Linda Holmes

1. The symbolism was a bit heavy-handed. It's frustrating that Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner doesn't trust viewers of the show enough to allow symbolism to live in an episode as suggestion and not insistence. The Mad Men audience is small and self-selecting; it is made up of people who choose to watch a show that requires attention and rewards patience.

It's Friday, and that means that television is serving up a few gems (new episodes of the wonderfully deranged Happy Endings) as well as a bunch of stuff intended for a target demographic of "started partying early; already passed out."

In that spirit, we bring you a few Real TV Listings for Friday, April 5.

This is an experiment with a minimalist approach to the Let's Rush To Judgment post.

On this week's extremely punchy round-table podcast, once we cover our most important landmark of the week, Stephen Thompson gets through some preposterous claims loosely connected to this video and we get on the topic of

While we go on about the Johnnys, Jimmys, Daves, Jays, Conans, and additional Jimmys of the late-night wars, where was Joe? Specifically, where was the enormous media coverage of the end of Judge Joe Brown?

Netflix has announced that the new "anthology" season of Arrested Development will arrive — all 15 episodes at once — on May 26. The show, which ran on Fox from 2003 to 2006 and won an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series, will bring back its entire cast, including Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Jeffrey Tambor, Michael Cera, David Cross, and many, many more.

I was out of the house, as it happens, for most of the first half of yesterday's Louisville-Duke game, and when I got home and looked at Twitter, before I turned on the TV, there was a huge stack of stuff to read, and the first thing that caught my attention about the game was this.

On this week's show, Glen and I are joined not only by our producer Jess Gitner, but also by a new face for PCHH: NPR Books editor Petra Mayer, whom you may very well know as much of the voice of our books team on social media.

Last night on American Idol was Motown Night, when we all learned that Motown songs (like "I Heard It Through The Grapevine") should all be sung as seriously as possible, wearing a scowl, with all the fun sucked out. (And that was a performance that was pretty good.) It's in keeping with this season, in which melodramatic ballads have dominated even more than usual.