Arrow, Season 3 (Episodes 9-13)

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

When last we saw Oliver, he'd just made nice with The Flash. Unfortunately, the good feels were short-lived as he soon learned that his sister (Thea/Speedy) had been drugged by his archrival (Malcolm Merlyn) and killed his ex-girlfriend (The Black Canary), which put her firmly in the sights of the League of Assassins and its leader (Ra's Al Ghul). (Pause for breath.) So how would things go when Starling City's emerald archer faced off with Batman's most deadly in-law? When answering what might be the most important question in the history of science, it's best to leave it up to the nanobots.

Episode 9

• Ollie vs. Ra's... = +20pts
• ...shirtless... = +10pts
• ...in the snow! +5pts
• Taking a nap after being stabbed through the chest and kicked off a rocky cliff and left to die. = +8pts (You earned it.)

Episode 10

• Pre-Arrow Ollie is starting to look a lot like post-grunge Eddie. = -3pts
• Testing  your high-tech supersuit's new weaponry on inflatable clowns. = +2pts
• Giving a man a gun before you beat him to death, thus giving him an 8% chance at survival. = +3pts
• Don't try this with Malcolm Merlyn because he thinks guns are annoying. = +2pts
• You know the old saying: If at first you don't succeed in sliding across a city street to crash through a window, hang there like a yutz for a while and then kick it like a toddler till it breaks. = +4pts
• Fighting crime in your street clothes. = +1pt
• Diggle in the green suit. = +5pts
• Turning the lights off on your friends mid-discussion. = -3pts

 Episode 11

• Given how unaffected Roy's knees appear to be despite his high altitude jumping and parkouring, we're calling Mirakuru. = -3pts
• Hero-shaming the new hero-shamer. = -2pts
• DJs who think their DJ gear is a primary target for crime bosses who've taken over entire portions of a city. = -5pts (And by "gear" we mean a Mac Book Pro.)
• Watching Laurel take on a bunch of criminals reminds us of that episode where Scrappy took on that mob of soccer hooligans. = -2pts
• Shooting the black Alderman first when there are plenty of other Alderman's to shoot. = -5pts
• Oliver kills good with guns. = +6pts
• Laurel admirably fighting crime with her face. = +2pts

Episode 12

• Staying open when your neighborhood is overun by thugs and the cops are like, "YOLO!" = -2pts
• Anytime Thea takes the words of her mass murdering father at face value. = -1pt
• John Barrowman takes a turn rocking the horrible flashback wig. = +3pts (And kills it.)
• Captain Chesthair busts Roy's secret identity in their first meeting, but can't recognize his own daughter or her playboy ex-boyfriend? We hereby diagnose him with emotional TV blindness. Which is a real condition TV characters suffer from. = -2pts
• Vinne Jones' "Brick" may be an expert in hooliganism, but we bet he sucks at magic. Edge, Malcolm Merlyn. = +4pts
• Hanging out with your murderous father while sharpening a large blade. = +0pts (Because it can go either way.)
• Falling for the old "this-guy-killed-your-wife-so-you-should-kill-him-yourself" play. +3pts (Because it's a classic.)
• Leaving your weapons behind in your police station for the criminals when you bailed and left all of the poor people to fend for themselves. = -3pts
• Thea's justifications for her involvement with Merlyn border on the idea that only children and white men live in a world without consequences. = -2pts
• The Arrow crashing your us vs. them "brick" party... = +5pts
• ...to give a speech. = +1pt
• Merlyn's magic. = +5pts

Episode 13

• Malcom has dealt a lot of pain to Oliver, but the label "failed businessman" somehow cuts deeper than all the others. = +5pts
• Thea's reaction to Oliver's secret is probably her best response to anything in the history of the show. = +10pts
• Peter Stormeyer returns freshly botoxed and newly accented. = +3pts
• Standing around talking about who should do what, while nobody does anything to help the person on the medical table in front of them. = -2pts
• Sneaking in a quick bone before trying to kill someone. = -1pt

Episode 14

• Taking your sister on a camping trip to that island you hung out on that most people refer to as "hell on earth." = -2pts
• Letting your daughter's mother's killer out of jail in order to help your daughter become a better killer. = +5pts (You got to learn somewhere...)
• Dropping into an empty office despite there not being a vent anywhere in the vicinity. = +2pts
• Diggle's long dead brother utilizes his break from Bones to lecture him on not appreciating the smell of white privilege and vomit. = -2pts
• Killing your sister's drug dealer at your best friend's party and then acting surprised several years later when you find out she still doing drugs. = +5pts (That's commitment!)
• Dislocating your sister's arm in order to help you break out of jail. = +10pts (That's hardcore!)

Episode 15

• "Hot Baths with Ra's" is the new name for our scorecard R&B boy band. = +5pts
• "My friends call me, Dig. You shouldn't even speak to me." = +10pts
• Brandon Routh has been a delight, but he loses the manscaping war with Oliver with that weak sauce facial hair. = +3pts (For trying.)
• Watching Merlyn get transported away, and anticipating Oliver's inevitable suicide run, we can't help but ask ourselves, "Didn't we already watch this already?" = -4pts
• Fessing up to your friend, who's just asked you to be his best man, that the real reason you dragged him on this suicide run because you didn't like getting stabbed in the chest and left for dead. = +3pts
• Ollie and Ra's: Second verse, different from the first. = +10pts.

Season Score: +114pts

Let's just all agree that the Ra's of Arrow is the best iteration of the character we've seen outside of the comics. The fact that it's played by Matt Nable, a former Rugby football player and co-star of Riddick (we all saw Riddick, right?), is as much a testament to the writing as it is to the actor's performance. This season's theme seems to be building towards a "we can fight for this city for you, because you're likely to die or (redacted)." John Barrowman has been so Boranez-like in his ability to transition between concerned parent and master manipulator, that we've stopped shouting, "It's Jack Harkness!" every time he's on screen. (Trust us. That's saying something.) Members of the extended family have also been given a moment or two. It's especially nice to see Thea and Laurel work their way into the show in a manner that isn't a momentum killer. While we weren't sure about the whole, "I have to go fight Ra's, again" trajectory of the last few episodes, the writers gave us something new by having Oliver fess up to the fact that what drives him is ego as much as a willingness to do good. Which, if you think about the character, is such a Green Arrow thing to do.

The Sentinel

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

The supernatural horror film was having its moment in the '70s. Thanks to the success of Rosemary's Baby in '68, the Devil became a hot Hollywood commodity in films like The Exorcist and The Omen. Somewhere in that mix rests a lesser-known oddity called The Sentinel. Based on a novel by Jeffery Konvitz, the film centers around a young model with a troubled past who discovers a terrifying secret about her new apartment building. Sounds juicy. Let's see what the nanobots make of it.

• Not yet sure what has prompted the Clerical Justice League to assemble. Maybe a threat from Apokalips? = +9pts

The one in the black and white vestments is definitely the Batman of the group.

• Credits play over a montage of female lead Alison paling around with Prince Humperdinck. = -3pts (Never trust a guy who's that handsome.) 
• Cast of this film is the center of a crazy Venn diagram of young actors on their way up and old actors on their way down. You've got Christopher Walken, Jeff Goldblum, Beverly D'Angelo, and Jerry Orbach (not exactly young, but well before his career defining turn on Law and Order) on one side and Ava Gardener, Burgess Meredith, and John Carradine on the other. = +16pts 
• The menacing priest following Alison down the street is surely a sign of good things to come. = -2pts 
• Flying out to Baltimore for your dad's funeral, only to not go to your dad's funeral. = -4pts 
• Alison flashes back to her high school years, to a day when she came home from school to find her dad canoodling with two ladies. Upon being discovered, he goes full Ike Turner on her. This raises a couple of questions:
  1. "Having sex" seems to be a lower priority with this threesome than "Eating a birthday cake," which... I dunno, maybe we've misunderstood what orgies were all about this whole time? 
  2. Who schedules their weird birthday cake threesomes for 3:00 in the afternoon on a school day? The responsible parenting choice is to have that shit wrapped up before your kid gets home. = -14pts
• Traumatizing though the above scene would have been, immediately attempting to kill yourself in the bathroom is a bit of an overreaction. = -5pts 
• Sound mixing is all over the place with this movie. It's like every line of dialogue was recorded in a different room. = -6pts 
• "You know what would make this movie scarier? More scenes of people shopping for apartments." - Every filmgoer in the history of cinema, according to director Michael Winner = -23pts
• Who wouldn't sleep easier knowing there's a blind, senile priest living five floors above them? = +6pts
• Badly dubbed Jeff Goldblum. = +4pts 
• Alison mysteriously collapses on the set of a photo shoot, adding Suspiria to the portfolio of films that The Sentinel is ripping off. = -3pts 
• The part of Ruth Gordon played by Burgess Meredith. = +7pts 
• Burgess Meredith's character is supposed to be gay, right? We're pretty sure he's supposed to be gay. -10pts in 1977; +15pts in 2015. Net score = +5pts 
• Alison, calling into her downstairs neighbors' apartment and receiving no answer, proceeds to invite herself in. That could have gotten her shot in NYC in the '70s. = -3pts 
• Beverly D'Angelo gives a whole new meaning to "Our bodies, ourselves." = -65pts (There's a time and a place. Come on.) 
• Actual exchange: "What do you do for a living?" "We fondle each other." = +38pts 
• The diabolical forces housed in Alison's apartment work their foul magic on her to...make her not do so great at her next commercial gig. = -8pts 
• Burgess Meredith invites Alison to a birthday party for his cat, attended by all of their fellow tenants. It's every bit as sad as it sounds. = -13pts

"Sorry I can't stay; I was supposed to wash my hair tonight..."

• Burgess Meredith goes from introductions to polka party in 0.2 seconds, then switches the music off while everyone is mid-dance. We're guessing that after all the party guests went home, he spent the next eight hours cleaning and redecorating his apartment, then went to bed and didn't get out of it three straight days. = -7pts 
• We've all had that dream where a naked Beverly D'Angelo plays the cymbals two inches from our face. = +11pts 
• After hearing strange noises from the (supposedly vacant) apartment above her the night before, Alison arranges a meeting with the lady who showed her the apartment and learns that the calls were coming from inside the house the entire time! Wait, that's the wrong movie. She learns that all the other apartments except for the priest's on the top floor are vacant! = +6pts 
• Love is... hiring a private investigator to tail your girlfriend without her knowledge. = -17pts 
• When investigating mysterious footsteps in the abandoned apartment above yours in the middle of the night, you want to make sure that you're as vulnerable as possible, so don't pause put on clothes, or shoes, or even throw on a robe. Just wander on up there in your sheer nightgown. = -22pts 
• Zombie dad > Ghost Dad. = +4pts 
• Was stop-motion really the only feasible option for capturing the scene of Alison stabbing her dad? We're pretty sure the shower scene from Psycho might have been able to offer a few pointers. = -11pts 
• So far, the scene with a bunch of New Yorkers running out of their homes in the middle of the night to respond to a woman screaming for help is the least believable thing about this movie. = -8pts 
• A grizzled detective casts suspicion on Prince Humperdinck over his wife's suicide the year before, while Christopher Walken stands in the background, looking pretty. = +6pts 
• "If we didn't exaggerate some of the evidence, every crook in town would go free... instead of only 90% of them." In 1977 = +5pts; in 2015 = -30pts. Net Score = -25pts 
• Prince Humperdinck helps Alison identify one of the party guests at Burgess Meredith's place as a long-dead woman who killed her husband with an axe. Good thing he happened to have The Picture Book of Obscure New York Murderers lying around. = -3pts 
• The detectives pay a visit to Prince Humperdinck's apartment when the body of his private eye turns up bearing stab wounds that match Alison's description of the encounter with her zombie dad. Humperdinck denies ever seeing the dead man before, to which the grizzled detective responds by smiling like a baby that's just farted. = -2pts 

*Thhhhbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb*

• An excerpt from The Catholic Pastoral Handbook, 1977: "When encountering a young woman in prayer at your church, it is proper for the clergyman to stand a short distance off and fix her with a rapt, unnerving gaze for so long as it takes for her to notice you in order to treble the graces received by her pious action." = -8pts 
• Why would a quotation from John Milton need to be translated from Latin when Milton, quite famously, wrote in English? = -9pts 
• Humperdinck enlists the aid of a locksmith played by Uncle Louis from Christmas Vacation to break into the creeper-priest's office and learn more about the blind priest who lives above Alison. We like the idea that National Lampoon did all of their casting from watching this movie. = +17pts 
• Gate to Hell discovered in New York City. In other news, water found to be wet. = +11pts 
• The unintentional hilarity of watching Prince Humperdinck try to strangle an old blind priest. = +13pts 
• Prince Humperdinck, now dead and damned for the murder of his wife, provides us with a handy information dump: Alison is meant to be the next "sentinel" who will guard the gates of hell once the old blind priest passes on. = +7pts 
• The Sentinel caused controversy for casting people with real deformities as the souls of the damned in its climactic scene. So it's like Todd Browning's Freaks, only instead of shining a light on the indelible human dignity of the disabled, the filmmakers were likely just trying to cut their prosthetic makeup budget in half. = -40pts 

They mostly look kinda sad.

• Burgess Meredith makes for a surprisingly good Satan. = +20pts 
• According to Humperdinck, the only way the devil can prevent Alison from assuming her role is by convincing her to commit suicide. We're not sure how marching her through a Boschian labyrinth of horrors is going to incentivize that. "Hey, this is really terrible isn't it? Now hurry up and kill yourself so you can experience it forever!" = -18pts 
• Creeper priest to Alison: "Guard us against evil and your soul that is doomed for your attempted suicides can be saved." So God, in this movie, is basically a hard-nosed district attorney who holds your priors over your head in order to get you to flip on the Devil. = -35pts 
• Alison assuming her role as Sentinel apparently failed to stem the rise of demonic forces, because we've just flashed forward an indefinite number of years, and everything still looks like the '70s. = -9pts (If that's not hell, we don't know what is.) 

Total Score = -169pts
Available on: Netflix DVD; the shelf of a vacant apartment, inexplicably translated into Latin

The Sentinel is a very '70s film, not only for its supernatural themes, but also for the heavily erotic overtones and liberal use of nudity, which seem uniquely at home in that era. Yet unlike David Cronenberg's Shivers or Lars Von Trier's more contemporary offering Antichrist, The Sentinel never gets much further into exploring our unease with the sensual than to say, "Hey, sex is kinda creepy, right?" In that way, the movie comes across as simultaneously prurient and puritanical, like it wants to have its tits, but wag its finger at them, too.

Mostly what we can't stop thinking about in this movie is poor Beverly D'Angelo. She only gets to wear clothing in half of her scenes, and in one of those she's rubbing one out over her red leotard. Watching this made us wonder how many actresses have a Sentinel in their past, some movie that reduced them to a body to be lusted over, which they just had to bank against the possibility of it leading to more work down the line. Major bummer.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #1

Score Technician: Nick Enquist

Much like the pilot episode of any new TV show, the first issue of any new comic book series has a lot of work to do. A strong issue one introduces strong plot lines, new characters, and new situations for the reader to want to buy issue number two. Recently, Marvel debuted a new series starring Squirrel Girl. That’s right, the unbeatable superhero that has comically taken down everyone from Deadpool to Thanos now has her own series. While the college freshman superhero’s new series certainly adds more diversity to the Marvel roster, one should remember that variety does not always equal quality.  How does Squirrel Girl hold up? The nanobots are diving in to find out.

• Cover of the book showing Squirrel Girl imagining herself as a member of an evil clone Avengers cursed with creepy pedophile smiles.  = -4pts.
• Open on Doreen Green (Squirrel Girl) singing her version of the Spider-Man theme song that’s all about her. = -3pts (For super narcissism.)
• Squirrel Girl beats up a white street gang in Central Park who are mugging a black man. = +2pts.
• Squirrel Girl and her sidekick squirrel (Tippy-Toe) go back to move out of the Avenger’s Mansion into college. = -6pts. (The attic she moves out of is ten times bigger than the broom closet she moves into. Also, it’s free rent in NYC. What the hell is wrong with her? The least she could have done is get Iron-Man to help with the moving costs.)
• Squirrel Girl hides her tail in her pants making it into a, “conspicuously large and conspicuously awesome butt.” Proving that white girls obsessing over bigger butts fad has become an epidemic. Are you happy Megan Trainor?!? = -5pts
• Squirrel Girl acts adorkable around a new guy on campus and has a debate with her squirrel pal about whether or not it’s okay to get strangers to carry boxes for them when she can easily carry them herself… And feminism keeps on marching. = -3pts.
• Doreen meets her new roommate, Nancy Whitehead, who gives her the college greeting every roommate should give: Don’t do these things and you won’t piss her off. = +4pts
• Nancy has a cat named Mew in the dorm, which is against the rules, but “obeying an unjust law is itself unjust.” Let’s hope that defense works after one of your allergic floor mates ends up in the hospital. = -3pts (For taking the wrong lessons from Martin Luther King's, Letter from a Birmingham Jail.)
• Suddenly Kraven swoops into campus!... For no reason really. = -6pts
• Deadpool’s unofficial villain card gives Squirrel Girl an advantage in fighting Kraven the Hunter! = +4pts
• Seriously, why is one of Spider-Man's villains on a college campus? Didn't he graduate, like, a decade ago? This literally makes no sense. = -4pts
• Squirrel Girl vs Kraven is actually more boring than it should be. Especially when he's defeated by her pointing out that he could go hunt bigger and more dangerous prey. Anti-climax to the max! = -5pts
• Doreen Green brings back her squirrel to live with her at the dorm. Good God how many lawsuits are going to come out of this dorm room? = -4pts.
• End the issue with coming of Galactus. Proving once and for all, when a Marvel writer doesn’t know how to add drama, all they have to do is add a Galactus. = -7pts.
• The sad realization sets in that She-Hulk and Fantastic Four were canceled for this. = -20pts

Total score = -60pts

This comic is just bad. At a story telling level, events just happen without any real flow or narrative structure. The main character is uninteresting and downright unlikeable at times. The art fluctuates from fluid artistic movement to the bizarre. Erica Henderson seems to have a really hard time with faces, as some of the characters just look creepy, including Squirrel Girl herself. Much of it is hard to get through, and for some reason someone thought it was a good idea to put jokes at the bottom of each page in tiny bright yellow print against a white background. Take that, losers who are also colorblind! The whole comic is a mess.

The book's biggest crime is that it’s boring. It’s an unfunny superhero book about a character that is portrayed as damn near perfect, and always thinks of herself as such. This probably comes from the title, Unbeatable Squirrel Girl! We see the wink there, but it’s hard to create good drama out of a character if she’s unbeatable. Her only flaw seems appears to be awkwardness. However, if we look at her as a deranged, narcissistic, homeless lady who dresses up as a squirrel and fights crime then things become mildly interesting.

We would avoid this book. Instead, here is a list of better books featuring kickass female superheros:

• Batgirl (both Gail Simone’s run and Cameron Stewart’s current run)
• Batwoman (Greg Rucka’s run)
• Birds of Prey (Gail Simone again)
• World’s Finest (Huntress/Powergirl run)
• Wonder Woman (Gail Simone, George Perez, and Brian Azzarello’s run.)
• Captain Marvel (Current Run)
• Ms. Marvel (Current Run)
• She-Hulk (Recently Canceled for Squirrel Girl.)
• Spider-Gwen
• X-Men (2013 run that has an entire female cast.)
• Bee and Puppycat (Both the comic and the show.)

Maximum Overdrive

 Score Technician: Alex Pearlstein

Remember 1987, when the tail of comet Rhea-M passed through our atmosphere, enabling space invaders to take control of our electric, electronic or internally combustible machines somehow? Man, that was messed up. We’ve all but forgotten about that dark period in our history. Fortunately, Stephen King gave us Maximum Overdrive, a docu-drama preserving for all posterity the brave exploits of the men and women of the Dixie Boy truck stop, held in thrall by a band of killer semis. The film, propelled by the sound track of AC/DC and absolutely no cocaine abuse whatsoever, stands as a testament to eight days in the eighties when we banded together to prevail over the evil of technology, rather than hiding in the crawlspace, only venturing out once to trap pets for dinner, because that would have been very wrong. No, we’ve moved on from those dark days, and now we return the honor, Mr. King, by running your film through an antique, manually cranked, wringer washer version of our scorecard machine, and the results are thus:

• Bank signs saying “Fuck You,” ATMs saying “You are an asshole.” Best or worst Jenny Holzer installation ever. = +10pts 
• Hiring AC/DC to do your soundtrack and then killing them in the first five minutes. = +20pts 
• All right, everyone off the Schadenfreude State Bridge, it’s about to rise. Ok, everyone off now. Hey! Get off, I said! The bridge is - ah no…aw, HAHAHAHAHA, look at those assholes on the Schadenfreude Bridge. They sure are getting horribly crushed. = +15pts 
• Putting the head of the Green Goblin on your truck. = +23pts 
• Having the sense not to look directly into a gasoline pump. = +17pts 
• Homicidal electric steak knife. = +12pts 
• Killing a homicidal electric steak knife with a hammer. =+3pts 
• An electrifying early performance by Giancarlo Esposito. Get it? ‘Cause he gets elec - WHAT? STOP THROWING THINGS. = -7pts 
• The whole soda machine to steam roller sequence. = +37pts

• Regular cars, the machines responsible for killing tens of thousands of people in the U.S. annually, can’t be bothered to help out the aliens. Meh, they seem to be saying, we’ve done worse. = -23pts 
• Let’s see, everything’s ok here at this gas station, doo dee doo, dead body, blood spatter, dead body, clock running backwards. CLOCK RUNNING BACKWARDS? OMFG. = +17pts 
• Antagonistic lawn sprinklers. = +3pts 
• Dog-killing toy cop car. = +7pts 
• Homicidal ice cream truck. = +13pts 
• Not being able to get out of the way of a truck backing up at you from across a parking lot. = -17pts 
• Bubba Hendershot. = +12pts 
• Doo dee doo, we’re the only couple driving on this state or federal highway, doo dee do. = -3pts 
• Having a bazooka lying around. = +7pts 
• Firing it at a gas station. = -27pts 
• Making a pass at a girl who just threatened to slit your throat. = -14pts 
• “You sure make love like a hero.” = +25pts 
• What the hell, are Bill and Brett sharing a cream puff? = +2pts 
• Sleeping with a guy who just crawled through a sewer. = -17pts 
• Mr. King? Mr. King?
  ZZZZZZZZ………GLUH?
  What do we film next, sir?
  IZZA JEEP...GLUH….ZZ….MACHINE GUN! MORSE CODE! MORE GAS MORE GAS…ZZHHAA ALIENS..SWEEP UP… BROOM…ZZZZZZZZZZZZ…….GUH…ZZZZ... = +43pts 
• “It’s like Neville Chamberlain giving in to the Nazis!” = -13pts 
• All the trucks in South Carolina head to the only station where people are stupid enough to give them gas. = -13pts 
• Not escaping through the sewer 24 HOURS EARLIER. = -24pts 
• The airplane that landed on a school bus. = +3pts 
• Li’l Deke’s cathartic drive-thru destroying moment. = +7pts 
• Mr. King? Mr. King? Where are you going?
  WHAT?
  We haven’t finished shooting the last scene, sir.
  I DON’T CARE.
  All the actors are just sitting on the boat, sir. The grip is yelling about overtime. That’s what he’s called, right? The grip, sir?
  JESUS FUCK, RUDY, I GOT THE FEAR, I DON’T GIVE A SHIT. THROW THE GODDAM FILM INTO THE LAKE WITH THE ACTORS FOR ALL I CARE. WRITE A GODDAM EPILOGUE OR SOMETHING, YOU FIGURE IT THE FUCK OUT.
  
  
  The Epilogue of Rudy the P.A.
  Two days later, a large UFO was destroyed in space by a Russian ‘weather satellite’ which had been equipped with a laser cannon and class IV nuclear missiles. Approximately six days later, the earth passed beyond the tail of Rhea-M, exactly as predicted. The survivors of the Dixie Boy are still survivors. = +105pts

Total Score: +176pts
Available on: YouTube

Space invaders! What did you expect would happen when you bade a random selection of our technology to go haywire for eight days? Was it a strategy to destroy our infrastructure, let as many people die as possible, and then have the survivors greet you as saviors? We have some experience with that strategy, so we could have told you that it wouldn’t work out very well. And maybe you should have tried to control the really deadly machinery, like "weather satellites" equipped with laser canons and class IV nuclear missiles. That seems like a pretty big oversight.

It’s ok, though. You may have destroyed our technology and left us at the mercy of the Amish mafia, but you also left us with great footage of bridge malfunctions, soda-machine deaths, and belligerent drive-thru intercoms. These images keep us warm at night; they’ve softened our worst fears of disasters through vicarious experience. If, at some point in the future, an airplane lands on our child’s school bus, we’ll have been emotionally prepared. Or if a soda machine fires cans of pop at our heads with such velocity that our skulls crack, at least we know that death will occur before we have time to be embarrassed. So thank you for these gifts, space invaders. You may be looking down on us in despair as you wait eons for the next comet to pass close enough for you to get up to your old tricks, but in the meantime, know that we forgive you.

American Horror Story: Freak Show, Season Finale

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

Yep, there was one more. Look we've already touched on the problems with this season. Let's just get this over with already.

• '50s lingo alert: "Nancy," a term used to describe wealthy boys who've murdered their mother and bathed in their blood. = -2pts
• Spitting on white privilege. = +5pts
• Finally quitting your job after your boss suggests putting horns on your girlfriend. = +8pts
• Not quitting your job after your last boss buried a knife in your chest and murdered one of your good friends. = -16pts
• The '50s, when big-time network executives had the grueling job of overseeing 12-hours of programming. = +2pts (How did they ever manage?)
• Remember when Elsa had fake legs? This show doesn't. = -2pts
• Spitting on your boss before you quit and then hanging around to make popcorn. = +3pts
• Being surprised when he shows up with his gold plated pistol to murder everyone. = -5pts
• Losing a fight to a guy named Dandy, even though previously you easily beat up a another guy who could crush another man's hands with minimal effort. = -8pts (Proof that female power is merely a plot device in AHS.)
• Jimmy Darling shows up one last time to remind us how useless he's been all season. = -4pts (See above image.)
• If you play a game and the score is 20-1, and you're on the team that only has 1, we're pretty sure that means you've lost. Don't try this logic with Jimmy Darling, though. You know why? Three words: The Toledo Code. = -4pts
• The last 30-minutes of this show. = 0pts

Episode Score: -23pts
Season Score: -43pts

We'd love to say something profound about this last episode, but it was such an incoherent mess we feel doing so would diminish the quality work the performers and people involved put forward in the past. (The less said about that sushi scene the better.) Sometimes you just need to cut the ties to those shoes in your closet that you never wore, because your boozer pops bought them for you on that birthday where your mom forgot the cake and the kid next door never let go of the giant balloon and got lost across the horizon. What can we say? That's just the fucking Toledo Code.

The Walking Dead Season 5, Episode 9

dailymail.co.uk

Score Technician: Joe Hemmerling

When last we left Rick & co., some major shit had gone down. A botched prisoner exchange between our heroes and the Slabtown set left Beth dead and the gang's immediate future uncertain. Tonight the gang makes the trip to Richmond to reunite Noah (A.K.A. Steve Urkel) with his family. If you've been following along with the Scorecard's sporadic check-ins, then you know we're crushing pretty hard on this season. Let's see if the mid-season premier keeps those good vibes rolling.

• This week's episode brought to you by Terrence Malick. = +16pts 
• Someone got rid of a perfectly good grandfather clock outside Richmond. = -2pts 
• This may come as a surprise to longtime Walking Dead fans, but Richmond is not a thriving, safe community by the time the gang gets there. = +4pts 
• Noooooooo! Tyrese is bit! You do not have our permission to trade up to a younger, nerdier black guy, Walking Dead! THERE WAS ROOM FOR BOTH OF THEM ON THE CAST! = -13pts 
• Stuffing a walker's mouth with your already-bitten arm while you set yourself up for the killshot. = +18pts 
• Tyrese's dying hallucinations of fallen cast members poignantly illustrate the conflict between trying to maintain one's humanity in a savage, darkening world...but it also reminds us of the ending of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. = +0pts (A hilarious wash.) 
• Ghost Beth sings a non-Tom Waits Song. = -4pts (We don't even know who you are anymore, Ghost Beth.)
• Katana stroke deflected by handle of machete buried hilt-deep in a walker's shoulder. = +10pts 
• While struggling to get clear of a mud patch and return Tyrese to Sasha, Rick plows into an abandoned truck a few feet in front of him, out of which pours a bunch of walker torsos, each with the letter "W" carved into its forehead. = +20pts 
• So long, Tyrese. It's been a wild ride. = -6pts 

Total Score = +43pts
Season Score = +323pts

Usually the talky episodes tend to be the place where Walking Dead stalls by the side of the road, but the narrative experimentation helped to maintain the meditative pace they were striving for. On top of that, we've got some pretty serious developments: Tyrese has bitten the dust, the gang is on its way to D.C., and don't think for a minute that whoever laid waste to Richmond and left a trunk full of torsos in the woods outside isn't going to come into play later.

Super Bowl XLIX

Score Technician: Sean McConnell

We've done this before. It's a sad fact that the nanobots used to like watching football. Especially on the day the rest of America pretended to, also. But this was not a good year for the NFL. A fact the nanobots couldn't ignore when running their calculations. Not even an 11th hour interview with us was able to salvage the league and Roger Goodell's reputation in their beady microscopic eyes. This was the year The NFL proudly put their foot down against things like human decency and common sense. It was the year the owners revealed themselves to be the CEOs they actually were in real life. By the end of the year, it felt like we were all watching one giant repeat of "Where Are My Pants?" only we all knew where the pants were and wished the NFL would put them on already and stop patting themselves on the back for being so blindly arrogant and clueless. It turns out everything was not awesome. It sucked. So how would such events manifest themselves in the biggest game of the year? Our first clue came when we were running the calculations, and the nanobots kept referring to the match-up as "The New England Cheats vs. Russell Wilson and the Coffee House Godhawks." Who would win when the most entitled franchise in sports faced off with the most arrogantly delirious? Time to crunch some numbers.

• Choosing the worst year in your league's history to host your biggest game at a stadium named after the most exploitative "university" in America. = -10pts
• Hydrating with Skittles. = +3pts
• Punting early. = -2pts (One point for each lame punt.)
• Sponsored by: Nothing illustrates the struggles of Mohamed Ali quite like watching a legless white lady do whatever most people can't. Proving once again that not even context or missing legs can stop white privilege. = -2pts
• Sponsored by: Kate Upton's boobs. = +4pts
• Sposored by: Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel, or clueless old people with money. = +2pts
• Marshawn Lynch and Rob Gronkowski both get tackled for short gains by a single defensive back, thus debunking the pre-show hype that both men were "nearly impossible to bring down." = -2pts
• Tom Brady hopes to derail any accusations of cheating by "throwing" an interception in the endzone. = -2pts (Sorry, Tom. You're going to have to play way shittier if you want to convince us that you aren't cheating. Not even Chris Collinsworth is convinced.)
• Sponsored by: Minion dong. = +7pts
• Sponsored by: Skittles, who suggests we settle all disagreements with our masturbation hand. = +5pts
• Sponsored by: T-Mobile, who finally reveal that they're the shadow Kardashian company we always thought they were. = -2pts
• Russell Wilson does nothing in the first quarter but run in circles, thus inspiring the new Judy Blume book, "S'up God, Can I Hit U Up for a Few First Downs?" = -2pts
• Sponsored by: Budweiser, endorsing bestiality. = -2pts
• Watching Tom Brady complain about anything, much less non-existent pass interference calls. = -3pts
• Seattle offers up their "Legion of Boom" card by allowing The Cheats to score first. = +3pts
• Sponsored by: Coca-Cola, demonstrating their understanding of the Internet and humanity by claiming that a little bit of Coca-Cola poured onto your computer can cure #gamergate, ISIS, and Internet Tolls. = +3pts (For reminding us that Coca-Cola knows nothing about people or technology.)
• Sponsored by: Cars with parachutes. = +4pts
• Sponsored by: Doritos, providing indisputable evidence that only white douchebags stuck in college still eat Doritos. = +3pts
• Tom Brady loses control of the football and clumsily tosses it into the ground. Announcers miss one of many chances to bring up Deflategate. = -2pts (For there being NOTHING TO SEE HERE, PEOPLE.)
• Sponsored by: Nationwide Insurance, the company that can help you turn a child's death into a financial opportunity. = -3pts
• Free-agent-to-be Marshawn Lynch evens things up and scores a touchdown despite The Cheats attempts to behead Seattle's lineman on successive plays. = +6pts
• Sponsored by: McDonalds, believing that the key to financial troubles is forcing the people who visit their restaurants to choose between paying for their meal or calling their family members and telling them they love them. Talk about a Sophie's Choice. = +0pts (1 point for every dollar we plan on spending at McDonald's or earning in free food when presented with these two options.)
• Sponsored by: Brian Cranston = +10pts
• Sponsored by: Um, since when have black voices become the preferred soundtrack to white suffering and triumph? = -5pts
• Sponsored by: Dog cops. Slightly less likely to kill poor people than real cops. = +5pts
• The Cheats and The Godhawks go into halftime tied after two quick scores. The battle between existence and douchery is neck-and-neck at the half. = No points. Just a check-in.
• Halftime:
• Katy Perry appears riding the bedazzled corpse of Voltron's cousin. = +2pts
• Dancing on the world's largest iPad. = +1pt
• Lenny Kravitz shows up to remind everyone what a great live singing voice sounds like. = +2pts
• Singing between singing beachballs. = +3pts
• Singing between singing palm trees. = +1pt
• Singing between singing sharks = -8pts (Do we even need to mention this? Or this?)
• We didn't think it was possible to ruin a cover of a song that you wrote and sang first. But it happened. = -2pts (If you like Teenage Dream covers, listen to this one. Not even joking.)
• Katy Perry performing with Missy Elliot despite no confirmation from anyone that Katy Perry knows who Missy Elliot is. = +2pts
• Blinging your mike. = +7pts
• Did Katy just happily shout the N-Word on national TV? = -5pts (Even if she didn't, changing the word and saying the new word is almost more racist. Trust these guys.)
• Flying across the audience on a footstool while strapped in by a thin line of bedazzled ducktape. = +10pts 
• Total Halftime Score: +13pts
• Sponsored by: Always, keeping it 100 about women. = +12pts (For using their airtime to make a commercial that subverted stereotypes rather than pandered to them.)
• Sponsored by: Angry Neeson. = +2pts
• Sponsored by: Um, we think Microsoft wants us to know that, for white people, making the most out of life involves (despite lacking legs) skiing, modeling, running, exercising, dancing, providing your kid with the best medical care money can buy. For black people it means letting your kids play on a computer in a bus for a few hours. = -15pts
• The Godhawks get penalized for celebrating after a touchdown. Given the fact that NBC would not show the celebration, we can only assume that they did the one where you drop your pants and pretend to poop a football. = +4pts
• Sponsored by: If we get Jublia, just shoot us. = -2pts
• After three quarters of watching Tom Brady miss open receivers, throw interceptions, and balls weirdly into the ground...not one peep from the announcers about the effect properly inflated balls may or may not have had on his performance. You know, cause he had nothing to do with that and doesn't even notice. = -2pts
• The Godhawks, feeling comfortable about their lead, spot The Cheats a few injured starters. = +4pts
• Danny Amendola catches a touchdown. In unrelated news: The over/under line for Amendola injury in Vegas just moved to +52:30. = +2pts
• Sponsored by: Driving turtles. = -1pt
• Sponsored by: The Slap, the NBC television show that should have been a single Lifetime movie. = -2pts
• The Cheats get away with an obvious interference call when the officials "miss" a defensive player clearly diving and swiping the legs of an open wide receiver. Meanwhile, God considers looking up from his cell phone, but not until he's seen the most recent 50 Shades trailer. = -1pt
• NBC shows the owner of The Cheats in his luxury box. We can't hear what he's saying, but we think it involves trap doors and a hilarious misunderstanding. = +4pts
• The Cheats take the lead. God decides that he'll get involved as soon as he finishes watching the Series Finale of Better Call Saul. = +6pts
• Sponsored by: More boobs. = +2pts
• Sponsored by: Rather than make an original new show, NBC decides to make a show based on The Americans, season 6, four seasons before The Americans can. = -6pts
• Someone tells Russell Wilson that God is finishing up the final episode of The O'Reilly Factor, so he calls a time out in order to avoid taking a delay of game penalty. = -2pts
• Annoyed at all of these pray-texts about football, God swipes the ball into Jermaine Kerse's hands as Kearse falls on his ass and returns to reading the final chapter of Game of Thrones: Fire of Flames. = +3
• Russell Wilson calls up God who, having had enough, calls up a pick play so that Russell can throw an interception so that he can go back to watching what the fuck Thanos does with all those Infinity Gems. = +5pts
• Sensing the inevitable, The Godhawks change strategy and launch the fourth Crusade against The Cheats and run into the Salah ad-Din that is The Gronk. = -3pts
• The Gronk of The Cheats puts a nail in this coffin by beating up half of The Godhawk's defensive unit. = +10pts (For finishing what he didn't start.)

Total Score: +50pts

A forgettable first quarter segued into a symbolic ending that felt like a shot across the bow for both The Cheats and the Godhawks. While we assume The Cheats played it straight to win (evidenced by all the interceptions and throws that went straight into the ground or over the receivers heads), even they were unable to triumph over God, who demonstrated his fickle interest in football by givething and takething away from the Godhawks mightily in the final two minutes. Proof that one should never bother the Creator during his motherfucking stories. We hope somewhere High Priest Wilson is taking the news well. It can hurt when God decides in any given moment that he doesn't give a shit. Just ask Jesus. Or Job. Or the Dinosaurs. Or Clay Aiken.