Lacrima

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5

[9.5/10] “My man!” So much to love in this one. The main story is so much fun, with all the humor the show wrings from the weak details of the simulated world (I love the pop tart driving a toaster bit). The aliens’ inability to deal with nudity, the expectedly great performance from David Cross, and using complicated crowd instructions to overwhelm the computer’s processors are all great elements. Heck, even the “simulation within a simulation” business, and the glee with which Rick and the aliens one-up each other, makes for an inventive and enjoyable adventure.

But my favorite part is Jerry’s story. The fact that Jerry not only doesn’t realize in the low-CPU end of the simulation, but has his most meaningful and fulfilling life experience in it, walks the line between tragedy and comedy so perfectly they should invent a new theater mask for it. The broken processing gags are familiar to anyone who’s played a glitching video game, and Jerry’s obliviousness to everything, and his emotional journey projected onto these blank slates, is just brilliant.

Overall, it’s noteworthy how confident and command R&M was out of the gate here, with a fun sci-fi adventure with an unassumingly dark bit at its core.

[9.0/10] I don’t know how Rick and Morty keeps doing it, but somehow the show continually finds new ways to combine insane sci-fi weirdness with deep and meaningful character introspection, and I can’t get enough of it.

At the same time the show crafts and adventure where Rick and Jerry turn a visit to a resort and theme park into a snowballing bout of murder attempts and changing alliances, the show also explores both the strain Rick placed on Beth and Jerry’s marriage, and Jerry’s own unassumingly weasely ethos.

The former comes in the form of an inventive resort setting with an “immortality field.” Maybe I’m just not deep enough into sci-fi, but I love the concept as a setting that not only makes for a natural place Rick would take Jerry (at Morty’s behest, naturally) but creates an interesting conundrum for the plotters trying to take out Rick. (Plus it creates one dark as hell joke from two little kids playing together.) The show certainly has its fun with the concepts, and setting a murder attempt there on a roller coaster that dips just outside the field is superb.

The great escape part is fun too. Everything from another alien forest full of crazy creatures, to a cruise line that makes dangerous people dumber rather than preventing them from boarding is inventive as all get out. Plus, the “time-preserver” sequence is the sort of Lynchian madness we haven’t seen much of from the show, but which featured some insanely creative sequences as well.

And in the midst of all this, there’s a great exploration both of who Jerry is, how Rick sees him, and what Rick’s done to his life. The high point of that is Rick’s speech to Jerry that his son-in-law plays it off like he’s prey but that he’s really a predator, attaching himself to people and bringing him down. It makes sense that Rick would see him that way, and it’s revealing of Rick that as much as he pretends his reasons for busting on Jerry are because he gets in the way, there’s a part of him that does it to defend his daughter, whose life he thinks Jerry ruined. Rick caring about things always manifests in weird ways, but that what makes him interesting as a character.

Hell, I like Jerry, and there’s something about a guy whose only crime is being “unremarkable” being treated so shabbily by pretty much everyone that feels wrong. But he’s also not a great guy himself -- a small, petty man as Principal Skinner might say. Still, his indecision about whether to let Rick die, coupled with his feelings about Rick squeezing him out and hurting his marriage, make for very rich, complex material in a pairing we don’t get all that often.

The B-story is not nearly as deep, but pretty darn great too. It has its own spate of weirdness, with Summer trying to make her breasts larger with one of Rick’s transforming rays and ending up gigantic and, thanks to Beth’s assistance, also inside out. That, coupled with the “tech support” guys being three little dudes who live in the machine and trick her into letting them out, makes the science fiction-y and comedy sides of the story spectacular. (The same goes for Beth’s bizarre “hoof collage”)

But there’s also some good character stuff there too. I’m kind of loving the direction the show’s taking Morty this season. He’s showing his own dark side (see how he treats Ethan), and he’s become the character on the show with the most perspective, being able to identify how his mom is acting like her father in her refusal to ask for help and arrogance in her belief that she can just solve the problem without engaging emotionally. Beth turning herself gigantic and inside out to comfort Summer about her body issues is a bizarre but hilarious way to resolve the story to boot.

Overall, another stellar outing from Rick and Morty that makes me lament we only get five more weeks (maybe?) of this awesome show.

[9.0/10] Not since The Sopranos has there been a show on television so devoted to examining the psyches of its characters. I feel like I need to rewatch this episode five times to truly unpack everything there is to glean from such a dense, psychologically complex episode. If there’s been a consistent theme to Season 3, it’s been digging deep into what makes the show’s main characters tick, what makes them who they are, and “Rest and Ricklaxation” both literalizes that (by separating its title characters into their constituent parts) and plays it out in fascinating, emotionally-wrenching detail.

The impetus for that is Rick and Morty going into a psychological toxin-clearing chamber at an intergalactic spa. The catch is that the chamber doesn’t just free you from harmful it elements, it removes those elements, personified as “booger” versions of you, and keeps them trapped in a chamber. So while the real Rick and Morty are feeling happier and more relaxed in the real world, the concentrated toxic parts of them are caught in the chamber working frantically to get out.

The initial results seem predictable, if a little twisted. Toxic Rick is even more hateful and self-aggrandizing than Real Rick. He’s constantly touting his own genius, constantly belittling Morty, and constantly lashing out at the world. Toxic Morty is entirely self-hating and debased, little more than a subservient wart of a person accepting any and all abuse.

What’s interesting is that it seems to flip the good/evil dynamic in Healthy Rick and Healthy Morty. While Healthy Rick feels compelled to rescue their toxic counterparts once he knows of their existence, Healthy Morty likes his own happiness and is constantly resisting any attempt to set things back the way they were under a the guise of not questioning it.

Now splitting protagonists into their good and evil sides is nothing new. (Lord knows the Star Trek franchise returned to that well time and time again.) But the twist, and the thing that makes the episode really stand out from the pack, is that the divergence point for “healthy” Rick and Morty isn’t some arbitrary definition of toxicity, it’s what they themselves view as the toxic parts of their being.

Which leads to all kinds of interesting complications, not the least of which is that Toxic Rick isn’t just some personification of bad, and Healthy Morty isn’t some noble personification of good. It’s a brilliant, fascinating choice to depict Healthy Morty as this honest but heartless, manipulative douchebag. The things that Morty sees as toxic in himself -- his self-doubt and self-loathing -- weigh down an overconfidence and disregard for others’ that, left unchecked, turn him into an uberpopular, successful stock broker, but one who doesn’t really care about anything else or anyone.

It’s a deranged echo of Inside Out’s thesis that negative emotions are vital and valid and help make us stronger individuals. There is something so frighteningly recognizable about Healthy Morty, between his offhand quips about his food being organic to maxims about saying important things face-to-face that reveal a deeper soulless beneath despite all the crowd-pleasing pablum. Toxic Morty isn’t a pretty sight or an encouraging reflection of the real Morty -- he’s deeply unhappy, horribly self-defeating, and outright declares that he wants to die. But the idea that these are the things keeping Morty from becoming a wide-eyed, smiling little monster is one of the boldest and darkest takes this show has offered on one of its main characters.

But that’s only half the impact of the twist. The other, and arguably more foundational reveal in the episode is that Rick really does care about the people in his life, at least Morty, but he views that as toxic, as “irrational attachments” he’d rather overcome. It’s striking in that it answers one of the basic questions the show has been teasing out forever now -- whether despite his protestations to the contrary, Rick loves his family. “Rest Ricklaxation” suggests that he does, but it’s something he hates in himself, which explains how and why he’s always trying to disclaim any such affections.

Rick may acknowledge the other parts of his personality as “toxic.” He admits narcissism, of disregard for the rest of the universe in favor of his own brilliance. But without that, without the parts of him he views as holding him back psychologically, he only has a general care for the world, about the impartial welfare of all, without any personal attachments to his grandson or anything else. The episode digs into who Rick and Morty are, what they hate about themselves, and the people they become without that, which tells you so very much about the show’s title characters.

Meanwhile, amidst all this deep psychological examination is an episode that just works on a nuts and bolts level. The conflict of reconciling toxic and healthy versions of Rick and Morty propels the episode nicely. Seeing a Rick-on-Rick battle throughout the Smiths’ house is thrilling with plenty of creative turns. Healthy Morty’s quiet psychopathy builds and builds keeping a comedic hum the whole time. And there’s even some amusing social commentary as Rick’s toxicity ray covers the globe and Morty’s restaurant acquaintance yells out “sea cucumber!” The main event of “Rest and Ricklaxation” is the show boring into the mental processes and damage of its protagonists, but it keeps the tension and the excitement up for what could otherwise be an overly cerebral exercise.

Like nearly all sitcoms must, it then returns things to the status quo. But while for most shows that’s a return to normalcy and sanity, for Rick and Morty it means returning those two characters to the fraught place where they began the episode. One of the most harrowing scenes in the entire series is the two of them sitting in Rick’s craft in the intro. Morty cries; Rick screams in anguish and admits he wasn’t in control, and the episode doesn’t turn away from the unnerving distress and damage these two individuals have accumulated over the course of their adventures.

This is what the combination of good and bad in Rick and Morty gets them. There’s the sense that both need that balance, to keep them tethered and, in different ways, to keep them caring about people, but the results of that cocktail -- of self-glorification and self-loathing, of brash confidence and debasement, of personal fulfillment and global concern -- doesn’t create a pretty picture for our heroes either.

[9.5/10] At some point, I am going to stop being surprised by Rick and Morty’s brilliance and just expect it, but the show is still at that point where I suspect it’ll be good every week, but it still manages to blow me away each new turn it takes.

I take “The Ricklantis Mixup” to be Season 3’s answer to the improv episodes from the prior two seasons -- a change of pace that allows Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland to play around in their amazing sandbox of a universe for a bit without feeling the need to develop or advance their main character. In that, they give us an episode that doesn’t have Rick or Morty or any of the other main characters, and yet has all the Ricks and Morties, in glorious, The Wire-esque splendor.

And The Wire really has to be the touchstone for an episode like this. Where else are you going to find something that addresses the challenges of cops and criminals, the rise of an charismatic and unexpected leader, the frustrations of blue collar working who feels like the system is holding him down, and the difficulties of four schoolchildren to make their way in that world. Hell, throw in a Hamsterdam, and you have all five seasons of that superlative show, filtered through Harman and Roiland’s dueling deranged perspectives and deposited into one twenty-two minute chunk. That’s an amazing achievement, the sort of praise I feel like I’m throwing out all too often for this show, but it keeps earning it.

The episode can roughly be broken up into those four stories, but what makes the episode more than just the sum of its parts (and what earns its Wire comparisons) is how interconnected those stories are, both literally, since they’re connected by the Citadel are all affected by the ecosystem that’s developed after our Rick destroyed the place, but also thematically, in the way each protagonist of each story looks at a bad situation and wants change, and gets it, but gets something unsatisfying or unpleasant or worse than they bargained for out of the process, with plenty of dead bodies floating among the garbage and blasted out the airlock.

That’s clearest for Candidate Morty, trying to win the presidency of The Citadel on behalf of The Morty Party. There’s something aspirational, almost West Wing-esque about Candidate Morty, as he gives soaring, Obama-esque speeches about dissolving the lines of division between Ricks and Morties and make The Citadel something better for all. That makes it seem particularly terrible when his former campaign manager, another Morty, tries to assassinate him. The move turns out to be all for naught since Candidate Morty survives and becomes President, in something that seems like a chance to turn around this mixed up place.

Instead, it’s revealed that Candidate Morty is the evil, eye patch-wearing Morty we met back in Season 1. It’s the perfect, knife-turning twist for the episode -- a reveal that the Carcetti-esque beacon of hope for a city in turmoil is a guy running on unifying rhetoric to pursue his own Carcetti-esque ambitions (well, maybe a touch more intergalactically evil than Carcetti’s). All of that hope, all of the communal joining together and believing that things can change just puts a tyrant into power, and holy hell is that one of the darkest things an already dark show has put forward.
Then there’s Factory Worker Rick, who seems older and more haried even by Rick standards, gazing out of subway cars, seeing wealthier and cooler Ricks succeed ahead of him, and sighing. He works at a factory that makes wafers out of the satisfaction an old fashioned “Simple Rick” enjoys when reliving the experience of spending time with his daughter (a subtly revealing bit in and of itself).

Things hit the fan when he goes postal, killing his boss and co-workers, and getting into a hostage standoff with the police. There too, the show capture a certain backbreaking ennui to this place, that even (and maybe especially) a locale populated by geniuses leads to this sort of dissatisfaction, disaffection, and anomie. And this story has just as cynical an ending, with Factory Worker Rick believing he’s won, only for the Wonka-esque Rick who runs the factory to capture him and use that feeling of freedom and satisfaction to fuel his new deluxe wafers. I mean, my god, if that is not the peak of devastating, existential irony on this show, I don’t know what is.

There’s also Rookie Cop Rick, who’s paired with Grizzled Cop Morty. More than the other stories, this one feels like it’s riffing on a sea of tropes ripped right out of the Training Day playbook. There’s plenty of political and social commentary baked in through how even Grizzled Cop Morty looks down on his fellow Morties as “animals” or how Rookie Cop Rick tries to give himself up to his brethren for the difficult choices he’s made and gets let off the hook. But it has less impact since it feels like more of those tropes played straight (or at least, as straight as can be possible given the insane circumstances) than something truly new and subversive.

Still, this is the part of the episode where the show gains strength from the crazy details of the world it’s constructed at The Citadel. The entire concept of a wild Morty club where Morty’s dress up in costumes, dance for one another, and use bad math, or of a series of news anchors from the same hierarchy of subuniverses, each of whom has it worst than the next, or just the concept of Morties who’ve been turned into lizards and Ricks adopting rural affections is bizarre and hilarious and head-scratching in the best ways.

That comes through in the episode’s final story, which sees a quartet of young Morties, soon to be assigned to a new quartet of Ricks, go out in search of a fabled “wish portal” that could change their lives. The sorriest among them is Cool Morty, who has an experimental drama chip that allows him to make things “sad and a little boring,” and who’s been through Rick after Rick. Here too, there is that sense of existential dread, of things never changing, the permeates the proceedings. Cool Morty’s suicide is unexpected and lives up to the sadness his experimental chip portends, but it’s made worse that the supposed change his dive into this sci-fi wishing well effected is the hollow one President Morty offered.

That’s the rub of this one. Even in this fantastical world of brilliant scientists and their boy sidekicks, there is a kaleidoscope of pain and false promises that stretch through everything. All the geniuses, all the good-natured moppets in the world can’t change that when thrown together into their own dysfunctional society. That Rick and Morty has the chutzpah to explore that society for an episode, and to deliver that message, just speaks to the boldness and off-kilter storytelling we’ve come to expect, and to make it all as funny as it is quietly devastating, is a near-miracle. Rick and Morty keeps delivering them on a regular basis.

[7.6/10] Well, I guess I was wrong about last week’s episode replacing the improv-based interdimensional cable eps we’ve gotten previously. But I enjoy this entree full of bite-sized adventures for our heroes. It’s a throwback to Harmon’s “clip show but with new clips” bit from Community and fun to see the mini-stories thrown out rapid fire.

I particularly liked the opening pair of stories. Morty mistaking his new guidance counselor for a scary moon man is the sort of Bailey School Kids schtick with a Rick and Morty twist that really tickled my fancy. By the same token, turning the usual “humans trapped in an alien zoo” routine into a Contact-based hoodwinking is entertaining.

But I also really enjoyed the fact that Rick didn’t just zap away the memories of things that were too heavy for Morty to take; he zapped away his own minor mistakes, like the phrase “taken for granite,” not to mention things that implicate his family members, like Beth choosing Summer over Morty in her alien Sophie’s Choice scenario.

While most of the stories were amusing in that black comic way the show’s mastered, it feels like they’re all another brick in the wall of Morty getting tired of Rick’s bullshit, and the rest of the family’s bullshit too. The twist that both Rick and Morty lose their memories and have to use the vials to figure out who they are revitalizes the premise a bit, but also leads to the bleak realization that after seeing all that stuff, the pair want to have a suicide pact.

It’s played mainly for laughs, with Summer barging in on them and refueling their memories in a desultory fashion like she’s had to do this dozens of times, but like most episodes of the show, it finds the humor in something that, at its core, is pretty damn dark. (And then “no wonder you guys fight all the time and are always behind schedule” sounds like a not so veiled bit of self-commentary about Harmon and Roiland, which is a little discouraging.)

Overall, it’s a fun, rapid-fire premise for an episode that allows the show to deliver its humor and demented scenarios in quick hit format, but which still uses the form to offer a commentary on its two core characters, what they’ve seen, and the frustrations and vanity and ego that drives them to want to end it all. The fact that the show can wring comedy from that is just another pelt on the wall of its achievements.

• Someone please help Cheryl. She's been through hell and back (her brother's and father's death, her weird mother, her attempted suicide, the gay conversion), so can someone please get her into therapy or something? I love her overly special and dramatic moments, but at this point it seems unrealistic for her to just go back to normal over night everytime.
• Sometimes Riverdale is so unintentionally funny, like Jughead and his friends storming into Betty's house with their pocket knives while they looked like they're straight from West Side Story (honestly expected some serious finger snapping) or Archie and his freaking highschool friends threatening mafia bosses and blowing up their cars while they're wearing ski masks and giving themselves another circle name (side note - Hiram must be the shittiest mafia boss ever because his only ally is a highschool boy) or the nuns just walking behind Cheryl and their friends like some bad horror movie villains instead of actually running and trying to catch them.
• The things I really liked about this episode was that Chic is finally kicked out of the house (though I still have no idea what's going on with him), Alice embracing her inner Serpent, Josie finding out about the drawings (still hope we'll learn more about whatever actually happened) and of course Kevin's face in the background of the last scene.

The one 16 year old girl says she's supposed to be "this great detective", the other 16 year old girl buys a bar and trades it for a diner and the third 16 year old gets crowned king of the Serpents. I don't think the writers even remember their ages at this point.

I'm not happy with the way this whole Black Hood season ended. It really feels like the writers had no idea who they wanted to put under the hood and halfway through the season they heard the theory of Hal being the Black Hood and they decided to roll with it like two episodes before the finale. For once there are no subtle hints for it to be him before episode 20 and on the other hand the whole reasoning and execution at the end felt hollow and cheap, especially the part about THE DARKNESS™. I thought at least one of the adults would finally address this as mental illness, but nope. Don't think we'll ever get to see any of them in therapy either.

Three things that I'm curious about - Chic, Alice's dead son and Polly.
Chic just disappeared and we still don't know anything. Was there even a point to begin with? I thought his creepiness would be relevant somehow, but nothing happened. I'm wondering if he'll come back next season.
Then there's Alice's dead son. I was actually thinking he's not dead because we really didn't get to see anything about him. It felt really tragic to know that Alice saw him and closed the door in his face, but I thought it would connect more with the overall story or with Chic.
And then there's Polly who definitely had something going on. I wonder if we know this mysterious guy who helped her or if her mother will get dragged into a weird cult. And I actually find this much more interesting than the cliffhanger that Archie is arrested (I was sure there would be some bloodshed after Jug's weird announcement) and Hiram is still planning to deal drugs on the New Southside. I was actually hoping for him to leave Riverdale or go to prison at the end of the season, but apparently his cheap mobster story will continue.

And even after all these complaints every week I'm still excited to watch new episodes and do enjoy it. It's over the top and crazy but at the same time I find it so entertaining :D

I kind of enjoyed this episode and that has everything to do with the fact that the parents got a bit more screentime and that for a second it looked like something really shocking was about to happen in this Gargoyle garbage which of course didn`t really.
I like seeing more of Cheryl and Toni but there has to be more there, there is not enough story there to truly get in touch with the characters. I'm actually a little relieved that Jug and Betty weren't a focuspoint of this episode, it's refreshing to see some other characters for a change, like Kevin and Josie.

Josie and Archie is a good match, way better than Varchie in my opinion and speaking of Veronica, can she possibly get more annoying? yes, of course she can. It's all about her and when her boyfriend tells her that his dad beats him up, oh well...

I liked how the parents all came together for this game and the safety of their children and that when the threat seems real that all of them come through for their kids even the ones who pretend to not care at all about their kids like Penelope. It's the little things in storylines like that that make the difference.

It is a total let down that they managed to bring forth ANOTHER Gargoyle King. How long can they stretch this out?

Well, that certainly turned DARKER rather quickly. Vanya's new beau is at the least a next level stalker, possibly a serial killer, or, on a long shot, also "special" or, has knowledge of Vanya's suppressed (since childhood) abilities, which makes her either hella dangerous, thus the suppression, or part of Daddy dearest's diabolical experiment to see what happens if you take a "special" child, and tell them they aren't worth bothering about, until they lose any and all confidence in themselves. I REALLY hope she's dangerous, cuz, otherwise, Papa needed killin' real good.

Diego has got guilt transference down really good. Kills his own "Mom" and makes Luther feel bad about wanting to shut her down. Abandons the family and turns it to "well, why did you stay, the problem is YOU". Douche. Even when his Detective Ex girlfriend / booty call FINALLY does what he's been egging her on all along to do, breaks protocol, and pays the price, he transfers the blame to HER, asking "Why didn't you wait for me? I was coming?" Dude has MAJOR issues.

What if Vanya IS the cause of the end??? Just sayin'.

Yes, Sheehan has basically been doing a glammed up Nathan, but then he always plays some version of that character since Misfits IMO.

[7.5/10] I liked this one a bit better than the last episode. The misadventures with the descendents of the most noteworthy witch and witch hunter were more amusing that the baby switcheroo act, and we got some more Sheen/Tenant goodness, which helped.

As to the former, I like the notion that Pulcifer, the modern version at least, is just an unlucky sap. He can’t deal with anything electronic, and has the worst luck overall, which makes him endearing as a sort of sad sack “didn’t ask for this” witch hunter. By the same token, adding Michael McKean to the proceedings is never a bad way to go with your show! The notion of the two of them leading a nutball witch hunt is promising.

The actual witch (or witch descendent) was reasonably entertaining too. I like the idea that for once, there’s a psychic who actually makes useful and accurate predictions, and that her family uses them to get ahead. I’m curious as to where they’re going with Anathema, and the whole bike/book mixup has potential as well.

I’ll admit, I haven’t really latched onto Adam’s quartet of kids just yet. Sure, there’s something cute enough about them misunderstanding history or playacting the British (nee Spanish) Inquisition (ole!). But it hasn’t really gotten a lot of laughs out of me yet, and I know we’re only two episodes in, but I keep waiting for a little more. It occurs to me that we might be in for a twist where it’s the third baby who’s really the antichrist but I may be grasping at straws there.

That said, I still think that the show is a solid 40% better when it’s just the misadventures of Aziraphale and Crowley. The two of them going on the hunt for the birth records of the original antichrist is especially amusing. Aziraphale’s stuffiness and generally creampuffery mixed with Crowley’s dash of sarcasm and devil’s foodcake is still a superb recipe.

I also like the little cheats here and there. Crowley helping Aziraphale with his stain, or having the corporate teambuilding paintball match turn into one with real guns that nevertheless involves beaucoup miraculous escapes hints at a nicer streak within him. And it’s just as fun to see Crowley himself get mad and threatening when Aziraphale almost calls him out on it.

The bike crash incident is amusing as well, with the pair using their powers in fun ways to try to keep Anathema from getting suspicious. I also got a kick out of Gabriel in the book shop making alien attempts to be discreet. At times, you can still see the strings of this show trying to capture a certain tone and voice that works in literature but is hard to translate to a different medium, but this episode fared a little better on that front.

Overall, I’m still in this for the angel/demon team-up moments much more than I’m in it for any of the other apocalyptic shenanigans, but the show had a better balance of that this time around, which helped.

[8.3/10] Look, I know it’s important that stories have conflicts and that six-hour shows expand their reach beyond just two people and that you need rising and falling action and all that good stuff. But damnit, I would watch the hell out of a version of Good Omens that was just “Aziraphale and Crowley hang out throughout history.”

The section of the episode before the opening credits is just so damn fun! Beyond the amusement of the costumes, and the takes on different biblical or historical moments, and the continually great banter between the angel and the demon, you just have lots of fun developments. Everything from the unicorn missing Noah’s arc, to the triple cross of the Nazis, to the secret history of why Hamlet was such a hit are all brilliant.

But I also love these segments as a way to show millennia-long bits of character development in between those two. I really like Michael Sheen’s performance in these segments, the way that he questions the brutality of old testament justice and seems appalled at the violence, but is so conditioned (and frankly repressed) that he refuses to the plan. I also really like how Crowley convinces himself he’s as evil as ever, but throughout history pops in to help his dear friend when he needs it. And I particularly like the way that, through the ages, the two slowly discover a certain futility to the way that they’re continually canceling one another out, and decide to just lay low and enjoy themselves and even help one another out rather than fighting to a stalemate between good and evil.

Despite all that, I think my favorite part is Aziraphale’s refusal to let his friend risk or even end his life. Even though the show has had its semi-dramatic moments at times, it’s been pretty irreverent, so digging into Aziraphale’s line in the sand about the holy water, only to show him bending and finally outright breaking the rules for his friend, sells the impact of their friendship on one another. That adds real weight to the final scene where the pair “break-up”, which feels both impactful given the history and change between them we’ve just witnessed, and has a certain combination of drama and humor to it given how the pair can seem like an old married couple at times.

The rest of the goings-on in the episode are fine. I’ll admit, I’m not quite sure what to make of Adam being influenced by Anathema and using his powers to neutralize nuclear power plants, but it’s an interesting development. The discovery that Aziraphale and Crowley’s “agents” turn out to be the same conspiracy nut is a funny one. And I like how Pulcifer discovers something genuinely witchy, that just happens to point him to the town where the real antichrist lives. (I also like that it’s something as subtle as always-perfect weather, and bits like “Lieutenant Milkbottle” are worth a laugh.)

Still, the heart of the episode comes from the way it focuses most squarely on the friendship between these two opposing beings who have nevertheless grown close and yet find themselves at odds. The notion of the two “running away together” has a certain potency given some subtext here (and Sheen sells it accordingly), but the way that their personal friendship and professional opposition collide here gives “Hard Times” both a dramatic and comic force that hasn’t been nearly as present in the prior episodes.

Overall this is the pick of the litter so far, and gives me hope for what the show can do going forward, particularly if it builds on the neat Aziraphale and Crowley work it did here.

[7.4/10] Not to beat this drum yet again, but I like this show best when it’s the adventures of Aziraphale and Crowley, and this one put them on the backburner. Still, there was enough to enjoy here to make things worthwhile.

For one, I’m actually on board with what’s going with Adam. I like the idea that he can make things real just by sort of willing them into existence, and with the mental influence of Anathema’s conspiracy magazines, that means the rise of Atlantis, and spying Tibetan monks, and friendly alien constables. It’s a bit of a hard shift from that to him deciding to remake the world with his three friends as captives, but there’s at least a bit of genuine scariness to that.

I’m less on board with Pulcifer and Anathema meeting and then nigh-instantly going into the throes of passion, but whatever. Shadwell realizing that he’s put Pulcifer in danger, and Queenie giving him bus fare and enough for a coffee and a snack is a kind of cute response to all of it.

And what we do get of Aziraphale and Crowley is pretty good! The “old couple having a tiff” routine between them is particularly enjoyable (especially with the random bystander telling Aziraphale that he’s been there and “you’re better off without him”). Aziraphale being roughed up by his fellow angels, and his mounting dissatisfaction with the way things are going is intriguing, and it being enough for him to utter a curse-word when being accidentally shuffled off to Heaven is a neat development.

I particularly like Crowley’s caper here too. Using Home Alone tactics to defeat his foes with holy water is a nice touch, and while a little cornball, the chase in the space between atoms has a bit of verve to it as well. But I particularly like his little breakdown before that. The discussions about being punished for asking questions, about testing but not to the point of oblivion, are pointed and sharp.

I also enjoy the introductions of Pollution and Death, and the shading given to the delivery man. His preternatural devotion to his otherwise mundane task is great, especially his “ours is not to know why” approach to it. There’s even some legitimate pathos when he writes an “I love you” note to his wife before taking the grim step toward delivering a message to death.

Otherwise, it’s interesting to see the show pulling the trigger on Armageddon with two episodes to go still. Bits like Heaven seeming as interested in the fight as in preventing it, Crowley wanting to run away to Alpha Centauri, and Adam’s view on remaking the world in his own image all have some juice and intrigue to them that makes me curious to know what happens next.

I'm glad that this was not a case of an intriguing and genuinely good pilot episode, followed by a bland rest of a season, like it tends to happen a wee bit too much in these days of the abundance of TV series. The fun and quality that was originally presented to us was steadily kept throughout the whole season, and it ended in a very satisfying and comfy way.

After these six episodes, I got vibes of Pushing Daisies (because of what I mentioned in the pilot episode), Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (for its overall quirkiness), Supernatural (a demon named Crowley and the whole bromance thing), and Stranger Things (kids on bikes trying to save the world — and, yes, I know Stranger Things was hardly an original snow). But, in the end, Good Omens was its own thing, and quite some of the most refreshing TV time I've had in a while. And it's impossible not to love Michael Sheen's and David Tennant's ineffable chemistry on screen.

A special mention to the little girl of the gang... Shows these days tend to shove SJW characters down our throats (the "politically correct" is becoming such a nuisance), but the way they handled her character turned out to be both adorable and hilarious! Characters like her often annoy the hell out of me, but she actually provided some genuine comic relief while trying to sound serious. Unintentionally or not, I say well done, show runners!

Also, did Agnes Nutter foresaw season two?

Jonathan Banks is ridiculous good. He does so much with so little; plays the stoic, taciturn old hand so well, that it's tempting to think of that as the sum total of what he is. In both Breaking Bad and Community, he plays a perpetually grumpy, vaguely prideful, uber-competent ruffian, and does so with such skill, that it's easy to go back to that well again and again.

But then in an episode like "Five-O", he hits a note of vulnerability. He sits in the dark, and the tears well in his eyes as he talks to his daughter-in-law about how he "broke his boy." Mike Ehrmentraut is not made of stone. He is a simple man in many ways, who is remarkable for how unremarkable he is at times. But there is a beating heart beneath his steely exterior, one that grieves for his lost son, that blames himself for allowing it to happen, and who throws himself at the mercy of his son's wife out of a sense of guilt and fairness for having taken the man she loves away from her.

That scene is so damn quiet. There's no music to subtly or not-so-subtly massage our emotions one direction or another. There's little of the cinematic flourishes that made Breaking Bad and its successor stand out in a sea of often bland direction on television. There's just close ups of a wounded animal spilling his guts over his greatest regret, and a similar shot of his daughter-in-law, who carries a similar look of hurt but also one of understanding. It's one of the most powerful, tragic scenes in this young series, but also in its more celebrated predecessor, that deepens an already enthralling character and shows that Mike is far more than just grump and handguns.

At the same time, as good as that final scene is, it shouldn't overshadow how well the episode that precedes it is constructed. Apart from the story of Walter White, apart from the story of Jimmy McGill, "Five-O" is a wonderful little short story that works almost entirely separated from the narratives of the protagonists that Mr. Ehrmantraut finds himself associated with.

It is both a mystery and a character piece, offering details both about what led Mike to where he is when we meet him at the parking booth in the beginning of Better Call Saul, but also examining who he is and the baggage he carries with him when we first meet him in Albuquerque.

The episode begins by, not in so many words, asking a number of questions. How did Mike get shot? Was he speaking on the phone with Matty the night before he died? What brought him to Albuquerque in this state? Why won't he tell his daughter-in-law? What did they talk about? Who killed Matty? Who killed his partners on the force.

Then, one by one, the episode cuts back and forth between the present and the future, answering these questions and presenting new ones as it goes. At one point, I believed that Mike had killed his own son for some reason. Or that he at least knew what was going to happen, but didn't stop it.

Instead, the episode doesn't leave the audience guessing for long. Even as it tosses out breadcrumbs, and lets silences linger that make more of an impact than any dialogue, it eventually shows you what happened before it tells you the rest of the story.

The sequence where Mike takes out his son's murderers is masterful. The subtle touches show who Mike is and what he's about. He's capable and smart, as seen in the way he anticipates the dirty cops taking his weapon and breaks into their cop car to plant another one. Despite his anger, he's nervous about his plan, as seen in the way his hand shakes as he makes sure to let his targets know that he's having a few as he holds his glass of whiskey. And he's wily, playing into their expectation that he's drunk, leading them to take him somewhere that an execution can take place without too much notice or trouble.

Then his demeanor changes, and he does what he feels he needs to, and we get everything we need to know except the last piece of the puzzle -- how Matty got mixed up in this in the first place. And that leads us to that final scene, with Mike at the most open and honest and wounded as we've ever seen him.

And we learn things about one of this franchise's greatest characters that were unknown before "Five-O." We know that he's a drunk, who managed to crawl his way out of a bottle. We know that he was a dirty cop, or at least one dirty enough not to raise any suspicion because That's Just How Things Are. And he is a man who carries on with a tremendous sense of shame for the man he was and what it led to. He views himself as someone unworthy of his son's admiration, as someone whose failure to live up to the sterling image his son had of him led to his son's death. Mike is not a sentimental man, not one to wear his emotions on his sleeves, but "Five-O" makes it clear that he carries that weight with him wherever he goes.

While Saul appears for an important segment here, this episode is not about him. He's a supporting character in Mike's story. And yet in the midst of all this great standalone storytelling and character development of Mike, the folks behind Better Call Saul still take time out to lay the groundwork for why a pair of individuals like Jimmy McGill and Mike Ehrmantraut would find each other useful and build a relationship, if not necessarily a friendship together.

To that point, "Five-O" is a great episode of Better Call Saul, that deepens our understanding of one of the series's major players. But even apart from that, it's just a wonderful, heartbreaking, self-contained story about a man who went along to get along, with booze and kickbacks and thirty years of the usual business along the way, and woke up when he failed the person in his life who mattered the most to him. It's easy to love Mike Ehrmantraut, the old badass with a code; but it's even better to love Mike Ehrmantraut, the grieving father ready to live with whatever consequences are to come for killing his son's murderers, who still struggles with the thought that he corrupted something pure and beautiful, and feels responsible for taking away his granddaughter's daddy, his daughter-in-law's husband, because he was not as good of a man as he might have been.

When I wrote about RICO, I talked about how much of what makes this show great is its commitment to a "show, don't tell" ethos in its storytelling. The show generally takes care not to lay its points on too thick, or be too obvious with its points and themes, preferring to let them emerge from its characters' interactions and the performances of its superb cast.

That's why I felt let down by "Marco". It's not a bad episode--it's hard to imagine any show in the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul pantheon sinking that low--but it's not nearly so subtle or deft in how it communicates Jimmy's internal struggle after the revelation that the brother he loved, and sacrificed for, and emulated, doesn't respect him and actually resents his attempts at self-improvement.

At the end of the episode, when Jimmy rolls up to Mike's tollbooth, asks him why they didn't take the money stolen by the Kettlemans for themselves, you get hints at what Mike started in "Pimento", both his falling in as a regular enforcer for the bumbling pill-dealer, but also his code--that he may be a criminal, but he's also a good guy, who's just out to do the job he's hired to do. And yet when Jimmy declares that he's never going to worry about doing the right thing again, it's so on the nose that the moment meant to cap off the entire season feels like it warrants a response of "duh." Let us see what your characters are feeling about their circumstances through how they behave, or even through dialogue; but don't just have them announce the shift you've already spent the entire episode setting up.

It doesn't give me great faith in Peter Gould, who both wrote and directed the episode and, with his Executive Producer credit, would appear to be the main creative force in the show beyond Vince Gilligan. Too many scenes in the episode that are supposed to put a bow on the events we've witnessed for nine episodes feel clumsy, awkward, without any of the flair, in either dialogue or direction, that the franchise is known for.

It comes through in the Bingo scene, where Jimmy's breakdown at a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead level of recurring Bs sets him off into a semi-stream of consciousness rant about the foolish act that set him on this whole path. It's a strange, disjointed sequence that tries to lean into Bob Odenkirk's great skill as an actor, but makes so much explicit that has otherwise been subtle but palpable subtext that it just seems like an odd outburst that's tonally inconsistent with the rest of the show rather than the moment of great emotional weight and character development it's meant to play as.

The same goes for the montage of Jimmy and his old pal Marco getting back into the grifting game. The flying signs and reds and blues have the characteristics of an old cop show (it's the same kind of montage The Simpsons has parodied time and time again), and it's kind of fun in the attempt at stylized filmmaking Better Call Saul and its forebear regularly traffic in, but the sequence itself still comes off oddly flat, and the recurring lines about telling secrets and swirling images descend into the cheese rather than transcend it.

To the point, the entire storyline feels kind of rote. The idea of Jimmy learning his brother is a false idol, that the backstop that kept him from sliding back into a life of flim-flamming rubes at the local bar, that motivated him to achieve all he has since Chuck helped him out of that jam in Chicago, was predicated on a falsehood, is a good one. But the consequences feel too easy, the following events and conflicts too convenient, even cliche.

Jimmy attempting to restart his old life and finding that regardless of his brother, he feels a pull to be good, to help his clients and the people he's made commitments to, is hokey enough on its own, but kind of works. It's believable enough that in the throes of lamenting what he gave up at the behest of an implacable sibling would send him back into that familiar cesspool to blow off the steam he'd been holding in for so long, and yet eventually find that once that's out of the system, his old life doesn't have the same allure it once did. Sure, that's a pretty conventional story in a show that's made its bones from being more than conventional, but it's enough, even if it's not superb.

Then, of course, Marco wants to pull off one last con. And, of course, his trademark Hollywood cough early in the episode, pays off in a by-the-book Hollywood Death to Teach the Protagonist a Lesson™, that this is the most exciting thing Marco's life and it's a sad and pathetic thing to hang your hat on as you're dying. It's set up well enough with the audience having seen Jimmy and Marco pull off the same con episodes earlier, but again, it feels like laying the stakes of Jimmy's internal conflict on too thick. We already know he's struggling with whether to, as Mike puts it in "Pimento", be a good guy or a bad guy. We already know that his moral compass it out of whack after what happened with Chuck. And thanks to his scene in Marco's basement, we already know he's feeling the pull of the changed man he's become.

Perhaps this is all supposed to build to the subversion at the end of the episode. After all of these fairly weak and typical lessons and reminders about living right, Jimmy's still so miffed at what he gave up for his brother, or so bound to what may be his true nature, that he can't bother to follow up on Kim and Hamlin's help and make good on going straight. There's something to that, but the hamfisted way in which the episode hammers that point home in Jimmy's exchange with Mike sucks all the power from the twist.

When Better Call Saul began, there was no way to know if it would have a Season 2. Maybe the rushed nature, the flimsy finality of that this episode tries to impart is a symptom of that. If there were never another episode of Better Call Saul after this, there's more than enough for the audience to fill in the gaps and understand the trajectory for Jimmy and Mike between here and Breaking Bad, and anything more ambiguous might fail in that regard. As Season 1 of the show draws to a close, there's a clear explanation for how small-time lawyer Jimmy McGill could turn from the scrappy-if-underhanded guy we meet in episode 1 to talented huckster Saul Goodman, and how Philadelphia policeman Mike Ehrmentraut finds himself as the go-to-guy in the company of criminals. But something about that tidiness, about that blatant declaration to that effect, feels too simple in a show that thrives on complexity, and it sends a tremendous season of television out on a disappointing note.

[8.5/10] You could be forgiven for asking, “Hey, isn’t there some guy named Saul in this show?” for most of the runtime of “Sabrosito.” It’s an episode that turns over most of the proceedings to the happenings in the orbit of Gustavo Fring, with enough of a narrative side dish for Mike and Jimmy to remind you that they are main characters in the series.

But I’m not complaining. Giancarlo Esposito has a presence that can hold your attention like few other actors can. The details we see here -- the cold war brewing at Don Eladio’s compound, the affronts between Gus and Hector, the declaration of resolve from Fring himself, add so much shading to what we already know about the grudges and rivalries within the cartel from Breaking Bad. In a way the rest of Better Call Saul hasn’t really, “Sabrosito” serves as a direct prequel to the events that Walter White would eventually get tangled up in, and by using Gus as a conduit for that, the show practically guarantees a compelling episode.

And, as usual, there is some connective tissue between the seemingly disparate, constituent parts of the episode. Gus’s story is ultimately about standing up to bullies, standing up to intimidation, standing up to the people who believe that you deserve less. It’s about pushing back against those who do not respect you, who believe that your new ways don’t measure up to their old ones, and who believe you need to kowtow to their wishes.

But so is Jimmy’s. Sure, an ornery older brother trying to drum you out of the legal profession is not exactly the same thing as a rival drug dealer using his standing in the cartel to lean on you, but “Sabrosito” draws a line between Chuck and Hector. Both of them are old timers, long entrenched in the systems in which they operate, ready to use their connections, their standing, the power and network they have amassed in their time, to stamp out the people who challenge their hegemony.

For Hector, that means preventing the upstart Gus from infringing on his territory. The opening of the episode in Don Eladio’s pool not only puts Breaking Bad fans on alert for little pink bears, but it calls to mind both Gus’s partner being killed at the edge of that pool, and Don Eladio himself meeting his end there. It’s an interesting shot that immediately makes the setting of the scene laden with meaning before a single word is spoken.

Don Eladio, gregarious shit-stirrer that he is, makes Hector feel the lesser man next to the bigger stack of crisp, clean bills Gus sends Don Eladio’s way, and the Los Pollos Hermanos shirt Don Eladio puts on only adds insult to injury. So Hector goes to throw his weight around with Gus, in the best way he knows how - by messing with him at his restaurant.

It’s unexpectedly tense for a scene set at a fast food chicken restaurant. Still, Hector knows the best way to violate the sanctity of Gus’s domain, to twist Gus where it will bother him the most. He wanders around the meticulously kept restaurant violating every norm of cleanliness and decorum imaginable. He intimidates customers; he smokes; he wanders in the back and carves gunk off his shoe. The message is clear -- I am in charge here, and even if there’s a greater authority than myself to consider, you’ll accede to my wishes.
That’s the message Chuck sends as well. There is the same air of tension as the McGill brothers, and their legal representatives, file in to accept the A.D.A.’s deal. Chuck, true to form, leans on his brother about every niggling detail, from the wording in Jimmy’s confession to the cost of the destroyed cassette tape. And from the minute Ms. Hay converses with Chuck about his condition, it’s clear that this is far from a neutral proceeding, removing any doubt that she is, knowingly or not, taking Chuck’s side on this. The peak is when she requires Jimmy to not only sign his confession and make restitution, but to apologize to his brother.

This is where Gus and Jimmy stand in the same position. Both are clearly on edge, facing the men who want to squeeze them out. But each maintains their composure, not rising to the bait meant to throw them off balance, letting their tormentors believe that they have won this battle. Gus, stoic as he is, simply makes velvety threats and stands there dignified and unmoved. Jimmy, a little more heart on his sleeve, turns his supposed apology into a recrimination, albeit one subtle enough to pass muster with the A.D.A.

But neither of them is beaten. Through Kim’s clever phonebooking and Jimmy’s use of Mike’s combined conman/handyman skills, the pair not only have a plan to thwart Chuck from getting Jimmy disbarred, but they have evidence and the benefit of Mike casing the joint to go on. Gus, for his part, stays resolute, but clearly is unspooling a big plan in his own mind. When he speaks to his frightened employees, he speaks off a refusal to bend, to allow the old guard to flex its muscles and have the newcomers cower in fear. He resolves to stand his ground, and the people who work for him applaud him for it.

And poor Mike may be a big part of that big plan. His is the most understated story in the episode, but it’s also, in its way, the most poignant. Mike is a taciturn individual by nature, which calls upon Jonathan Banks to fill in the blank spaces of dialogue with his world-weary expressions. With his granddaughter Kaylee nestled in his arm, there is a hint of wistfulness, of regret in his eyes, enough for his daughter-in-law to pick up on it. These are the loved ones for whom he committed those terrible deeds for, for whom he got other innocent people killed. Better Call Saul plays its cards close to the vest, but Banks’s performance gives the sense of the moral calculus of those acts weighing on Mike in that moment.

When sitting down with Jimmy at the diner, Mike remarks that it was nice to fix something for once. When we see him later in the episode, he’s reading Handyman Magazine. Mike is good at what he does -- the way he manages to nonchalantly shoo Chuck away with his power tools shows that -- but there’s also a sense that he’s weary of this. Keeping his daughter-in-law and granddaughter in that nice neighborhood, with the good schools and safe havens, costs real money, and Mike’s most marketable skill, the one that brings those brown paper bags full of dollar bills, isn’t a pleasant one. Maybe, Mike just wishes he could rest -- build things instead of tear them down.

One of the best qualities of Better Call Saul is the way it uses its status as a prequel as an advantage rather than a difficulty. The tension between Gus and Hector in “Sabrosito” is heightened because we know there is enough bad blood between the two of them in the future that Hector sacrifice his own life so long as he can take out Fring at the same time. Jimmy’s tet-a-tet with Chuck has added intrigue because it seems as though Chuck has his brother dead to rights, and yet we know that Jimmy will continue practicing law, by hook or by crook, leading the audience to wonder how he’ll wriggle out of this one.

But it also creates a sense of tragedy, of star-crossed destiny for characters like Mike. It isn’t a bully who compels him, and it’s hard to imagine someone being able to intimidate him into doing anything. And yet, he is no less pulled by forces beyond his control -- the need to care for his family, the need to make up for the death of his son that he feels responsible for -- that we know will keep from the life of a contented handyman.

The encounter between Mike and Gus at the end of the episode, where Mike agrees, in his typically cagey way, to work for Gus, is in part a momentous one, because it serves as a milestone for a partnership that will pay dividends for each of them. At the same time, it’s a recommitment to a line of work that will ultimately grind away at Mike, that will lead to his death, that will jeopardize those stacks of dollar bills he has stashed away for his granddaughter.

It’s hard to say it will lead him to ruin. Mike is not a young man and he enjoys close to a decade of being able to care for his family. But for at least a moment in “Sabrosito”, it seems that at a time when Gus and Jimmy are desperate and resolute to stay in the game, Mike wants out. And we know, however much he may want that, the ability to while away his time fixing doors instead of dusting cartel goons, he’s fated to keep at this until, one day, it kills him.

[8.8/10] One of the great things about The Sopranos was the way it would show a character meeting someone or having a moment that changed their emotional state, planted some idea or bit of perspective in their head, that they would then carry throughout the rest of the episode, often taking it out on people entirely divorced from that inciting incident. It was part of the show’s deft emotional calculus, where it could capture the way thoughts and feelings flit around in the background, popping up in surprising ways or at unexpected times.

As much as the aptly titled “Expenses” is devoted to the financial corner Jimmy finds himself in, it’s also devoted to that same idea, the notion that one interaction, one exchange with another person can reframe the way you feel about something or someone, in a way that lingers and cannot be easily erased.

It starts with another of Better Call Saul’s cold opens, that again succeeds in displaying visual virtuosity -- in the motley crew of individual framed against a blank wall and the cars and trucks rushing overhead -- but in the way it serves the message being communicated -- that here, Jimmy is just another guy and he’s hindered from doing what he does best by all this noise.

That’s the overarching theme to Jimmy’s portion of the episode. The now Saul Goodman is used to being able to use his powers of persuasion, his winning attitude and ability to feel out any situation to bend things to his advantage. For all Jimmy’s faults, there’s always been a cleverness to it, and a way with people, that have kept him from the harshest of consequences in any jam he’s in.

But now he finds himself embroiled in circumstances where all his winning ways can’t extricate him from the financial difficulties he finds himself in. It begins with the Community Service Supervisor docking him all but a half hour of the four hours he worked picking up garbage because he was using his phone to answer calls for Saul Goodman productions. He tries to negotiate, to rally his fellow garbage-pickers to his side, to appeal the the man’s sympathies, but all he gets in return is “we could make it zero.”

That’s the response Jimmy gets throughout the episode, as the thought of his remonstrations falling on deaf ears continues to wear on him. At a time when his dire monetary straights require the best of his salesmanship abilities, the desperation and unavoidable strictures of him circumstances seem to hobble him. His attempts to upsell his commercial-shooting services on the phone lead to hang up. His effort to try to upgrade a paying customer to a bigger package gets him nowhere. And in his desperation, he actually allows a couple of savvy business owners (played by the Sklar Brothers of the underrated show Cheap Seats) to hold him over a barrel and get him to work for free.

Jimmy is used to having power, It may not be the sort of positions of privilege that the Chucks and Howards of the world enjoy, but he’s accustomed to being able to use his silver tongue to give him an advantage in any random situation in which he needs it. But from that first moment with the Community Service Supervisor, he feels stymied, closed in, powerless. It’s natural, then, that he takes that out on others where he can, repeating those words, “we could make it zero” to a Chinese food delivery boy who looks askance on him for a low tip. Each indignity seems to snowball from that first one, until Jimmy is at his wits end and blowing off his steam at delivery boys and random marks in bars for whom his scorn is misdirected, intended for causes of his frustrations that are out of his reach.

Mike finds himself with solace, rather than frustration, when he meets Anita, a woman who attends church with Stacey. When Anita initially offers to help Mike build the playground he promised to assist with in the last episode, he brushes her off, with hints that it’s due to a certain strain of sexism. But Anita won’t take no for an answer, something Mike clearly admires, as he acquiesces and she proves herself a capable aide in the effort.

Mike’s respect and interest in her only grows when he learns at their support group that she lost her husband, who was also a man in uniform (albeit a navy man, rather than a cop). The show seems to be setting up Anita as a love interest, which is an interesting, though mildly concern direction to go with the character. But what’s particularly notable is how his interactions with Anita -- where she tells him that her husband was lost while hiking with the body never being recovered -- effect a change of heart in him.

When Nacho leans on Daniel, of “Squat Cobbler” fame, to get him some heart pills that he can use to poison Hector, Daniel seeks out Mike’s protection once more, explaining the scheme (or at least as much of it as he knows). Mike initially wants no part of it, brushing Daniel off and washing his hands of it.

But something about his conversation with Anita changes his mind. Maybe it’s the idea that her husband, somebody who left and never came back, reminds Mike of the innocent person whose death he indirectly caused when he knocked over one of Hector’s trucks. There’s hints that Mike has been trying to buy his soul back, from what happened with Matty and with the cartel, when he donates all the materials for the church playground. His agreement to be Daniel’s muscle seems unlikely to be out of a particular care for that dolt’s well-being, but Nacho may be a different story.

Nacho isn’t exactly pure of heart, but Mike does take a certain paternal tone with him -- here and in episodes past. It was Nacho’s presence that gave him pause in “Klick”, and Mike’s smart enough to read into what Daniel’s telling him, figure out what Nacho’s planning, and feel the need to warn him to cover his tracks and protect himself. “Expenses” stays a bit cagey about what exactly’s pulling Mike here, but it’s clear that the small emotional reminder from Anita is enough to move him to do something different.

Kim might be moved to do something different as well, though in a far less pleasant manner. When Paige from Mesa Verde compliments Kim on how she and Jimmy won at Jimmy’s disciplinary hearing, deriding Chuck all the while, the persistent guilt bubbling within Kim rises to the surface. In going over some numbers with Paige later, Kim is unexpectedly short with Paige, immediately realizing the slip and apologizing. Without ever saying as much, Kim admits that she’s bothered by being complimented on what happened with Chuck, telling Paige that as far as she’s concerned, all she and Jimmy did was tear down a sick man. It’s a small part of a larger conversation, but it brings out something that’s been bothering Kim, that manifests itself in a sideways fashion.

Still, once that thought has reared its ugly head, it’s hard to tamp it back down. When Jimmy and Kim are together at a bar, sizing up potential marks as they did in “Switch” as Jimmy is trying to get his mojo back, Kim starts to seem just the slightest bit aghast. Jimmy speaks with a malevolence about taking down certain marks, going to elaborate extremes (frankly sounding like Chuck) in his imagined schemes against certain unkind gentleman in the establishment.

There was a mutual allure between Jimmy and Kim when they first tried to pull this sort of con off in “Switch.” Kim seemed impressed by Jimmy’s ability to persuade and flim-flam and Jimmy was enthralled by a partner who could also be an effective partner in crime. But that one moment with Paige, the glee at a mentally ill man’s downfall, fostered a nagging impulse within her, one that seems to make her question whether the man she’s thrown in her lot with is a decent person in a bad situation or whether he is the scorpion atop the frog.

Jimmy seems to embrace the latter label in the episode’s closing scene. His efforts to get a refund on the malpractice insurance he’ll no longer need are the last bit of insult to injury. Not only can he not received a refund, he’s told, but when he returns to practice, his rates will go up 150%. The one minor life raft in the midst of his stormy financial sea turns out to be the promise of an anchor.

It’s then that Jimmy starts crying, and just as I did for his brother in “Sunk Costs,” I almost believed him. “Expenses” does a superb job at showing how far Jimmy is being stretched, how much he’s willing to break his own rules and grasp at whatever straws he can to get the money he needs to keep going. This could be the final one, the thing that breaks the emotional defenses of the normally unshakeable Jimmy McGill.

In truth, it could still be that. Jimmy is not above mixing truth with fiction to serve his ends. But whether they’re real or fake, he uses those tears to subtly cue the malpractice insurance adjuster, who also insures Chuck, to the disciplinary hearing transcripts that expose his brother as a sick man. It’s a way that, even in what seems like his lowest point, Jimmy can regain some joy, some pleasure, in sticking it to his brother once again. While Kim is coping with guilt over what she rationalized as a necessary action, Jimmy is twisting the knife.

And why wouldn’t he? From the start of “Expenses,” Jimmy finds himself stymied and rebuked in everything he tries to do, whether it’s get full credit for his community service or get a refund on his insurance premiums. He sees Chuck as the person who put him in this situation, and the one thing he can still do, even if he’s caged and neutered in every other respect, is stick it to his brother. Jimmy is still powerless for much of the episode, unable to deploy his persuasion in the way he’s used to for his own personal gain, but he can still use it for Chuck’s personal loss, and for now, that’s enough, something the devilish smile on his face as he leaves the office reveals.

Often times it’s the little moments that move us, that create some niggling thought in our brains that festers or flourishes into something more. For Mike, it’s a reminder and a call to action. For Kim, it’s a warning, a lingering concern about the individual she’s tied her life to. And for Jimmy, it’s a nagging impulse, a prickling thought, that he can only stamp out by running up the score on his brother, to prove to himself that he still can.

[8.6/10] The opening of “Slip” is a little more direct than episodes of Better Call Saul tend to be, as it fills in some gaps Jimmy’s backstory and perspective. When pressed by Marco about Jimmy’s parents’ shop, about how they worked hard and everyone liked them, Jimmy admits it’s true, but questions the value of it. He declares that it got them nowhere, and characterizes his own dad as a sucker.

Jimmy’s philosophy becomes a little clearer, snapping into place with the flashback to his youth. His dad was someone who refused to bend the rules, who wouldn’t take even so much as a valuable coin for himself, who wouldn’t sell cigarettes to the kids from the local religious school to make ends meet, and in Jimmy’s eyes, that got him nothing. It’s a little too tidy and pat, but Jimmy sums it up nicely -- Papa McGill wasn’t willing to “do what he had to do,” and Jimmy definitely is.

That’s the thrust of “Slip,” which is as much an ensemble piece as any episode of Better Call Saul so far. Jimmy, Mike, Chuck, Kim, and Nacho are willing to go the extra mile, to do the difficult thing, not because they want to, but because they believe it needs to be done. It’s what unites those disparate individuals and their different challenges here. Each of them strains a little more, goes a little farther, in the name of biting the bullet and doing what needs doing.

For Jimmy, that means going back to his old ways. What’s interesting is that Jimmy tries to be good here. He tries to build on the success of his first ad with the owners of the music shop, and all they do is try to squeeze him. Granted, it’s Jimmy, so he’s probably inflating costs a bit, but still, the episode sets them up as jerks, and Jimmy as at the end of the rope. So hey lays out a drumstick, asks them one more time if they’re committed to not paying him what they originally agreed to, and then he intentionally takes a painful looking spill in their store to get leverage. Look out, Slippin’ Jimmy is back.

He also returns to his huckstering to get back at this community service supervisor and make a little scratch in the process. His big show of a potential lawsuit and deal with a fellow worker grow a little farfetched in terms of persuading the grumpy supervisor who eventually gives in, but the purpose of these scenes is clear. Jimmy tried doing things his parents’ way, the good way, and the only thing it got him was an empty bank account. Now, he’s back to taking the (literally) painful, less-than-savory steps that ensure he has enough money to hold up his end of the bargain with Kim.

But Kim’s willing to go the extra mile too. When Jimmy offers her the money, she obliquely hints at the idea that he might need time to regroup, that she’s willing to carry the load for the two of them for a little while. It’s not entirely clear whether she’s worried he’ll return to conning people full time and wants to alleviate the financial incentives to do so, or she’s simply concerned that whatever his assurances, unreliable Jimmy may not be able to come up with his end on a monthly basis without his legal practice. Either way, she takes on a new client, one where she already seems pretty slammed, to make sure that they’ll be able to make ends meet, with or without Jimmy’s contributions.
The Mesa Verde head honcho refers that client to her at a lunch meeting, where she just so happens to run into Howard. Howard, ever the politician, is plastically cordial, but Kim, unlike her beau, still has pangs of guilt and offers him a refund on the law school tuition he put up for her. Howard, letting the scales fall for the first time in a while, reveals that he too is working overtime, having to reassure scores of clients after the incident with Chuck gets out. Kim’s willing to take the (figuratively) painful step of handing over $14,000 dollars to assuage her conscience, and Howard is out there hustling to preserve his firm’s good name after his partner’s public breakdown.

But some good seems to have come out of it. Chuck is back with his doctor and (self-)reportedly making great progress. He may be overestimating himself a little bit, but he’s pushing through his exposure therapy and accepting that his illness is a mental not physical one. When Dr. Cruz warns him about taking it easy and not setting his expectations too high, he remains optimistic, anxious to get better.

In a tremendous sequence, without a word of exposition, “Slip” suggests that Chuck might overexert himself in this effort. He’s using the coping techniques the doctor suggested for him when standing in front of the blaring fluorescent lights of the grocery story. He lists the colors and objects he sees, taking his focus away from the pain. Director Adam Bernstein uses the tools in his toolbox to underscore the severity of what walking through the freezer case does to Chuck, the zooms, the noise, the vertigo of it all. It seems like Chuck has pushed himself too far, that he’s about to suffer another attack

But when we see Chuck later, he has the groceries and is no worse for wear. These things are difficult for him, painful for him, but he is ready and willing to push, to take that damn step, in the same of what he wants to achieve.

The same is true of Mike, who is clearly still haunted by Anita’s story from the prior episode of her husband dying in the woods without anyone ever finding the body. He digs and digs in the New Mexico desert, metal-detector in hand, until he finds where the unfortunate Good Samaritan was buried by the cartel. He calls it in anonymously, presumably in the hopes of ensuring that another family won’t have to go through the uncertainty that Anita did.

But he’s worried about leaving his own family in a state of uncertainty too. He still has his cash from his various extra-curricular activities, but he’s worried about how he could get it to his family should something happen to him. So he goes to Gus Fring, in the hopes Gus can help him launder it. It’s a scene that shows the two men’s growing mutual respect. The meaningful handshake that closes the episode (along with Gus turning down Mike’s offer of 20% to launder it) signifies the ways that their values are the same. They are both smart, decent men who get mixed up in indecent things, and they’re willing to do what it takes to make that work.

That just leaves Nacho, who has what is possibly the most difficult task of all. What I love about this series of scenes is the way they show how meticulous, how careful, how deliberate Nacho is about all of his. There is nobility in Nacho wanting to protect his father from Hector, but he is not in any way reckless about it.

Instead, he does the legwork, he takes the extra steps that will make his operation successful. He is delicate and careful as he grinds the poison into dust and fills the lookalike pills under a magnifying glass. He practices, over and over again, the act of palming the pill bottle and depositing it into a coat pocket, so that when the moment comes, it will be second nature. And he even goes so far as to climb onto the top of the restaurant that serves as Hector’s headquarters the night before, messing up the air conditioner so that Hector will have a reason to take off his jacket.

The subsequent scene where he actually makes the switch is masterful. “Slip” holds the tension of each step in the process: from the would-be fake bill, to the probing of the wrong pocket, to the pill switcheroo, to that grand moment of truth where Nacho has to make the move he rehearsed so many times and land the pill bottle into Hector’s jacket without him realizing. It’s a great outing for Michael Mando, who conveys the way that Nacho is trying to exhibit a practiced, casual calm, but inside is anxious beyond words. His deep exhale and clenched fingers in the back after it’s all done says everything.

Each of the tasks taken up by the main characters in this episode -- planting poison pills, finding a dead body, braving the height of your illness, taking on extra work, and even breaking your own back -- require something extra, more sacrifice, more pain, more difficulty. But when something important is at stake -- your livelihood, your well-being, or your family -- the major figures of Better Call Saul are the type of people who face that head on and take whatever measures the situation requires, even if that means drastically different things for each of them. Those steps are painful, tense, and even dangerous, but for better or ill, Jimmy McGill and the people in his orbit, are the people who do what they need to do.

[8.2/10] There is no show on television that threads the needle between symbolism and literalism better than Better Call Saul. Part of the show’s success, and that of its predecessor, stem from the fact that it works equally well as an exciting story as it does a commentary on human nature and what relationships with bad or shady people do to us. No character represents that idea better in “Fall” than Kim Wexler.

The scene with her out on the Texas-New Mexico border to interface with her new client works well as foreshadowing, and as a sign that Kim is trying to take on too much by herself and coming close to suffering for it. When her car gets stuck in the dirt, she has so much going on, another tight deadline to meet to try to make up for Jimmy’s possible shortfall, that she tries to take care of it all herself. She find a nearby board, heaves and pushes on the car until it budges, and panics when it starts heading toward a nearby oil derrick. Only by racing into the driver’s seat and slamming on the breaks at the last minute does she avoid a grisly wreck.

It functions as a sign that Kim is juggling too many balls, that she’s letting small but important details slip, with her car as a particular conduit for this idea, in a way that could come back to bite her.

But it also functions as a larger metaphor for what Kim’s going through with Jimmy. She has a problem of being stuck in the muck herself -- with the threat of Chuck’s machinations to get his brother disbarred and Jimmy’s ensuing suspension putting pressure on her to carry the firm. So Kim does what she always does -- she pushes and pushes and pushes until she can get things moving again. Little does she realize that in all that pushing, she may be headed for disaster, and it’s only her frantic heroics that allow her narrowly avoid it. Sooner or later, those heroics will come up short, sooner or later, trying to expend all of her efforts to keep Jimmy out of that muck will backfire on her. It’s only so long that she can go to such lengths and avoid that crash.

Everyone’s hustling hard to avoid a crash in “Fall,” though most of the plots of the episode involve financial decisions rather than ones involving dirt and chrome. That includes Mike who, in a brief scene, does his due diligence with Lydia to make sure he’s putting his name down with the right people, but it also includes Jimmy, who is pushing hard to speed up the timing of his payment from the Sandpiper case.

To that end, he finds roundabout ways of putting pressure on Irene, the named plaintiff, in settling the case so that he gets his percentage of the common fund. That means, plying her with cookies to take a look at the latest letters advising her as to the status of the case. It means giving her a free pair of walking shoes to make her look like a big spender. And it means going so far as to rig a bingo game to make it look like fortune keeps smiling upon her at the expense of all her friends and erstwhile well-wishers.

Many of these sequences are funny. It’s amusing to see Jimmy decked out in full mall-walker gear as he puts in plan into motion. There’s something undeniably entertaining about Jimmy being ensconsced in a spirited session of chair yoga when turning Irene’s friends against her. And it’s enjoyably silly hearing him play “let’s you and him fight” while playing innocent in the Sandpiper lobby. There is a prosaic quality to Jimmy’s treachery here, and his million dollar payday requiring him to hobnob with a pack of old ladies creates a certain amount of inherent farce.

But it also brings a cruelty, a cavalier and callous quality to the story. Jimmy is not entirely without scruples – there is a moment of hesitation, a momentary wince, when he sets the rigged bingo balls into the chamber – but in the end he’s willing to turn poor, innocent Irene into an outcast, to leave her crying in a back room from the ostracism, to get what he wants. That’s who Jimmy is. When he’s in a tight spot, it doesn’t matter that this is someone who is kind to him, who trusts him, who was his key to getting the Sandpiper case in the first place – he wants what he wants and he’ll do what he needs to do to get it, regardless of how dishonest, crafty, or cruel he has to be to do it.

The same, appropriately enough, is true for Chuck in “Fall.” When the malpractice insurance providers show up and declare that they’ll double the premiums on every lawyer in the firm so long as Chuck is in practice there. Chuck vows to see them in court, and Howard, initially kindly and then more forcefully, suggests that Chuck ought to retire. Howard tells his partner that there’s a place for him at the local law school, and less gently, that he no longer trusts Chuck’s judgment.

It’s easy to see Howard as just as mercenary as anyone here (including Jimmy, whom Howard accuses of being like Golem as he tries to move a settlement along), but he’s not wrong. Chuck seems to legitimately be a great legal mind, and he genuinely appears to be getting better, but he has his vendettas, his blindspots, his irregularities that, understandable or not, have made him a liability to the firm he helped create. It’s hard to accuse Howard of any sort of altruism in this, but he’s been supportive of Chuck, stood by him, and it’s not unreasonable for him to reflect and say that Chuck is doing more harm than good to the company that bears his name.

But Chuck doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about outrageous premiums or putting his firm’s good name on the line as part of a byzantine plan to catch his brother in the act, or even about destroying his firm by trying to cash out his share. He puts on a show for Howard, one that sees him having turned the lights on and used an electric mixer to try to puff himself up in front of a friend-turned-adversary, to show Howard that he is not the crazy man who ranted and raved on the stand but a sharp thinker making great strides who can either be a vital asset or a one-man poison pill depending on which side Howard chooses.

That’s the thing about Chuck, and his brother for that matter. They are willing to destroy, or threaten to destroy, the lives and livelihoods of the people around them to achieve their own goals, and damn the consequences. (Those consequences may, providently enough, make Howard more likely to want to settle the Sandpiper case in order to have some liquidity and cash on hand.) Even the people close to them, who have helped them and looked out for them, are not immune from suffering in their wake.

That catches up with Kim in the end. She can’t celebrate with a miffed Jimmy when he brings in a fancy bottle of booze in honor of his scheme to prompt a settlement working, because she has to do much to do to try to cover his behind. There’s been hints that her efforts to do it all herself rather than deal with her lingering concerns about Jimmy were going to hurt. There’s the five-minute naps in the car before meetings at Mesa Verde. There’s the near-miss out at the oil derrick. There’s other instances where simply being proximate to all this mess has put Kim in harm’s way.

As always, the show shoots it beautifully. There’s something quietly ominous about the silence in the car after Kim rehearses her speech. The scenery outside the window starts to fade away. Suddenly, in a blink, the accident hits. She moans in pain as she pulls herself from the wreckage. Her carefully-crafted binders blow away in the wind. Smoke billows into the austere New Mexico landscape as she surveys the tumble of metal and legal documents before her. This is, despite all her efforts, despite all her attempts to carry everything on her own back, something unavoidable.

That’s the rub of “Fall” and of Better Call Saul. Except when facing one another, the McGill brothers almost always get what they want. They know how to work the system, to tilt things in their favor, to intimidate or challenge or call the bluff of whomever is standing in their way. And because of that, they rarely suffer.

But the people around them do. The people who care about them, who try to help them, who do anything to tarnish their pride or their patience end up worse for being in the unfortunate orbit of these two men, just as Nacho’s father is worse for his son’s association with the Salamancas. It’s never Jimmy or Chuck who has to face the consequences, has to stomach the hardships of their failings or difficulties -- it’s the poor old lady made a pariah so that Jimmy can have a payday, it’s the man who stood by Chuck until it threatened to destroy his firm, and it’s the smart, decent woman who became Jimmy’s confidante, accomplice, and caretaker, straining to keep the two of them from ruin, and finding herself asleep at the wheel, surrounded by crushed chrome and the detritus of her meticulous work.

There is no escaping the McGill brothers. There is no fixing them or correcting them or saving them. There is only the doomed efforts that emerge in their wake, that inevitably end in a crash.

If you feel strangely sad at the funeral scene, it's because it's sinking in: we will no longer have the brilliant Michael McKean in this show :(

Overall it was a slow episode, even by Better Call Saul standards, but that's understandable considering where we pick up from. Chuck is gone and Jimmy, Kim and Howard have an increasingly strong feeling that it was no accident. I like the fact that Jimmy started the day happily, probably doing his best to brighten up Kim's morning (she only just got involved in her car crash despite it feeling like a year and a half for us) but then... stark contrast in his character during almost the entire episode as he deals with what happened to Chuck.

Jimmy's ridiculous reaction at the end suggests that far from mourning his brother, his biggest concern all along was whether he would be the one to blame for Chuck's mindset - but once he can pin it on Howard, it's all good, man. However, I think this is a coping mechanism and he truly mourns Chuck/feels guilty, which will likely manifest through destructive behaviour during the season. We saw the beginnings of a shift towards the Saul we know after his friend Marco died (end of season 1) and that wasn't even his fault... but Chuck's demise may be the point of no return.

Other than that, we had Mike doing Mike things - in this case, an infiltration in Madrigal. I thought he was trying to find out something specific, but in the end it seems he was actually working as a security consultant, which I could see becoming an issue for Lydia/Gus... but it's definitely too early to tell. One thing is for sure, there's an eerie entertainment value in the most mundane scenes with Mike, I feel like if it was 40 minutes of that I would still be fine.

One thing I love about Vince Gilligan and his team is this habit of repeating the last moments of one particular scene from the previous finale in a season premiere. They do this since Breaking Bad and I always love it because it brings you back to that moment immediately without trying to dump information on your brain while you actively try to remember the details. You don't have to be like "ohhhh right, Hector had a stroke, Gus looked at Nacho" because they show you, then continue it. On that side of things there was not a lot more other than Nacho and the other gentleman receiving orders from Bolsa... and Gus identifying a new opportunity and mentioning DEA.

(First thought: Gus' Spanish seems to have improved, which was terrible in BrBa, but they also have him talk less so far)

(Second thought: is Hank going to show up?)

I almost forgot to mention the intro but there isn't a lot to say, really. I'm starting to think these little teaser scenes of the future are... just that, teasers. Which is not a bad thing exactly, yet could be disappointing for viewers expecting more. But I could be wrong, they could always be saving some surprises, I guess it all depends on them using these future scenes in episodes other than premieres.

[8.2/10] One of the most interesting questions to ask, both about real people and characters on television, is why they choose to do things they don’t have to. Life and circumstance often force a person’s hand, causing people to do what they feel they must. But there are situations in which there’s no external force, no rules or sticks or carrots, just a raw choice to be made. It’s these sorts of choices that can reveal who a person is, and what they’re going through, in a way that’s clearer than for choices muddied by need and force and inertia.

Those are the types of questions that “Breathe” is interested in. Why is Gus Fring not only trying to keep Hector Salamanca, a man who inflicted unspeakable pain on him, alive, but also moving against those who tried to kill him. Why is Kim Wexler attending a meeting to determine Jimmy’s share of Chuck’s estate when Jimmy himself is blowing it off? Why is Mike Ehrmantraut determined to run his “security consultant” routine on all of Madrigal’s outposts over Lydia’s objections? And why is Jimmy McGill ready to sabotage himself out of a job offer, one he’d just hustled like crazy to earn?

It's the first question that interests me most – why Gus would go to the effort and expense of trying to ensure Hector survives when, as his lieutenant notes, it would be far easier, and perhaps more just, for Gus to let him die.

I write most of these reviews assuming that the average Better Call Saul-watcher is at least roughly familiar with Breaking Bad, and I suspect Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, and the rest of Better Call Saul’s creative team work in the same way. There’s too many hints and callbacks and Easter eggs (see also: the Salamanca twins) for that not to be the case. But oddly enough, Gus’s story here makes the most sense if you haven’t seen Breaking Bad.

Without the prior series’s flashback to Gus’s first encounter with Hector, you might assume that Gus and Hector are just standard issue rivals in a dangerous business. You could read Gus’s preservation of Hector’s life as him protecting the cartel from what he suspects to be an outside attack. You can read Gus as disliking Hector as a rival who treats him with disrespect, but not wanting his erstwhile ally dead. You can read him as a man of principal, who believes that the captain of an organization should be protected, even if he’s not especially fond of one of his peers.

But if you have seen Breaking Bad, Gus’s behavior is all the more puzzling, precisely because you know exactly what Hector has done to Gus, and how easy it would be for him to let Hector perish. Keeping Hector alive, let alone with the help of someone from a renowned medical facility, is absolutely something that Gus does not have to do, especially when mere inaction would allow this dastard to meet his maker without Gus having to take the risk of enacting his revenge himself.

Lydia has a similar, if not quite the same, sort of confusion about what’s motivating Mike to inspect the Madrigal facilities as part of his made up job as a security consultant, and maybe that helps shine a light on Gus’s perspective as well. Despite my sharing a similar puzzlement over Mike’s behavior in the last episode, Mike explains himself here – telling Lydia that this is a way of covering his tracks, of making sure that if anyone asks about this “rounding error,” he’s been seen. Lydia (gently but firmly) encourages him to reconsider, but he won’t be deterred.
When she raises the issue with Gus, he’s not exactly sympathetic. Instead, he inquires as to whether Mike’s causing a real problem, and when she admits that Mike isn’t, he leaves it at that. Gus and Mike are birds of a feather, who recognize something in one another – a combination of a particular sort of honor, a meticulousness, and a sense of pride in their work. “The man has his reasons” seems to be Gus’s thought process, and if he deems that good enough for Mike, he may deem it good enough for himself.

Or maybe it has to do with wanting the chance to do right by someone. That seems to be Kim’s motivation for representing Jimmy as Howard is administering Chuck’s last will and testament, something Jimmy himself seems to have no interest in. As a final insult, Chuck leaves his little brother $5,000 dollars, enough to let any reviewing judicial body that Jimmy wasn’t overlooked, that he wasn’t disinherited in a way that would leave the will open for Jimmy to contest, a way to make sure that his good-for-nothing little brother doesn’t get anything but the most meager slice of Chuck’s estate despite how much time and effort and love Jimmy put into looking after his brother.

But that’s not the insult Kim is worried about. In a powerhouse performance that, if there is any justice in Tinseltown, will help Rhea Seehorn get the Emmy recognition she’s deserved for some time now, she turns her recriminations on Howard. Kim is a little inscrutable in her motivations too. There is the sense that she means what she says when she chastises Howard for telling Jimmy about his theory that Chuck killed himself, for “putting that on” Jimmy. She’s seen the effect Chuck’s death had on Jimmy, the sort of hardship that he’s dealing with under his surface-level calm, and it’s possible she genuinely blames Howard, at least in part, for complicating Jimmy’s grief.

Still, while Kim isn’t necessarily mercenary enough to try to strongarm Howard into doing something more for Jimmy than Chuck did, there’s the sense that she’s also frustrated with Chuck, frustrated with this situation, and maybe even a little frustrated with Jimmy. But you can’t yell at a dead man; you can’t yell at a situation; and if you have a shred of decency, you can’t yell at a grieving man.

You can, however, yell at Howard Hamlin, who is, at best, an accessory to the ills Chuck suffered and caused, but who’s there and willing to take it. It feels like there’s more in store for Kim and Howard than this bitter rebuke. But for now, Better Call Saul leaves us to wonder why Kim chose to stand in for Jimmy in a meeting he himself blew off – whether it’s to stand-up for someone who’s been disrespected or wounded, or to let something out that has no other place.

Jimmy’s comparatively brief, but just as potent part of the episode sees him looking for an outlet as well, but in a very different way. With his suspension still in effect, Jimmy is hunting for jobs, and his first stop of the day is to interview for a position as a copier salesman. As usual, Jimmy gives the sort of brilliant pitch you’d expect from him, where he shows that he knows the inside and out of the product, ingratiates himself to the folks interviewing him with his affable charm, and wins them over with his powers of persuasion. And when even that’s only enough to net him a very positive “we’ll be in touch,” he doubles down, makes the hard sell, and gets the job offer.

A job offer he just as soon rejects.

Jimmy doesn't have to do that. He doesn't have to throw away an opportunity that he sold like hell to get. He doesn't have to build up his prowess as a salesman and a potentially valuable member of this company just to instantly self-sabotage all of it, and go so far as to shame his would-be employers for having the recklessness to fall for his schtick.

But Jimmy wants to punish himself. He wants to test himself. No matter what face he puts on, Chuck’s death, and his hand in it, has gotten to Jimmy. So when he walks into these places, he tries to be the silver tongued devil who could talk his way into anything, but he hears his brother’s voice in his head, the one that tells him that everything Jimmy’s ever done is built on a lie, that he doesn't deserve to have any sort of success, that what he does is dangerous and dishonest. This is Jimmy’s form of self-flagellation, of self-sabotage, and it’s a tribute to Bob Odenkirk and the show’s writers how well-constructed and well-acted and well-suited the scene is to tell that story.

And maybe that’s the lesson and the connection between Jimmy’s story and Gus’s strange decision. Maybe it’s a question of punishment and of control. The final scene of “Breathe” is the most frightening that Gus Fring has seemed since he threatened to kill Walt’s infant daughter. There’s a gentility to Fring (and in Giancarlo Esposito’s performance) that makes him plausible as someone who could pass without notice in the respectable world, but that makes him ten times as scary when he let’s the hounds of the chain and speaks in clear but unnerving threats and demands. His threat is implicit in the death he orders, in his statement to Nacho that he knows what was done to Hector and by who, and his demand comes earlier in the episode.

Gus tells his lieutenant that he when Hector dies: not a stroke, not some low level soldier, just Gus Fring and Gus Fring alone. Maybe he still believes that Hector is deserving of punishment, that he deserves to suffer, but he wants to be the one to dole it out, to decide when Hector has had enough, which might not come until Hector is forced to watch Gus conquer the Salamanca empire. Gus doesn't want Hector to die, but perhaps it’s not because of any sort of mercy or professional courtesy. Perhaps it’s because he has a plan for Hector, he’s playing the long game, and death’s too good for his enemy, at least right now.

So he does something that neither circumstance nor pressure forces him to do -- he spends his money to keep a rival from perishing, just as Jimmy undercuts himself, and Mike takes on duties no one asked him to, and Kim stands up for someone she cares about. In a show centered on a man who moves the world with his equivocations and manipulations, there’s a purity to these sorts of actions, the ones that aren’t required or forced. Instead, they come from what these people really want, and show what’s important to them, what’s bothering them, and what might be worth more to them in the fullness of time than what’s in front of them right now.

[8.2/10] Jimmy and Kim are on different paths. That’s been clear for a while now, but this episode’s cold open makes it literal. “Piñata” begins with a flashback to the halls of HHM, when Jimmy was a gregarious mailroom clerk and Kim was a precocious law student. Even then, there’s a rapport between them, but a clear difference as well.

Kim’s strength is her curiosity and understanding. She impresses Chuck (a welcome, understated return for Michael McKean) with her knowledge of the case law that underlied his big win in the courtroom. She’s clearly fascinated by this -- amazed that he was able to get justice for his clients based on some obscure precedent. That’s her talent as well -- squeezing every bit she can out of the finer details to get things right.

But Jimmy’s strength is people. He knows how they work, how they operate, and while he often uses his preternatural charms for his own personal gain, oftentimes he’s just friendly enough to forge connections. It’s clear as he roams the floor, collecting Oscar ballots for an office pool, that he knows everyone in those cubicles as well as Kim knows those old cases. They represent two different approaches, both to the law and to life in general, and “Pinñata” shows them literally headed in opposite directions.

That seems to be the case in the present as well. While Jimmy is making plans for their joint future, scribbling letterheads and logos,- Kim’s expression while seeing his scratchpad says it all. It’s all nicely understated: Jimmy’s obvious enthusiasm for his dream job alongside the woman he loves and Kim’s growing realization that she just cannot be a part of that.

There is something very good about that -- we don’t want good and decent Kim to be tarnished or dragged down into the muck where we know Saul Goodman will one day make his home -- but also something very sad. Jimmy and Kim aren’t particularly high octane as television romances go, but there’s an undeniable sweetness and affection between them. It may not be built to last, but there’s still something warm about it, that makes the viewer melancholy about it headed for an ending, even if it’s what’s best for everyone.

It doesn't feel like what’s best to Jimmy though. At a lunch at their favorite spot (one where Kim specifically shoos away their pseudonyms, a meaningful gesture), Kim tells Jimmy that she’s joining Schweikart and Cokely as a partner, building (and heading) their banking division. It’s a boon for Kim. The move will allow her to both staff associates on Mesa Verde and ensure that no balls are dropped there, while giving her enough leeway and freedom to do the pro bono work that’s meaningful and personally satisfying to her.

But it dashes Jimmy’s dreams, and she knows it. Despite his self-serving nature at times, Jimmy is a good guy (or at least a good enough guy) and puts on a supportive front. He’s gobsmacked though. Director Andrew Stanton (of Pixar fame) frames Jimmy taking a minute to process the news in the door of the kitchen, with creative, ever loudening sounds from the food prep to represent the moment of stress and realization he’s experiencing to see his great hope shattered like that.
It’s hard. This pairing is a sinking ship. But in an episode where people offer words to others that they mean for themselves, Jimmy echoes Kim, and tells her that she has to do what’s best for her, even if that puts them on different trajectories.

And they’re on what seem to be entirely different trajectories from Mike and Gus. Normally, there’s some sort of thematic connection between what could be considered the two mostly separate tracks of this series within a given episode. The “How Jimmy Became Saul” segment of the show might not intersect with the “Breaking Bad Prequel” segment, but there’s typically something that connects them in terms of ideas if not in plot. But Kim and Jimmy’s diverging paths don’t have much to do with Gus and Mike’s efforts to build their big, undetectable meth lab.

The closest thing to a connection is the idea in the Mike/Gus portion of the show that you need both the detail-oriented virtuosity and the people skills to really make something work. The one doesn't function without the other. As Mike is setting up the living quarters for the builders who’ll be working in isolation for six months, he’s on top of both ends of the equation. He says they’ll need creature comforts -- recliners, a basketball hoop, even a bar -- but he’s also on top of security and monitoring, making sure they have everything they need but that if they start “climbing the walls” he knows about it.

He’s meticulous enough to predict everything the contractors will need, but also sharp enough to single out Kai, the smart-mouthed, mildly rebellious worker, as a potential trouble spot. And he, like Kim, is not cold despite his attention to detail. In one of “Piñata”’s sweeter scenes, Mike comes to Stacey’s door to offer her an apology. It’s a quiet, but heartfelt scene. For all his ability to read people, Mike isn’t always great at being with them, and seeing him admit fault and, in his own taciturn way, ask put the unpleasantness behind him and be back in Stacey and Kaylee’s life is unsuspectingly sweet from the gruff old man.

But sweetness is not what Gus has in mind for Hector Salamanca. I’m of two minds on the little parable from Gus’s past that he offers to his comatose foe. On the one hand, the monologue is a little too writerly and on the nose. It’s such an obvious metaphor for the situation with Hector and seems too perfectly calibrated to tell us more about who Gus is, how he views the situation with the Salamancas, and why he’s going to such lengths to sustain the life of someone he hates.

On the other hand, as usual, Giancarlo Esposito knocks it out of the park, conveying the sense that Gus is baring his soul as much for his own benefit as for Hector’s (or the audience). You can hear the emotion in the voice of a character normally so cool and reserved. There’s a quiet seethe, a cold seeking of righteous retribution that comes through in a way that feels genuine rather than the practiced or put on genteelness that Gus usually offers. In the hands of anyone else, the monologue might be too cheesy, but here, the performance is good enough to rescue it, and make you understand and believe in how Gus’s eternal dedication, care, and vigilance, will give him a leg up in this war.
You wouldn’t necessarily put Gus and Jimmy in the same category, but that nevertheless is something that unites them. Jimmy may not have the discipline or the vision of Gus, but he also knows how to work situations to his advantage, to play the long game, and to do the legwork to cover all the angles he needs to.

That’s the takeaway from the steller sequence that closes the episode. When Jimmy tries to offer the three young punks who “rolled” him in the last episode a deal, and is rebuffed at the end of a switchblade, he lures them into a trap. It’s a great setpiece from Stanton, who not only captures the kinetic exhilaration of Jimmy sprinting away from his attackers, but also the disorientation and sense of intimidation, as Jimmy and his goons hang these boys upside down in a pinata warehouse, and make them promise to leave him alone, left they end up like the rest of the quickly-destroyed goods hanging alongside them.

It’s a spectacular set of scenes, both for the creativity the Pixar pro shows in their construction, and for what they tell us about Jimmy. It elucidates his decency. As he did with the music store owners who attempted to stiff him, he tries to give the hoodlums a fair deal, and only turns to subterfuge and threats when they treat him badly. But he also has a plan when things get ugly. That is Jimmy to a fault -- up for doing things the nice (if not exactly legal) way, but ready with an elaborate, well thought out plan to guarantee he gets what he wants and needs if things have to get rougher, just as he always has.

It’s telling, then, that he ends up back where he started in this episode. The phone scheme is (with a one burner payoff) being operated out of his same tiny office in the back of a nail salon where we first met the young Mr. McGill on Better Call Saul. Chuck is gone. Kim is moving on without him. And his law license is suspended. That means it’s time for him to roll up his sleeves (literally in this case) and rebuild.

You see that mentality in his speech to Howard Hamlin. “Piñata” draws a parallel of parallels (a parallelogram?) between Chuck and Kim on the one hand and Howard and Jimmy on the other. In each instance, you have one member of the partnership who is the dedicated and sharp-minded jurist, able to move the dial with their sterling intellect and commitment, and the consummate pitchman, able to be the face of the operation and maximize the value of the name and reputation that the other partner provides.

With Chuck gone, Howard is clearly lost. Howard seemed out of sorts in the last episode, and HHM is “right-sizing” and falling apart under his watch. Jimmy tells him to get it together, that he’s crappy lawyer but a hell of a salesman, so he should get out there and do what he does best in order to right the ship. They are, again, words that Jimmy offers his sometimes rival that he means more for himself.

Because Jimmy is undeterred. Kim going to another firm is a body blow, but one Jimmy doesn't intend to let put him down for the count. He is back to his old scheming ways, figuring out how to use his inheritance to get him enough burners to put him back on his feet. The plan with piñatas is just a start. Kim and Jimmy are moving in different directions, but the difference is that while Howard is rudderless without his partner, Jimmy is emboldened to start his hustle once more, no matter who’s by his side, or who he pushes away in the process.

I’ve known the evenings, mornings, and days alone,
I have measured out my life in Mesa Verde awards and burner phones.

[8.7/10] With my sincerest apologies to T.S. Eliot, it’s amazing how Better Call Saul can move so slowly, and then so quickly, without missing a beat. It’s hard to know how much time has passed up until this point in the show, but season 4 picked up right where season 3 left off, and has more or less crept along in the aftermath of Chuck’s death and Hector’s “accident” ever since.

Until now. I spent a great deal of time talking about how the last episode set Jimmy and Kim on diverging trajectories, to the point that it was even occasionally literal. “Something Stupid” takes that idea up a notch with a cold open set to the titular crooner melody. The show’s unrivaled montage abilities depicts the passage of time with unwrapped statuettes, file cabinet labels, and holiday sale signs. But Better Call Saul once again gets a little formally creative, using a well-placed split screen to show how both Kim and Jimmy are flourishing in the new lives each has embarked upon, but also how those lives are slowly but surely pulling them further and further apart.

It’s an interesting choice, since Better Call Saul is very much about the slow burn. But it’s part and parcel with one of the most noteworthy creative decisions the show consistently makes -- how Jimmy and Kim are meant to be a real relationship with slow ups and downs rather than the constant shocks and fireworks of romance on a standard network drama. When this season started, I feared for Kim, because the show seemed poised to concoct some grand accident, some big mistake on Jimmy’s part, that either scares her away or worse.

Instead, “Something Stupid” gives us the death of a thousand cuts, and it gives us small scenes and the changing of the seasons to make it happen. The show may still be building to that grand incident and gesture, that will sever the only couple it’s ever truly put together. But Jimmy and Kim didn’t start with fireworks on this show, and rather than end them with something explosive, Better Call Saul is content to just show them drifting apart, more and more living separate lives, until that division just happens without either of them realizing it, or wanting to admit it.

Because “Something Stupid” isn’t just about the passage of time. It’s about the little signs that things have changed or are changing, the ones that are almost imperceptible but nevertheless tell the story. That comes through in our glimpse of Hector. Time has been kind to the old man after the incident with Nacho. During some rehabilitation exercises with the expensive doctor Gus provided, Hector knocks over a cup of water. The medical staff writes it off as an involuntary reaction from a man still trying to regain control of his motor functions. But the perspective shots and editing let the audience know otherwise -- that this was a minor stunt from Hector so he could leer at his nurse.

Gus, observant man that he is, sees it too. He recognizes more than that his longtime foe is still a lech. He recognizes that Hector, the awful man Gus wants revenge, is still in there. Vengeance is no good if there’s no one but the shell of a man to appreciate. Gus too has his own almost impercetible moment, a slow malevolent smile, that conveys his recognition that the man he wants to punish is still awake and aware enough to appreciate it.

So Gus turns the knife a little. He sends the doctor onto her next assignment. In effect, he halts Hector’s progress, despite the doctor’s protestations that there’s more recovery to be had. Hector has recovered enough to appreciate what Gus has done, while still being limited enough to hate it. The simple flick of a cup sets in motion a series of events that changes Hector’s life, and lays the groundwork for Gus’s death.

That’s the interesting thing about the passage of time in “Something Stupid.” It can either elucidate how much progress has been made and imply the trajectory that’s being halted, or it can show how much things have deteriorated. When we see Mike and the Germans, it’s very clearly the latter. The crew that Werner the engineer hired have made great strides in constructing Gus’s underground meth lab, but there’s miles to go before they sleep, and it’s starting to get to the workers.

When an accident on the job sets them back months, on a job the whole group knows won’t be finished anywhere near on schedule, tempers flare, scuffles break out, and it becomes clear to both Mike and Werner that things can’t continue on as they have. There’s more suggestion than development here, as we see more of the restlessness bubbling under the surface for the workers than anything actually coming to a head. But we see a growing camaraderie between Mike and Werner, a shot down suggestion that things might flow easier without Kai that feels portentous, and the slightest change in expression from Mike to show us his acceptance of the idea that the workers need some “R&R”, lest things spin out of control.

But bad feelings are bubbling under the surface for Jimmy and Kim as well. Jimmy and Kim have growing resentments about one another, but are either too ensconced in the status quo to rock the boat or, more charitably, care about each other too much to make an issue out of them, so they come out in odd ways.

When Jimmy tags along with Kim to a Schweikart office party, he can’t help taking a powder in her office. And there, he starts to get a little jealous. He walks the floor and finds out that her office is almost twice as big as his. He looks at a framed note from a pro bono client, and sees that Kim has already had more success, engendered more appreciation, in her spare time as a substitute public defender, than he had when it was his regular gig. Jimmy is scraping by and seeing his partner soar. It bothers Kim, but he loves her, so he lashes out in other ways.

That means causing trouble at Schweikart, using his small talk expertise to “spitball” a fantastical company trip to Mr. Schweikart himself, with all the employees in eartshot. After Jimmy finishes laying out this extravagant ski trip and creating expectations, Schweikart will either have to break the bank to pull it off or disappoint his employees when the real trip fails to live up to the image of a winter wonderland that Jimmy creates. It’s Jimmy’s way of stomping on the Schweikart sandcastle that Kim’s helped to build, a quiet little F.U. and “you’re not so big, huh?” His little conversation has plenty of plausible deniability for the trouble it’ll cause, but Kim knows better, even if she’s unable or unwilling to call him on it. The icy trip home says as much.

But they’re still a team. So when a misunderstanding with a bag of sandwiches, a pair of headphones, and a plainclothes cop leads to Huell facing jail time, Jimmy goes to Kim for help. It’s a well constructed conundrum because it has good and bad elements to it. There’s some real injustice in Huell potentially having to go to prison because of a legitimate misunderstanding as regards a less-than-legitimate business. But there’s something questionable at best about Jimmy’s wilful blindness and obstinance to the cop about his burner phones, and something mixed about Jimmy’s motives, even if it seems unfair for Huell to have to take the fall.

And then there’s Kim’s role in all of this. The most striking reaction, in an episode full of them, is Kim practically suppressing a gag reflex when Jimmy suggests solving this problem by making the policeman crack on the stand. It’s too close to what she helped Jimmy do to Chuck, too much like the sort of life destroying ploy to save one’s own bacon that she’s been trying to make amends for since. So she takes the case but rebuffs Jimmy, resolving to do it her way -- with facts and precedents rather than hustles and manipulation.

But that fails. The prosecutor not only rejects Kim’s tactics, but questions why Kim’s even doing this, and unwittingly slags Kim’s partner in the process. It’s a tense scene, of Kim trying to do everything in her power to make this work, the right way, to help Jimmy even as she’s seeing more and more the ways that he is not the kind-hearted soul with rough edges she once thought. The edges are starting crowd out the parts of Jimmy she always appreciated, even as, in true Breaking Bad fashion, the show puts her in a tight spot and dares the audience to find out whether and how she’ll escape it, and what it will cost her and Jimmy, to do so.

The close of the episode seems to be setting up the sort of dramatic, high stakes moments that drove Breaking Bad. But Better Call Saul has been a show about slower burns, about more gradual, softer transformations than the collection of inflection points that pushed Walter white from “Mr. Chips to Scarface.” And it’s taking the same tack with Jimmy and Kim. Even as the seasons shift, there’s not some big moment that changes everything. There’s just a gradual winnowing of the trust and mutual admiration they once shared, until the image each had of the other is too tarnished to go on.

Jimmy takes a bus ride out of New Mexico and spends his time writing letters and postcards with the help of other riders as well. Mike takes the Germans out to a strip club and Werner to a bar. Kai stirs up trouble and Mike goes to bail him out and Werner spills some details about the superlab to men at the bar and Mike takes him home. Jimmy comes back home and prepares his office at the nail salon to function as a call centre. The "fake" letters make its way to the judge and Suzanne insists on finding out what makes Huell so special. The phone numbers included on the letters are the phones Jimmy has and pays his filmcrew to play improv if the DA's office calls. Huell's sentence is reduced and Jimmy and Kim celebrate. Soon after, Kim tells Jimmy she wants to do something like that again. (Why Kim??) Mike tells Gus they're about halfway done the superlab but still way behind schedule. Nacho takes some time to reflect on his life before becoming part of the drug world and a new Salamanca at the restaurant makes Nacho worry about how things might change. This episode left me with a wide grin on my face stunned to think that when Jimmy has run out of ideas to do something wild, something new comes along.

Jimmy becoming Saul is complex and this episode dug further and gave birth to his transformation.

1. Respect. All of life, Jimmy craved respect. Underneath it all, we learned that Jim is a good guy and a people pleaser. But he wasn't able to earn respect from people he value the most -- his late brother Chuck and his confidant and lover Kim.

2. Reformation. Jimmy has tried to shed his "Slippin' Jimmy" past with hard work and generosity. But people still see him as "Slippin' Jimmy". His breakdown after scholarship speech was the final draw.

Armed with charisma and limitless persistence, Jimmy is now reborn as Saul set out to climb to the top of the building.

The flip side is Mike. Underneath his hard exterior is a deeply damaged man who is forced to push almost everyone away so that he can have a full control over his deeply damaged life.

Every time he takes full measures, he becomes more damaged. On this episode, he gave all he can to save Werner, but deep inside, he knew that wasn't going to work. It would be a half measure. His defense is impeccable attention to details and planning but that didn't work this time.

An amazing season finale for an amazing season.

And now we know why Otis is so uncomfortable with his own sexuality... But I'm guessing he'll come to terms with it by the end of the season. But only slightly, because we want more seasons of this precious little gem of a show.

I'm not sure what will happen to Eric. At first, I thought he had gone into the classic (and cliché) self-destruction downward spiral, but I smelled a hint of premature redemption during his conversation with pretty face Indian boy. I just hope they won't ruin the character with all that angst. I mean, it's understandable that he's feeling that way, that's also him growing up, as a person, but I don't want to see him deviate too much from his joyful self. Also, I hope Otis will eventually get to him. I find their friendship more heartwarming and real than that of those kids from Stranger Things.

Of course, Otis' scene with whatshername was as awkward and uncomfortable as it was funny. Not because of Otis, he clearly has a trauma about sex, but the girl was a hoot!

Oh! Gillian "Clearly Horny as Fuck" Anderson finally got some! Hooray! Or... Did Otis' panic attack cockblocked her? If so, then it's the second time Otis cockblocks her mom, damn!

And now, for the cherry on top that was that very last scene: so, Maeve does have a tiny thing for Otis, huh? ;) That scene made me go all "aaaaww" and giggle like a little girl.

– I'll be hurt either way. Isn't it better to be who I am?

I'm soooo glad Eric managed to turn things around and realise he should be proud of who he is and just enjoy it. He just needed a role model (with fancy nails) to kick-start his self-esteem back in place. And then the reunion with Otis... Oh boy! I'm not gonna lie, I shed a tear when I saw Eric smiling after Otis apologised to him, I was so happy to see those two make amends and strengthen the solid friendship they always had. I know it's only been a couple of episodes, but I already missed the two best buds hanging out, together.

And Maeve... Wow! She looked stunning! I literally froze when Jackson first saw Maeve ready for the ball AND HE DIDN'T COMPLIMENT HER LOOKS!! D: Luckily for him, that didn't pan out. I guess Maeve isn't the kind of girl to be hung up on such trivial girlie things, anyway.

Did they really get Ezra Furman to perform at the ball? How cool! Too bad he didn't actually play the Macarena, though.

Otis' first big public speech was very touching and an emotional highlight of the show, because he was talking to that guy high up on the moon (did you catch this double meaning? teehee!), but we all know he was taking about himself and Maeve. He was so close to getting Maeve in his arms (or the equivalent romantic expression in Otis' peculiar terms)... But then drunk Action Man cockblocked the whole thing! Damn! That was hard to watch... Because now Otis and Maeve are the farthest apart they've ever been, right after being the closest to each other. And only one episode left! How will they fix things between the two in just one episode?!

I was reading through the comments and was surprised that some people think Otis is trash this season... Literally the party scene was the only one where he did wrong so far. He's been dealing with his mom and Jakob's relationship (+ Jakob's personality), Ola, Maeve, his own and other people's sex-related problems for a long time - who wouldn't explode at some point?
Just like how Jackson had enough of one of his mother's dictatorship and almost broke down (well, technically with the self-harm he already did) and how Eric stood up face-to-face to Adam and told him his honest thoughts (yaaas, so proud! I was actually afraid that he would change his mind and back down, but I'm so glad that there's a character in existence who doesn't choose the "bad guy" bully at the end!). These characters had enough too, yet I don't see anyone bashing them. And Otis has/had a lot more on his plate than these two.

I'm conflicted about Maeve now. Last time I wrote that they're basically soulmates with Otis, and I really thought that... but then Isaac came, and now I'm kinda rooting for him? But I'm also rooting for Maeve just concentrating on herself? And also rooting for Otis to apologize and speak to Maeve about his feelings while he's sober?
Since Maeve and Otis are 2 of the 3 main characters, and almost the whole SE1 was about them starting to like each other, I guess they'll end up together, but it wouldn't be a first of this show to give things a twist and pair Maeve up with Isaac.

Jackson and Viv are getting closer, yaay! I mean, that was a strong gut feeling right from their first meeting, but it's still nice to see Viv starting to care more about Jackson (and vice versa), little by little.

I think I was just as scared as James was when Alyssa left the police station to go to Clive's house.
The emotions were so high this season and I'm glad they went this way even though I wouldn't have minded it to have ended with Bonnie shooting them both (it was shocking and unexpected) but this happy ending made me tear up. It was beautiful and a nice message that things can work out in the end, even though of course both of these characters are scarred for life and in need of serious therapy (I love that Alyssa pointed that last one out herself).
I think that anyone who has endured trauma or felt depressed to the point of being numb could relate to Alyssa, the things she thought will hit home. They did for me and it's good, it's good that we see her struggle and in the end survive and able to 'ask' for help (when she says to James that she'll probably need therapy). It's a good message to put out there.
I'm glad they decided to leave it as this, there is no need for more seasons to drag a story out that it perfectly wrapped up now. It could've gone without the second season but I love that they did this season.

Valerie is my favorite number so it was a privilege getting to see it for a second time, it made me happy seeing brittany, mike and santana singing and dancing together again.
That Toxic performance was amazing!!! With no doubt better than the original. And I’m so happy Heather is back -I understand she took a break cause of her pregnancy, but Brittany was really missed. And I’m glad they invited Dianna back even tho I still don’t understand why she wasn’t invited for Cory’s episode.
The one thing I didn’t like was Mercedes participating in that petty and childish competition, I feel like that situation is beneath her and she knows she is super talented and she is successful as a pop star and Rachel is successful as a broadway performer.
I just wanna say that Rachel’s always been and continues to be an awful person, she was a bully too but somehow she changed that narrative and claims to be the victim, just think about everything she did to kurt, mercedes, tina, sunshine, even finn and quinn too, but she’s bitter that she never got to bully Santana, and she wants to know why real life still feels like hs? Cause she keeps acting childish, bitter and petty! Also I’m really tired that they keep singling out Quinn and Santana as bullies (and even Puck) when Q and S never messed up with M (maybe they threw her a slushie, I’m not sure) but overall S and M were friends, and I think Puck stopped being a bully to them after he joined the club, and he was only the bad boy, but never in the 100 episodes Q or S told M she wasn’t talented so I don’t know what she’s talking about, and again Rachel was a bully and a terrible person so it’s fair if Q and S were calling her out.
Also it’s so cringe to watch Tina becoming Rachel’s adoring fan, like why reduce tina to that??
And again Will Schuester proving that he’s a terrible human being, he is so ungrateful to April when she literally donated 2 MILLION DOLLARS to the auditorium/club and he misspent it and wasted it away and has the nerve to blame it on April and demand more money????