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Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP97.5/10. It's really hard to grade the first episode of this show. I try to grade shows against themselves (e.g. what a 7.5/10 means is different for The Sopranos than for, say, Star Wars: The Clone Wars). The problem is that Better Call Saul has a past (or rather, a future). That means that, at least out of the gate, I'm going to underrate it for two reasons. The first is that it's a spinoff of Breaking Bad and seems to share that show's style and storytelling acumen, which means its baseline is going to be higher than most show's ceilings if it can keep that up. The second is that it needs some room to go. Sure, “Uno” would be an 8 or a 9 for a lot of series, but in the shadow of Breaking Bad, there’s an implicitly higher height that Better Call Saul is poised to be able to hit. So that means the early going of Better Call Saul exists in a strange kind of limbo between its Golden Age of Television predecessor in the past, and the expectations of quality in its future.
Which is to say that despite a rating that works out to roughly “Good”, I don’t have much, if anything to complain about in the episode. There’s a lot about it to like, and it has the same charms of its antecedent in many ways, but it doesn’t hit “wow” just yet, so the stellar work it puts in in the show’s debut episode gets a standard thumbs up, rather than an enthusiastic one.
But here’s what I liked about the first episode. The cold open, featuring Saul living as a “shnook” (in Goodfellas parlance), showing him in black and white with his old ads reflected in his glasses being the only color showed off the wonderful visual sensibilities this show has and shares with its predecessor. I loved the way that the episode, in both that segment and the episode as a whole, used blocking, framing, and color to convey information visually rather than having the characters devolve into exposition or simply stating how they feel.
That goes for the writing of the episode as well. It establishes Saul’s relationship with his brother, with the law firm and big shot partner he’s fighting against, with the lawyer at that firm he has something with, with his current position and frustration in his career, all without hitting the audience over the head with it. The pilot sets up the world of the show very well and very subtly. The position it puts Saul in, struggling to make ends meet, trying to do right by a terminally ill brother, and scraping by with his wits, charm, and ability to sniff out a con, is a compelling one, where the subtext is palpable but not obvious.
There was a similarly deft tack with the slowness of the episode. There's a very deliberate pace to the proceedings that conveys the restlessness of Saul in his circumstances, a sense in which he's frustrated at how he can't make things move better and faster that comes through in the small human moments, the seconds in between the big action and exchanges, that sets a perfect tone.
It also sets an appropriate number of hints to Jimmy McGill’s future, from the obvious ones like an appearance from Mike (and, I think, Huell?), to subtler ones like the nail salon, or his scam-wise nature in general. The episode perfectly toes the line between nodding too strongly to the huckster we see helping Walter White in the future, and presented a wholly disconnected schmuck who seems divorced from the persona Breaking Bad fans would come to know and love.
I also liked his caper with the skateboarders. It is a nice precursor to that hucksterism, and it’s well motivated both in terms of why he’s doing it (to get money and stick it to his well-heeled rivals in the process), why he would use those guys (his run-in showed that they were capable and it reminds him of his own past, though the latter part may also be a canard), and what it means (the first big step in Saul using underhanded tactics to get ahead in New Mexico). I also loved that it went completely sideways, with unexpected twist after unexpected twist right up to the big surprise at the end. It’s a great sequence, and bodes well for the series going forward.
All-in-all, it’s a fine start to the show, that did what it needed to do in order to establish its universe, gesture toward its predecessor, and chart its own, interesting path. I’m firmly on board, even if I may damn the show with faint praise due to high expectations along the way.
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motherfucker be typing whole encyclopaedia on one episode
@fellipecom2eles too bad we could see the cameraman
[8.7/10] The close of “Something Beautiful” makes me think of a scene from “Nailed”, the penultimate episode of Season 2. In that episode, Chuck McGill confronts his brother and Kim about his suspected switcheroo with the Mesa Verde files. He impugns Jimmy’s character and says Kim should open her eyes. And he tells Kim that Jimmy did it for her, that it was a “twisted romantic gesture.”
But Kim defends Jimmy. She admits that he’s not perfect, but essentially argues that he’s a good person, a person she pities for how much he wants his brother’s love, a love that he’ll never get. She chastises Chuck for denying him that and judging him, for threatening to inflict such consequences on Jimmy, denying his theory as crackpot. But when she’s alone with Jimmy, she betrays her true feelings. She punches him in the arm. She expresses her frustration, because she’s no fool; she knows he did it, and she knows Chuck’s right -- he did it for her.
So when Kim returns to the offices of Mesa Verde, the crown jewel of her ill-gotten gains, and sees their vaunted “models” of their expansion plans, it’s overwhelming for her. The camerawork and editing is tremendous, zooming in on this miniature world and making it larger than life, especially with Kim’s place in it. She sees a tiny man and woman in front of the building, the sounds and the feelings rush back, and she can’t help but remember how this all started. It started with this man that she loves taking revenge on his brother on her behalf. That’s not something Kim Wexler can shake as easily as Jimmy seemingly can.
Sometimes you start something, and you don’t know how big it’s going to get, or the difficult places it’s going to take you. “Nailed” is also the episode where Mike knocked over one of Hector’s trucks. In a bitter echo of that scene, “Something Beautiful” opens with Gus’s henchmen recreating that tableau with Nacho and the dead body of Arturo, to make it look like the same goon who attacked Hector’s soldiers before have struck again. It is, in keeping with Gus’s M.O., a meticulous job. No detail is left unattended, and to complete the cover-up, they shoot Nacho in the shoulder and in the abdomen, leaving him to bleed in the desert with nothing but a phone call to the twins to potentially save his life.
There too, the scenes are beautiful, but harsh, as director Daniel Sackheim uses Nacho’s injury and rescue to show both the efficient brutality of Gus’s plan and his goons as Nacho is left to bake and bleed under the desert sun, and the impressionistic resplendence of the flashes of night-lit faces he sees on the operating table of the same veterinarian who associates with Mike and Jimmy.
After that vet gives Nacho his diagnosis and medical advice, he leaves Nacho with one last instruction -- “leave me out of this.” The vet says that the work with the cartel is too hot for him, and he wants out. It’s another bitter irony, because Nacho wants out too. He told his father he was trying. He wanted to keep his family from getting involved deeper with the Salamancas, deep into this morass. But like Kim, he’s too far into it now, and he’s suffering the physical and mental consequence of something he can’t escape from, that’s happened because of him.
And yet, as much as Nacho desperately want out, there are those who desperately want in. Gus, ever the mastermind, has made it so that the Salamancas are without leadership and supply on the streets is running thin. He gets to play the reluctant subordinate to Don Bolsa, agreeing over feigned protest that, if he must, he’ll find an alternative supply of meth with the Salamanca’s pipelines shut off for the time being, a contingency he has clearly been planning for some time. His almost undetectable smile while on the phone with Don Bolsa betrays it. While everyone else is scrambling, in too deep, Gus knows how to play the hand he’s dealt.But this new situation requires him to go Gale, the latest Breaking Bad alum to appear on Better Call Saul. Gale is as delightfully geeky and puppy dog-like as always, singing along to a rondelay of chemicals sung to “Modern Major General”, reporting his results from the tests that Gus had him run, and practically begging for Gus to let him be the official Pollos Hermanos meth cook.
Gale is one of this universe’s more endearing inventions, to the point that his presence is a welcome little joy in an otherwise fairly heavy episode. It even makes me forgive the show’s increasing, and frankly kind of cheesy, willingness to dip back into the Breaking Bad pool. But here that crossover quality works, because we know Gale’s fate, and what lies in wait for him on the other side of that desperation to join up, the harsh realities that Nacho is facing as he wants out of what Gale wants into.
Sometimes, though, that life on the other side of the glass is just too appealing. That seems to be the case for Jimmy, who returns to the sort of small time hustles we saw him running with Marco back in the day. This time, it means replacing the secretly valuable hummel figurine owned by the copier salesmen he rejected in the last episode with a common, otherwise undetectable replacement, and pocketing the profits.
The ensuing sequence -- where Jimmy’s hired goon tries to make the swap, and inadvertently gets trapped hiding from the company’s owner, who’s in the doghouse with his wife -- is one of the funniest in the show so far. (It had echoes of “squat cobbler” with its absurdity.) The humdrum, almost cliché problems of the owner buying his wife a vacuum cleaner, listening to self-motivational tapes, and ordering pizza in the middle of the night while the would-be thief hides under a desk is a brilliant and hilarious setup, made funnier by how much patience Better Call Saul shows with it. And the coda, with Jimmy misdirecting the owner and rescuing his accomplice with little more than a coat hanger and a car alarm, is the icing on the cake.
But there’s more going on than just comedy here. Mike recognizes that when he turns down the job. He realizes that Jimmy’s after something else, something beyond just an easy score, and that’s a complication Mike is smart enough not to want to get involved in. Unlike Nacho, and unlike Kim, Mike knows when he’s walking into a briar patch he might never walk out of, and he’s been reminded recently enough that few things in the circles he runs in are as clean or “in and out” as he might hope. There’s warning signs going off about Jimmy, and though we know they won’t keep Mike away from the once-and-future Saul Goodman forever, they’re enough to keep him away for now.
And maybe that’s the same sort of realization that Kim is starting to have. At the end of the episode, Jimmy sees the piddling distribution Chuck left for him, reads a mildly condescending but still genuine and heartfelt letter from (so Jimmy knows it’s really from Chuck), and yet he’s nonplussed. Yet again, something that would seem to provoke some outpouring of emotion from Jimmy gets bupkus, while it’s Kim who breaks down and tears up and needs a minute.
Chuck’s letter talks about he and Jimmy’s bond as brothers, about the connection they share despite their differences, about the resilience and hustle Chuck admires in his younger sibling. And there’s two ways to take Kim’s wounded reaction to that.
One is a sense of guilt for having been the thing that motivated the rift between the McGills. Chuck told her it wasn’t her fault back in “Nailed” but he also told her that Jimmy did all this for her. As I’ve mentioned before, part of the larger story Better Call Saul has told thus far is of Kim slowly but surely replacing Chuck as the major person in Jimmy’s life. Maybe being reminded of what led to her getting Mesa Verde, of the bond between brothers that was severed on her account, is too much to bear.
But the other is that she realizes she picked the wrong side. The last time Kim was in Mesa Verde’s offices, she told her counterpart that all that had happened with Chuck at Jimmy’s disciplinary hearing was the tearing down of a sick man. In that scene in “Nailed”, Kim took Jimmy’s side over Chuck’s. Whatever the truth was, she believed that Jimmy’s heart was in the right place, that he was the victim, and that he was a good man.
Now, in the wake of Chuck’s suicide, maybe she’s starting to see his decency, maybe she’s starting to reevaluate the set of events that led her to this place, and her choice to be with a person who seems fine with them all. In “Something Beautiful”’s final image, we see only half of Jimmy’s face, the other half obscured by Kim’s closed door, and there’s symbolism in it. As perceptive as Kim is, she didn’t see the whole picture with Jimmy; she didn’t see the whole picture with Chuck. Now that it’s coming into focus, she finds herself so immersed in something awful, so bound up in it, and all she can do is buckle and try to bear it.
Breaking Bad has already shown us the fates of so many of these characters, how Jimmy, Gus, Gale, Mike, are all sucked in and battered by this world. But Better Call Saul leaves us people like Kim and Nacho, who we can only hope escape this terrible orbit in better shape than Chuck did.
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nice essay, no one reads it though
[7.3/10] Another solid episode. Bean’s story is the main event here, and I really enjoyed her pursuing the Arch Druidess throughout Steamland while slowly but surely building a friendship with Gordy, her accidental co-workers at the major manufacturing company in the area. There’s a lot of fun to the two of them palling around together in Steamland, whether it's the amusing take on early 1900s scientific management amid the industrial revolution, or the silly setups and payoffs of the two of them at the carnival.
There’s some intriguing worldbuilding as we learn more about how Steamland came to be through a delightful “Carousel of Progress” spoof, and just seeing Bean learn how the average worker gets by in this land of wonders, while also learning a little more about recreation and stratification in the realm helps the place feel more real. In particular, I like the irony of how the princess envies the life of the worker, since Bean views it as an existence more free of obligation and expectation, despite the monotony and more diffuse set of societal guardrails that people like Gordy face (more or less).
(As an aside, it feels more and more like we’re getting some explicit Futurama connections, from the factory being dubbed “Gunderson’s” as in “Gunderson’s Nuts”, and the Arch Druidess seeming to be an even more plain analogue to Mom from Mom’s Friendly Robots. I’m not 100% sure where they’re going, but color me intrigued.)
The subplots are less successful. Elfo’s solo misadventures in Steamland are worth a few chuckles at best, and his interludes at the explorers’ club are stock without a lot of laughs to them. Zog treating Luci like a kitty (and Luci enjoying it) is likewise worth a few yuks, but feels pretty mild. That said, I’m interested to see how Oona nursing Zog back to health goes.
Still, the main event is Bean and Gordy. They’re cute together, between Bean’s confidence and determination in pursuing the Arch Druidess and Gordy’s unacknowledged crush. That makes it even more dramatic when we learn the real deal here. Not only is Gordy the head of Gunderson’s, but he sent the Arch Druidess to Dreamland to lure Bean here, and his servant is one of the two Steamlanders Bean met last season. (I think I’m gonna need to rewatch that episode because some of the details have escaped me in all this time.)
There’s intrigue in the notion that for all Steamland’s advancement, Alva sees magic as a misunderstood natural phenomenon with even greater potential. The Archdruidess’s warning not to trust this seemingly sweet guy (at least in his Undercover Boss guise) adds another layer to it. Once again, even where the laughs are hit or miss, Disenchantment draws me in with its longform storytelling and worldbuilding.
Overall, this is an episode where the A-story does most of the heavy lifting, but the dynamic between Bean and Gordy/Alva, plus the major plot developments and reveals, give it a boost.
EDIT: I rewatched the last Steamland installment and remembered that "Gunderson" is also the surname of the "logic wizard" who took Bean to Steamland in last season's penultimate episode. He and his associate refer to the Zog assassination attempt as being at the behest of "The Boss" (presumably Alva?). The plot thickens!
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do people really read your essay for each episode ?
I fell asleep during this episode. Is it just me, or is this season pretty darn boring?
I’m simultaneously watching the Australian version and I’m beginning to think — with the incomparable Jeff Probst aside — that it’s superior. Check it out if you haven’t!
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@tvwatcha3 yep not much going on but thats still entertaining if you don't mind girls being dumb as hell
Good god, Cody is the absolute best player I've seen. That man is so big brain and chill, really hope he wins
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@jo_is_a_roof Don’t open this until you’re fine with a mini spoil on episode 5 or 6 I dont get the hate he’s getting from the big mexican girl (forgot her name), it’s doesn’t seem like he’s acting all chill, I genuinely think he is on a day to day basis
While I don’t blame anyone on this season and I think it’s just a product of a boring season with a boring cast, seeing 4 women go home in a row is brutal.
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@mellon11 brutal? or just fair?
@TvWatcha3 xander for the win hopefully
[8.1/10] For the entirety of this season, Kim Wexler, and the audience, have been waiting for Jimmy McGill to genuinely deal with his brother’s death, to confront it in some way, rather than moving on as though nothing happened. From the season premiere, where he brushed off Howard’s tortured confession with a happy air, to last week’s raging out, we’ve seen Jimmy sublimate his feelings about Chuck and his brother’s death. We’ve seen him repress them, run from them, and act out because of them, but never really face them head on.
Those feelings are at the core of “Winner”, the finale of Better Call Saul’s fourth season. The latest scheme from Kim and Jimmy requires Jimmy to cry crocodile tears at Chuck’s grave on the anniversary of his death, to get earnestly involved in the scholarship grants made in Chuck’s name, to loudly but “anonymously” throw a party for the dedication of the Chuck McGill memorial law library and seem too broken up to enjoy it. It’s all a big show, to attract as many members of the local bar as possible, in the hopes that word will get back to the committee judging his appeal for reinstatement as a lawyer.
It is an effort to put on grief, wear it like a mask, for self-serving purposes. The knock on Jimmy, the thing that held him back in his first hearing, was a lack of remorse or concerning or mournfulness about his brother. So he and Kim send every signal imaginable to the legal community, in lugubrious tones, that Jimmy is a broken man still shaken up by his brother’s passing, only withholding mention of Chuck because the memory is too painful to bear.
As usual, it’s a good plan! It’s hard to know for sure whether the signs of Jimmy’s faux grief make it back to the review board, but they at least seem to be effective on his immediate prey. And Kim is there by his side, shooting down his more outlandish ideas, workshopping his speech to the committee, and helping her partner mislead people in the hopes of regaining something that was taken away from him.
But the key to it all working is Jimmy’s speech to the review board. He goes in with a plan to recite Chuck’s letter to him. Jimmy wants to let his brother’s eloquence and feeling carry the day so that he doesn't have to put on that mask of true feeling and seem insincere. But he departs from the script. He improvises. He offers what sounds like an honest assessment of his relationship with his brother, the reasons why he became a lawyer, the difficulty of gaining Chuck’s approval, the truths about Chuck’s demeanor and the hardships their sibling relationship faced at times.
The the impact of those words is heightened by the karaoke cold open that shows Jimmy as needling but caring, Chuck as condescending but proud, and the two of them as loving siblings. It clearly moves the review board. It causes Kim to wipe away a tear. And you’d have to be made of stone to sit in the audience and not feel something as Jimmy offers what sounds like a heartfelt and honest eulogy for his brother and their relationship.
But it’s a canard, a put-on, a lie. It is an echo of similar faux-sentimental assessments from Chuck, and once again, I almost believed it. Jimmy revels in having put one over on the review board. His cravenness about tugging their heartstrings astounds Kim, underlining her worst fears about the man she loves. After tearfully echoing the passage from his brother’s letter, about his pride in sharing the name McGill, Jimmy asks for a “doing business as” form to practice under a pseudonym instead. Saul Goodman, scruple-free lawyer to the seedy underbelly of Albuquerque, is born out of the ashes of his brother’s life and name.
There was no truth in Jimmy’s seemingly sincere pronouncements. There was no outpouring of grief or real feeling in that confessional moment, or if there was, it was anesthetized and calibrated to be used for dishonest purposes. For ten episodes, we’ve been waiting for Jimmy to acknowledge what his brother meant to him in some genuine way, and instead, he gives us, the review board, and most notably Kim, what turns out to be just another performance.
It is, in a strange way, a negative image of how Mike behaves in this episode. When he speaks to Gus about Werner’s disappearance, he seeks mercy on his friend’s behalf, trying to avoid a mortal response from his employer. He pleads caution, forgiveness, the possibility of correction. But when he speaks to Werner himself, he’s colder, angrier, more taciturn and practical in the way we’ve come to expect as the default for Mr. Ehrmantraut. He too has a divide between the face he presents in his profession and the one he presents to his erstwhile friend.
But at least “Winner” gives us some good cat-and-mousing in that effort. For all the heady material in Better Call Saul, it’s hard not to enjoy the petty thrills of detective work and chases gone wrong all the more. Seeing Mike pose as a concerned brother in law, and piece together where Werner’s likely to be is an absolute treat. And the way he manages to loses Lalo Salamanca -- with a gum in the ticket machine ploy -- is a lot of fun.
Lalo himself, though, really drags this portion of the episode down. He’s a little too cartoony of an antagonist on a heightened but still down-to-earth show. The fact that he crawls through the ceiling like he’s freaking Spider-Man was patently ridiculous. And his single-minded pursuit of Mike and ability to ferret details out just as well veered too far into the realm of contrivance. I appreciate the promise of greater friction to come between Gus and Mike’s operation and the Salamancas, but the bulk of Lalo’s business in this one was unnecessary, and kept Nacho, who’s been underserved in general this season, on the sidelines.
Still, it leads to a tragic, moving, heartfelt scene between Mike and Werner where what needs to be done is done. Between Werner’s naive requests to see his wife, Mike’s matter of fact resignation about what needs to happen, and Werner’s slow realization of the position he’s in all unspools slowly and painfully.
The upshot of it is simple though. Mike found a friend, and he has to kill him. There’s sadness in Mike’s eyes, evident beneath the anger that it came to this. There’s pain in Werner’s, and for yours truly, when Werner tells Mike that he thought his little escapade would result only in frustration but ultimately forgiveness and understanding from Mike, because they’re friends.
There’s not room for friends in this line of work, at least not under Gus Fring. Ultimately, it’s not up to Mike, and underneath the stars of New Mexico, at a distance, with a spark and a silhouette, we see him have to end the life of someone he’d rather let go, because it’s his job. Werner is the first man that Mike kills for Gus, but he won’t be the last. And it all starts with a man who made one mistake, that can’t be forgiven, because the powers that be would never allow it.
That’s what ties Mike’s portion of the episode to Jimmy’s. Jimmy delivers what is basically the Saul Goodman Manifesto to a young woman who was denied one of the Chuck McGill scholarships since she was caught shoplifting. He tells her that chances at respectability like that scholarship are false promises, dangled in front of lesser-thans to convince them they have a shot when they were judged harshly before they even stepped in the door. The system is stacked against you. The rules are to their benefit. So don’t abide by them. Make your success without them. Do what you have to do. Rub their nose in your success rather letting yourself be cowed by something unfair and biased against you. The world will try to define you by one mistake, but fight back and don’t let them win.
That’s a comforting worldview, one that lets the viewer off the hook to some degree. We want to like Jimmy. He’s affable. He’s fun. He’s good at what he does. It’s easy to buy in Jimmy’s own sublimated self-assessment -- that the white shoed system is unwilling to overlook less credentialed but hard-working individuals who’ve had missteps but overcome them, so he has to fight dirty. It’s tempting to buy into that narrative -- that the people with the power aren’t playing fair, so why should he? Why shouldn’t scratch, claw, fight, and cut corners along the way to getting what he deserves?
But the truth is that “the system” hasn’t done much to keep Jimmy down. Howard Hamlin wanted to give him a job after he became a lawyer. Davis & Main gave him every opportunity to succeed. Even the disciplinary committee is not unreasonable in questioning Jimmy’s penitence when he offers no remorse for the person he hurt with his scheme. Jimmy’s made plenty of his own mistakes, but it’s not “them” trying to hold Jimmy McGill down; it’s “him.”
That’s the trick of this season finale. Despite all the put-ons and subterfuge, Jimmy does genuinely reckon with the death of his brother, he just does it in the guise of unseen forces set against him rather than a cold body in the cold ground. It’s Chuck who tried to keep Jimmy from being on the same level as him. It’s Chuck who instigated the disciplinary proceedings that continue to be a thorn in Jimmy’s side. It’s Chuck who judged his younger sibling solely on his mistakes, who overlooked his hustle, who saw those missteps as all that Jimmy was or could be. When Jimmy rails against the system that he sees as holding him down, when he uses that as an excuse to color outside the lines, he’s really railing against the brother, and his feelings of anger and pain and grievance, that no longer have a living object of blame to sustain them.
Because Jimmy has to be the winner. If Jimmy is denied his reinstatement, if a young woman with a checkered past but a bright future can’t earn a scholarship in his brother’s name, if it’s ultimately judged that someone like Jimmy isn’t allowed to be in the profession of someone like Chuck, then it means that Chuck won, and Jimmy can’t bear that.
Despite the loss of his sibling, we only see Jimmy truly cry once this season. It’s not in front of the review board. It’s not in a quiet moment with Kim. It’s in his car, by himself, when the engine won’t start, when he feels stymied, when it seems like the forces Chuck set in motion will pull him under for good, cosmically confirming his brother’s harsh assessment of him.
There is grief in Jimmy McGill, pain caused by a severe loss. But that loss didn’t happen when Chuck died. It happened when Chuck broke his heart, turned him away, told him that he didn’t matter. As with others on T.V. this year, death didn’t mean the loss of a confidante for Jimmy; it meant the end of the possibility of approval, of pride, of the sort of family relationship Jimmy had always wanted and thought he might one day gain.
There is truth in those tears behind the wheel of an off-color sedan, a mourning in private to contrast with the show he puts on in public. And Saul Goodman -- the real Saul Goodman -- is born. Because if Jimmy couldn’t earn his brother’s love, then at least he can win, he can try to become what Chuck never thought he would, reach heights his brother never reached, no matter what lies he has to tell, what corners he has to cut, or who he has to hurt or deceive to get there. That’s Jimmy’s truth now; that’s his response to his Chuck’s death, and that’s the force that moves him from the decency and concern of the man we meet at the beginning Better Call Saul to the amoral, win-at-all-costs mentality that comes with the new name that distinguishes him from his brother.
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@andrewbloom you really think anyone is going to read an essay?
This show in general was an 8 for me. but damn the finale was really good. I honestly didn't feel like I was extremely attached to these characters but I was wrong. this finale made me cry and laugh and I'm not even an emotional person. This was a GREAT finale for such a good show, and I'm glad they ended the show this way. I'm really happy about the ending, and thus show was really fun and funny to watch. Finished the finale and the show at 11:40PM.
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@awkashmi why would we need to know when you finished it ?
Thank God there was no Jan, but why no Holly either? Michael without Holly felt incomplete.
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@qstar.inc no it didn’t
Shout by Why Not Zoidberg?
Natasha Lyonne is fun but the premise is weak and the writing is lazy and derivative.
It was quite predictable throughout.
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@slimyboi yeah totally, you can guess where it's going pretty easily
Still don't get the point of Diana Silvers. Show would be better off without her.
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@theavereviewer same for the trans man woman whatever it is. useless in the show but netflix must have its wokeness
Angela totally deserved it. XD
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@bdgamer thanks for the spoiler idiot
I already don’t like Tori. And could Maryanne be any more adorable?!
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I swear she’s so happy all the time but I know it’d get on my nerves after a while
I stg Jean better be okay!
Also I've seen people saying that Eric cheating was understandable? Yes in a way, they're young and he's frustrated about Adam not being ready to be out. But that's just it, it's unfair of him to act frustrated with him. Everyone has their own pace and you can't force yours onto them.loading replies
@reiko_lj Eric's a bitch that's it
[7.0/10] This is another episode of The Boys where it feels like there’s ten million things going on. Let’s focus on the good stuff.
The dynamic between Homelander and Ryan continues to be one of my favorite parts of the season so far. Ryan is trying his best to do what’s expected of him, but doesn’t fit into his dad’s role or the life HOmeladner wants for him. Homerlander is ostensibly trying to build something for his son, but subconsciously worries about aging and being replaced. Given the trajectory of the show, and Homelander’s own weird quasi-oedipal fixations, you can see him turning on his son at some point out of a concern that Ryan will supplant him. Hence Homelander showing up to Ryan’s first save despite Sage telling him not to.
And poor Ryan! You feel for this kid, just going align with what everyone wants of him ,but feeling insecure and out of control. His tears over accidentally murdering the stuntman make you feel for this kid who’s being placed in a situation he doesn’t understand and isn’t suited for. And the writing and performance of Homelander continues to be outstanding, with him not even processing that Ryan’s upset about the death of someone Homelander considers a “toy”, but rather assuming he’s upset at Homelander stepping into his limelight.
I continue to like the business with Sage. She clearly has a bigger agenda at play, and knows exactly how to play people to achieve it. The Boys hasn’t always been perfect at paying these kind of grand schemes off, but for now, I’m happy to be along for the ride. Her rightly pointing out that Ryan needs to stand alone, turning Deep against Ashley, and stoking the conspiracy nuts all make you wonder what she’s getting at. Sometimes it’s more exciting to see the plates spin than it is satisfying to see the writers finally stack the dishes, but I still like the fact that she seems to have a bigger plan in play.
That said, I’m nonplussed by most of what happens at the ersatz QAnon festival. The cornpone Jubilee knockoff, Firecracker, and the perverted Multiple Man knockoff, Splinter, don’t do a lot for me. Taking aim at the tinfoil hat crowd is certainly topical, which is a good mode for The Boys, but there’s nothing particularly incisive about the parody or deep about the show’s observations on why people turn to that kind of conspiratorial nonsense.
I’m not made of stone. There’s fun to be had in the heroes and villains crashing a bat mitzvah and going to town with mid-fight photo booths, heavy metal horahs, and menorah-based stabbing. But the show has done this sort of thing so many times by season 4 that it loses much of the novelty. I will say, as a fan of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, it’s amusing the see The Boys’ network stablemate get such an amusing shoutout here.
The material with the actual Boys leaves me mostly nonplussed. I’ll admit, I have some investment in Butcher trying to be honest for once, getting kicked out of the group, and still coming around to save his friends. The show gets at something real about the sad dynamic between him and MM, with the sense of Billy genuinely having made some changes but it being too late given all the shit that he’s put Marvin through. But it’s a little quick and given how much else is happening here, doesn’t get enough time to breathe.
It feels like Frenchie and Kimiko have already kind of reached the end of their arcs and now the show is grasping at straws for what to do with them. Kimiko struggling with her past and maybe going on a revenge spree plays like a rehash of what the show already did with her brother. And Frenchie’s new boyfriend turning out to be the child of a family he killed is a silly, soap opera-esque contrivance.
Speaking of which, I have real mixed feelings about the Hughie’s mom storyline. Jack Quaid does great work as a grown child struggling with the return of a parent who abandoned him. Hughie’s mom already has a certain presence to her, between the essential oils nonsense and the sort of passive aggressive, vaguely condescending school teacher tone she takes with Hughie. I’m compelled by their scenes together.
But the whole, “Your father’s been secretly talking to me for a couple of years and has granted me power of attorney” is another dumb soap opera-esque twist. I guess the show needs a reason why Hughie wouldn’t just kick her out, but it’s still awfully convenient. Maybe it’s all part of some Vaught plan to get to Hughie or something, but that would be even sillier.
I also don’t really care about Annie’s struggle with whether or not to be Starlight. As with Frenchie and Kimiko, it seems like we’ve kind of done her arc multiple times now, and the show’s running out of ideas for the character.
That said, strangely enough, one of the characters I’m most compelled by here is A-Train. The notion of his brother actually getting through to him, and him warning to do something genuinely heroic, is low-key inspiring. Him recognizing Hughie’s kindness in front of his family, and providing exonerating evidence for the men falsely accused of beating up Sage’s plants is one of the few genuinely good things we’ve seen him do. Nothing gold can stay in The Boys, but I’m intrigued by his change of heart.
Oh yeah, and seeing Will Ferrell play a Blind Side-esque mentor figure is worth a solid laugh, and so is the new Black Noir continually not really understanding his character.
Overall, I wish these episodes had more focus and momentum, and we’ve reached the point in the show where many of the character journeys seem to have reached their natural ends, only to continue on regardless. But there’s still some quality story threads to follow, particularly those on the supe side of the equation right now.
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@andrewbloom no one read your essay
Shout by KanashiiNinja
VIP2Heidi was giving me second-hand embarrassment almost every time she talked at the final tribal! Talking over Yam Yam, trying to pander to the jury instead of speaking on her game (since she didn't have much of one), and talking about how Tika was on a high the whole time while she had to struggle. Meanwhile Tika came to the merge with only 3 members, she was struggling because Tika picked the other 2 tribes apart one by one and they didn't realize until it was already too late. I'm very happy Yam Yam won! It was between him and Caroline but he played the more well-rounded strategic and social game. Fun season!
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@lazyassedninja yam yam had no impact on the game though. he acts like he did everything but couldnt manage to make others vote for survivors he wanted out
Shout by Corey
VIP2Yam Yam’s big personality came across, to me, as “showy” and forced. I was not enamored by it like everyone else. And I don’t believe he was as strategic as everybody perceived him to be. He clearly wanted Carolyn out for a while, but failed at convincing anyone else. So I’m not thrilled with the winner. (Although it beats last season.)
I was really rooting for Carolyn, but happy she reached the end. We, as an audience, were lucky to have watched her play. Such a unique and genuine contestant.
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@tvwatcha3 yeah i wished he didnt win. He was the know it all, saying he knew exactly what everyone was thinking was just too much
Shout by teunis
VIP3might be surprisingly difficult to pull of an episode like this. great chemistry between the two of them. big fan of leaving things to the viewers' imagination, often more powerful than a decent on-screen explanation.
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@teunis_ hot garbage episode you meant?
Review by Suit
“Left Behind”, an episode that is best left behind? Not quite, but it is undoubtedly the most disappointing one so far.
One of the major missteps was telegraphing the fate of one of the main characters, a decision that weakened the story’s impact and disconnected the viewer from the unfolding drama. Even the attempts to build suspense in the lead-up to the characters’ fates proved disappointing. Was the episode mere filler? Not exactly. It did offer a bit of depth to Ellie’s character, but it did so at the expense of the show’s near-flawless track record.
Unfortunately, neither Storm Reid nor Bella Ramsey possesses the necessary screen presence to truly captivate and hold the audience’s attention. The writing and direction both fall short of alleviating this fact, which further detracts from the overall quality of the episode.
The strength of the show has always been its ability to develop complex and engaging characters, and it’s disappointing to see it falter at such a crucial juncture, especially after delivering back-to-back brilliance.
Despite its missteps, “Left Behind” doesn’t necessarily spell doom for the show. With two episodes still left in the season, I remain hopeful that this misstep is just a minor hiccup in an otherwise stellar series.
01x07 - Left Behind: 6.9/10 (It Gets the Job Done, Slightly Flawed)
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@suitability essay andy be like
@pato51 yeah was boring as fuck
Jeez, the snowflaky reactions of straight white men because not every single episode and narrative centres them - anything deviating from that priority is apparently "woke". Get over yourselves, you egomaniacal bigots.
Anyway, another great episode that nicely expanded Ellie's backstory - bonus points for the Mortal Kombat II appreciation, too :nerd:
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@2ls1t no need to project dude
@stu623 you my friend are high on copium
OMG THIS WAS SO GOOD!!!!!!! I mean I think we all can agree Cassie is very stupid but that’s the point and Kaley’s acting is so so so good!!
I feel like it was a terrible decision to leave the scene and to throw the murder weapon away cause yeah I would also be scared to be locked up in a foreign country but I don’t feel like Thailand’s police would take it to heart that a white american woman might had killed a white american man in a fancy hotel, I think they would pass it along to the embassy? And maybe Cassie would spend like a night in jail and then be sent back to the US and that’s a big maybe cause for staters she didn’t have a motive, she wasn’t covered in blood (she says she was but it was only a smudge in her hand), she didn’t have any cuts on her hands from stabbing/cutting him with a broken bottle of glass so I feel like the US embassy would take the lead. Then she called her lawyer friend and only asked her about Amanda Knox??? Why didn’t she ask her for help??? And I don’t like her logic of “they locked up a tourist for 5 years just for littering” cause littering is offending the country and its laws and if she had killed a Thailand citizen of course she would be taken away forever but this is white american on white american crime. And then she stopped to buy a scarf?? And it was like a luxury store so obviously it had cameras and probably she paid with a credit card so...
But obviously I don’t think he killed him, that business partner looks suspicious, on one of the montages of that night you can see a hand putting the blue bottle (murder weapon) in a table while Cassie and Alex are sitting on the couch so there was someone else in the hotel room, idk if the hand is the business partner’s or a hotel worker’s and then when the business partner called the hotel’s front desk she immediately asked them to go check on his room and that was just really obvious, like if I was meeting someone and they don’t show up I would give them a few more hours before worrying especially if last night we were partying like that and I then would go to the hotel myself.
This episode was so strong, I just hope it doesn’t turn into a courthouse drama, cause lately I’ve watched a lot of those and I’m kinda tired, I feel like the lawyer myself and it’s exhausting trying to defend so many imaginary clients.loading replies
@aars26 ok you fan boy
Not bad we will see a bit weird though
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@winchesterz very weird and very poorly realised
Interesting premise. Feels a bit like a PTSD fever dream.
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@chilkara except all the flaws in the making of the episode
What a surprising winner, right?
Another disappointing season for me :frowning2:loading replies
surprising? no, very disappointing yes
Unfortunately this episode has ended my lifelong survivor love, and it will be the last episode I watch. This turned it into something it’s not about, and it’s no longer survivor the way it used to be. It’s always going to evolve but it evolving into a race against race thing isn’t what this show was meant to be about. I don’t think I can respect this gameplay, and I would prefer to stop watching now.
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@mellon11 because everything is about race now. they’re playing dumb and you’re voting for them ? that’s because of their race for sure not because they are playing the game like retards. i hate how the society is becoming man
Daniel is one of the stupidest survivor players of all time.
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@mellon11 he’s legit so retarded
