Oh cool, I never watched either of those, so I thought I was special for recognizing him from TD. I'll probably never watch All the Real Girls (Zooey...eesh...), but one of these days I'd like to give Boardwalk Empire a whirl.

Not him. I meant his lawyer/right hand man Sy Feltz.

I just watched Season 1 Episode 1 of this; you guys have been hiding this from me.

Ep 3 perked things up a little bit. I have a small crush on the girl cop.

7 episodes in now; I should be caught up by the end of next week!

While not as good as last season I'm surprised this isn't a little more popular here than it is. The plot threads started coming together last week & I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

I'm watching. S2 was better, but I'm still hoping we run into some S1 characters.

The showrunner said we would see some old characters at a different age, which I took to mean someone from S2 (the 70s) rather than S1.

The main character of S2, Lou Solverson, is the father of Molly Solverson. Molly was one of the leads in S1. In S1, Lou ran the dinner and shared stories about the events that take place in S2 with Molly.

Spoiler: show

Also, Hanzee Dent from S2 becomes Moses Tripoli in S1.

Super confusing.

Just one episode left in Season 2. Do I then catch up with Season 3, or do I wait until it's over and watch the whole thing at once?

All caught up! I basically love everything about this show, even though the plots from each season have a lot in common. And for the record, I loved the spaceship (which is definitely being echoed in Season 3, even if it's not a direct tie-in to Season 2).

I haven't seen the most recent ep so maybe that will change my mind, but so far this season has been a disappointment.

The last two were very good, last week's was probably a bit better. I thought there was at least one scene this week that was a cheap rip-off of a scene from earlier in the series...

Spoiler: show

The Wolf guy threatening the fellow in the library just felt too much like Malvo convincing Hanks' character to let him go in Season 1, IMO.

There have a few obvious references to past seasons and other Coen movies this season that have felt, like you said, cheap. Sy dropping the "nomenclature" line, Varga's line about Lenin, etc. Seasons 1 and 2 had them too, but they were integrated more subtly.

My biggest gripe is that I just don't care about any of the characters this year except maybe Ray's girl whose name I'm forgetting. Season 1 had Colin Hanks and his daughter, plus Molly, season 2 you had Molly, her mom, dad, and grandfather (Danson), not to mention Hanzi. All of whom felt like real, human, 3-dimensional characters who grounded you in the reality of the story, like Francis McDormand did in the movie. This year everyone is either dull as dirt -- Am I supposed to care about Gloria and her son, who have shared all of about 20 seconds of screen time so far? -- or grotesque.

Where do you see spaceship echoes?

Great question--I forgot since I wrote this post! Gimme a few to think.

Oh--everything having to do with the sci-fi novels and stuff! The little animation of the robot. As I said, not a direct reference (i.e., not trying to explain why we saw UFOs last season) but playing off the same kind of mythology.

There's also the thing where no motion sensors pick up on the female cop.

Oh, I love that. There's a short story by Roberto Bolano about how his son tries to train himself to be invisible to those sorts of sensors, and it's always stuck with me for some reason.

I'm one episode behind but it's been solidly good this year. It's just that last season was fantastic.