BlackBook

Lizzy Caplan has made many a fan through memorable appearances on premium cable shows, from the hilarious and gone-too-soon Party Down to her V-juice-addicted traveler on True Blood. This fall, she has top billing in one: Masters of Sex, a new Showtime series in which she stars alongside Michael Sheen.

Look, I know you’re probably at “the office” and “really busy,” but those excuses are not going to cut the mustard this time. You have all ten episodes of the first series of Canadian sci-fi potboiler Orphan Black to watch. I don’t care that the second season isn’t coming out until next year. Get on this.

Anthony Weiner made a mistake. Or several. But to err is human, am I right? I’m pretty much over Weinergate. What’s more annoying than that scandal is the ongoing talk about the man’s return to the spotlight. As with Jonah Lehrer, it’d be nice if Weiner languished in obscurity a bit longer—and his former colleagues agree.

Rob Ryan is one hard-working comedian. Not only does he have a relentless tour schedule at comedy clubs throughout the country, he's also quite a prolific video maker. And his videos aren't just shaky camcorder footage of his live shows, he does excellent sendups of the topics of the times, set to popular songs. Most famously, he did "Newark State of Mind," an ode to America's worst city set to the music of Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, but he's done many others, including one exclusively for BlackBook entitled "Lenox Hill Glory" that poked just a little bit of fun at the circus surrounding Blue Ivy Carter's birth. Today, he's back again with a spot-on takedown of the two different types of fan reactions to the recent Game of Thrones finale on HBO, as set to Pink's "Just Give Me a Reason." It's called, fittingly, "Just Give Me a Season." 

These days I feel like every news story you come across raises a lot more questions than it answers. For instance: how? what? Such is the case with NY1’s brief hit on this bald hipster-looking guy who stole $90,000 out of someone’s car in Queens.

With Game of Thrones off the air and the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad shrouded in mystery (at least since that stolen script was recovered), it’s time to get a taste of that other masterpiece of 21^st Century premium cable ultra-violence: Boardwalk Empire.

Today is a very special day—it's National Doughnut Day. A perfect day when the sprinkles of the world align and we finally have an excuse to indulge in our cravings and better yet, many a time, for free. But if there's anyone whose craving for saccharine pleasures trump the rest, it's David Lynch's surreal and mysterious town of Twin Peaks— "a kind of Our Town through the Looking Glass, where doughnuts, deer heads and even percolated fish portend the evil lurking beneath a small-town veneer." So while you're eating your jelly or creme filled treats of perfection, travel back through some doughnut filled moments from your pal Dale Cooper and the rest of the gang—and remember the Lynchian mantra, "Keep your eye on the doughnut, not the hole." Enjoy.

The wave of hype surrounding the new fourth season of Arrested Development has come and gone. People watched it, they had opinions about it, and they expressed those opinions very loudly. The new season was indeed polarizing, but one generally positive consensus about the show seems to be the inclusion of the hilarious and underrated-pretty-much-until-now Maria Bamford as DeBrie Bardeaux, Tobias' fellow aspiring actress / love interest. Bamford's goofy, physical comedy and committed delivery won rave reviews, and now she's taking her talents to the Internet.