Perfectly adequate Saturday fare. I felt like the showier answers fell flat because they all felt like things I'd seen in themeless puzzles before. Like … things that would've been impressive a decade ago (XRAY VISION, KAFKAESQUE, AZERBAIJAN, etc.). I mean, those are perfectly good answers, but they are also about where this grid maxes out, interest-wise, so the wow factor was minimal. I actually found some of the less showy stuff, like ARE YOU SURE? and START SMALL, more impressive, because they seemed like fresh interesting colloquialisms. But overall everything seemed just fine—Saturdayesque. Clean grid, light on the junk, interesting answers, appropriate difficulty level. But nothing really gives the puzzle personality or makes it memorable.
I stared by running the short Downs up top, only I went AGEE instead of PUZO at 2D: Two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter, so despite having many others right, I got a bit stuck. First real coup was getting TSING-TAO, with no crosses (7D: Beer named for a port on the Yellow Sea). This got me OCT and ABCTV, and then ECO allowed me to shoot VACCINES across the grid, and from there I had footholds galore. Well, a couple. Muffed it by writing in CDRACK instead of CDCASE (49D: Obsolescent media holder). So the media is obsolescent, not the holder? For some reason, the rack strikes me a amore obsolescent, but the clue does seem valid. SW corner was very easy to get into because of the piece of cake clue on B FLAT MAJOR (27D: Key of Schumann's Symphony No. 1). No, I didn't know the key, but I had the B, and … what else was it going to be. I wrote in B FLAT M--OR instantly. JUNE gave me MAJOR. Rest of the corner went up in smoke. Had the most trouble with TEE ZED, specifically the TEE part. I was sure (for quite a while) that it was THE ZED, which I almost liked for its insanity.