>Big Love. Last year, a great show. This year, not so much.

This year, even more so. It's raising more questions about the Hendricksons' faith and their commitment to it, by testing them again and again and finally shoving their Principle into the light of day.

Weaver Gaming and all its subplots are very intriguing to me because it shows what happens when someone's purported ethics go up against practical demands.

I still want more backstory on this family, though. We got a tease about how Nikki became Wife No. 2 and how Barb was dragged into the Principle, but I want to know a lot more.

>AND an attraction to a waitress as a sign from god? puh-lease.

Bill never thought this; Margene did. Bill was the one who told Margene, "Maybe it's just lust."

(By the way, fans of "Entourage" probably recognized the actress who played Anna - she played the wife of the Israeli businessman who refused to finance "Medellin" because Vince WOULDN't sleep with his wife.)

I posted a letter here slamming Heather and her cheap shot at Vanessa Williams, and now I see it's been taken down.

Well, I didn't use profanity in the letter title and I didn't post anonymously (although a made-up screen name isn't much different, but by Salon's standard's it's not anonymous).

Just a glitch? Am I just looking in the wrong place? Was it all just a bad dream?

That these "journalists" wasted a week running this crappy contest or that you wasted about 1,000 words writing about it?

I once went to a bachelor party by mistake because it had been posted in the office as just a party (not "bachelor party," just "party for Bill"). This guy had a lot of platonic female friends and it never entered my mind that he would have one of those "your life's over, pal" shindigs. I didn't ask who else was going, just went to the restaurant (which has no connection to ANY strip clubs).

When I got there, you'd have thought I had some dread disease. The host sidled up to me, looking very embarrassed, and said, "Uh, what are you doing here?" I said, "You basically invited me with the vaguely worded public flyer, dumbass!" I wished Bill luck and left.

Bachelor parties are silly anachronisms that I think are probably leftovers from ancient times, when the men of the village made sure the groom lost his virginity before the wedding so he could do the job right. (My theory on bridal showers is they were ways for poor girls to raise a dowry. Now they're just ways for womento soak their friends, even if the "friends" are people they barely say hello to once a week in the lunchroom.)

Anyway, I say let the little boys have their No Gurlz Allowed thing and organize a bachelorette party.

I went to this story because you said in the headline that NetFlix won't let you leave. Wow, I thought, he got stuck in some kind of long-term contract or they're incompetent and they can't seem to get his cancellation processed or something.

No, you just want to take your obsessive little list with you.

I don't see how this could be taken to be offensive to Muslims. I don't mean Muslims are overreacting, assuming they even care; I mean the newspapers knee-jerked: Comic strip about burqas. Hmm, he must be making fun of burqas and therefore, by extension, making fun of Muslims.

This cartoon, as I see it, is about our shallow idea that everything we do is good and true and if another culture does not emulate us, well, we've got to show them the light.

And it's about the ridiculous notion that a guy insisting on seeing his hot girlfriend in a hot bikini is somehow a freedom fighter.

Notice that the guy doesn't even notice that nothing has changed and his girlfriend is continuing to do as she wishes.

Anyway, Joan Walsh is right to refuse credit for showing courage.

The promos already turned me off this show. I've seen all I want of the whiny husband jerking off, the whiny wife demanding to have a baay-bee, and her male-model husband complaining about HAVING to have sex. Oh, and Jane Alexander lording over it all.

More pretty people pissing and moaning because their lives are only 99 percent perfect. Just what we're all aching for.

>the rise of Ryan out of nowhere, no one apparently capable of having a relationship with anyone OUTSIDE the office environment.

It's obvious YOU have never worked in an office. These things are the most realistic parts of the show. Ryan's ability to use every bad marketing cliche in a single conversation is another.

It does veer off into the unbelievable - I doubt anyone is quite thick enough to believe a computer is actually communicating sentiently with him, as Dwight did - but so what?

TV is rife with fakery, from the broke "Friends" living in enormous Manhattan apartments to the crime-tech geeks playing sexy detectives on "CSI." The essential truth of "The Office" is that the corporate world is a soul-crushing insane asylum, and that's as accurate as anything can get.

The morning after the Red Sox won the Series this year, I predicted that fairly soon some moron would write a column like this, based on the usual trend-feature statistics: a couple of the writer's friends and some guy named Matt.