Category: The Very Best Of

How I Met Your Mother produced an impressive five Thanksgiving episodes in its nine-year run. (It also had one more whose titled played on the occasion’s name, but otherwise does not qualify.) Among contemporary live-action sitcoms, only four have matched or exceeded that output. The peerless Modern Family was also 5-for-9 on this front going…

Monday marks 10 years since Slumdog Millionaire hit theaters. Besides launching Dev Patel into stardom, the decorated international independent film landed seasoned director Danny Boyle his first Oscar. The British-born Boyle has yet to build on that particular trophy count, but has sustained a consistent formula for acclaim. An easy majority of the 13 theatrical…

This Monday marks exactly five years since Avril Lavigne last released a studio album. She will cut off that hiatus in the near future. The 34-year-old Canadian rocker is making promotional rounds with the title track of Head Above Water. When she is not debunking conspiracy theories, as she was last week, she is capturing…

The first and most memorable drove in 1992’s great wave of Queen songs in cinema came close to falling through. In 2014, Wayne’s World title star Mike Myers confessed to Marc Maron that a lack of “Bohemian Rhapsody” would have been a deal-breaker. But with the blessing of lead singer Freddie Mercury, who passed away in…

Has Jimmy Pesto run his course as a Bob’s Burgers antagonist? In short, yes, but he has had a worthwhile run. This past Sunday marked the cross-street pizzeria owner’s first appearance in Season 9. He had sat out the previous eight episodes, and another eight prior to the series’ 145th installment. After showing up in…

Jonah Hill will not be 35 until this year’s penultimate day of autumn. His calendar youth hides behind his vast, ornate acting experience, to say nothing of the brains he has surely picked. This Friday, his first crack at directing a full-length feature will have its widespread release. With Mid90s, the authoritative Rotten Tomatoes states…

Fresh Off the Boat is the logical favorite to make the third go-round of ABC’s TGIF resemble the block’s original run. Defying the dreaded “Friday night death slot” throughout the 1990s and two bookending half-years, the first TGIF coincided with slews of Young Artist nominations and wins. Some series from that run and a brief…

Did Troy McClure, along with other Phil Hartman characters, make a crucial difference in The Simpsons’ peak years? If nothing else, Hartman gave a solid series a delectable extra layer of entertainment value. Hartman, who died under horrific circumstances shortly after the ninth season, would have turned 70 this Monday. That melancholy milestone can spawn…

For any full-fledged American ’90s kid, 2009’s The Proposal evokes two second-season Rocko’s Modern Life episodes. The unrelated movie title matches an Ed Bighead line, which he follows with a classic scream. Later on, another plot fundamentally resembles that of the Sandra Bullock vehicle 15 years in advance. Granted, it takes some stretched-out thought or brimful…