J. borrowed the title of this week's episode from one of his favorite Local H songs, and it's appropriate, because we're talking about the Battlestar Galactica bad-choices-for-understandable-reasons-a-thon that is the opening of season three: "Occupation," "Precipice," and "Exodus, Pt 1." And this is about as dark as the show gets, folks. (It don't get much darker than the heroes employing suicide bombers, does it?) Elsewhere, Elementary adapts (which is to say borrows a title from) the canon in "A Study in Charlotte," and J. has plenty of rage to dole out about the X-Files finale. Plus, we open the show talking about assassin ethics and babble about The Witness. Don't ask me why I just broke down the show in reverse chronological order, I just work here.

Hey, sometimes an episode suggests two titles. Whatcha gonna do? Anyway, this week, we're recording a day early and talking about Elementary, which provides a pretty decent mystery, even if it's not what J. ordered. Then, Enterprise just...man, it's Enterprise, I'm running out of adjectives for "mediocre." We talk about "Cogenitor," "Regeneration," and "First Flight." They're bad. We also talk about our favorite lines from The Simpsons in here apropos of nothing, so there's that!

We are taking requests! Details at the top of the show. Meanwhile, CBS hired Bryan Fuller to run the new Star Trek series and everybody's excited. On Elementary, Watson is invited to play Night Owl to Cortez's Rorschach. Then, we wrap up Battlestar Galactica's second season with "Lay Down Your Burdens," as the ragtag fleet settles on New Caprica and everything is fine* forever**! Don't blame me, I voted for Roslin.

(*a different flavor of "shitty")(**a year)

Welp. The podcast is late this week because J. spent several days trying to uncorrupt his audio files to salvage the entire second of this show, which was beset by connection problems of all kinds. It didn't work, regrettably. So here's what we've got: we talk about home improvement (and Home Improvement), J.'s new obsession with The Witness, this week's superlative X-Files episode (even Robby liked it!), Elementary's struggles with motif vs theme (which allows J. to talk about Leverage), and one Enterprise episode, "Judgement." Our discussion on "Horizon" and "The Breach" are forever lost to time. Sorry.

The truth is...over there somewheres, probably? After dispensing with a rather forgettable episode of Elementary, we get down to the real business: the long-awaited (?) return of The X-Files, and the premiere of its unlikely tenth season, "My Struggle." (Robby only watched the first episode, as we discuss.) Were Mulder and Scully given a compelling enough reason to return? Could the mythology stand the test of time and still hold up in this very different time? Has Chris Carter spent the last decade learning how to write dialogue that sounds even remotely the way actual people actually talk? Listen to the episode and find out the answers! (Hint: The answers are all "no.")

Then, we talk about our actual business, as Battlestar Galactica shuffles its feet for two episodes then gets it act together in a big way with "Sacrifice," "The Captain's Hand," and "Downloaded": dumb choices, bad commanders, and the horrifying curse of immortality.

How broken a show is Enterprise? It turns out a solid episode -- one of its best ever, according to J. -- and it's still flawed on such a fundamental level that it can only inspire frustration. After discussing this week's pretty solid Elementary episode, we dig into three Enterprise installments -- "Future Tense," "Canamar," and "The Crossing" -- and spend more time engaging in our favorite leisure activity: taking pot shots at Rick Berman and Brannon Braga. Hey, everyone needs a hobby.

Well, we had to get to this at some point. Battlestar Galactica finally runs aground as we talk about "Epiphanies," "Black Market" -- yuck -- and "Scar." Is "Black Market" so awful it's actually kind of great? No, of course it's not, but J. is fascinated by how complete a failure it is. Elsewhere, we talk about Fallout 4 and this week's episode of Elementary, "Miss Taken," which fails to be as weird as the real-life case it's based on.

Robby's suffering from the remnants of a cold, but he fights through it so J. can complain the baseball Hall of Fame voting. After that, we talk about the Sherlock special, which was exactly an episode of Sherlock (but more so); then Enterprise fills out a Mad Libs in "Dawn," gives the 1980s something to think about in "Stigma," and brings it all home in "Cease Fire." Hey, two of these were pretty good!

Yeah, that's right -- it's a mega episode. It's the equivalent of 1024 episodes. Roughly.

Actually, it's six -- six of the best clips of the Podcastulacra that J. could dig up from the last year. We talk Elementary, Deep Space Nine, Better Call Saul, Veronica Mars, Enterprise, and Battlestar Galactica. Along the way, Robby isn't here to stop J. from counting down his ten favorite television shows of 2015.

Happy New Year!

It's Christmas! J. and Robby give gifts -- the Mary Tyler Moore episode "Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid II" and the Psych episode "Christmas Joy" -- then sit down to Christmas dinner: the latest episode of Elementary (where the mystery is whatever but MORLAND HOLMES, Y'ALL); Battlestar Galactica's ultimate main course in "Pegasus" and "Resurrection Ship"; and then dessert, as Don Draper goes rogue and the Mad Men crew invite you to "Shut the Door. Have a Seat."

Next week: the year in review!