Superb season premiere for the show. It's a spiritual cousin to co-creator Dan Harmon's "Remedial Chaos Theory" episode of Community. The time splits were a neat gimmick, and what made it so great as a storytelling device is that each moment of "uncertainty" both created new problems for Rick, Morty, and Summer, but also told us a little more about them and how they tick. It was great fodder for creativity on a show that's filled to the brim with it, and they even fit in some heart with 1/32 of Rick attempting to sacrifice himself to save 1/32 of Morty. It was a fun kick off to the new season that played on last season's finale.
And I enjoyed the B-story to boot! It was much more down-to-earth (at least, in terms of this show) with saving the deer. It was nice to see a little focus on Beth as a character, and I loved both the absurdity of the story's conclusion and the fact that it tied into the tossed off line about Jerry's big tip at Coldstone. Throw in the amusing Einstein tag, and you have a hell of an episode.
Nanites in the core! With all the damage I'm amazed it could be repaired.
So far this season has been overall the weakest mainly because of the shifting towards that zombie military corps thing.
But this episode was by far the best of this season with a good buildup the last few episodes and right back on track why I love this series. Hopefully they start to concentrate on the main cast and "their" stories more again (and with less Don E, I don't like that kid at all).
Thinking outside the box there from Data. Sometimes you just have to get nasty!
diplomatic TNG is best TNG
Picard at his Picard-est. Marvellous stuff!
pretty good stuff. i'm surprised this wasn't controversial, considering religion is indirectly referred to as 'contamination'. however what annoyed me was that in the episode just before this, picard was willing to risk the enterprise in order to protect the presumed two survivors of a planet. here picard berates beverley for not leaving one of the mintakans to die, and when troi is held captive, you get the feeling he may have let her die in order to minimize the risk of further cultural 'contamination'. this utilitarianism seems a bit inconsistent, and i do wish picard had been a bit more of a kirk at times, refusing to accept a 'no win scenario' etc. anyway, this is just a minor irritation. TNG has really hit its stride in season 3 so far.
has some profound things to say about the human condition. unfortunately prefers to preach more than an after-school special
Romulans. So, what were they doing there? I wanted answers.
Ferengi don't not have the best reputation do they. Seems two of them were destined to be lost forever in a tiny pod. That wouldn't be any fun. 70,000 light years away. People should listen to Geordie!!
Bleh, I really did not care for that Devinoni Ral, even right from the beginning.
Clan wars and prejudice, there's always plenty of that around
[7.7/10] There’s a sense in “Off Brand” that many of the major figures of Better Call Saul haven’t really been doing what they’d like to be doing. Demands of family, money, and sometimes the two intertwined have kept the likes of Jimmy, Chuck, Mike, and Nacho are, at times, reluctant or bitter or scarred by the work they’ve been doing over the past few seasons. But for each of them, there is something pushing them, almost against their will, to move closer to something that might be better for their souls.
For Jimmy, that means a break from the law. At heart, Jimmy is a showman, a people-pleaser, albeit one who’s happy to use those skills to feather his nest where possible. That gives him an avenue in the law, but his references to having to go “Karloff” in his commercial for...commercials, or the dangers of stripes on screen suggest that he’s as thrilled by the art of his presentation as he is in any con.
He showed the same inclination in his meticulously-produced commercial for Davis & Main and his first big “Gimme Jimmy” ad. And the first glimpse we see of Cinnabon Gene is of a man whose world is black and white, where the only hint of color are the flashes of his famous “Better Call Saul” clips that first drew Jesse and Walt to him. As corny as it is to see Jimmy in the hat and beard and vest (and it must be said that Better Call Saul gets the lo-fi look of local ads down perfectly) there’s the sense that Jimmy is in his element when he’s on camera, and that it may be the closest thing to honest work that could sustain him.
After all, there is a sense that Jimmy became a lawyer out of a combination of admiration for his brother as a template for success and in a bid to earn his respect and perhaps even love. There’s ways in which his showmanship makes him a good fit, but as his stint at Davis & Main shows, also things that make him a liability. It does seem to pain Jimmy a bit to have to inform all of his clients of his twelve-month suspension (in another of this show’s tightly-edited and hilarious montages), and we know it won’t last, but maybe he would be happier as a commercial director and/or star than as an officer of the court. The suspension is not ideal, but it may just push Jimmy into something fulfilling after being so directed by his relationship with his brother.
As despondent as Chuck may seem having effectively lost his contest with his brother, the result seems to spur him as well. While the fallout from “Chicanery” clearly left him shaken, seeming even suicidal at times, a visit from Howard seems to snap him out of his funk. Howard, a talented advocate in his own right, appeals to Chuck’s vanity and his sense of serving the calling of the law above prosaic personal concerns.
In the shadow of those lofty ideal, Chuck begins to test the limits of his exposed psychosomatic “allergy.” He gives himself exposure therapy, gripping a battery in his hand with subtext that he’s pushing himself to move past it. And he even goes so far as to call a doctor, presumably to ask for help, to push him beyond his illness, whether he believes it to be physical or mental. As much as Chuck looks at his brother with disdain, in many ways Jimmy has been coddling him, indulging his electromagnetism “allergy” self-diagnosis rather than forcing him to confront the deeper-rooted issues that have caused it and deal with it. Oddly enough, it may be Jimmy’s final act with Chuck (if his statement to Rebecca is to be believed) that spurs his brother to get the help he needs.
Mike needs some help too. It’s not in the same way as Chuck exactly, but as he sits in that support group while his daughter-in-law recounts the difficulties of raising a daughter without her father, we know that Mike too has unresolved issues from his son’s death, issues that this sort of group might help him with.
But, like Jimmy, he’s also been pulled into a world by financial necessity and familial issues that it may do him better to be without. When his daughter-in-law asks him to help pour concrete for a neighborhood playground (possibly the one at which he’ll later be arrested) it’s the kind of labor, the kind of building something, that Mike appeared to covet in the last episode, with Gus luring him back into the world of drugs and brutality. There’s always something that feels a little less than above board about Mike’s daughter-in-law’s requests of him, a sense that she (consciously or unconsciously) uses Mike’s guilt over his son’s death to persuade him to do things for her and her daughter, but here, it may be the same sort of push that let’s him do a little of what he’d really like to be doing, like the kind Jimmy received.
And then there’s Nacho, who’s also pushed into actions he wouldn’t seem to pick without some amount of prodding. But unlike the three other men who get their share of focus in this episode, Nacho seems like he’s being pushed into something that will hurt him, that isn’t a step toward recovery or betterment and fulfillment, but something to drive him deeper into a place that isn’t comfortable.
When he’s counting dollars at the beginning of the episode, he’s apt to let the underling who’s a little light off with a warning. But all it takes is one belittling comment from Hector, who’s seemingly barely paying attention, for Nacho to drag the goon back in and brutalize him in the kitchen. When he’s upholstering in his father’s shop, a slip with the needle reflects the image of blood in his eyes, and suggests a man who is, at least in part, still carrying his grisly actions with him from that day.
But Hector prompts that sort of viciousness, that effort to take out what you need from whomever you need it from. Hector sends him to test the limits of Gus’s patience by taking six bricks from the Pollos Hermanos delivery rather than five. Push your advantage -- that’s the lesson Nacho is constantly learning from his would-be boss.
(As an aside, I don’t know that we really needed to see Gus surveying the industrial laundry facility which will eventually house Walter’s lab and conferring with Lydia. BCS has been good about not laying the Breaking Bad nods on too thick or shoehorning them in, but this felt like too much with little purpose beyond saying “Hey, remember how this becomes significant in the other series?”)
And yet, Nacho may take that lesson and turn it against the man who’s teaching it to him. Hector’s insistence on using Nacho’s dad’s shop as a front provokes real resistance in the young man. We’ve already seen Nacho’s willingness to throw his associates under the bus because they pose a threat in terms of stability or understanding. When Nacho places his foot on one of Hector’s pills, after a coughing fit prompted by Tuco earning himself some more time in jail, there’s the hint that he may have something to do with what finally fells Hector. Better Call Saul uses the the inevitability of Hector’s downfall to, ironically enough, create mystery, where Mike, Gus, and Nacho all have reasons to try to take him down.
That’s the risk of all these big events prodding our protagonists to try things that they’d otherwise been shoving to the side. We know that Jimmy’s filmmaking career is temporary, and that Mike’s handyman excursion is fleeting. These individuals will be pulled back into this world and this life despite their efforts, self-directed or not, that keep them away from it. The mixing of those worlds, the humble work at the car shop and the drug enforcer duties for Hector, may also collide for Nacho, in a way that pulls him back into that muck, into using that brutality Hector instills, without any need for further provocation.
I've been reading GoT's books but Mysha Scene didn't affect me like that when I read it. I cried, man! This episode is unique!
I can't even imagine what that must have felt like, when he realized that he had become a traitor for no reason. He was arrogant and annoying, but poor guy.
That moment when the Klingons de-cloacked. Friggin awesome.
Wise to be cautious; a very elaborate and well rehearsed deception
Such a real topic, terrorism is something history as much as modern times deals with, struggles with and is failing to resolve.
One of my all time favorite episodes of TV ever. Really strong storytelling here. It doesn't get better than this.
Definitely one of my favorite episodes. Took one for the whole empire...
Not sure I understand what's happened to Worf; looks bad.. People turned their back on him. Powerful! Yeah, sarcasm....
Omg. This was definitely one of the most funniest episodes I've seen thus far. The ending was amazing. Loved this epsiode.
[3.9/10] I’ve talked about this before in my write-ups for Star Trek, but I try to hard not to impose my modern values and norms on a show made fifty years ago when watching The Original Series. I’m sure that people fifty years from now will look at the art being made by people today and have serious issues with how things are depicted or glossed over, and so I do my best to take these stories as I find them, acknowledge areas where they’re lacking in how we view morality and what’s appropriate today, but still attempt to appreciate them on their own terms.
“The Gamesters of Triskelion” is an episode that really tried my patience and tested my ability to do that. The episode is nominally focused on Kirk, Uhura, and Chekov being secretly beamed to a gladiator planet where some unseen “providers” force them to train and fight, but it centers on issues of slavery and gender dynamics that the show is ill-equipped to handle, and it makes this one pretty hard to watch at times.
First and foremost, one of the local enslaved gladiators attempts to rape Uhura (and the episode is a little cagey about what exactly happens) and “Triskelion” pretty much glosses over the aftermath, essentially forgetting about it once it’s happened. Nichelle Nichols does an amazing job, with her horrified screams being truly chilling, in a way that reinforced that this was not a subject that a colorful show like Star Trek was in any way set up to address in a meaningful fashion. The fact that it’s almost immediately forgotten, and treated like any other indignity the crew, is a pretty hard thing to get past.
But that brevity at least means the episode isn’t throwing the uncomfortable aspects in your face every five minutes. There’s something more than a little disturbing about Kirk seducing Shahna, the alien gladiator who is ostensibly training him, when at best, she is someone who has lived her whole life as a slave and has only very fuzzy notions of concepts like consent or autonomy, and at worst she seems to have the understanding and roughly the capacity of a child.
“Triskelion” tries to gloss over this by putting her in one of those costumes that leaves little to the imagination, and having Kirk try to couch his affections in ideas above freedom and love. But the reality is that Kirk makes a move on this individual who is not at all equipped to handle such things. The episode is founded on the idea that he teaches her to love, and that comes off as him grooming her rather than a free and equal concordance between the two, it makes half of the episode devoted to something that just scans as wrong.
The other problem is that even if you separate out those uncomfortable parts of “Triskelion,” you’re left with a pretty standard, dull episode. Kirk is hoodwinked by aliens with god-like powers, falls in love with a babe of the week, and uncovers the terrible secret of the new planet before concocting some plan to escape. There’s nothing wrong with the formula, but if you’re not going to do anything novel it means the execution has to be good, and the gladiator theatrics and unpleasant sexual and slavery stuff really detract from whatever the episode’s trying to do.
There’s only a couple of genuinely good things about “Triskelion” that save it from being the absolute pits. One is that the Spock-Bones-Scotty effort to try to find Kirk and company is pretty darn good. A lot of these episodes have the main action going on down on the latest planet of the week, with the business on the ship trying to rescue them feeling perfunctory. But here, there’s a legitimate conflict between the three men about what the best approach is, and a legitimate challenge in trying to track what happened to their crewmen.
As always, Spock is great here. I love the tack that even cold logical Spock is willing to act on a “hunch” when all other options are exhausted. Following a random energy trail may be a longshot, but if the transporter is working properly and their searches of the area prove fruitless, then it works with his Vulcan logic that following that path, however unlikely, is the best thing to do.
There’s also great interactions between him and Bones and Scotty, with Spock’s line about taking any suggestion “even an emotional one” about where to look, Bones responding that Spock finally asks him for something and it’s that, and the little interlude about mutiny and compromise standing out as particularly great.
The other quality part of the episode is that the action choreography is actually pretty good here. I’ve had my beef with the fights on Star Trek before, but the creative use of the weapons and the recess-like rules of staying on particular colors made for an interesting battle with Kirk versus his three aggressors, and eventually Shahna at the end there. It’s good to know the episode can do some combat even if it can’t handle the storytelling or character stuff.
Still, again, the plotting is pretty dull too. The reveal of the lit-up trio of brains and Kirk giving another one of his tedious speeches about what it means to be truly advanced and blah blah blah didn’t do much for me. (Even if it did seem to be the inspiration for the robot elders of Futurama, one of my favorite gags.) And the ploy to wager against them and free everybody seems contrived as well, even when it’s not rooted in something that’s supposed to be romantic but comes off kind of disturbing.
And yet, as cheesy as the line is, there is pathos when Kirk leaves Shahna and promises that she’ll look up to the stars and remember him. It’s a good performance from the guest actress, and it suggests that more could have been made from this -- that there’s juice in having to say goodbye to someone who opened up your world and understanding, and that if it hadn’t been wrapped up in what reads as a hasty and inappropriate relationship, the episode could have been markedly improved. It’s unfair to judge something from five decades ago according to the standards of today, but it’s also unfair to expect an audience to be able to grin and bear the sort of uncomfortable sexual politics that “The Gamesters of Triskelion” puts on display, mixed in with a weak base plot to boot.
My stomach hurts from how hard I laughed at Liv's "old lady" voice.
This is one of the most consistently impressive shows I've had the privilege and absolute joy to watch. It carries a similar tone and feel as The West Wing, also written and created by Aaron Sorkin, which makes it no surprise why I loved this show so much. The writing is spectacular and the acting is phenomenal. This is one of those rare shows where every character grows and develops and has a moment to shine. I'm sad that the show only lasted 3 seasons, but those 25 episodes are pure gold.
I found it unbelievably irritating that the older brother was blamed for something the younger one did by himself. Older brother pranking his younger brother by playing dead is in no logical way related to younger brother being an idiot and eating the fruit. Younger brother could've eaten the fruit at any time. The person who made it so easily reachable for uneducated kids is to blame, and I'm willing to bet it wasn't his older brother...
This is one of the best episodes I've ever watched in this series.
