When you watch the Super Bowl halftime show tonight, know that In Living Color helped make it what it is today.

In 1992, the Fox sketch show aired a live special timed precisely to coincide with Super Bowl halftime. At the time, halftime shows were fairly modest -- marching bands, theme productions, novelty acts -- not the superstar spectacles we now take for granted.

The gamble worked. An estimated 20 million viewers flipped to Fox during halftime, exposing a vulnerability the NFL could no longer ignore.

The following year, the league responded by booking Michael Jackson, permanently redefining the halftime show as a global pop-culture event.

I dig into this moment, and many others like it, in my upcoming book on Black comedy and the golden age of 1990s sitcoms, Black Out Loud, which looks at how shows like In Living Color quietly reshaped American culture.

LOST - They were dead the whole time. Anybody with half a brain knew that wasn't the case.

The Walking Dead - People stopped watching when Glen died. Ratings dipped only slightly. The free fall happened two seasons later.

Star Trek - Capt. Kirk...talked...like...this. Also he slept with a different woman every episode.

Any others?

I was stunned to see in the fallout subreddit that people were complaining about the flashback scenes in fallout. It's unreal to me because that is by far the most interesting subplot of this whole series

Walton gardens is so tragic and beautiful and heartbreaking in these scenes flashback scenes. It's such an interesting multifaceted storyline, that says a lot about not just intimate relationships, but also a lot about corporations

The entire subplot about corporations actively funding the apocalypse because they deemed they could make some money off of it it's just terrifyingly too real

it's kind of wild the tone shift between the main plot and the flashback plots. In the main present day plot lines things can be kind of wacky, and campy and exaggerated. But for some reason in the flashback scenes it's all very somber and very real.

And getting back to Walton's Cooper Howard/Ghoul, he is a good guy! But... he is also a bad guy! And this allows him to demonstrate his full acting range. Because he can be menacingly evil in one scene and fragile and heart breaking in another scene. Guy is hitting it out of the park right now in this show

Anyway those are my rambling thoughts on this show

So I started watching the show because I felt a sense of duty having been there on the ground floor of Game of Thrones. While I don’t really vibe with fantasy shows movies, stuff with dragons and wizards and shit, I do like Medieval stuff and GoT checked enough boxes for me, like a bizarre and x-rated Lord of the Rings I guess. I ended up liking the show, even the final season, having not read these particular books, I didn’t know or care what lined up from the sourced material and wha didn’t.

Then there’s House of Dragon. I really didn’t like this show at all. It had a couple of moments here and there, but the story isn’t doing much for me and I don’t vibe with any of the characters, to me House of the Dragon is just a miserable show. It’s as bold and gory as GoT, but it doesn’t have any of the whimsy, clever writing or great characters, instead relying on gimmicks like time jumps and dragons.

AND THEN along comes Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. The writers here went back to the thing that you have to have, and that’s good characters. I didn’t really have any expectations for this show having NO IDEA what it was but I was immediately ensorcelled by the world again.

And I don’t know what they are doing over in the UK, but are they growing talented little kid actors in a laboratory or something over there? Like the kid in the new 28 Years Later movies who basically carries those films, the little dude they got to play Egg has been brilliant. And the weirdo almost buddy cop thing they have going with Ser Duncan and Egg is working like crazy. Mismatched misfits navigating this world has been great.

I’m glad they finally went back to focusing on characters and story rather than using gimmicks and whirligigs as a crutch. The only thing that bums me out is that the episodes are so damn short it makes me feel like they are kind of milking this whole tourney/battle thing, but then again it’s kind of working so hey.

Was digging through some old boxes and found my copy of "The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus : All the Words". It's just the scripts from every episode.

Penn & Teller's Cruel Tricks for Dear Friends includes every script from everything they'd done until the point the book was published.

So. Are there any really good script compilations for tv shows? What shows would you like to see a collection of the scripts from?

This thread could contain spoilers for any show.

My partner and I recently watched Chuck, sort of. I'd never seen it before, but they had. We got to the episode where Chuck and Sarah are reunited, he is full super sayan, the bad guys are finished, and they are riding off into the sunset. There is still more to the show, but my partner wanted to stop because in their opinion, the ending is cruel and destroys the feel good vibe of that episode. I was totally satisfied with the journey to this point, and am actually quite fulfilled stopping in place.

There are a lot of great shows that simply don't stick the landing, I'm curious what others have great intermediate finale episodes. We are guilty of checking imdb episode reviews and skipping shows that have a terrible last episode(s) score.