I'm 'offended' by the word 'offensive'. There is no easier, quicker way to prove you're too lazy or stupid to actually discuss and analyze a difficult subject matter than saying 'You can't do that, it's offensive!'
Joking about controversial or simply horrible things may not be emotionally safe for everyone involved but you can not watch Luis CK and expect he won't bring up stuff like rape. That's some risky stuff, sure. It's very easy to become cruel or sadistic with this but if you look not just at the intent but also the perspective of the comedian, it'll become clear that it is surprisingly empathic. Not only does Luis show empathy for the perpetrator but also goes further and analyzes the motives.
Comedy is a tool to analyze and understand subject matters. It takes intelligence and brutal honesty to make jokes as successfully as Luis does, especially when discussing issues like pedophilia.
That's why I laugh about CK's rape jokes but get angry when a guy stands on a stage and just says 'Wouldn't it be funny if somebody raped you?' to a female heckler. One explores a topic and tries to understand it, the other is just being a cruel asshole.
There's a reason laughter isn't a common sound in churches. Good humor often deconstructs what we tend to understand as unqestioned, common knowledge. It reduces kings to mere humans, prophets to popular madmen and gods to fairytale characters. 'Offensive' is the word you use when you're not pious enough to shout 'blasphemy'.

Writing: All of these shows are what we might call 'clever,' which is generally a big selling point for me. Unexpected, heavily layered, structurally complex writing for comedic effect - a lot of recursive, iteratively growing humor. They're all also quite big on dialogue, and are comparatively 'dark'.

Themes: All of them also feature self-destructive and dysfunctional characters, to different degrees. In addition to this:

Rick & Morty: Does brilliant deconstruction of science fiction concepts without a condescending outside perspective. An amazing example is (spoilers) the time that Rick makes Cronenbergs of the entire global population, or the time that Morty's indecisiveness creates split quantum timelines.

Potentially good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5A5Mb__fiA

Always Sunny: Never shies away from exploring the darkest consequences of its incredibly self-absorbed, idiotic, low attention span, high energy, self-destructive cast.

Potentially good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_49P1RtqU0

Arrested Development: ...I'm not good at writing these synopses; I just wanted to see if I could figure out why I love these shows so much. Anyway, Arrested Development is the most heavily layered of all of them, so in just a few episodes it builds up an incredible library of call-backs, double meanings, etc. It's also less abrasive than the other two, if you have something against offensive shows.

...I don't know if there any good example scenes. You should just watch it.

1 - Well let me deconstruct that a bit. Presumably you rely on news, how can you rely on any of it to be trustworthy? Several ways obviously, I would say the main are (A) Ownership, (B) Reputation and (C) Funding.

A - Ownership - RT (and it's web of shadowy news sites pretending to be local) are owned by the Kremlin or clearly Kremlin linked oligarchs. Their incentives should be clear, promote the Putin narrative. When all independent TV news has been shuttered within Russia or taken over, you would expect these outfits to be heavily biased towards propaganda. I would similarly have to be suspect of outfits like Voice of America (US government funded). Corporate news sources have their own incentives. I happen to like the Economist but I'm mindful of its ownership involving the Rothschild family and Eric Schmidt (Google) being on the board for example. After all, every news outfit is owned by someone.

B - Reputation - This is the main one to me. You can say what you will about Western media, but there is a cultural expectation among its people and its reporters of the freedom to report newsworthy stories. There are obviously biases and those form part of the news source's reputation. We know TV news tend to be short on fact and sensationalist. Equally, we know Fox News to be right wing. We inevitably find these things out because no matter how much a news owner might want to control its message, freedom of speech sees the reputation leak out. We have reports (regarding Fox for example) that memos go out to use specific language like "Climategate" or we have controversies such as when photos of NYT reporters were photoshopped with yellow teeth.

C - Funding - Advertising vs Subscription, but that's not really relevant here.

My main point is, relying on Putin directly or any of his web of 'news' to get information about Russia or America is particularly silly. We know their ownership, reputation and thereby incentives. Or any state backed news. For corporate news, ultimately any bias from ownership, reputation or say government influence will leak out.

2 - I don't see him as any more politically effective or intelligent than necessarily any other major leader. If I've expressed anything here it should be that what Putin says is just as calculated and manipulative as any politician. Just because it has a veneer of 'speaking truth to power' or recounts some truths does not mean it is true in its entirety. Bluster and waging wars is politically popular in Russia, he is simply playing to a different audience. I would say any notion that he is more 'objective' is farcical. After all the kind of imperialism that he decries of America is the exact kind he's engaged in in Ukraine and now Syria!

To me the chicken looked really bland...he just pan fried it with nothing. I would have slightly salted it, then put rosemary and butter in the pan and slow fried it in that, much more flavor (EDIT:funny enough, that's exactly what I'm having for dinner, but I baked it with tatos and carrots). Between the bland chicken and complete lack of condiments, I could totally understand why he didn't rate it high.
Great concept IMO, but poorly executed. Just a few more easy steps could make all the difference. He probably should have started with a good sandwich, deconstructed it, and then re-recreated it from scratch with help from knowledgeable people (or at least books) telling him how to do each step properly.

Also....BACON!

There are 100 issues to this EU mess, and 100 different angles to each issue. To stay on top of things or even just to keep a somewhat comprehensive overview is impossible at this point.

It's too complicated, charged with too much emotion, too blurred with power politics. A clusterfuck if there has ever been one.

And you can't even counter any single argument in a meaningful manner, because it would take a deconstruction of the whole thing to present a pursuasive case. The helplessness is infuriating.

Greece accumulated debt in a foreign currency (Euro). Had they been using a free-floating currency with Greece as the sovereign issuer, it would have been much less of a problem. But that's a different discussion.

You brought up retirement benefits. These benefits have been a major talking point over here in mercantilistic Germany. Unfortunatly, a lot of inaccuracies crept into the debate over time. A closer look reveals that it's not as black and white as it is made out to be. One point at a time...

The effective retirement age, if we look at OECD stats, is basically the same for men in Greece and Germany. The age of 56 is often thrown around as the expected average retirement age for workers in Greece, but that's only for the totally messed up public sector. The average for the private sector is significantly higher, as the OECD numbers indicate.

Yet the size of retirement benefits is even more controversial. There are, in fact, some very dubious practices going on in Greece, which result in rediculous retirement benefits for a select group of people, even at very young ages. Decades of nepotism, that's what it produces. But even so, pension expenditure as a % of GDP was not significantly higher in Greece before the GFC than in Germany. When Greek GDP collapsed, expenditures as a % increased, naturally. Some have gotten absurd benefits, but the majority got a pittance. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Greece doesn't have a social safety net, unlike Germany. There is no welfare. Many people have to take early retirement at reduced benefits to have any income at all.
So I'll say it's bad in Germany. Last decade's changes to our retirement system have a metric fuckton of people (~40% of workers) heading straight into poverty when they retire. It's social security for them, and nothing else. Still, it's bliss compared to what the plebs in Greece now ended up with.

However, even all those beautiful OECD stats have to be taken with a grain of salt. Germany has a working bureaucracy. Everything is documented. Greece is a mess. Therefore, all comparisons are guesstimates at best.

Finally, as long as the Greek economy produces enough goods and services, it is for them to decide how to distribute their wealth. If they want a lavish retirement system, so be it. Our governments opted to create a true underclass of the working poor, and gutted a retirement system that made it through two world wars unscathed. If German retirees want to bitch about their benefits, it should be aimed squarely at our governments and their intentional deconstruction of our social welfare state.

I like the "talk show deconstruction" angle. I don't like his condescending attitude.

That's what annoys me. There is so much great music out there, it's just lazy to use those tunes.

They're good songs and the first time they were set to an action video, it really worked. But it's been done to death now.

Hell, use this http://videosift.com/music/video/David-Hasselhoff-True-Survivor

or this http://videosift.com/music/video/Chilly-Gonzales-Deconstructs-Pop-in-2015

or this http://videosift.com/music/video/BARONESS-A-Horse-Called-Golgotha

Chilly Gonzales Deconstructs Pop in 2015 has been added as a related post - related requested by ChaosEngine on that post.

Shake It Off - Deconstructed

Umm, someone has cut the original Plinkett reviews in to the other guy, it's not a direct rebuttal. You can catch all the original reviews (and reviews of other movies) on http://redlettermedia.com/plinkett/

That being said, if you watch some of Plinkett's stuff, putting aside the little mass murderer/cat raping/hot pockets bits he throws in for a bit of levity, he has some very deep insights in the technical side of filming. He deconstructs scenes very intelligently and he explains things neatly, giving you a solid explanation why you previously just had a "something about this scene bothers me" feeling.

Automata bothered me that they had their own "Rules of Robotics", but felt like trimming those back to only 2, leaving even wider loopholes for creative drama, but still following it to the same conclusion.
I liked The Machine a bit better because instead of a fictional portrayal on AI finding a way through it's man-made cage, it was about experimenting with an AI that had no cage and seeing what self-discovery brought it.
Ultimately both those films just devolved into meaningless action in the end. I hope this one doesn't. Otherwise the premise looks almost identical to The Machine, right down to the robots name (Eva/Ava, same phonetics).

Lots of interesting science fiction out the last couple years though. Lots seem to be dealing with our infatuation of deconstructing our physical bodies to explore what's left. Between this film, The Machine, Robocop, The Signal, and I'm sure at least one other I'm leaving out, they all have viscerally imagined portrayals of human figures with as little recognizable human traits as possible.

He is hosting a game show -- I have seen promos.

Celebrity Name Game or something.

I hope he deconstructs the game show like he did late night douchebaggery.

the fact that you refer to them AS "them" shows that you don't actually treat them the same.

if you actually did treat them the same...you wouldn't actually be here defending yourself against accusations of being racist. You're on the record many times talking about how they're different. most of the looters being black after all. If you treated them the same, you wouldn't have made that distinction as it wouldn't have mattered.

again..you didn't think before you typed did you? It took me all of a minute to deconstruct that brain fart.

I see Bob didn't think too hard before typing either. Dumb people don't know they're dumb??? think about that one long and hard. EDIT: I see @Fairbs beat me to it

This guy does a great deconstruction of the song and its zeitgeist. Highly entertaining, a great sift.