Top 10 TV Episodes

The second season of FXX’s cult-hit series assayed its lead character’s depression; it was a hard right turn for a series that had previously been an insouciant comedy, and one that yielded television that was often qualitatively “better” than it was actually watchable. But this episode, in which Gretchen stalked a seemingly perfect neighbor couple only to discover they were as lost in the world as she was, opened up the show’s universe. It also resonated, in its final moments, with the sort of visceral pain that TV rarely does so well.
The strongest half-hour of Aziz Ansari’s new sitcom was its most formally inventive. Moving quickly through months in the lives of the central cohabitating couple, the episode depicts the various stages of new romance, from infatuation to disenchantment to trying to figure out a way to actually live together. Master of None was, unusually for a new show, confident in its ability to push past clichés; “Mornings” was tough-minded about both partners’ deficiencies as partners, making their attempts to bridge the gap all the more romantic.
The final stretch of Mad Men, taken as a whole, was far more interesting than any single episode; it’s hard to single out any particular instance from a run that was so thematically cohesive and so across-the-board satisfying. Still, respect should be paid to the show’s finale, both for its elegant structure (built around Don Draper’s calls to different women in his life) and its remarkable final moments, in which Don, re-envisioning his time at a New Age retreat as a Coke ad, is proven to be a genius who draws, relentlessly, from his life. (Or a vulture preying on others’ pain–debate among yourselves.)
HBO’s moody half-hour came in for criticism throughout its now-concluded run for being “boring.” This was the series’s most eventful episode, sure–encompassing a trip to a funeral in Modesto and a car crash. But for all the incident, “Looking for a Plot” was as deliberate and thoughtful as fans of the show had reason to expect. A scene at a gay bar, in which the show’s characters contemplate what life would be like had they never grown up and gone West, is as fuzzily moving as any the show produced.
The second season of Comedy Central’s most amiably insane show had real points to make about “FOMO”–the “fear of missing out” that’s been painfully exacerbated by social media. But it also contained the year’s best sight gag, with the revelation that Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) turns into a fedora-wearing lounge singer every time she blacks out drinking.
Netflix series tend to have serious problems with pacing; episodes of House of Cards have, for most of the series’s run, blended together into one endless mega-sode. Not so the season 3 finale, which stood out both for ratcheting up the tension to make viewers finally care about a seemingly pointless long-term subplot–the fate of poor Rachel–and for clarifying what, exactly the show had been about all along. Claire’s decision to walk out on Frank at season’s end made the show’s meanderings seem like a path to a grimly satisfying plot twist.
The reboot of this early-2000s reality TV standard brought the year’s most emotionally and politically charged relationship, between headstrong director Jason Mann and empathic producer Effie Brown. Both were forced to work together on a film about which both had very strong ideas on everything from the film stock (Mann’s passion) to onscreen diversity (Brown’s principle). The tensions between the two, which came to their height in this late-season episode, spoke volumes about expectations around white men and black women in Hollywood. They were also, simply, the best and least contrived depiction in recent memory of a stressful work relationship.
Scandal has righted itself; after spending far too much time on an outlandish secret-spy program, the show has redoubled its focus on its most provocative parallels with the real world. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) made her status as the President’s girlfriend public, giving rise to controversy that felt as though it could happen in our world. Never was the show’s reinvigorated approach to politics and race relations more evident than in this episode, which examined the ways in which powerful black women (like Olivia, or like the show’s creator Shonda Rhimes) are spoken of in elaborately coded ways.
The single most inventive show currently on TV, The Last Man on Earth has, in its first two seasons, rebooted itself countless times, tearing down central parts of its premise in service of something that might be more fun. It’s exhilarating–never more so than in the show’s pilot, which establishes Phil Miller (Will Forte) as a balefully lonely apocalypse survivor before tossing away the concept with the introduction of a new companion (Kristen Schaal). Not everything the series tried worked, but both the melancholy tone of this episode and the antic glee with which it was left behind made this a near-perfect slice of TV.
In his third episode doing late-night talk as himself, Colbert defined the role he would occupy with a sympathetic but not partisan interview with the Vice President. Politics-watchers expected Biden to announce a run for the Presidency on the show; they were surprised when Colbert and Biden bonded over shared grief over still-painful losses. The interview seemed to push the boundaries of what’s possible in late night, and showed a new side of a figure who’d been exhaustively covered in the news.

The 4 Most Common Relationship Problems — and How to Fix Them

Relationship problems. Everybody has them. And sometimes you have them over and over and over.

Most of the people giving advice don’t know the research. So where are the real answers?

I decided to call an expert: Dr. John Gottman.

You might remember him as the researcher in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink who, after just a few minutes, could predict whether a couple would end up divorced.

John is a professor emeritus at the University of Washington and co-founder of the Gottman Institute. He’s published over 190 papers and authored more than 40 books, including:

• Principia Amoris: The New Science of Love
• The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
• The Relationship Cure: A 5 Step Guide to Strengthening Your Marriage, Family, and Friendships

He’s also a really cool guy. John’s gained powerful insights from studying couples that thrive (who he calls “Masters”) and couples that don’t (who he calls “Disasters.”)

So what are you going to learn here?

1. The four things that doom relationships.
2. The three things that preventthose four things.
3. The most important part of any relationship conversation.
4. The single best predictor of whether a relationship is working. (It’s so easy you can do it yourself in 2 minutes.)

Want to be a Master and not a Disaster? Let’s get to it.

1) The Four Horsemen Of The Relationship Apocalypse

John has studied thousands of couples over his 40-year career. Four things came up again and again that indicated a relationship was headed for trouble. The Disasters did them a lot and the Masters avoided them:

#1: Criticism

This is when someone points to their partner and says their personality or character is the problem. Here’s John:

Criticism is staging the problem in a relationship as a character flaw in a partner. The Masters did the opposite: they point a finger at themselves and they really have a very gentle way of starting up the discussion, minimizing the problem and talking about what they feel and what they need.

Ladies, are you listening? Because criticism is something women do a lot more than men. (Don’t worry, we’ll get to how the guys screw up soon enough.)

#2: Defensiveness

This is responding to relationship issues by counterattacking or whining. Here’s John:

The second horseman was defensiveness which is a natural reaction to being criticized. It takes two forms: counterattacking or acting like an innocent victim and whining. Again, the Masters were very different even when their partner was critical. They accepted the criticism, or even took responsibility for part of the problem. They said, “Talk to me, I want to hear how you feel about this.”

#3: Contempt

It’s the #1 predictor of breakups. Contempt is acting like you’re a better person than they are. Here’s John:

Contempt is talking down to their partner. Being insulting or acting superior. Not only did it predict relationship breakup, but it predicted the number of infectious illnesses that the recipient of contempt would have in the next four years when we measured health.

#4: Stonewalling

It’s shutting down or tuning out. It passively tells your partner, “I don’t care.” And 85% of the time it’s guys who do this.

(Want to know a shortcut to creating a deeper bond with a romantic partner? Click here.)

Okay, that’s what kills a relationship. Naturally, you want to know what stops those things from occurring, right?

3 Things That Make Horsemen Go Bye-Bye

From looking at the Masters, John saw what prevented the downward spiral of the 4 Horsemen:

#1: Know Thy Partner

John calls this building “love maps.” It’s really knowing your partner inside and out. It was one of the Masters’ most powerful secrets. Here’s John:

A love map is like a road map you make of your partner’s internal psychological world. The Masters were always asking questions about their partner and disclosing personal details about themselves.

Why is this so rare? It takes time. And the disasters didn’t spend that time. In fact, most couples don’t spend that much time.

John cited a study showing couples with kids talk to each other about 35 minutes per week. Yeah, 35 minutes.

And even most of that was just logistics — “When will you be there?” “Don’t forget to pick up milk.” — not deep personal stuff like the Masters.

#2: Responding positively to “bids”

No, this has nothing to do with eBay. We all frequently make little bids for our partner’s attention.

You say something and you want them to respond. To engage. It can be as simple as saying, “Nice day, isn’t it?”

It’s almost like a video game: when the person responds positively (“turning towards a bid”) your relationship gets a point.

When they don’t respond, or respond negatively, the relationship loses a point… or five. Here’s John:

The couples who divorced six years later had turned toward bids only 33% of the time. The couples stayed married had turned toward bids 86% of the time. Huge difference.

Couples with high scores build relationship equity. They’re able to repair problems. They’re able to laugh and smile even when arguing. And that makes a big difference. Here’s John:

If you turn toward bids at a high rate, you get a sense of humor during conflict. Humor is very powerful because it reduces physiological arousal during arguments and that’s been replicated in several studies.

#3: Show admiration

Ever listen to someone madly in love talk about their partner? They sound downright delusional. They act like the other person is a superhero. A saint.

And research shows that is perfect. Masters see their partner as betterthan they really are. Disasters see their partners as worse than they really are.

(For more on the science of sexy, click here.)

Admiration is about the story you tell yourself about your partner. And that leads us to how to predict whether your relationship is working…

The Best Predictor Of How Good A Relationship Is

You can do this yourself: have someone ask you about the history of your relationship. What kind of story do you tell?

When your partner describes your relationship to others, what kind of story do they tell?

Does the story minimize the negatives and celebrate the positives? Did it make the other person sound great?

Or did it dwell on what’s wrong? Did it talk about what that idiot did this week that’s utterly wrong?

This simple “story of us” predicts which relationships succeed and which fail. Here’s John:

Our best prediction of the future of a relationship came from a couple’s “story of us.” It’s an ever-changing final appraisal of the relationship and your partner’s character. Some people were really developing a “story of us” that was very negative in which they really described all the problems in the relationship. They really emphasize what was missing. Masters did just the opposite: they minimized the negative qualities that all of us have and they cherish their partner’s positive qualities. They nurture gratitude instead of resentment.

(For more on what research says makes love last, click here.)

Is there a part of a relationship conversation that’s critical? Actually, there is.

The Most Important Part Of A Relationship Conversation

It’s the beginning. 96% of the time John can predict the outcome of a conversation within the first three minutes. Here’s John:

Negativity feeds on itself and makes the conversation stay negative. We also did seven years of research on how Masters repair that negativity. One of the most powerful things is to say “Hey, this isn’t all your fault, I know that part of this is me. Let’s talk about what’s me and what’s you.” Accepting responsibility is huge for repair.

How you start those serious relationship discussions doesn’t just predict how the conversation goes — it also predicts divorce after 6 years of marriage.

Via Principia Amoris: The New Science of Love:

…it went on to predict with high accuracy their fate over a 6-year period of time. The predictions we made about couples’ futures held across seven separate studies, they held for heterosexual as well as same-sex couples, and they held throughout the life course.

So you’re talking and you’re starting off positive and calm. Great. Now you should stop talking. Why?

When I asked John what the best thing to do to improve a relationship he said, “Learn how to be a good listener.”

The Masters know how to listen. When their partners have a problem, they drop everything and listen non-defensively with empathy. Here’s John:

In really bad relationships people are communicating, “Baby when you’re in pain, when you’re unhappy, when you hurt, I’m not going to be there for you. You deal with it on your own, find somebody else to talk to because I don’t like your negativity. I’m busy, I’m really involved with the kids, I’m really involved with my job.” Whereas the Masters have the model of, “When you’re unhappy, even if it’s with me, the world stops and I listen.”

And sometimes the best thing to do at the beginning of a relationship argument is to end it immediately. Why?

69% of a couple’s problems are perpetual. They won’t be resolved.

Beating a dead horse, asking someone to fundamentally change who they are isn’t going to work — but it will make them angry. Here’s John:

In the studies that Bob Levenson and I did, we brought couples back into the lab every couple of years to find out what they are arguing about. And people resolved only about 31% of their disagreements. You can edit these videotapes together and it looked like the same conversation over and over for 22 years. Masters learn to accept what will not change and focus on the positive. They seem to say, “There’s a lot of good stuff here and I can ignore the annoying things.”

(For more on how to listen like an expert, click here.)

Okay, that’s a lot of great stuff. Let’s round it up and finish with the thing John said that impressed me the most.

Sum Up

So here’s what John had to say:

1. The 4 things that kill relationships: Criticism, Defensiveness, Contempt and Stonewalling.
2. The 3 things that prevent them: Know your partner, respond positively to “bids”, and admire your partner.
3. The best predictor of relationship success is how you and your partner tell your “story of us.”
4. The beginning of the conversation is crucial. Negativity compounds. Keep a cool head and resist emotional inertia.

One last thing that really blew me away: what makes for happy relationships sounds a lot like what makes for happiness in general.

Research shows, happy people seek out the positive and are grateful for it. Unhappy people find the negative in everything.

There’s a very similar dynamic in relationships: Masters scan their relationship for good things, disasters are always noting the bad.

And not only that — the Masters’ way of looking at the world is actually more accurate. Here’s John:

People who have this negative habit of mind miss 50% of the positivity that outside objective observers see. So the positive habit of mind is actually more accurate. If you have a negative habit of mind, you actually distort toward the negative and you don’t see the positive. People with the positive habit of mind, it’s not that they don’t see the negative — they do, they see it — but they really emphasize the positive in terms of the impact on them. That’s the difference.

Choose to see the positive. It can cause a cascade:

• It’s fuel for your good “story of us.”
• You’ll probably start relationship conversations on a good note.
• You’ll admire your partner.
• And on and on…

Some of the same things that make you happy can improve your relationships — and vice versa. What’s better than that?

John and I talked for over an hour, so there’s a lot more to this.

I’ll be sending out a PDF with more of his relationship tips in my weekly email (including the two words that can help make arguments dissolve.) So to get that, sign up for my weekly email here.

5 Ways to Instantly Connect With Anyone You Meet

How we communicate largely determines what we experience in life. It influences how much money we make, every relationship we have and where we go in our career.

Our income can be limited if we are unable to pitch our product to a client, ask for a desired salary in an interview or request a raise from management. On the other hand, the depth of our relationships will be constrained if we don’t have the confidence to approach new people or have the ability to resolve conflict and express ourselves.

Yet how often do we actually practice this art? Most of the time we tend to just wing it and learn as we go. Unfortunately, throughout our lives, most of us pick up some devastating yet subtle habits that can ruin conversations. And the biggest problem is that we think some of the habits are good communication tactics.

When I coach leaders and other professionals on how to elevate human performance in business, I come across these far too often. Understanding how human behavior relates to your specific business can be a big competitive advantage.

Here are five tips to help you instantly connect with anyone you meet:

1. The human brain picks up on subtle cues

When someone is talking, their subconscious is on the look out to see if people are interested or not. It’s a defense mechanism to ensure we don’t get embarrassed or hurt from our environment. Our brain will look at everything from body language, facial gestures to the words that are spoken.

When listening to someone, your eyes should never look away for longer than a few seconds. The minute you start staring at other people, TV screens or constantly looking elsewhere, you are sabotaging the conversation. It makes the other person feel like what they are saying is not important and can be a real shot to their confidence. Be aware of how you listen to others, a good idea is to ask close friends and family if there are any things you do that throw them off when they’re speaking.

2. Don’t relate everything to you

If you are in a conversation and someone is talking, let them have the stage. Many people feel that by interrupting a story and relating it to their own life, is a good way to enhance the connection. While this is true when done sparingly, there is nothing more frustrating when it’s overdone.

You can’t build trust with someone if they feel that every time they start talking, you are going to jump in. Not only does it interrupt their focus and retract their emotional investment in the conversation, but going forward they will be hesitant to talk at all.

3. Watch for filler comments

I have a close friend who I love calling out when he does this. I will be chatting with him on the phone or in person, and despite his best intentions, it is incredibly obvious when he stops listening.

He tends to overuse filler comments that don’t align with what I’m talking about. Filler comments are typical things we say to show someone that we are listening such as “yeah,” “oh cool,” “gotcha,” “interesting,” etc. However, when they are used to pretend like you’re listening, it can be very obvious and distracting.

With multi-tasking at all time high, we’ve all been conditioned to do this at some point. However, if you are not called out on it, you may never realize how disrespectful and obvious it is to the other person. As a general rule: Always listen to others, the same way you expect to be listened to.

4. Don’t pretend like you know everything

When talking with others, we often want to show that we are educated and knowledgeable. It can be hard for some people to admit they are learning something new for the first time. Many leaders find it difficult to take advice, because they feel they should know everything and be the one giving guidance.

On the other side, most employees are eager to prove themselves, so they try not to expose any of their weaknesses. However, we have all been in a conversation where we think we are bringing up something important, only to hear the other person barely acknowledge it.

It doesn’t matter your title or experience, if you want to connect with someone or influence them, you must make them feel valued. In his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie’s principle #9 is as follows: “Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.” When you let someone know they are providing value, it makes them feel good and enables them to open up more. So be aware of your ego, and try to stop it from controlling your behavior.

5. Plan ahead

If you are someone who gets nervous or freezes up during conversations, plan your questions in advance. This isn’t to automate your interactions and turn you into a robot. It’s to ease your mind so you can get out of your head, be confident and enjoy a natural free-flowing conversation.

You can get through any conversation by asking the right questions. So have three open-ended, thought-provoking questions for every situation you may be in. You could split the potential interactions into:

A. A networking event or potential business opportunity

B. Meeting someone new at a social event

C. Bumping into a friend

The key is to ask questions that are not invasive but do make the person have to stop and think about their response. The great thing is that not only will your conversation be more interesting — but you will be much more memorable.

Critics denounce 'Muslim' label on California shooters

The religion of the attackers who went on a shooting rampage in California should not be become the main focus of the investigation, critics say, after the FBI announced the deadly assault was an "act of terrorism". 

Fourteen people were shot dead and 21 wounded after Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik allegedly stormed a party in San Bernardino attended by his co-workers and opened fire on Tuesday. The couple were later killed in a shoot-out with police.

Lawyers for Farook's family noted media coverage has quickly moved to portray the attackers as Muslims, while past shootings by those of other religions never brought their faith to the forefront.  

"He [Farook] was an isolated individual without any friends," lawyer David Chesley told reporters on Friday. 

"When a Christian goes to shoot up an abortion clinic, the headlines don't say 'extremist Christian Catholic' just like every headline is saying 'Muslim massacre' or 'Muslim shooters'."

Chesley noted while the FBI announced on Friday that the massacre was an act of terrorism, it did not say it had direct evidence of links to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

US-based law professor Khalid Beydoun told Al Jazeera there are violent "fringe elements" within the Muslim-American community, but he noted the same goes for other ethnic or religious groups in the United States.

Beydoun said more than 350 gun crimes this year in the US were carried out by white men, while 63 percent of mass shootings have been committed by white males since 1982.

"This conversation needs to happen across racial lines, across religious lines… One religious community should not be indicted, and that's the narrative being shaped right now within the popular media space," Beydoun told Al Jazeera.

Meanwhile, in the first poll on views of Muslim Americans taken after the mass shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed 51 percent of Americans view Muslims living in the US the same as any other community. 

Only 14.6 percent said they were generally fearful.

Amaney Jamal, a politics professor at Princeton University, said it's "healthy" to see the majority positively viewing Muslims, but cautioned about growing fears.

"If terrorism is designed to create a larger gap between Muslims and Westerners, unfortunately they're succeeding," Jamal said. "The threat of terror is going to be fought by Muslims and non-Muslims together. You would like to see those gaps close so people are working together and not being fearful."

Pamela Anderson last person to pose nude for Playboy

Pamela Anderson will be the the last person to pose nude forPlayboy, ending the magazine's more than 60 year publishing tradition, the company revealed on Thursday.

The former "Baywatch" star will be featured on the cover of the January/February 2016 edition of the publication, hitting newsstands next week. 

"I got a call from [Hugh Hefner's] attorney who said, 'We don't want anybody else. There's nobody else, could you do the last cover of Playboy?'" Anderson told Entertainment Tonight.

This is Anderson's 14th Playboy cover and 15th pictorial for the magazine, according to Playboy.

The company, founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953, revealed in October that it would stop publishing nude centerfolds. Circulation of the magazine has dropped significantly from 5.6 million copies in 1975 to around 800,000 in recent

End the Gun Epidemic in America

All decent people feel sorrow and righteous fury about the latest slaughter of innocents, in California. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies are searching for motivations, including the vital question of how the murderers might have been connected to international terrorism. That is right and proper.

But motives do not matter to the dead in California, nor did they in Colorado, Oregon, South Carolina, Virginia, Connecticut and far too many other places. The attention and anger of Americans should also be directed at the elected leaders whose job is to keep us safe but who place a higher premium on the money and political power of an industry dedicated to profiting from the unfettered spread of ever more powerful firearms.

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

It is not necessary to debate the peculiar wording of the Second Amendment. No right is unlimited and immune from reasonable regulation.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

What better time than during a presidential election to show, at long last, that our nation has retained its sense of decency?

Why the San Bernardino Shooting Is Unprecedented

The mass shooting in San Bernardino that killed 14 people and wounded 21 was unique for its male and female pair of attackers, something experts say has never occurred in the U.S.

Police have named Syed Farook, 28, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 27, as the two suspects involved in the shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., which provides services to people with developmental disabilities. Both were killed by authorities Wednesday.

“This is the first time I’ve seen anywhere in the world a public mass shooting attack with a man and a woman that was successful,” said Adam Lankford, a University of Alabama criminal justice professor who studies mass shootings.

Dual attackers in a mass shooting are rare because one person can typically pull the more extreme of the two from turning violent, Lankford said. Mass shooters are also almost always men, with estimates showing that 98% of attackers are male. Men tend to be more violent, and studies have shown that a threat to a man’s societal status can trigger violent actions.

Still, there have been a handful of mass shootings involving women, the most deadly occurring in 2006 when Jennifer San Marco killed seven people and committed suicide at a postal facility in Goleta, Calif.

Profiles of past dual attackers can vary widely. In Columbine, experts largely identified Eric Harris as the likely instigator behind the attack who successfully convinced Dylan Klebold to take part. Similarly, John Allen Muhammad, 42, appeared to have acted as a father figure to Lee Boyd Malvo, 17, throughout the D.C. sniper shootings. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was sentenced to death for the Boston Marathon bombing, has been portrayed as a follower of his older brother Tamerlan by his defense attorneys, but reporting by the Boston Globe has portrayed him more as a co-equal. It’s still unclear whether the suspects in the San Bernardino attacks were equally responsible for the attacks or whether one pushed the other into acting.

“The San Bernardino shooting is very unusual,” said Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor, citing the husband-wife duo and the fact that they also were parents of an infant. “This couple, with a well-paying job and a six-month-old baby, seemingly had a lot to live for, which is not what we usually see in mass shootings.”