotional season finale with several regular cast members making their exit — or close to it if the rumors are true. Seth Meyers is slated to take over hosting duties for NBC’s Late Night, but will remain on board at least through the fall. Bill Hader said a tearful goodbye last night after eight years on the show. We’re thankful the eps were Hader-heavy. The closing shot of him doling out bear hugs was sweet. Fred Armisen and Jason Sudeikis are “probably” taking their leave. One man, however, dominated the night: Kanye West. … Read More

Television

This Week’s Top 5 TV Moments

By Sarah Fonder on

There are scores of TV shows out there, with dozens of new episodes each week, not to mention everything you can find on Hulu Plus, Netflix streaming, and HBO Go. How’s a viewer to keep up? To help you sort through all that television has to offer, we’re compiling the five best moments on TV each week. Season finales made this a particularly rich week for TV, and this round sees the end of The Office, the long-awaited reveal of the mother on How I Met Your Mother, and a New Girl cameo from Taylor Swift. … Read More

Television

The 10 Best Sitcom Finales in TV History

By Jason Bailey on

Last night, NBC brought down the curtain on The Office in rather a lovely fashion, with a series finale that was warm, nostalgic, and plenty funny. Bringing a long-running sitcom to a close is a tricky bit of business (how ya doin’, Roseanne), but The Office joins a handful of shows that have done it very, very well. Here are some other examples. … Read More

Television

‘The Office’ Comes to a Poignant, Lovable Conclusion

By Jason Bailey on

Last night on NBC, with the appropriate pomp and fanfare, The Office did what it should have done at the close of season seven: it came to an end. The American version of the British classic had an appropriate cause for conclusion when star Steve Carrel made his exit, but the Peacock wasn’t ready to let one of its few successes go quite that easily. So things got bumpy in Scranton, during an eighth year filled with miscalculations and peculiarities. But when original showrunner Greg Daniels was brought back in to steer the show snugly into port during its last season, a funny thing happened: The Office started to work again. And last night’s series finale was a fine, poignant wrap-up of an erratic but lovable show. … Read More

Television

What ACLU’s ‘Modern Family’ Marriage Campaign Says About Our Politicized, Wedding-Obsessed Culture

By Tyler Coates on

Yesterday, ACLU Action launched an online campaign urging producers of the massively popular sitcom Modern Family to incorporate a gay-wedding narrative in the show’s sixth season. In an era when no major network shows feature an openly gay character (this season saw the cancellations of The New Normal, Partners, Happy Endings, and Smash), Modern Family stands out in that it features two gay characters who are in a monogamous relationship and are raising an adopted daughter. The ACLU’s campaign argues that the couple should be wed, just like the two heterosexual couples on the show. Despite the good intentions on display, the campaign is completely absurd. … Read More

Television

Popular TV Shows Improved by Diddy

By Tom Hawking on

Just like pretty much everyone else on the Internet, the inhabitants of Flavorwire central giggled heartily at the news yesterday that Diddy was trying to inveigle his way onto Downton Abbey. The fact that the whole thing was a clever piece of promotion for a pretty amusing Funny or Die video didn’t dampen our enthusiasm any — by then, we’d moved onto envisaging other TV shows that we’d like to see Diddy on, and breaking out Photoshop to make our dreams a reality. See the results of our fantasies after the jump. … Read More

Television

Mapping the ‘The Office’s’ Slow Decline

By Chloe Pantazi on

For the dedicated fans of The Office who haven’t been offended/ disappointed/ heartbroken enough by its gradual decline over the seasons to abandon it entirely, tonight’s series finale may be its biggest disappointment yet. For all the show’s flaws, the Dunder Mifflin employees have indeed become something like family — not just among themselves, but to those committed viewers who have stuck with the gang through the good times and the very bad ones. Now that it’s time to bid the show goodbye, here’s our guide to the show’s steady descent, in a series of moments that made The Office really start to suck balls. (That’s what she said.) … Read More

Television

Flavorwire Exclusive: S.E. Hinton on Her Epic Love of ‘Supernatural’

By Emily Temple on

This week, while in a Twitter black hole of sorts, I made my way to the profile of legendary author S. E. Hinton (of The Outsiders and Rumble Fish fame). I was surprised to find that she described herself thusly: “writer for a long, long time Supernatural fan horsewoman wife mother friend.” Now, being a (semi-closeted) Supernatural fan myself, I was tickled to see that the writer loved the show enough to make it part of her online identity. With a bit more research, I discovered that she is a committed fan who has appeared on the show and has even been known to write Supernatural fanfiction. So, just in time for tonight’s Season 8 finale, I emailed Hinton to ask about her love for the show. And she wrote back! … Read More