ECONOMY OF (FOUR LETTER) WORDS: Baby. That'll do, really.

I was sitting here trying to express my frustration and disappointment with the just-concluded season of Sons of Anarchy. The screed was getting longer and longer. The tirade was getting more and more torrid. The rant was veering from the vaguely literate to the indulgently vulgar and consuming punctuation conspicuously (primarily of the parenthetical and interrobang varieties).

Then I remembered a comment from one of our worthy readers (Amber, here) that adequately captured the general disappointment with Shoot 'Em Up a few years ago. It seems to me that it applies equally well to the Sons of Anarchy situation this season: simply put, it had too many babies in it.

Cut Abel The Kidnapped Wonder-MacGuffin out of the storyline and it could have been perfectly serviceable run of episodes. There would have been time for so much more of the good stuff about law vs. order, practice vs. principle, love vs. lifestyle, that previously threatened to make this show more than a bad soap opera dressed up in black leather and dirty denim. In fact, if Jax Teller hadn't gone all Sally Field on us this season, it would have saved cast, crew, audience, and production company the time, expense, strain, and embarrassment of that thumpingly ill-scripted and implausible trip to Ireland. None of that was remotely necessary, and it was all done at the expense of more interesting themes, plot lines, and characters--the very things that drew me in last season.

Really, my list of gripes is profanity-laced and never-ending, but that sums it up: too many babies.

BETTER WITH REWRITE: As I clean out my DVR from last week, I finally figured out why I keep watching Better With You. I recognize it's not terribly good, but almost every performer is exceedingly likable and better than the material (the exception is Jake Lacy, who, not surprisingly, is the only member of the cast without a laundry list of prior credits). In that way, it reminds me of The Class, another show with wildly scattershot writing, but a solid and very likable cast, including many who went on to things that made much better use of their talents--Lizzy Caplan (Party Down), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Jason Ritter (to the extent The Event works at all, he has a lot to do with it), Andrea Anders (Better Off Ted), and Jon Bernthal (Walking Dead). I hope Better With You is likewise the gateway to better projects for its cast (particularly Joanna Garcia, who's well past due for a big hit--Privileged was arguably the last really good show on the CW, even if I'm still watching Gossip Girl).

COUNTING HELICOPTERS ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, THE SYMPHONY OF THE FAIR LIGHT:  Do the Minnesota Vikings want to be in Los Angeles?

WHAT ABOUT THE F**KING KIDS? We all recall the joy of the infomercials for the Gathering of the Juggalos, but it's time for Juggalos to celebrate the holidays--yes, Sugar Slam hosts an exhortation for all good Juggalos to give back (NSFW).

ONE NIGHT IN BANGKOK: Yes, it's basically Chess: The Musical: The Roleplaying Game Module.

"LEADER OF THE SAINTS, INSPIRATION TO HIS CITY":  The editors of Sports Illustrated have named Drew Brees as their 57th annual Sportsman of the Year.

Other SI writers penned essays on their nominees, including Chris Nowinski, Roy Halladay, Rafael Nadal, Ndamukong Suh, Armando Galarraga, Mike Krzyzewski and the San Francisco Giants.

COLLECTIVELY, "AWWWWWWW":  Via today's WaPo comes word of a new site, ZooBorns.com, which is devoted to pictures of newborn animals at zoos around the world.  They're all tagged by category, so children's music fans can indeed isolate the baby belugas and other adorables by species.