[7.0/10] Feels like we’re limping to the finish. Candidly, maybe I’m just burnt out on the show. Major things seem to happen, like Dick getting smashed to death in the Fortress of Solitude and Rocket sacrificing herself to get Aqualad, Tigress, and Zatanna out of the boom tube, but there’s nothing here that convinced me those deaths will stick, and they come with little fanfare or ceremony. To be charitable, that’s how these things might happen in real life, and I can appreciate it, but we’re also just hitting these various points one after the other so there’s not much time for the audience to react to anything.
I’m increasingly convinced that Young Justice is a show more focused on assembling the pieces of the puzzles than on developing the characters through them. I thought the focus on arcs this season was going to help with that, but with Aqualad and Rocket’s stories, their changes of heart seem to happen mostly by fiat. Likewise, there’s not a ton of character in what’s happening now, with a little intrigue in the arguments between Zod and Zod Jr. over how to deal with the survivors of the House of El, but otherwise not much in the way of character stakes over plot.
And the plot is fine. There’s yet another weightless fight in the Phantom Zone between our heroes and some nameless, practically faceless bad guys. The Justice League reps meeting up with the Legionnaires and Flash helps assemble the team and leads to a couple of brief, but pleasant character moments featuring Phantom girl reuniting with her friends and Superman meeting other survivors of Krypton. The Zods arriving at the Fortress of Solitude is vaguely cool, albeit more from what it means in other works than something established by this show.
Speaking of which, the whole Emerald Empress shtick for Ursa Zod comes completely out of nowhere. I think we’ve seen that eye before, but otherwise, there’s been zero setup for what this means or why it matters or why Ursa would be a good pick for it. It’s just a random power upgrade for no reason.
Oddly, it seems like we’re setting up for a Zod vs. Green Lantern clash at some point, given how so much of the Phantom Zone and Zod’s philosophy is founded on strength of will, which is a key point for the Green Lanterns as well. But they haven't really built to that being a key feature of the battle to come, which, I suppose, won’t really stop the writers if past is prologue.
I’m also still not on board with the Superboy business. I can appreciate the idea that the zone sickness broke him down to his Cadmus programming, but it still feels undermotivated and just odd to this point. As with Brion, a character having their will overridden through science or magic isn’t especially interesting since there’s no agency to it. His fear that he’s killed M’gaan has some juice to it, and I assume she’ll be the key to snapping him out of it, but his whole story has been derailed.
That said, the idea of Zod beaming into Columbus Circle and threatening to have Conner kill Superman on live T.V. is at least a big hook, so I’ll give the episode that. Overall, I keep waiting for this climactic arc to snap into place, and with only one episode to go, it still all feels like a mechanical prelude to the finale rather than a story progressing and building chapter by chapter.
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dul boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no plany Makes ack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dul boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play make Jack a Dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All workand no play maks Jack a dull boy
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
All work and no plany Makes ack a dull boy
All work and no play make Jack a Dull boy
8.5/10
What a
Sensational way
for a new horror trilogy
to kickoff.
With
Talk to me:
Talk 2 me:
Talk to me untitled prequel
Talk to me
is an absolute treat to
Horror fans this is one
of the best Horror movies
of 2023, much much better
than Evil Dead 2023
and definitely a more
entertaining and solid
Horror than the
Insidious franchise
especially
Insidious the red door
2023 where literally the
franchise just goes to
shit at this point.
Talk to me gets it
right on every level
and knows exactly the
story it wants to tell.
Speaking of what a unique,
fresh and interesting story
usually in so many
Teen Horror movies
It's when shit goes sideways
and the spirits start popping
that the good stuff starts
but uniquely these
Numbnuts know exactly
what they are doing
and they are not shy
about it.
(What could go wrong).
The VFX are amazing
and the tension and
scares are awesome,
and the twists and surprises
are wonderful.
what's not to
Love about this kick ass
Horror, I had high expectations
for this gem and it certainly
did not disappoint.
I am absolutely thrilled
I will own this on
Blu Ray before
31st OCTOBER 2023
so I'll be able to do
a rewatch as part of
My 31 days of Horror.
I am even more happy
that this movie is part
of a planned trilogy
with the 3rd installment
being a prequel.
Verdict:
Highly recommended
if you love great Horror
movies then you are
certainly going to love this.
#supportthefranchise
Wtf happened at the end there, what is Shiv's angle? :thinking: They are all making moves without each other: Ken lied to Roman and Shiv about telling Hugo to badmouth their dad in the press, Roman froze out Ken when he went off on Matsson on the cliff, and Shiv is now developing her own relationship with Mattson. These siblings can't work together, can they?
I like how the episode opened with a mirroring scene to Kendall’s original intro in the pilot. When Ken is rocking in the town car to rap, you know he’s back on his bullshit.
“Already rich.”
The Tom/Shiv stuff is so unhealthy.
I think Matsson was lying to Shiv about the blood bricks. He's playing her for sure. He was sounding Shiv out, I think the fact that he plays to her ego right afterwards by commenting how she is cool and like her father indicates some manipulation on Matsson's part.
I thought Toms little speech before that about how America has its own Paris and if that burned down they’d just build another was really good as well, such a perfect summation of a particularly American arrogance.
“I metabolise fast because I’m dynamic.”
“2 meters of nepotism.” is such a brutal insult to Greg. I think the Tom and Greg thing has slipped into self-parody at this point and it’s not really working anymore. Greg has become a pointless character.
“Sweden or Norway they all descend from the same rapists.”
5.4/10. This one was pretty dire. I cannot believe that in an episode about two warring tribes (and a literal snobs vs. slob conflict), they actually uttered the words "I guess we're not so different after all." Sometimes I forget that this is a kids show, and it's nice to have lessons here and there. But this was just the most predictable, generic story about two different communities finding ground imaginable. (Even if it does include the voice of Odo from Deep Space 9!) The one tribe being fastidious proper folks and the other being slovenly warriors is the laziest kind of divide, and the whole "learning to appreciate one another through overcoming a joint obstacles" was hokey as all get out.
The only real saving grace are the competing legend stories of the two communities. While the different perspective on the same event bit has been done to death, I appreciated the fact that the episode used different art styles for each retelling of it as a way to accentuate the different views of the different groups. It's a nice touch. And Aang lying and saying he knew the two patrons who started this whole thing 100 years ago, and that it was nothing, is at least an interesting twist.
But the most part this is just a paint-by-numbers kids show episode, teaching everyone a low-level lesson about differences being skin deep among common mistrustful communities (and shoehorning a rushed dispute and resolution for Katara and Sokka on the same terms.) Pretty weak.
This is fascinating, I loved every second of it. Such a brilliantly written script and Cate Blanchett’s performance deserves every possible accolade, Lydia Tár is one of the best characters I’ve seen in a long time. The way the film tackles pretension, artistic ego and achievement as a veil for perceived integrity, and the abuse of power that results from it really spoke to me. Should artists be held accountable or not? Should we seperate art and artist? What is the effect of cancel culture on art? These are questions I’m currently asking myself, as one of my own favorite artists made anti semetic remarks and alligned himself with highly questionable social movements just a few weeks ago, tanking his own career. I used to be firmly in the camp of seperating the two, but this movie made me reconsider that, which is quite an achievement. An achievement made all the more impressive by the fact that there’s no spoonfeeding going on here. The main character isn’t judged in an obvious way and Todd Field clearly wants you to draw your own conclusions.
Now, the script is super intricate, there’s a lot of technical mumbo jumbo in it. Having a background in music (and music theory) myself, I can honestly say that a lot of that stuff went over my head. I got the impression that parts of it were meant to be satirical, but still: you don’t need to feel stupid if you don’t have a perfect grasp on what all of that means, because it’s not the crux of the story. Your focus should be drawn to the journey of our main character, which is intriguing by itself. It starts out as a drama, but then incorporates elements of psychological thrillers as the film progresses. After the movie finished, I immediately wanted to go back and dissect how we’d gotten to the point where we end up.
The filmmaking is very Fincher-y: it’s cold, impersonal, distant, and it has some of the best one takes you’re going to see this year. It’s confidently slow paced, subtle and the director likes to linger on certain shots for a long time, which will inevitably lead to some of the general audience calling it '''''boring''''', even though it obviously isn’t. In fact, I can even see it winning Oscars in a few technical categories, it’s that exceptional.
9/10
Incredibly beautiful.
I feel like this is what by Sofia Coppola's "Somewhere" aspired to be.
I love the type of slowness depicted: not done out of virtuosism for its own sake, but leaning in on the small, apparently insignificant moments like smoking in a balcony or washing hands - it was done beautifully, in a very personal way that allows you to stay with the character for that second longer that allows you to really see him/her and what they're feeling. Or having that moment for you to fully experience your emotions as well.
So often a character is created through a sum of events and actions and words said, cut after cut - whilst you can learn so much from the silences! Such underrated empathic tool.
As much so as the camera focusing on the character itself (or some body parts: I loved Celine Sciamma's glance on hands in "Portrait of a Lady on fire" for example) as they're performing an action - focused, reading through them the emotions they're feeling rather than by showing the action itself. The bike videogame and the interview were brilliant instances.
The part I was astounded by, tho, was the mastery in showing how important a bond can be in making you pull out a better version of yourself you didn't even expect to be there: when Sophie says "happy birthday" on the bus, it's such a simple act and yet the pinnacle of many small ones that remind Calum of what's really life for.
As a personal note: never underestimate how you can affect loved ones, with a caring word of gesture or by simply being there
Such a movie needs a proper walk home after the cinema to let you thoroughly grasp the feelings it conveyed
[7.4/10] This was basically “Fanservice: The Episode”, in more ways than one, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I got to watch Samurai Jack as one continuous series, so some of the stacked returns here are neat enough, but not so amazingly cheer-worthy as they would be with a thirteen-year absence between outings for the show. Still, I can imagine how cool it must have been for longtime fans to see some of their favorite side characters and one-off personalities make a return engagement.
Don’t get me wrong, it was still fun to see the Woolies, or the Blind Archers, or the techno girl, or Da Samurai, or Demongo, or the other little nods to past Jack adventures. Their reappearance has a little less impact when it’s only been a month or two since you last saw these characters, but it’s still fun to see them back in action, often with their original voice actors, if only to see where they’ve ended up after fifty years of adventures.
But I also appreciate that all of this retracing of steps isn’t just hollow nostalgia. It’s to prove a point -- despite the fact that Jack has lost hope, he’s inspired it in everyone he’s come across. He sees his legacy as one of death and destruction. “The Omen” says as much to him -- that where he goes, men, women, and children perish, and he can bear it no more. But by following his former path and seeing the lives he’s touched, Ashi can report the contrary, that wherever Jack has been, he’s instilled in them the spirit to keep fighting, the hope that Aku can be defeated and there’s better things in this world worth fighting for.
It’s also a big part of her personal journey. She’s turned a little quickly from bile-spewing assassin to true believer, but I do like her hesitance to call Jack a friend mixed with her devotion to finding and saving him. I’ll admit, I’m sure that Tarakovsky and company are excited to be on Adult Swim with much less censorship, but it felt indulgent when the episode depicted Ashi scrubbing herself down to the nude and wrapping herself in a leafy but shapely new outfit. I’m no prude, but there’s something that felt unnecessarily leering about that.
Still, I like that, once again, even for an element of the episode that feels cheesy or contrived, the show makes it meaningful. It’s not just an excuse for the show to depict Ashi in a state of semi-undress. It represents her making an internal change after having been exposed to so many of Jack’s good deeds. It’s a straightforward but still noteworthy example of dramatizing an internal change with an outward one.
At the same time, we have some of the show’s prior broad comedy via Scaramouche. I’ll confess that there’s some solid bits that made me chuckle, and I appreciate the show taking some time to move along the missing magic sword angle on the villain side of the equation. But hopping head shtick did get a little tiresome after a while.
That said, for all the fanservice through most of the episode, I appreciate where the episode ends things. The idea that Jack is ready to commit seppuku, because he feels that he has failed his quest and deserves nothing less, is a heartbreaking one. I also appreciate that Ashi is the one who saves and turns him after he saved and turned her. She reminds him that however hopeless his efforts on his quest have seemed, they were not fruitless. They saved lives, changed hearts, and in her case, made her a better person. Even better, she tells him that those children he thought died in the past episode are alive -- that he didn’t kill them; he saved them.
It’s enough to restore Jack’s faith. It’s been a long, harrowing journey, but his willingness to turn away Death, to turn his sword in defense to save the person who tried so hard to save him, is a satisfying one. He’s not ready to just give in anymore (for now), and the show takes pains to earn that transition for its title character. The quest to find the magic sword once more and set right what went wrong is out in force again. That’s really cool.
The cheesy or pandering parts of this episode still don’t work perfectly for me. (The techno song for one felt off, plus did we get stealth cameos from Popeye and Astro?) But the core of the episode is good, which carries the day.
[7.7/10] I found myself surprisingly compelled by Victor Stone’s story here. I knew Cyborg’s origins from the likes of Teen Titans, Justice League: War, and god help me, Batman v. Superman. So I didn’t expect to be terribly moved by seeing him emerge here.
But this really worked on me. Some of it comes down to the well-sketched relationship between Victor and his father Silas. We get more of Victor as a godo kid who wishes his weather weren’t so distant and showed greater care for his own son, and we see more of Silas as an aloof man who seems to put more stock into his work than his boy. The personal issues between them are standard, but fleshed out enough to matter.
Some of it is the coolness of having Khary Payton (the voice of Cyborg in Teen Titans and others projects), voicing Silas here, giving the story some full circle qualities. Some of it is the graphicness of witnessing what happens to Victor, his exposed skeleton and organs, bloody and murmuring which drives home the horror of the accident that befell him. (And seriously, OSHA needs to do an audit of Star Labs after simply opening a door into a power cable causes an explosion.) Some of it is the desperation of a father turning to an alien device he’s been told is “pure evil” because it might save the son who’s only there for this accident because he wanted to confront that dad who didn't pay enough attention to him.
But I think a lot of it comes from the tremendous performance from Zeno Robinson as Victor. There’s such incredible anger and hurt in his voice when he excoriates his father for his negligence, or laments that he too is a “freak” now. The realness of the performance sells the realness of the moment, and makes this the best Cyborg origin I’ve seen on any screen big or small.
The other stories here are good as well. Seeing Violet and Forager (now dubbed Jason Bugg with two Gs and gifted a human glamor charm from Zatanna) attend their first day of high school is a fun, more low stakes treat. I assume Harper Row turns out to be some important superhero figure given the credits, but for now, I like her as a vaguely Daria-esque punk who welcomes Violet and Forager and treats them with kindness, in contrast to their skeptical classmates. Someone who’s compassionate and accepting of oddballs is always going to win me over, and her sharp sarcastic wit doesn’t hurt either.
I also like the twist that Violet’s stomach ache is connected to Victor’s experience with the fatherbx/ The same indigo light that infuses him in his “murderous” mode overomes Violet when she develops a heretofore unknown indigo aura. The fact that she shows up to cure Victor is the fatherbox’s influence, without necessarily knowing how or why could have been a cheap twist. Instead, it establishes a connection between Halo and New God technology, and provides a reason to bring Cyborg into the fold. In particular, I’m glad that he affirms to his dad that the fatherbox’ influence is gone, but he still wants to get away because his life has been ruined by this accident and he doesn’t want to speak to his dad. Again, what could easily have fallen into melodrama comes off as authentic, which isn’t an easy feat given the high volume approach here.
The same goes for Nightwing’s confrontation with Brion. Geo-Force’s anger over the League not clueing him in as to what’s going on with his sister is natural, and frankly, Dick’s responses aren’t great. But I like Dick diagnosing that Brion’s not really mad at the established superheroes, who he knows are doing all that they can, but rather fixated on other issues involving his brother, his expulsion from his home, and the difficulties of having to be content with “patience.” There are some cliches involved, but I appreciate Nightwing treating the situation seriously and helping Brion see a way forward rather than fixating on the past.
Overall, this one delivers a gripping origin for Cyborg, has fun with the Outsiders’ first day of school, and finds new psychological depths for Brion. Not bad at all.
[9.5/10] They got me. They really did. I believed that Saul would do it, that he would find a way to lie, cheat, and steal out of suffering any real consequences for all the pain and losses he is responsible for. I believed that he would trade in Kim's freedom and chance to make a clean break after baring her soul in exchange for a damn pint of ice cream. I have long clocked Better Call Saul as a tragedy, about a man who could have been good, and yet, through both circumstance and choice, lists inexorably toward becoming a terrible, arguably evil person. I thought this would be the final thud of his descent, selling out the one person on this Earth who loved him to feather his own nest.
Maybe Walt was right when he said that Jimmy was "always like this." Maybe Chuck was right that there something inherently corrupt and untrustworthy in the heart of his little brother. This post-Breaking Bad epilogue has been an object lesson in the depths to which Gene Takovic will stoop in order to feed his addiction and get what he wants. There would be no greater affirmation of the completeness of his craven selfishness and cruelty than throwing Kim under the bus to save himself.
Only, in the end, that's the feint, that's the trick, that's the con, on the feds and the audience. When Saul hears that Kim took his words to heart and turned herself in, facing the punishments that come with it, he can't sit idly by and profit from his own lies and bullshit. He doesn't want to sell her out; he wants to fall on the sword in front of her, make sure she knows that he knows what he did wrong.Despite his earlier protestations that his only regret was not making more money or avoiding knee damage, he wants to confess in a court of law that he regrets the choices that led him here and the pain he caused, and most of all he regrets that they led to losing her.
In that final act of showmanship and grace, he lives up to the advice Chuck gives him in the flashback scene here, that if he doesn't like the road that his bad choices have led him, there's no shame in taking a different path. Much as Walt did, at the end of the line, Saul admits his genuine motives, he accepts responsibility for his choices after years of blame and evasion. Most of all, he takes his name back, a conscious return to being the person that Kim once knew, in form and substance. It is late, very late, when it happens, but after so much, Jimmy uses his incredible skills to accept his consequences, rather than sidestep them, and he finds the better path that Kim always believed he could walk, one that she motivates him to tread.
It is a wonderful finale to this all-time great show. I had long believed that this series was a tragedy. It had to be, given where Jimmy started and where the audience knew Saul ended. But as it was always so good at doing, Better Call Saul surprised me, with a measured bit of earned redemption for its protagonist, and moving suggestion that with someone we care for and who cares of us, even the worst of us can become someone and something better. In its final episode, the series offered one more transformation -- from a tale of tragedy, to a story of hope.
(On a personal note, I just want to say thank you to everyone who read and commented on my reviews here over the years. There is truly no show that's been as rewarding for me to write about than Better Call Saul, and so much of that owes to the community of people who offered me the time and consideration to share my thoughts, offered their kind words, and helped me look at the series in new ways with their thoughtful comments. I don't know what the future holds, but I am so grateful to have been so fortunate as to share this time and these words with you.)
EDIT: One last time, here is my usual, extended review of the finale in case anyone's interested -- https://thespool.net/reviews/better-call-saul-series-finale-recap-saul-gone/
Altough I'm german I rarely check out german TV shows. The last one was Deutschland 83 and that was like two years ago. Germany just hasn't figured TV out yet but that's another discussion.
When I heard Netflix was producing a german show I just had to check it out because Netflix has a great track record so far and Germany does have talent infront and behind the camera. But overall I think this show just fell flat. Good, but nothing great.
Fantastic visuals that are shot very beatifull, the actors IMO are mostly great and the music/score can be beautiful but often gets obnoxious. But unfortunetly there are too many characters that are hard to keep track off which distracts from the story.
The story is already confusing enough even without trying to keep up with the many characters over different decades and it heavily sets up future seasons without answering a lot of questions about this one and just left me unsatisfied at the end.
Still worth watching tough IMO and very bingeable similarly to Stranger Things.
But if you do watch it then choose the subbed version. I checked out the dub really quick and it sounded horrible. And also don't browse your phone as you might do on other shows. You're going to miss so much important shit.
EDIT after Season 2:
I'm not actually sure what just happened and what I think about it. But the one thing I'm sure of is that the casting in this show is absolutely phenomenal. The actors look so much like their younger counterparts that I'm not fully convinced they aren't actually related.
Plus the cinematography is still fantastic and the music monatages are really beautiful (and they got rid of those obnoxious sound effects).
And altough the story is still very confusing I found it more easier to follow and more engaging than Season 1 because I now know all the charcters and their background. And it seems that the writers had this all planned out and aren't just making shit up as they go.
Changed my rating from 8 to 9.
EDIT after my first rewatch just before S3 is released.
Changing my rating again. This time to a 10. After S1 I thought it was good but confusing show (8), after S2 I thought it was great and really well thought out one (9). Now after rewatching both seasons for the first time I think the show is fucking masterpiece. (10). Once you can watch it without being confused and actually knowing what is happening your just in awe throughout all of it.
If they stick the landing with season 3 it could be up there with the best ever.
EDIT after Season 3
Masterpiece. Simple as that.
Writing. Directing. Cinematography. Casting. Acting. Soundtrack. Everything is perfect.
I'm going to miss the beautiful music montages at the end.
[8.5/10] So I’ll admit, I thought the first part of this one was cool but kind of empty. Normally, Samurai Jack gives us a little context for whatever Jack’s quest of the week is. So while the sequences of seeing him dodge spikes and leap over lava were visually cool, it felt like a random bit of Legend of Zelda-style dungeon crawling without much of a motivation behind it.
That said, as always, the design and animation was all really cool. I love the look of the different lands Jack makes his way through, from the windswept plains at the opening, to the blackened hills in the middle, to the magma-infused caverns that make up the bulk of the episode. This is also a great episode for sound design. The whistling of insects, the slow crunch of his footsteps, and the tumble of rocks all make these settings come alive. And the music fits the epicness of the confrontation that follows.
But things really go up a notch in this episode when Jack confronts the titular Lava Monster. I love what follows, where Jack refuses to fight for “amusement” only to learn the monster’s tragic story. The engraved rock that tells the story of his Norse-inspired people being conquered by Aku is a great way to communicate his backstory, and allows the show to get even more creative in how it visually conveys ideas in the episode.
I also love the lava monster’s motivation. The idea that he wants to die a warrior’s death, that Aku tortured him by denying him that, and that he built this obstacle course to find a great warrior worthy of a fight that could send him to Valhalla is a really cool and mythic one. There’s a nobility and tragedy to his quest, and Jack finding the honor in going against him after hearing his story is a great beat.
I love what follows when Jack defeats his foe. The decay and gratitude of the Norseman beneath that rock is touching as hell. The impressionistic vision of valkyries carrying him to Valhalla and letting him ascend with the gods is beautiful. And Jack completing his story on the stone to let them know that he is free is a lovely touch.
Overall, this one starts out as a cool but kind of hollow video game obstacle course. But it blossoms into an epic, mythos-filled story about one man’s quest to live and die by his own code, and the long-awaited deliverance from a curse. Really cool.
This is an episode about life and death. Tony and Carmella talk about Tony getting a vasectomy, about his ability to create more life. And Tony berates and then makes peace with A.J., the life that he created. At the same time, Christopher experiences a vision or a dream or something that makes him think he saw hell, and it prompts everyone to think about what comes next, even Paulie, who takes things so literally that he has his sentence in purgatory calculated and is trying to pay the priest protection money.
It's also an episode where everyone's justifying what they do and what they have to do. Tony sees himself as a soldier and "soliders don't go to hell." Paulie imagines his time in purgatory in relation to eternity. Even Melfi is justifying to herself continuing to see Tony even though she seems to know on some subconscious level that it's a dead end and compromises her "ethically and professionally."
And Tony and Pussy have their "Avon and Stringer on the Balcony" moment together. That and the scene with Tony and AJ were very affecting. Not to mention the looks exchanged by Tony and Carmella where nothing really is said, but despite her moral reservations, Carmella is grateful that Tony avenged Christopher. There's something hanging over the episode - Christopher coming close to death seems to pull the fragility of everything into focus for the lot of them, but it's not enough for any of them to really change. At the end, Carmella implicitly endorses her husband's lifestyle, and the angels are watching, and maybe waiting.
[9.0/10[ An incredibly tense hour of television. What's so impressive is that Better Call Saul accomplished this despite us knowing that, of course, Jimmy and Gus both survive. It comes down to such fantastic performances from everyone involved. You immediately buy how shaken and terrified Jimmy and Kim are, and how frightened even the normally steady Gus is at the point of Lalo's gun. Vince Gilligan's direction is outstanding, with a Hitchcockian flair for light and shadow that sets the foreboding mood of all these set pieces. And the score does the rest, helping the audience to feel the emotion of these scenes even if we rationally know the fates of several of those at the most risk.
My only mild beef is that Gus' survival feels like a bit of a cheat. It's still not clear to me why he did the gun in the superlab, and the dialogue kind of shrugs at the idea. Even in the dark, it seems like Lalo would have done better against Fring than he did. But details like Fring seeming to make one last desperate ploy to survive, still suffering wounds despite his body armor, and admitting he was over his skiis with this whole thing in the end helps make it passable. On a moment-to-moment basis, the scenes absolutely work, which covers for a lot.
What struck me the most is that closing image -- Howard and Lalo, two very different men, sharing the same fate and the same grave. It's a sign that the barrier between Jimmy's legal life and Saul's criminal life has been firmly shattered. Both lives, both worlds, are bound up in these deaths now, with the psychic weight hanging over Jimmy and Kim for the last five episodes. This never happened, but they, and Mike, will all still have to live with it. I can't wait to see how.
EDIT: If you'd like to read my usual, longer review of the episode, you can find it here -- https://thespool.net/reviews/tv-recap-better-call-saul-season-6-episode-8/
[9.1/10] Where in god’s name did Lois Smith come from and why isn’t she in everything? I’m not sure I can recall a better one-episode character. Smith walks in, takes a difficult role that has to stand in for both the manifestation of the marital issues that Philip and Elizabeth are dealing with, and as the moral center of the show in just a handful of scenes and monologues, and she absolutely knocks it out of the park.
It’s probably too much to call “Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep” a bottle episode. It’s not the most wide-ranging outing The Americans has ever had, but you have the subplot with Stan and Oleg, and wrap-arounds with Martha and Hans that mean it’s not just a one-room story. And yet, wide swaths of the episode take place in the machine repair shop, where it’s basically just Elizabeth and Betty, talking about their lives, and halfway summarizing the core of the season and maybe the series.
That core comes from an essential drift between Elizabeth and Philip, manifested by a closeness that’s emerging in their fake, or at least less real relationships. There is a trust between “Clark” and Martha, to where after everything, the lies and the realization of the position he put her in, she’s still informing on her FBI coworkers. When it comes time for Gabriel to decide what to do with the knowledge that the Bureau knows about the bugged pen, he agrees with Philip that Martha can be trusted, because she’d do anything for him.
The same is true for Elizabeth and Hans. When Elizabeth tells her young trainee that he can’t stay in the game since their mark from the last episode saw him, he responds. He kills the young man that the Jennings spared (so much for second chances), to tie up that loose end. He speaks in soaring rhetoric about doing it for his country, but he also says it’s so that he can keep working with Elizabeth. He is so into this, so into her, that he’s willing to kill for it.
There’s a level of devotion and trust in Martha and Hans that’s missing between Philip and Elizabeth at this point in their relationship. The season has belabored the point at times, but the issue with Paige has divided them, and each is wondering if they’ll ever be able to get back to some semblance of normalcy and mutual understanding again.
That’s where Betty comes in. It’s a television convention and cliché to have a character we’ve never seen before conveniently start recounting their life story in a way that directly rates to the themes of the episode. But that’s what makes it so damn impressive how well this works here. Betty’s stories of her life, of her husband being affected by what he’s seen, of her shock that Elizabeth is a mother who does evil things, are compelling in the moment in a way that excuses the slick television writerliness of it all.
I think my favorite part was the revelation that Betty and her beloved Gil had been divorced and remarried, with another wife in between. It’s a little on the nose, but her talking about the pair no longer having “sugar in their eyes” and no more fights about “not being what I want rather than what you are” feels like the wistful wisdom that the Jennings need. The sense of her husband having lost his religion given what he’d seen at war, how that haunted him, gives it an extra resonance for a pair of communists who do harsh things on a weekly basis. Just writing it, it sounds cheesy as hell, but in action, you 100% buy it as the remembrances of a woman who realizes that this is the end of her life.
That’s the other part that makes this one so piercing -- Betty’s death her feels so tragic and, though no one lays a hand on her, brutal. When Philip says, “She picked a bad night,” there’s a senselessness to it. This woman isn’t the enemy of the Russian government. She’s just in the way. That makes it feel unfair that she has to die, just so a mail robot can be tampered with without anyone knowing.
But it gives Elizabeth a chance to be honest about who she is with someone who can’t tell her tales, to offer a form of confession to someone who psychologically stands in for her own sick mother. And it gives Betty an excuse to tell her life story to her killer, because she has no one else to tell it to. There is a symbiosis here that reverberates between the two of them even though Elizabeth is very taciturn here, alternating between that dead-eyed menace that Keri Russell is frighteningly good at and the wounded doe look she takes on as things get harder.
Things get harder when Betty asks if Elizabeth has children, and when she confesses that she does, and explains, to Betty’s horror, that she does this to make the world a better place, Betty replies, hauntingly, that that’s what evil people do to excuse their deeds. It’s another brick in the wall of Elizabeth and Philip wrestling with their morality of their mission and profession, and of whether or not to bring Paige into this world.
That’s given extra force with Betty’s stomach-wrenching death. It’s easy to get into skirmishes with equal and opposite spooks or FBI agents who have guns and plans to ruin your life. But this is just a kindly, moral, old woman. The gasping, disoriented, disturbingly normal way in which she perishes from an overdose of her heart medication pierces us, and pierces Elizabeth as well in its frankness.
It’s the kind of thing I like, and the thing that television does like no other medium. Here is a whole story, a whole life, in miniature, that doesn't move the plot or shift any of the story’s heavy machinery (the mailroom robot excepted). It’s just there to move us, to make the characters think, to leave wisps of doubt and regret in their minds that may float behind their eyes at the next killing or the next time they hug their kids goodnight or the next time they fall asleep together. It’s all because of one extended sit down with an old woman, who reflects Elizabeth’s life back at her in a way far more frank and honest than this veteran spy is used to in her world of layers of lies and codes and meanings that are frustratingly, but sometimes comfortingly, below the surface.
[7.4/10] We’re only three episodes into this season of The Americans, but already we have a few recurring motifs. One of them is entirely unsurprising -- the continuing debate over whether or not to start grooming Paige to be a member of the KGB. All of Season 2 basically existed to set up this dilemma, and so it’s natural that the show would pick it up and follow the issue into the next season.
The catch is that it’s getting to be time for the show to either advance that storyline or put it on the back burner. At this point, we firmly get that Elizabeth and Philip feel differently about this idea, and it’s driving a wedge between them. We get that the Centre wants Paige to be brought into the fold, and is unlikely to take no for an answer. It’s not like these are bad notes to play or anything, but we’re starting to reach the point where either there needs to be some real movement in that subplot, or the show needs to move it to the background for a little while so it can simmer while other issues are coming to a boil.
But that connects to a couple of other motifs that have been surprisingly prominent in Season 3. One of those is close calls. Obviously The Americans is not shy about putting the Jenningses in danger, or forcing them to come up with daring or ingenious or occasionally horrifying ways to get out of seemingly impossible situations, a la Walter White.
The difference is that this season, it feels like the FBI’s net is tightening around the Jenningses, and around Elizabeth in particular. She’s the one who had to get into a fist fight with Agent Gaad and Agent Aderholt to get out of a sticky situation with a woman she thought was a CIA informant. And here, by dint of being the driver, she’s the one being tracked by the CIA after she and Philip try to monitor a member of the CIA’s Afghan group, and Philip’s able to tuck and roll his way out of danger.
That cat and mouse does three things for The Americans. First, it lets the show set up another tense confrontation. Again, this show hasn’t necessarily shown enough chutzpah in the past to where we can really believe that Elizabeth will be caught for real three episodes into the season. But the music, editing, and plotting of the situation are so good that even if you know Elizabeth is likely to make it out of his situation unscathed, you’re on the edge of your seat trying to figure out how she’s going to make that happen. Everything from the radio receiver drop, to the countdown until go-time, to the crash and run and hyperventilation that follows, makes for a superb sequence.
Second, it gives The Americans time to more fully introduce Agent Aderholt. We don’t know much about Aderholt, beyond that he seems to be Amador’s replacement. But “Open House” gives us a few details. For one thing, he’s a little sweet on Martha, which is encouraging since she continues to be in an unwittingly loveless marriage with Philip, one where a very different version of the kid issue is at play. For another, he is by the book and a little old school, not wanting to use the automatic file transfer bot because it’s less time to hand-deliver a known file than to track down a lost one.
And last but not least, we learn that he understands what the FBI is dealing with in the form of the “illegals.” All it took was one encounter with Elizabeth for him to deter any inclination to take her lightly. He’s the one who figures out how loose the CIA’s dragnet on Elizabeth is, and t’s his encouragement, his boldness with his boss, that persuades the CIA to try to drop the hammer on her rather than continue following her and hope something bigger shakes out. It’s a brief introduction, but it’s effective to show who this guy is and what he’s about.
Third, that close call once again underlines why Philip is so nervous about letting Paige into this world. I’ve written about the dangers the Jenningses face on a daily basis, and the fear of exposing their children to that plenty before, but suffice it to say, Elizabeth coming this close to being ensnared by the Americans and taken away from everyone she loves drive home what’s at stake for the people who become soldiers in this war.
So does the other odd recurring motif so far this season -- pretty brutal, bone-crunching scenes. There’s a moment of relief, of tenderness from the previously frosty Philip once Elizabeth returns home after the close shave. But that moment quickly transitions to a much more harrowing, if strangely no less intimate, moment where Philip is forced to perform some field dentistry on Elizabeth’s worsening jaw.
(As an aside, I’m willing to handwave it, but it seems odd that the Jennings have to resort to pliers in the garage when we’ve seen the KGB bring out ruskie-friendly medical professionals for their assets before. But whatever.)
The extraction is a well-shot, but hard to watch scene. The look on Philip and Elizabeth’s eyes, the crunch of bone, the sight of blood, the image of Elizabeth stopping her husband but then grasping his shirt in the midst of the procedure, all wordlessly convey the combination of determination, necessity, and horror that mark this late night example of the prices the Jenningses, Elizabeth in particular, continue to pay in the same of their cover and their mission.
It’s not hard to see why this sort of experience would give Philip and Elizabeth pause about the idea of their daughter doing the same thing. Philip sees the same quiet strength in his daughter, the ability for her to be okay with things that are not okay, that he does in his wife, and it makes him angry and afraid. It leaves him upset enough to throw figurative dirt in his handler and old friend Gabriel’s face (after a revealing, bluff-heavy, and overmatched game of Scrabble that was laden with symbolism).
The Paige story may need to be advanced or put on the back burner, but Season 3 of The Americans is, at the very least, offering plenty of reasons for Philip and Elizabeth to have reservations about the issue. Who knows if those recurring motifs -- the close calls, the crunching body parts -- that feel like warnings will be enough to resolve the continuing question of Paige’s involvement in her parents’ second lives, or if they’re just portents for what awaits her down the road.
(As an aside, I was pretty nonplussed by the very brief story about Oleg having an out back to Russia but choosing to stay in America. If we never saw him again, I wouldn’t cry any tears. That said, I was more compelled by Elizabeth having admitted “chemistry” with the young TA she’s training in espionage, but putting the young man off because she doesn't want to mess things up with Philip, even as he’s fairly cold to her.)
[9.1/10] I use a lot of hyperbole when writing about this show, but the sequence where Leslie & Co. try to make it across the ice and get Leslie on stage is one of, if not the, funniest bits of physical comedy in the entire series, and maybe any series.
It’s just such a perfect disaster: the gang awkwardly shuffling on the ice, the dog peeing on Ron, Andy taking a spill, the red carpet not going far enough, the miniature stage, Leslie’s attempts to get on the stage, Leslie’s attempts to give a speech, Leslie’s attempts to wave and try to talk on ice at the same time, Pistol Pete’s miserable attempt at a dunk, and god help us, the constant repetition of the “get on your feet” song. It’s just a wonderful cornucopia of things going wrong and it’s a perfectly edited sequence.
It represents the ramshackle ways Leslie’s campaign is getting started as they try to make it on their own. The amateurish quality of it is brilliant, as is the way it both shows how big of an underdog Leslie really is and the need for her to bring Ben and his know-how onto the team.
Speaking of which, his attempts to dive into his hobbies are hilarious. There’s something great about him committing to the calzone idea or stop-motion animation (which is such a perfectly Ben Wyatt interest), and then realizing how little he’s actually accomplished. Chris recognizing that Ben’s depressed, even when Ben didn’t is a nice touch that shows their friendship, and it’s the push Ben needs to get back to doing something beyond indulging his hobbies.
There’s lots of great laughs, particularly with the team of Ron, Andy, April, and Tom getting pulled over by the cops. It’s such a great ensemble, and I’d forgotten that this was there they added Champion to the mix. (Ann’s line about him being terrible at digging was superb.)
Overall, one of the all-time funniest scenes in the show and some solid advancement for both the characters and the campaign arc make this one excellent.
[9.0/10] The beauty of science fiction is that, in the right hands, it can tell stories that other genres can’t. Strip away the limitations of fact, unleash the powers of imagination, and you can conjures worlds and situations that the poor metes and bounds of the real world cannot sustain. But in the best hands, the absence of those limitations, the combination of fiction and abstraction, allows an author and an audience to reach truths that even the most poignant, most trenchant cut of reality cannot match.
So when Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons imagined a god, a living embodiment of quantum entanglement, they used him to explore the bitter ironies of causality. They traced the lines of cause and effect, jumbled through one man’s life, to find the knotted ends of detachment and transcendence amid omniscience turned predestination. Jon Osterman had, like others before him, come unstuck in time. And his creators, like others before then, used his temporal dilation to explicate the human condition in ways that linear storytelling would not allow.
Jeff Jensen & Damon Lindelof use it to tell a story about love and about creation, and about how both create a yearning for something that is fated to be gone. Love is what motivates Dr. Manhattan to create his paradise: a glass jar, a comforting home, and the two people who first showed him what resolute joy looks like. He constructs them to want only to spur that same joy in others, rather than hoard it for themselves, but it leaves one of the originals bereft of a creator who abandoned him, and his many copies hurt, in their firm and upright way, that their master wants to leave them. And it’s what cause him and Angela Abar to forge a life together, a joining of two into one that, unlike the “everything” Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias one spoke of, must not only end, but end tragically.
Watchmen takes advantage of Jon Osterman’s scattered, all-at-once experience of the timeline to channel those ideas. The frame story is what amounts to his and Angela’s first date -- a series of predictions and parlor tricks that warn her everything that’s to come, in sufficiently vague terms, with the knowledge that they’ll be enough to bring them together. Some things he keeps hidden. Some things he allows Angela to arrive at on her own. But either way, he does so with the knowledge of where they will lead, because he’s experienced their past and their future and their present, or rather, he’s experiencing them all right now.
Jensen & Lindelof justify the series’s biggest twist by how maddening it would be to love something like that. Why would a god abandon his life, confine himself to a mortal? Maybe he would do it, in a bizarre sort of way, as “a Zeus thing.” Maybe it’s the one sort of risk he can take to show the woman he cares for that he would sacrifice for her, that he’d give up paradise for her, that he’d live with fear again for her. The transition from Jon to Cal is a leveling, one that requires a great deal to earn ten years of love.
Watchmen likewise had a number of narrative bills that were coming due. We needed to know why Adrian Veidt was on Europa and what the hell was going on there. We needed to know why a god would wrap himself in a mortal’s bones and sinew. We needed to know what motivated Reeves to go on this crusade. And against all odds, “A God Walks Into Abar” has roundly satisfying answers.
Europa is the paradise that Ozymandias thought he wanted, the chance to be adored that he trades for the answer to Dr. Manhattan’s desire to be closer to the woman he loves, and not lose her like he did Laurie. The servants there are his effort to create life, to find a gentler world, amid the larger creation motifs and allegories the episode unleashes with regularity. Dr. Manhattan chooses to become human again to give his romance with Angela the opportunity to blossom. And over the course of ten years, Veidt’s liberation-turned-gilded cage, and the Abar’s love and life together, are each allowed to blossom in a way that fits the other puzzle pieces that Watchmen has laid down.
But not all of it fits so neatly. When it comes time to explore how Reeves became involved in all this, “A God Walks into Abar” chooses to make Dr. Manhattan a conduit, a channel between two people who barely understand one another’s existence, and inadvertently (or purposely) allows them to start something that will bring all of them to the present moment. But instead of the other events, which cloak some certain effect in the future with some mention of its cause in the present, the time-shifted exchange between Reeves and his granddaughter is sui generis. It is a stable time loop, one where it’s impossible to say who initiated the knowledge of Judd Crawford that starts all of this, if anyone did.
It is a paradox, the sort which not even Dr. Manhattan can resolve. But it’s not the one that moves him. Instead, it’s the fact that Angela tries to save him even when told, by a man that sees the future, that she cannot. It is the moment that he falls in love with her, and yet it is both the last moment they share and the thing that spurs him to seek out the first one. It is a paeon to the inscrutability of love, the incomprehensibility of creation in this sorry universe, where misbehaving quantum particles tie parts of us together across time and space, far beyond our comprehension and outside our control.
“A God Walks into Abar” writes a bit too much this on the screen, letting Dr. Manhattan’s trademark first person narration and a few writerly monologues do some of the heavy lifting where the situations forged do enough of that on their own. But it also realizes its ideas in a way that only this type of fantastical story can: the unknowableness of something emerging seemingly from nothing, whether it’s a man or a world, and the irrevocable pull of love between two people, that causes us to take risks, to make sacrifices, and do everything in our power to reassure and protect, even when fate itself stands in our way.
(Two asides for things that didn’t fit in this review: 1. This was Jeremy Irons’s best episode and his scene with Dr. Manhattan was incredible and 2. My bet is that whoever eats that damn waffle, containing the same egg Manhattan made on his first date with Angela, inherits his powers, and my money’s on their son.)
[9.1/10] Jean Smart is a revelation. Her Laurie Blake has a Dr. House-like aura, far from the semi-naive young woman following in her mother’s footsteps, she is the uber-competent, seen-it-all, as cynical as she is capable representative of the old guard. “She Was Killed by Space Junk” puts a lot on Laurie’s shoulders, and a lot on Smart’s shoulders, and the result is Watchmen’s best episode yet.
What makes the character's entrance work is that she is both a bridge to the original Watchmen story in the most direct way yet, but also someone who can offer a different perspective on the main story of this new series. So far, despite our sojourns to visit Veidt and the occasional flashback to Germany, this series has treated Tulsa as the whole world, with all of the events, political intrigue, unrest, and character having their lives orbit this one community and its larger tensions.
Bringing in Laurie Blake, the daughter of the original Silk Spectre and The Comedian and the head of the FBI’s anti-vigilante task force, as the feds’ representative to investigate Sheriff Crawford’s death, helps pull back our perspective a bit.
We see someone who treats Keane Jr. (who, I’m a little ashamed to admit, I just now realized is likely the son of the author of the original anti-superhero act) with contempt for his ambition and politicking rather than admiration and respect. We see someone who cuts through the protective veneer that the Tulsa police force has erected around itself, quickly getting secret identities, “racist detectors”, and closed ranks local communities in and intuitive, almost causal way. And we see someone who casts explicit doubt on masked cops being any different than the masks vigilantes she’s developed a sincere contempt for over the years.
So much of Watchmen’s early going has been steeped in Angela’s perspective on this community, on the threat the police are responding to, and on its major players. By filtering this now-familiar world through Laurie’s perspective, someone who comes with the authority of being an original Watchmen lead character out-of-universe and her family history in it, it gives the whole situation a different spin. Like the feds descending on a town with very specific power balances and investigating a ground-shaking murder in Twin Peaks, Laurie and her junior associate arriving in Tulsa gives us one more reason to question the rightness of what’s going here, on either side of the thin blue line.
In a much more direct sense, we’re left to wonder what’s going on either side of Adiran Veidt’s property. To be frank, “She Was Killed by Space Junk” more or less stops dead in the middle to check in with him. We see our most tactile outing with “the smartest man in the world” yet, watching as he draws up blueprints, sews and severs, and eventually creates a suit for one of his automatons to “explore the great beyond.’ That is, until, the experiment fails and his efforts to rectify it leave him running afoul of “The Game Warden.”
That leads me to my (admittedly somewhat out there theory): What if Ozymandias is on Mars? What if Veidt’s “captivity” as described in the letter, is him being transported somewhere by Dr. Manhattan, the erstwhile game warden, so as not to be subject to any threats or investigations on Earth. And now, Veidt is trying to test the limits of his gilded cage and see if he can make it out of his enclosure. There’s a bizarre, separateness to every part of Veidt’s story so far, something that seems itching for a big reveal to let everything fall into place, and that’s the best stab I can make at it so far.
But apart from my grand theorizing, Veidt’s interlude still seems like a detour from the major story of the episode in the from of Laurie arriving in Tulsa, sizing up Angela, and proving herself a formidable presence in the town and in the series. Part of how the show establishes that is with some of its best action sequences and most taught moments of tension.
That comes in the early scene, where Laurie smokes out a Batman-esque masked adventurer by tipping him off to a bank robbery, having her team be the bank robbers, and then springing the trap on him. It’s a great way to establish Laurie’s take-no-crap bona fides, her ability to get into the heads of the vigilantes, and her brutal sense of justice with her willingness to shoot the target in the back (with the implication that she didn’t necessarily know his body armor would stop the bullet).
And you see it at Sheriff Crawford’s funeral, where a member of the Seventh Kavalry (explicitly made a Klan equivalent in the text), tries to hold Senator Keane Jr. hostage with a suicide vest he claims is connected to his heart. Laurie doesn't hesitate, just grabs the ankle-holstered gun she snuck in and pops the guy in the head, with the bullet inches away from the senator. Turns out the hostage-taker was telling the truth, and Angela has to drag his corpse into the grave and push Crawford’s coffin on top of it to stifle the explosion. It’s a hell of a set piece, showing the two women’s capabilities when they work together, even if their exchange later in the episode shows them at odd.
But it also shows Laurie in line with someone unexpected -- her father. The woman we meet decades after the events of the original comic has taken her father’s surname, and with it, his worldview. Like her dad, she now works for the government, calling masked adventurers “jokes” and does the bidding of the FBI. Like her dad, she thinks all of the noble-minded vigilanteism is bullshit. And like her dad, she’s seen too much, done too much, lost too much, that to be anything but caustic would be too painful.
That’s why the piece de resistance of “She Was Killed by Space Junk” is the frame element of the episode, where Laurie tells a joke (well, technically two jokes) to Dr. Manhattan through a box that’s theoretically sending the message to him on Mars. It sums up her nihilism, where no matter whether you’ve done good, done bad, or don’t recognize the distinction, everyone’s going to hell anyway, so you may as well act accordingly.
Her tears on the phone, her final laugh at the absurdity of the car that falls out of the sky, signify the ascendance of someone who still remembers falling in love with Jon Osterman, who still laments that Dan Dreiberg is (apparently) in jail, and who has assumed the mantle of The Comedian, in deed if not in name. The original Watchmen was about the toll that a life of masked adventuring would actually take on the heroes we so admired in the comics pages. “She Was Killed by Space Junk”, then, is about the toll the events of Watchmen would take on the people who lived through it. Through the character of Laurie, and Smart’s tremendous performance, we see The Comedian’s legacy rearing its ugly head, long after the man himself, and the events his death spurred, have been laid to rest.
Swerve swerve swerve. I can't say I'm surprised, it's what Westworld is known for however this felt less organic then before and more like we were intentionally lead down the wrong path just to have the big revelation in the end that we were wrong. Problem is none of it was surprising or inspiring, it didn't make you go "oh what???" like in season 1 when we found out William was the man in black, it just made you go oh whatever...
Maeve switched sides, saw that coming. Dolores wanted to save humanity now? Please... There's a man in black robot? Already knew that, don't care what comes from it. Don't believe Dolores is really dead, don't care if she isn't, don't believe William is either, don't care if he isn't. William didn't end up saving anything, Hale is a bitch again. The only real emotional part of the episode was seeing Bernard visit Arnold's family and that still wasn't even that spectacular. Bernard has the key... to what exactly? Everyone got their catch phrase in. This episode just showed the show's gone on too long and the story is all over the place. To think it's going to keep going feels more like a chore then something to be excited for. With any mercy they end this thing with a 3 or 4 episode arch in season 4 and be done with it.
Alas Westworld, this pain is all I have left of you.
