The Atlantic posts its list of The Best Television Episodes of 2013, and it is chockfull of brilliant pop culture analysis. “To kill the very people avenging the similarly ignoble, unforeseen, and earned-by-impracticality death of the figure who had initially seemed like the hero of the show? To do it with a raft of perfectly anguished performances—a hopeless scream, a resigned goodbye to a parent, a callous kiss-off to a sacrificed hostage? That’s a landmark feat of storytelling, an example of how to illuminate the human condition by shocking the conscience.” RT

Almost as if in companion, the AV Club picks the worst films of 2015. On the chopping block: A Good Day to Die Hard, Man of Steel, The Big Wedding, and more. I couldn’t agree more about Gangster Squad, though I did think they missed the point of Austenland a little. RT

The Latino Review has an extensive guide to the convoluted world of Terminator time travel RT

And, The New York Times takes a Literary Look Back at 2013. “The best literary news of 2013 is that, as Evan Hughes reported in The New Republic, books have not succumbed to the downward-spiraling revenue trend: Sales of books in all formats actually grew by almost $2 billion in the last five years, and e-books have turned out to complement printed books without replacing them. It’s easy to see why writers should be happy — they can continue to get paid for their work — but this is equally good news for readers, who still need publishers to find, foster and distribute good writing.”  RT

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