I didn't watch the NFCCG since it was beyond obvious how it would go, but I did track it online as it went. Sure is nice to see that Rodgers went from anemic halftime stats to a very respectable statline once SF surely went into a softer defense that allowed him to pad meaninglessly. Given that it's an indisputable fact that Aaron Rodgers's existence breaks people's brains, I'm sure the story will be that Rodgers fought valiantly and only lost because of a poor supporting cast.

So who do you root for in the Superb Owl?

The lifelong rivals or the group representing some of the worst people on the planet?

There has never in my lifetime been a more glaring gap of good guy to bad guy. Anyone cheering for Suggs and Hill instead of Kittle, Jimmy G, and Richard Sherman should be shamed for all of time.

Man, I had forgotten they picked up Suggs too. Glad that someone else is out there properly hating him since it feels like his completely reprehensible baggage is forgotten by most people. Anyway, throw Frank Clark in as another toxic member of the Chiefs. He was long the worst thing about the Seahawks even though he was never the reason anyone hated us.

Regardless, certainly rooting for KC. Their having a likable head coach and quarterback makes it easier to turn a blind eye to how very problematic it is to root for them otherwise. I rooted for Pittsburgh over Arizona and Baltimore over SF in the SB, so it won't be my first time embracing the dark side to oppose a division rival's title hopes.

While I'll be rooting against SF in the Super Bowl, it remains impossible for me to get my blood up to nearly the same extent as I did back in the '12-'13 season. Jim Harbaugh staying off the championship podium was maybe the single most important thing in the history of sports, and there's nothing about the current Niners that comes close to being as unlikable as Harbaugh and his utter failure to integrate into adult society. I won't be happy if the Niners lift the trophy, but Jim Harbaugh getting to celebrate a championship would have been crack-in-the-universe stuff. Even if the upcoming SB doesn't go my way, I'm pretty sure my first reaction will be to breathe a sigh of relief and think that at least it was this edition of the Niners and not the '12-'13 version.

What. Just root for the chiefs and sleep easy at nite. Mahomes is awesome and highly likable as a person.


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SHAME

Yeah, the chiefs are definitely the team that hoarded shitty people who happen to be good at football. Forgot Clark.

I know that feeling. I ended up cheering for the Pats over the Chiefs in the AFC title game last year because Hill is such a piece of **** that it overcomes my annoyance of a team I hate due to division alignment. I'm sure there's a difference since who really cares about Brady getting 6 rings when he already has 5 but ensuring Hill has 0 is important. When the rival doesn't already have 5 recently then it gets closer I'm sure. Luckily I'll never have to worry about it because the Bills and the Jets suck lol

It's funny that I mentioned the two examples above (Steelers over Cards and Ravens over Niners) and glossed right past last year, when I rooted hard for the Patriots to beat the Rams. That was no problem for me at all, particularly given the effect you named: we already live in a world where Brady has a bunch of rings, so who cares about one more?

I'm pretty sure the Niners haven't won a SB since Bob Holly and the 123 Kid were at the Royal Rumble comparing themselves to the San Diego Chargers right before the Niners kicked the **** out of the Chargers in the SB the following week, so that's 25 years now. It's a much more comfortable world when they're relying on counting rings from a quarter-century ago to brag. Anyway, while being an offensive xenophobic douchebag is, I suppose, a lesser evil than being violent against women, I would still note Nick Bosa as an example of a current Niners player who is massively unlikable.

Again though, this is a relatively dull level of hate-rooting compared to some of the prior examples. There was some extra oomph in Steelers over Cards and Patriots over Rams because I was not only agitated by the thought of a division rival shipping a Super Bowl, but was super ****ing agitated that a majority of Seahawks fans were rooting for the division rival. Ravens over Niners had the amplified effect due to Harbaugh as stated above, though at least Seahawks fans were all of the same mind on that one. This time, the fanbase will all be in it together again, and there's no ****ing Harbaugh in the game.

You are not wrong. Perhaps the secret to all this is to recognize there are a lot of shitty people in the world and you're always going to be bogged down if you're constantly focused on hoping that they don't succeed instead of noting the good people and focusing on wanting them TO succeed. In which case I still will root for the Niners because Richard Sherman is the **** (who gave the greatest postgame sports interview of all time) but I suppose there are worse things than Andy getting one.

Well yeah, on a 53-man roster I'm not sure that anyone fields a team that could pass any reasonable purity test if we knew more about every player. The Frank Clark example, when the rest of the league passed on him and then the Seahawks got him well into the second round - fully recognized to be a steal from a talent standpoint, but pretty odious from a moral standpoint - was the moment where I couldn't even suspend disbelief and see my team's organization as having any sort of upper hand in terms of decency. Carroll and Schneider went out there and tried some unbelievably transparent spin about how they really do care about domestic violence, etc., but the only ones who bought that were people who were desperate to stick their heads in the sand.

I always think of a relatively minor moment from the movie The Contender, when the operatives trying to help push Joan Allen's confirmation as VP through were talking about employing some nasty tactics against the other side. Allen said (paraphrase), "If we start doing things like this, we're no better than they are." Sam Elliott responded incredulously and matter-of-factly, "We ARE no better than they are!" Obviously there are big problems with both-sidesing things and drawing false equivalencies, but at the same time a person should allow themselves to admit that most people, most organizations, and most businesses that they support do some dirty **** that a person shouldn't have any interest in defending, and also shouldn't let themselves look away from.

Since Disney+ dropped, been attempting a chronological watch of the classic Disney animated feature films, as I haven't seen most of them since childhood. So far:

Snow White - still a great achievement that holds up as one of the best they've done. Grumpy is my spirit animal.
Pinocchio - very good; far better than I remembered it being.
Fantasia - great stuff, though I've watched this a bunch of times over the years so I already knew what I thought of it.
Dumbo - worthless; worse than I remembered it being.
Bambi - pretty decent; I was ready to be pretty tough on this one because deer are oversized pests and I've always blamed this movie for humanizing them, but I did basically enjoy it.
Cinderella - meh; not my thing. Seems like a pretty big plot hole that the glass slipper survived midnight when nothing else did.
Alice in Wonderland - great stuff; one of their best. They did reasonable justice to Lewis Carroll's brilliant book, which I highly recommend to all.
Peter Pan - weaker than most so far in the chronological watch. Had its moments, but I mostly wasn't entertained. Includes the funny disclaimer for "tobacco depictions," but neglects to mention "btw we get super racist in this one."

This right here, this is a reason that everyone should like Richard Sherman.



(Still hope he loses by 50 on Sunday.)

Richard Sherman would have been a great wrestler with promo skills like that

Good Place finale was just A++. One of the best finales I've seen.

What a great show and I'm a big fan of a popular/successful show deciding the story they wanted to tell is over instead of trying to drag it out for a few more seasons for the money. Wish more of them did that. Imagine how more favorable we'd be towards Lost if it stopped at 5 seasons or How I Met Your Mother ending after 3.

I kept enjoying HIMYM for longer than that, though I understand the objections. That one sort of hinges on what story they wanted to tell too. If it was always meant to end in that same bullshit way, it would always have murdered its own legacy.

I haven’t seen The Good Place’s finale yet.

The HIMYM writers have mentioned that the initial pitch was 3 seasons: Meeting and starting to date Robin, Dating and eventual breakup, Moving on to other people only to realize later in life that they were right for each other. Basically everything after season 2 was "treading water" compared to the original idea. I think if the story was more tightly broken down like that then it would have come off fine. As it was, there was so much "filler" that changed all the characters after season 2 that it no longer made sense (and the Barney/Robin stuff was so pointless in the grand scheme of things). I loved a lot about that series early seasons though.

After having a full day on it, I think The Good Place's finale is perfect. I don't think any finale I've ever seen wrapped things up in such a satisfactory way before. Even more than Parks (even if you consider Unity Concert the finale, my opinion holds).

I just watched it. Great finale. Not sure I'm quite at the same level of conferring it GOAT finale status - initial reaction was that Parks and Rec was better - but I loved it.

I also breathed a sigh of relief that Gardner Minshew finally got a Good Place shoutout before it went off the air. I've been waiting for it.

I'm happy with the Minshew call out for sure. Minshew is perfect for Jason. I thought each and every main character got a heartwarming and personalized send off. Whether I still feel it's one of my favorite finales after I have more time to sit on it or not, I'm just glad I found a tv show I really connected with. Part of me thinks I need to start watching 99 due to the track record (I found out Schur ALSO did Master of None on netflix which is great and I've long said handles relationships in the one of the most realistic ways I've seen in media) even though I genuinely hate cop shows.

Side note: I adore their take on the afterlife.

Jason's was a surprisingly great write-out for me given that he always tended to be my least favorite of the main characters. Loved his parts in this. Chidi and Michael were even better, though that was more expected since I always loved those two.

The structure was very similar to the Parks and Rec finale, which makes it an easier direct comparison than other finales. I rewatched Parks in the past year, and while I had already remembered it having a strong finale, I was struck a lot more by its greatness on second go.

I like Brooklyn 99 and do recommend watching it, but it has maybe 5% of the heart that these other Schur shows have; it's much closer to pure slapstick (which is fun, but just know what you're getting into). I think "workplace comedy" is probably a more apt description than "cop show" too FWIW, though they do use crime-solving to drive episodes.

Incidentally, is texting “I’m five minutes away” when you haven’t left home really a thing? Because that’s weird.

I'm not going to spoil The good place based on your last posts but seriously you think Parks & Rec has a better ending than 6 feet under? That's such a bar that so very few shows have come near.

I'd argue you're the worst is my favourite last episode ever.

Oh I wept during the 6 feet under finale. And that's when I was 20 and didn't cry at **** ever.

I had a friend growing up that would - and I do not exaggerate the frequency or severity of this - text that he was 5 minutes away or "almost there" 10 minutes after we said we'd meet and then show up 25 minutes after this. It was the absolute worst.

Haven’t seen 6 Feet Under, so I can’t comment there.

The Americans is on my short list for best finales ever, but it’s difficult to compare that with these comedy finales.