I am incredibly grateful to Game of Thrones for this adventure I have found myself sucked into for some years now. I am grateful for all the emotions it brought me since day one, bitter and sweet alike. I am grateful for all the laughs, all the tears, all the jokes and gags, every single bit of it, I really am grateful and appreciative of it all. It's been just... wonderful.
That said, I am feeling robbed and betrayed right about now. This ending is arguably one of the worst series finales in the history of television and trust me I realize how bold of a statement that is. The terrible violations the characters have suffered this season, the lack of proper resolution to many of the plots and narratives developed over seasons worth of buildup, the seeking of shock value at the expense of quality writing... that and much much more solidified this as an absolute disappointment of a finale, as opposed to the marvel wrap it could've given this cultural phenomenon.
This episode does have its positives, as always the score, acting and cinematography are perfectly performed but I just do not think it's nearly enough to compensate for how lackluster the writing has been, as much as I wish they did. Oh well, sad as it may be, I'll just hold on to the good stuff and hope that GRRM's book, once finished, will tackle the ending in a more coherent, more respectful and more meaningful way. It's been real y'all...
P.S: I'll leave this here lest some people jump me again. This comment is a representation of my own personal opinion, I am entitled to one just as all of you are. If you enjoyed this season and felt this finale delivered what you were looking for then more power to you mate, but that doesn't nullify my opinion nor does it make yours any valid. If you want to discuss or challenge my views, I'd be more than happy to engage you on that basis but if all you have to offer are petty remarks then please keep them to yourself.
"iF yOu ThInK tHiS hAs A hApPy eNDinG, yOu hAvEn'T beEN pAyInG aTteNtIOn"
Literally everyone except Daenerys got a happy clean ending.
This episode and this season as a whole have been a complete and utter disaster. the decline of storytelling quality from the last seasons is shocking. The show is barely recognizable at this point.
A character who wasn't a contender for the throne ended up on it even though they have done absolutely nothing this whole season, had lots of potential to make for a very interesting role but was ignored and swept aside then suddenly elected king.
Daenerys's character being completely butchered as she was turned from someone who never showed the slightest disregard to innocents' safety to someone who commits mass genocide and shows no remorse afterwards, all in the span of 2 episodes.
So many character arcs were neglected or wrapped up poorly. Jon being reduced to a secondary character with a combination of three sentences of dialogue, Jaime's development being thrown out the window, Cersei barely doing anything and then getting killed by bricks, Tyrion, the master tactician, turning to a gossiping idiot then getting promoted after he quits his job (seriously?)
So many plot points were discarded or turned out insignificant. Azor Ahai, Jon's lineage, The Lord of Light, Cersei's prophecy...etc
The whole White Walkers storyline being eliminated in one episode, then the whole Iron Throne storyline being eliminated as well in the end (FFS)
So much shit not making the slightest bit of sense. Dany's army multiplying, Arya's impenetrable plot armor, The North getting the independence while the Iron Islands didn't when they were the first ones to demand it, Drogon not killing Jon after he killed Daenerys, hell, the Dothraki and the Unsullied not killing Jon after he killed Daenerys, The point of the Night's Watch now that the WW are gone. Tyrion being in chains and holding up a presidential vote over who would run the 6 republics. HBO c'mon man.
Overall the pacing was too fast and inconsistent, the ending was rushed, anti-climactic and nonsensical. This couldn't have ended in a worse way. Kudos to D&D!
Sometimes you have to cross a line. Sometimes, you do everything right; you do everything the way you believe that it should be done, and you still lose. Your forbearance, your good deeds, your extra effort to do the right thing, only enabled the bad guys, only let them profit from their misbehavior. So you have to make compromises. You have break some of the rules yourself; you have to sully yourself by playing their game; you have to be like the bad guys to beat the bad guys, for the greater good.
These are the thoughts motivating Mike Ehrmantraut as he wraps his hands around the rifle he'd previously shied away from. But they're the same ones going through Chuck's head as he tricks his brother into incriminating himself on tape.
Mike has a code. He doesn't want to kill people. His shaky hand after his run-in with Hector's henchmen shows he doesn't even want to hurt people. And he certainly doesn't want an innocent person to come to harm because of a choice he makes. But as Asimov explored in the short stories involving his Three Laws of Robotics, sometimes these principles conflict; sometimes they pull a person in different directions and force them to make some hard choices.
The eminently capable Mr. Ehrmantraut tried to abide by his no-kill policy, and still deliver a blow to his erstwhile rival. He tried to exact his vengeance on Hector in a way that would take the crime boss out of the picture, but also keep the innocents out of harm's way, and insulate himself and his family from the Salamancas' reach. Instead, it all goes sideways. Bad luck keeps the cops off of Hector's trail. A Good Samaritan loses their life in the exchange. And the man Mike went to great lengths to leave still kicking is summarily executed in the desert.
Mike tried. He tried very, very hard to have his cake and eat it too, to earn the money that he thinks will help him buy his soul back after the death of his son, to dip his toe in the mud without getting too dirty. He tried, and he lost anyway.
So it's come to this -- a sniper's nest overlooking a Salamanca hideout in the harshness of the New Mexico desert. His silent vow not to take a life, his distaste for snuffing out another man's existence, have to be put aside. More harm will be done--at least in the final tally--if he doesn't violate that code. He buys the sort of weapon he turned down the last time he considered killing a Salamanca. He sets up from his far away vantage point, to where his enemies seem to be in miniature -- tiny lives off in the distance. He lines up his shot. And he waits.
Then, that pesky moral code comes back again. At the moment of truth, Nacho stands between him and Hector. The greater good says do it. The pure utilitarian says that Hector will continue to inflict misery and pain, that Nacho isn't exactly an angel himself, and that a semi-innocent man will be killed regardless of whether Mike shoots or doesn't, so he may as well take out the real bad guy in the process. The retributivist says that Hector deserves it, for threatening a little girl, for ordering the death of an innocent person, for having a man killed who may not be nearly as innocent, but whose only crime in Hector's eyes was succumbing to Mike's scheme.
But Mike can't. He just can't. It's the reason he caught a beating instead of taking a life in the first place. It's the reason he gave Nacho half of his money for taking the rap for Tuco. It's the reason he's spurred on to right this wrong in the first place. Only the people who kill the innocent--Hector Salamanca, Matty's murderers--deserve to die, and Mike just doesn't have it in him to stomach the collateral damage that would come along with preventing Hector from hurting anyone else. The moment passes; another undeserved death takes place, and Mike waits once more.
Until the sound of his car horn calls him away. He finds a branch lodged between the seat and the steering wheel, calling his attention to a note with a simple message -- "don't." Someone is smart enough to know what Mike is up to, and has a different plan. Who is that someone? [Speculative Spoilers here -- an enterprising redditor found that if you take the first letters of all the episode titles in Season 2, they make an anagram for the phrase "Fring's Back."] We don't know for sure yet. But it's someone who wants to stop Mike from going through with it. Mike is ready; he's been pushed past his limit and he's ready to do what needs to be done, but his conscience and outside forces keep him from crossing that line.
Chuck has no such limitations, either from within or without. But the episode's cold open gives us a window into what drives him, what's shaped the way he looks at his brother. Chuck has tried to be an upstanding man, at least from his own perspective. While Jimmy is reminiscing about a crazy time at their mother's birthday party, Chuck only remembers everyone else having to clean up Jimmy's mess, literally and figuratively. While Jimmy strolls off to grab a sandwich, Chuck waits dutifully with his comatose mom. And when he's alone, he breaks down. Chuck may seem heartless at times, but he is still a man of feeling, and his quickly recovered demeanor when the nurse comes in suggests that, like Hamlin, he may put on a mask to project the image he thinks he needs to uphold, regardless of how he really feels.
Then his mother lurches back to life for just a moment, and Chuck is captivated once more. But with her final breath, does she call for the son who stayed by her side? The one Who made something of himself? The one who was there to help his parents rather than exploit them? No, she calls for Jimmy. The hurt, the jealousy in Chuck's eyes looms large. This is the final insult, the last thumb in his eyes that for all Chuck's good deeds, for all his effort to do right, to be right, everyone, even his own Mother, loves the personable Jimmy McGill just a little bit more. Chuck keeps their mother's final words from his brother--better to keep him from enjoying the fruits of his misbegotten labors--but their sting lingers.
(Incidentally, it's a great little swerve to show Jimmy waiting beside at the hospital, only to then reveal his brother sitting next to him, letting the audience know that this is a flashback and not the aftermath of Chuck's incident at the copy shop.)
That's how Chuck processes these events, and that's what's lurking in the back of his mind when he realizes that Jimmy has sabotaged him. Jimmy can't be allowed to him win. He can't continue to prosper and benefit from stepping outside the lines just because he knows how to work a crowd. He can't be a bad actor and still be rewarding by living so large and so well on the back of so many lies and cheats and shortcuts. As Jesse Pinkman so memorably put it, he can't keep getting away with it.
To prevent that, to expose Jimmy for what Chuck thinks he really is, he has to take a page out of his brother's playbook. Chuck's plan to entrap his brother into confessing his misdeeds on tape is nigh-Machiavellian, but also feels like the sort of scheme that Jimmy himself would cook up.
One of the interesting things about Better Call Saul as its developed over the course of two seasons is the way it's explored the idea that as different as Chuck and Jimmy seem on the surface, there's a great deal of common ground between them. Chuck's shown a certain duplicitousness before -- in how he's used Howard as his hatchet man or pushed his partner to punish Kim as a way of getting to Jimmy. But this is something different, something more elaborate and even sinister. The layers to to Chuck's ruse, the misdirection, the orchestration, the cleverness in how he pulls it off all reek of Slippin' Jimmy. The younger McGill brother may be more personable, but there's a craftiness that he and Chuck share. Chuck may not have his brother's golden tongue, but he still knows what buttons to push when it comes to the CEO of Mesa Verde, and he knows how to pull off a plan as meticulous, manipulative, and perfectly-calculated as any of Jimmy's.
What's ironic about is that at the same time Chuck is becoming more like the man he misguidedly believes his brother to be, Jimmy is doing the same, but in the opposite direction. "Klick" may be the most overtly moral and upstanding we've ever seen Jimmy be. He rushes into the copy shop and starts directing traffic to get his brother some help, even though it will expose his attempt to cover his tracks. (And kudos to Michael McKean, who was amazing throughout the episode, but was especially good in his wordless but meaningful reaction when he sees Jimmy as he regains consciousness.) He stays by his brother's side throughout Chuck's recovery. He draws a line in the sand that despite everything that's happened, he won't commit Chuck, because it's not what he brother would want. He agonizes over subjecting Chuck to those tests even if he believes it's in Chuck's own best interests. He gives up his temporary guardianship even if it would leave Chuck, as he puts it, right where Jimmy wants him. He has a look of guilt when he watches the commercial he worked so hard to make and realizes he hasn't quite lived up to being the paragon of honesty and virtue he presents himself as.
And in the end, he confesses to his brother. Jimmy comes clean when he believes that the chain of events he set in motion caused Chuck to retire and dive even deeper into his psychosis. Jimmy may not believe he's really risking his career or his livelihood by doing so, but he is exposing himself, making a sacrifice by playing into Chuck's image of him. Jimmy absolutely loves his brother, and after all the effort he put into covering up his misdeeds, the lengths he went to in order to prevent Chuck from confirming his suspicions, the thought of his actions wounding his brother deeply motivates Jimmy to lay it all out there for him.
What's so tragic and deplorable is that Chuck is taking advantage of that. He's using his brother's love to hurt him. In a way, he's making the same choice Jimmy did when he obtained temporary guardianship over Chuck and forced him to take those tests at the hospital. He's taking the choice out of his brother's hands, because he doesn't trust him to make the right one. But it's also cravenly manipulative. Chuck is playing on Jimmy's own deep-seated concerns for him in order to undermine him. There's something especially cruel in the poetry of that, something that feels particularly wrong about turning someone's care for you against them in such a cold and calculated fashion.
It can be hard to explain what makes Better Call Saul great because so often it comes out in the little things. It may be the direction and editing, which convey Chuck's disorientation by flipping his perspective upside down beneath the hospital lights, or communicating Kim's pride in Jimmy by putting her beaming smile in the frame as his commercial plays. It may be the small but significant performance of the doctor who looks after Chuck, who manages to be a steady and caring voice of reason between each of the mercurial McGill brothers. It may be the little bits of dry comedy in an episode as significant as "Klick," from the "no offense," "none taken," exchange between Mike and the arms who wipes his prints off the rifle, to Ernesto's beleaguered wish that he was back in the mail room. Or it may be something like the quiet moment where Ernesto explains to Jimmy why he lied on his behalf -- for the simple reason that Chuck seemed out to get him, and Jimmy's his friend.
That, more than Chuck's fierce intelligence, more than Jimmy's golden tongue, more than one brother's pride and the other's lack of shame, is what truly distinguishes the McGill brothers from one another. When Jimmy plies his trade these days, when he employs a little subterfuge, he's usually trying to help people -- sometimes himself, but also the woman he loves and people like the seniors at Sandpiper. When things go awry, when it looks like people will really be hurt, he doesn't sit on the sidelines; he acts to rectify his mistakes, whether it's by talking Tuco into commuting the death sentences of his twin collaborators in the desert, or by admitting his actions to his brother to prevent Chuck from giving up his life and his sanity. Jimmy is far from pure, but he cares and he tries, and people like Ernesto see that.
But Chuck only uses those same skills to hurt people. Sure, he justifies it by seeing himself as an agent of morality, as it being part and parcel with his self-given duty to uphold what's right and just in this world. And yet even if he thinks what he does is for the greater good, when push comes to shove, Chuck uses that craftiness to deny his brother the seat at the table that he'd earned, to punish Kim for Jimmy's transgressions since she was the only one within reach, to wrest away a client when someone more deserving had done the legwork, and to incriminate a brother whose confession he was only able to wring out because of Jimmy's love and concern for him. Jimmy serves individuals; Chuck serves some greater sense of righteousness, and unlike Mike, he cares little for who's caught in the crossfire.
Chuck has a very personal, very exacting moral code, and it leads him to hurt the people who care about him the most. Jimmy's ethical mores are much more fluid, much more apt to let the ends justify the means, but he means to do good, more or less, and to help people, especially those close to him. And Mike is somewhere in the middle, intent on protecting the most important people in his life, trying to live up to the high moral standards he sets for himself even as he gets his hands dirty, and most of all trying not to hurt anyone in the process. "Klick" wraps its characters in these little moral conundrums, and teases out the connections and distinctions between its heroes and its villains as each tries to find their way out of them, and the lines they are and are not willing to cross to do it.
Jimmy doesn't have a bad heart. It's just how he is. It's just his nature. He takes advantage of people. He leaves people holding the bag. It's in drips and drabs, but it's what he does. That's how Chuck sees his brother. And maybe it's how Kim is starting to see him too.
It's not hard to see why there would be a rapport between Chuck and Kim, even if they're very different people. There's a sense of righteousness to both of them, even if Kim's is much humbler and more genuinely committed to that than Chuck is. They're people who've worked hard for what they have, without trying to take shortcuts.
The easiest way to see that in the episode is the wonderfully realized montage of Kim busting her hump down in the dungeon of document review and using every spare moment to drum up leads and land a big client to raise her stock at HHM. The multi-colored post-it notes on the clear glass in the stairwell, the wide shots of Kim calling in every contact she's ever crossed paths with while the rain pours outside the parking garage, her awkward moments trying to avoid detection in the bathroom, are all great images that, with a Spanish version of "My Way", convey the way in which Kim's method differs markedly from Jimmy's.
Jimmy is the king of the big idea. He's the one who comes up with the hail mary play, the crazy scheme that will set things right again, the grand gesture that will make everything better. But that's not Kim's way, as she memorably tells Jimmy when he tries to play knight in shining armor. Kim's way is to fight and scratch and claw and depend on herself, on her sweat and gumption and elbow grease to win the right way, to bet on herself and put in the time and effort to make that a winning bet.
It's not hard to see Chuck as cut from the same cloth, at least at one point in his life. In the present, we see Chuck in some state of obsolescence, still trying to come back from his psychosomatic illness (possibly brought on by the death of the wife we meet in the cold open?). We see him depending on other people, whether it's the kid from the mailroomclerk who brings his groceries and chauffers him to HHM's office, or the security guard who shuts off the lights opens the door for him, or even Kim who's effectively forced to make his coffee.
But we know a few things about Chuck that suggest he wasn't always this way. Even now, he's excited about the complexity of the case Kim brought in, of the work it will entail. And while we don't know about his exact path to becoming a big time partner at a firm with his name on the building (or at least on the flag in front of it), the fact that he reached those heights where the likely breadwinner in his family ran a local corner store suggests he had to do a great deal of scratching and clawing himself to get where he is, even if he's gotten fat and happy in the intervening years.
That's why it's not a stretch to watch that final scene and think about how Chuck sees himself in Kim. He sees someone who who put in the hard work both to the point that she's been up all night doing doc review and still managed to land a $250k client as a fourth-year associate. And he also sees her as someone else Jimmy has hurt by making them trust him and then betraying that trust.
One of the wonderful things about Better Call Saul and its forebear are the way it plays with perspective, literally (in terms of its shots), but also figuratively. We don't know if Papa McGill was truly the paragon of virtue Chuck made him out to be. It's not hard to imagine Jimmy telling a very different story about the man who raised them. But there's a plausibility to the tale that Chuck tells, of Jimmy bilking his own father -- not robbing him, not meaning ill, just taking a little here and there because it's who he was, because honest work didn't get him where he wanted to go as quickly as he wanted to get there. And it's easy to see how that could make Chuck furious with his brother, endlessly mistrusting of his brother, and sympathetic to a hardworking, motivated young woman whom Chuck sees as another one of his brother's victims.
Erin, the young associate babysitting Jimmy at Davis & Main after his misbehavior with the commercial is the living embodiment of the idea that Jimmy needs a guardrail to keep him from giving into his worst impulses. She's an annoying character--she's meant to be--and one who feels a little more cartoonish and stock than BCS usually brings to the fore, but she serves a purpose here.
She shows that Jimmy would rather duck out of the office than spend the time to learn the house style, that he has a little bit of Chuck's arrogance to where he's dismissive of learning anything from an associate who's junior to him, and that he's apt to "finesse" rather than play by the rules. Sure, the beanie baby is a pretty minor hill for Erin to die on, but Jimmy's conversation with the prosecutor in the bathroom is another reminder of how lucky Jimmy is to be where he is, and how he still can't help but bristle at the restrictions being in that place entails.
Jimmy is our protagonist. He's one of the breakout characters from Breaking Bad and the one we see doing a great deal of scraping of his own in the first season and we can't help but enjoy watching him work his magic and know that he means well. That makes us sympathetic toward him, makes us root for him. But Chuck's right to worry that there's something in him that can't be trusted, and Kim's right to rely on herself rather than take a leap on a person who's shown he can't necessarily turn off the part of him that has to push the limit of whatever situation he finds himself in.
Rhea Seehorn's stellar throughout "Rebecca", but her best work comes in two scenes in particular. The first is when she gets a phone call from her acquaintance at the Mesa Verde bank and ventures out into the parking lot for the privacy to confirm the deal. Her moment of triumph and exuberance, of all her hard work paying off, is infectious and delightful, and a wonderful culmination of that expertly-constructed montage of her cold calls.
The other is the moment where, after sticking the landing with Mesa Verde's CEO, she offers to take the helm on the case, and Hamlin coldly rebuffs her. The look on her face, the realization that all her effort wasn't enough to lift her out of the doghouse by her own bootstraps is devastating. In both scenes, the camera cuts to a wide shot--one where she's framed on all sides by the outline of the parking garage, and one where she's dominated in the frame by the HHM flag. In both of them, she's very small, signaling the sense in which despite her yeoman's work, she's treated and seen as a minor cog in Hamlin's machine.
Hamlin himself is an interesting character, though like the surprise appearance from a wheeling-and-dealing and subtly intimidating Hector Salamanca, we only see a bit of him in this episode. The first season paints him as the bad guy, almost cheesily so with his pressed suits and mustache-twirling needling of Jimmy, but eventually reveals that he actually always liked Jimmy and was doing his best to honor Chuck's wishes, putting him in a different light.
The scene where Chuck and Hamlin confronted Kim about Jimmy's commercial suggested that Chuck was goading him into punishing Kim from his brother's transgressions (or what he thought was her complicity in them). But Hamlin's "we'll see" response to Chuck's assumption that landing Mesa Verde will put Kim back in his good graces, and Kim's observation that Hamlin pulled the same schtick when things went South with the Kettlemans suggest he's not simply a decent guy trying to vindicate his partner. As Chuck posits, Hamlin was burned by Jimmy too, and he blames Kim for it. Hamlin doesn't have Chuck's experience with Jimmy to know and appreciate that this is just what he does, and so lacks the same sympathy for Kim that Chuck seems to have in the end, and which appears to bring Kim closer to Chuck's view of his brother than the other way around.
But while Kim's view of Jimmy, and to a lesser extent Hamlin's, is informed almost solely by seeing him given a golden opportunity and nearly squandering it after being warned of the deleterious effects it would have on the people who put their necks out for him, Chuck's is informed, at least in part, by jealousy and resentment. The opening scene of "Rebecca" is an extraordinary little story all it's own, and one of the best parts of it is the way it shows Chuck as envious of Jimmy's easy way with people.
When Chuck describes their father (and this is a bit of a leap on my part), it seems like Chuck inherited the work ethic of a man who wanted to become his own boss and run his own business, and Jimmy inherited the personable nature of a man who was beloved by the neighborhood he serviced. For all Chuck's accomplishment, in his mind his screw up jailbird of a brother can waltz into his home, rattle off a bevvy of lawyer jokes, and entertain and engage with his wife easier than he, or his non-sequitur attempt at the same type of humor hours later, are able to muster. There's disappointment in his expression, indignation, that what Jimmy can manage without having to struggle for it is just unfair.
There's a number of hints at what lurks in Chuck's psyche during those scenes. His advice to his wife about dealing with an unsatisfactory individual in her orchestra, that it's "her reputation too" shows how he views Jimmy and his good name and the appropriate tactics for preserving it. As Mrs. Bloom observed, the first image we see in the episode is Chuck screwing in light bulbs, and it coincides with the first appearance of his wife. The very deliberate way in which their scenes are lit suggest that she is a light in the darkness to him, and that her being absent, whether because of an untimely death or because Chuck lacked Jimmy's easy charm and she left him, had a profound effect on him.
But every moment that he's tugging on his ear, there's the sense that he's tired of Jimmy's routine, of the way he ingratiates himself to people as the first step toward taking advantage of them. Kim is beginning to see this side of our chosen champion as well. Kim is someone who, as the episode goes to great lengths to show, has to earn everything she has and fight even harder to keep it. Chuck's story suggests he was once the same. And now, as they seem like unlikely allies, a dissenting view of the nascent Saul Goodman emerges, that the king of quick fixes, that the man who can talk his way out of any problem, is not above uses the people he cares about for his own ends, not because he's bad, not because he's cruel, but because it's the only way he knows how, and the people who enable him are left to bear the brunt of his failures.
I don't really know how to put in words my love for this show. This was a very satisfying finale and the description could not be more perfect.
We got the answers we needed but its up to us whether we want to believe them. I believe Nora but it doesn't matter. This has always been a love story between two very broken people. Kevin realizing he has been just running from his life and just keeps coming back (see the end of every season). He becomes obsessed about finding Nora and him coming up short for all those years is truly heartbreaking. Nora finding her children and realizing that she is not needed. Spending all that time to just look at them from a distance and see them one last time. They fixed their problems the best the could. In the end, when they finally get back together, they are honest with each other and can be happy together, no more bullet proof vests and bags over the head. The last shot was beautiful with the two of them in a house and the messages of love coming back home. This was a surprisingly happy ending to an overall very depressing show and I'm ok with that.
This is one of, if not, the greatest TV shows ever.
I went into this expecting a stupid movie with hopefully a few laughs. I was blown away by not only how funny the movie was, but how well it deconstructed religion, faith, and reason, and how those all need to work together to make our lives better.
For people who thought this movie was stupid - sorry, but you're stupid. If you couldn't appreciate how well this movie showed the uncaring, awful universe - and why we need to tell ourselves stories that make us enjoy it for as long as possible - then you're just stupid. If you didn't see how this movie talked to atheists, how it presented a convincing argument for faith and religion, alongside the perils of both, then you're the one who missed something. If you couldn't see how this movie demonstrated science, reason, and skepticism, and why those are still not enough, then you're just stupid. It showed, beautifully, the power of mind altering drugs, and how some folks are just going to go ahead and do the worst of them, with no regard as to what others have to say about it. That's a reality that we need to accept, and need to stop pretending that we can make go away just by wishing it so.
Within this cartoon universe, the creators of this movie explore themes in a way that I've not seen done before, demonstrating the power of animated story telling applied to adult themes. Yes, the movie has crass humour, some of which falls flat but some of it is tear inducing funny. But if this movie doesn't make you think, it's because you're stupid.
Go see this movie.
This isn't an origin story exactly. We already know who Jimmy McGill is by the time he shows up on our screens. But at the same time, "Mijo" is an important building block in how Jimmy becomes Saul Goodman. It's darkly funny, but there's something very compelling about Saul more or less realizing his potential and gaining his confidence based on being able to negotiate a drug dealer seeking retribution down to a leg-breaking from murder. The ensuing montage, showing McGill employing that newfound confidence to hack it as P.D. and get honest pay for semi-honest work is a neat little tale that feels very much of a piece with the rest of Vince Gilligan's ouvre.
It also shows a certain conscience within Jimmy McGill. Sure, he's bending the truth and using his big mouth (which he thanks Tuco for pointing out) to help out criminals, but he also could have walked away from the whole Tuco mess scot free, and instead chose to put himself at risk again to save the lives of the twins that he'd put in harm's way. And his discomfort at the breaking of breadsticks (in a scene that was tremendously shot by ace director Michelle MacLaren) reveals that he can't quite just walk away from what happened, even if it's given him a new lease on life to some degree or another.
That scene out in the desert features the trademark Gilligan combination of terror and comedy, with a moral choice looming over the whole affair. The entire Tuco chain of events, from the tightly-wound boss's quiet reassurances to his grandmother, to his exuberant response to hearing he's "the king" in an FBI sting, was cracker-jack storytelling that paid off in the rest of the episode.
I also appreciated the slow development of the relationship between Jimmy/Saul and his brother. The show is sticking with a slow burn as to the real nature of Chuck's predicament, but his disapprobation and implied concern that Saul is back to his "Slippin' Jimmy" days after reading the hospital bill is good character work that helps motivate the "back to work" montage that follows. By the same token, Saul encouraging his brother not to use the "space blanket", and the meaningful looks exchanged nods toward the bigger issues of Chuck's situation without being too blunt about it.
And it all leads to a promising jumping off point for the story, with Tuco's henchman (Nacho?) hearing Saul's story and wanting to use the (apparently) scam-minded attorney to help him rip off the Kettlemans. The last scene does have a certain "something tells me we'll meet again, each and every week" vibe, but it works as a natural followup to the events of the episode. Engaging from the start, this was a great episode.
I don't really care about Trump from a political standpoint. Sure, I find a lot of what he has to say dumb or even repugnant, but he's not a real candidate, no matter how he's polling at the moment. He's a sideshow, sure to flame out as soon as the primary season gets real. But I do care about whether or not he'd be a good host for SNL, and despite the high ratings he pulled in on name alone, the problem is that he's barely suited to host the show as "Donald Trump, TV personality" and definitely not suited to host as "Donald Trump, presidential candidate."
The reasons are myriad. He's not an actor. Despite his stage presence and experience on television, he doesn't really have the range or timing to do live comedy. And most importantly of all, a good SNL host has to let themselves be a part of the joke, to be genuinely and not half-heartedly self-deprecating, which Trump just didn't do. All of those qualities made this a pretty poor episode, completely independently of how you feel about Trump as a politician.
The inexperience of the cast and crew didn't help. One of the SNL's longtime and important behind-the-scenes guys is gone, and the show's production has been a step behind ever since. A razor sharp cast and cracker jack production was necessary to work around Trump's limitations, and given the newness of the cast and the issues with production ("tweets" not appearing when needed, camera cuts being off), it just wasn't there.
On to sketch-by-sketch reviews!
The cold open about the democratic debates was a highlight. I don't really get Cecily Strong's Rachel Maddow, but Kate McKinnon has absolutely found a character in her Hilary impression, and Larry David continues to give a breakout performance in his Bernie Sanders impression, where he can find the comedy in something as silly as vacuum pennies.
The monologue, with Taran Killam and Darrell Hammond busting out their Trump impressions was pretty standard SNL stuff for celebrity walk-ons, and there wasn't much to it.
The "President Trump, 2018" was one of the worst sketches I've seen in a while, less because of the subject matter, but more because the joke at its core "things are going just too well under Trump" is one of the most toothless, self-serving premises for a sketch I've ever seen on the show. Say what you will about appearances from John McCain, Sarah Palin, Steve Forbes, or others, but they were definitely willing to laugh at themselves in a way that Trump just wasn't. Sure, there were a few good lines here and there, but this was the antithesis of comedy, and portended how rough Trump's performance as host was going to be.
The "Bad Girls" pretaped bit was fun enough, but the joke wore thin pretty quickly, and it feels like diminishing returns after the similar and superior "Twin Bed" and "Dongs All Over the World".
The "Trump's Mean Tweets" sketch was a trainwreck. It's a weak idea for a sketch to begin with, but this was where timing and production were absolutely necessary to salvage anything of it, and instead it just died on the vine. The one tweet about "Kenan is a letter away from Kenyan" was a good one, but otherwise this was weak material with weak execution.
I have to admit, the reference at the core of the Drake pretaped bit was over my head, but it was a nice little sketch that gives the performers a chance to succeed on pure silliness. Taran Killam and Beck Bennet tend to go a little broad for my tastes, especially in these sorts of roles, but it was inoffensive in context. The appearance of Ed Grimley was a nice surprise, and this seemed like one of the few points in the night where Trump was game to look legitimately silly. A minor highlight.
Weekend Update continues to be plague by a conflict between solid material and weak execution. Jost & Che just don't seem comfortable out there, and their repartee isn't nearly as cute as they think it is. Leslie Jones's isn't my favorite performer at the update desk, but her amusing interactions with Jost (especially when they subvert them) do take some of the edge off her weaker (and loud) stand up routine. Drunk Uncle continues to be a superlative character, whose shtick should get old, but just doesn't. He was a necessary and hilarious part of a Trump hosting gig, and didn't disappoint.
I don't know what the hell the "Band Introduction/Laser Harp" sketch was supposed to be, but again, timing and production were off, and a one-joke premise sketch could not get out of the starting gate.
The Mr. Crocker pretaped bit was funny in that absurd/awkward humor sort of way. Again, Trump felt ill-suited to the role, but this was one of the few instances in which he kind of worked given the inherent weirdness of the tone of the sketch. Also, Beck Bennet did a superb comedic performance, playing the absurdity straight in a way that held the sketch together.
The "Toots" introduction for Sia was an...ok premise, but again, came off really lame in the execution.
I've never cared for the "Adult Film Star Pitch" line of sketches. They just never land for me and always hit the same beats with slightly different jokes. (SNL's never done that before, right?) This was no better (the only laugh being Cecily's "I haven't been at the Whitehouse since the 90's") and again, Trump just sort of plays himself and bloviates at the end. Nothing doing.
Overall, a pretty poor episode, largely thanks to an inexperienced group of performers and crew, and a Host who, whatever you think of him otherwise, did not have the skills or the attitude to make live comedy work.
This was a thrill ride. While I would have liked the dynamic between Jessica and Kilgrave in the prior episode, her finally getting him into the hermetically sealed chamber, and trying to generate enough evidence to acquit Hope was a great premise for the episode, and the way it managed to rope in almost every character into that room made it very interesting.
I was especially interested by Hogarth. She's always seemed fairly mercenary, and there's been a lot of interesting set up for her seeing a potential in Kilgrave's powers that Jessica, having been violated by them, finds instantly repugnant. The implication--bolstered by a weird scene where Pam goes kind of Lysistrata on Hogarth to get her finalize the divorce--that Hogarth would be willing to make some kind of deal with Kilgrave in order to get what she wants is a pretty wild factor to throw into the Kilgrave equation here. Their scene together was superb, and putting the two best actors on the show together was a good choice. There was a real Hannibal vibe that worked.
And I also appreciated that the episode used the character to comment, however hand-wavingly, about how insane this plan is. It's hard to believe that any court or law enforcement organization would countenance a confession or demonstration where the perpetrator was so clearly under duress. But at the very least, Hogarth points this out, and she and Jessica try to take steps to make up for this. (Including Detective Cool Lester Smooth, who's always a welcome presence.)
And the idea seemed so crazy because the end goal seemed impossible. Krysten Ritter was pretty stellar when Jessica was trying to manipulate and goad Kilgrave into using his abilities on camera, figuring that she could hit on a nerve to the point that he'd slip and reveal himself. But even then, it seems obvious that Kilgrave could just say "Stop that" or "Go away" or "Please don't hurt me," or "Please let me out" and achieve his goal without showing anything crazy or supernatural on the screen.
That, however, is what makes the twist of bringing in Kilgrave's (sorry, Kevin's) parents pretty ingenious. Sure, it's a little convenient that they're in town and findable (Jessica Jones is no Veronica Mars in her abilities as a P.I.), but there's a plausible enough reason for it, and seeing them confront him was a heart-pumping moment.
I'm going to run out of ways to say how great the character of Kilgrave and the actor portraying him are in this. His shock, anger, and the other panoply of emotions Kilgrave displayed when seeing his parents for the first time since childhood was impressive. Again, the show does a good job of making the audience empathize with Kilgrave, and understand how he became what he is, without ever trying to justify him or make them sympathize with his view of things.
That mirrored viewpoint idea is one of the show's best tools, especially in how it contrasts Jessica as someone who is blameless but riddled with guilt, whereas Kilgrave is the cause of untold pain and misery and considers himself faultless for it. The focus on their own conflicting narratives for how things have happened is an interesting key to the series.
To the same extent, it was nice to see the parents get explored a bit. While the whole "virus" detail of his powers strikes me as a little too "midichlorians", I like the idea that they were trying to help him, that things got out of hand, and that they ran out of fear. Kilgrave, understandably, sees it as abandonment, but everyone in this show having a reasonable (or at least internally consistent) view of events, even as they differ markedly, is one of the show's strengths.
And yet there's also something disquieting when Jessica beats the hell out of Kilgrave in that cell, or when she shocks him as he stands in ankle-deep water. He deserves punishment, and how a victim confronts their abuser is rich thematic material. But make no mistake, this is torture, and that makes it disturbing to some degree even if Jessica has as much moral right as anyone to take revenge on Kilgrave and attempt to use these methods to save Hope. To some extent, you just have to say "it's a TV show" and appreciate that we're talking about comic book stories here, but still, putting it all in flesh and blood on the screen makes the violence uncomfortably real at times.
But then that ending, where so much comes spilling out all at once. The shock of Kilgrave's mother stabbing him. The turn of him telling her to stab herself. The realization that Hogarth (probably) disabled the shock mechanism. Trish unwittingly freeing Kilgrave and almost being forced to shoot herself in the process. The struggle to save Kilgrave's Dad and the detective. And, of course, the twist that Jessica is, in fact, now immune to Kilgrave's powers. It was a heart-pumping finish to what was likely the most intense hour of television this show has offered thus far.
This was a thrill ride. While I would have liked the dynamic between Jessica and Kilgrave in the prior episode, her finally getting him into the hermetically sealed chamber, and trying to generate enough evidence to acquit Hope was a great premise for the episode, and the way it managed to rope in almost every character into that room made it very interesting.
I was especially interested by Hogarth. She's always seemed fairly mercenary, and there's been a lot of interesting set up for her seeing a potential in Kilgrave's powers that Jessica, having been violated by them, finds instantly repugnant. The implication--bolstered by a weird scene where Pam goes kind of Lysistrata on Hogarth to get her finalize the divorce--that Hogarth would be willing to make some kind of deal with Kilgrave in order to get what she wants is a pretty wild factor to throw into the Kilgrave equation here. Their scene together was superb, and putting the two best actors on the show together was a good choice. There was a real Hannibal vibe that worked.
And I also appreciated that the episode used the character to comment, however hand-wavingly, about how insane this plan is. It's hard to believe that any court or law enforcement organization would countenance a confession or demonstration where the perpetrator was so clearly under duress. But at the very least, Hogarth points this out, and she and Jessica try to take steps to make up for this. (Including Detective Cool Lester Smooth, who's always a welcome presence.)
And the idea seemed so crazy because the end goal seemed impossible. Krysten Ritter was pretty stellar when Jessica was trying to manipulate and goad Kilgrave into using his abilities on camera, figuring that she could hit on a nerve to the point that he'd slip and reveal himself. But even then, it seems obvious that Kilgrave could just say "Stop that" or "Go away" or "Please don't hurt me," or "Please let me out" and achieve his goal without showing anything crazy or supernatural on the screen.
That, however, is what makes the twist of bringing in Kilgrave's (sorry, Kevin's) parents pretty ingenious. Sure, it's a little convenient that they're in town and findable (Jessica Jones is no Veronica Mars in her abilities as a P.I.), but there's a plausible enough reason for it, and seeing them confront him was a heart-pumping moment.
I'm going to run out of ways to say how great the character of Kilgrave and the actor portraying him are in this. His shock, anger, and the other panoply of emotions Kilgrave displayed when seeing his parents for the first time since childhood was impressive. Again, the show does a good job of making the audience empathize with Kilgrave, and understand how he became what he is, without ever trying to justify him or make them sympathize with his view of things.
That mirrored viewpoint idea is one of the show's best tools, especially in how it contrasts Jessica as someone who is blameless but riddled with guilt, whereas Kilgrave is the cause of untold pain and misery and considers himself faultless for it. The focus on their own conflicting narratives for how things have happened is an interesting key to the series.
To the same extent, it was nice to see the parents get explored a bit. While the whole "virus" detail of his powers strikes me as a little too "midichlorians", I like the idea that they were trying to help him, that things got out of hand, and that they ran out of fear. Kilgrave, understandably, sees it as abandonment, but everyone in this show having a reasonable (or at least internally consistent) view of events, even as they differ markedly, is one of the show's strengths.
And yet there's also something disquieting when Jessica beats the hell out of Kilgrave in that cell, or when she shocks him as he stands in ankle-deep water. He deserves punishment, and how a victim confronts their abuser is rich thematic material. But make no mistake, this is torture, and that makes it disturbing to some degree even if Jessica has as much moral right as anyone to take revenge on Kilgrave and attempt to use these methods to save Hope. To some extent, you just have to say "it's a TV show" and appreciate that we're talking about comic book stories here, but still, putting it all in flesh and blood on the screen makes the violence uncomfortably real at times.
But then that ending, where so much comes spilling out all at once. The shock of Kilgrave's mother stabbing him. The turn of him telling her to stab herself. The realization that Hogarth (probably) disabled the shock mechanism. Trish unwittingly freeing Kilgrave and almost being forced to shoot herself in the process. The struggle to save Kilgrave's Dad and the detective. And, of course, the twist that Jessica is, in fact, now immune to Kilgrave's powers. It was a heart-pumping finish to what was likely the most intense hour of television this show has offered thus far.
This was a thrill ride. While I would have liked the dynamic between Jessica and Kilgrave in the prior episode, her finally getting him into the hermetically sealed chamber, and trying to generate enough evidence to acquit Hope was a great premise for the episode, and the way it managed to rope in almost every character into that room made it very interesting.
I was especially interested by Hogarth. She's always seemed fairly mercenary, and there's been a lot of interesting set up for her seeing a potential in Kilgrave's powers that Jessica, having been violated by them, finds instantly repugnant. The implication--bolstered by a weird scene where Pam goes kind of Lysistrata on Hogarth to get her finalize the divorce--that Hogarth would be willing to make some kind of deal with Kilgrave in order to get what she wants is a pretty wild factor to throw into the Kilgrave equation here. Their scene together was superb, and putting the two best actors on the show together was a good choice. There was a real Hannibal vibe that worked.
And I also appreciated that the episode used the character to comment, however hand-wavingly, about how insane this plan is. It's hard to believe that any court or law enforcement organization would countenance a confession or demonstration where the perpetrator was so clearly under duress. But at the very least, Hogarth points this out, and she and Jessica try to take steps to make up for this. (Including Detective Cool Lester Smooth, who's always a welcome presence.)
And the idea seemed so crazy because the end goal seemed impossible. Krysten Ritter was pretty stellar when Jessica was trying to manipulate and goad Kilgrave into using his abilities on camera, figuring that she could hit on a nerve to the point that he'd slip and reveal himself. But even then, it seems obvious that Kilgrave could just say "Stop that" or "Go away" or "Please don't hurt me," or "Please let me out" and achieve his goal without showing anything crazy or supernatural on the screen.
That, however, is what makes the twist of bringing in Kilgrave's (sorry, Kevin's) parents pretty ingenious. Sure, it's a little convenient that they're in town and findable (Jessica Jones is no Veronica Mars in her abilities as a P.I.), but there's a plausible enough reason for it, and seeing them confront him was a heart-pumping moment.
I'm going to run out of ways to say how great the character of Kilgrave and the actor portraying him are in this. His shock, anger, and the other panoply of emotions Kilgrave displayed when seeing his parents for the first time since childhood was impressive. Again, the show does a good job of making the audience empathize with Kilgrave, and understand how he became what he is, without ever trying to justify him or make them sympathize with his view of things.
That mirrored viewpoint idea is one of the show's best tools, especially in how it contrasts Jessica as someone who is blameless but riddled with guilt, whereas Kilgrave is the cause of untold pain and misery and considers himself faultless for it. The focus on their own conflicting narratives for how things have happened is an interesting key to the series.
To the same extent, it was nice to see the parents get explored a bit. While the whole "virus" detail of his powers strikes me as a little too "midichlorians", I like the idea that they were trying to help him, that things got out of hand, and that they ran out of fear. Kilgrave, understandably, sees it as abandonment, but everyone in this show having a reasonable (or at least internally consistent) view of events, even as they differ markedly, is one of the show's strengths.
And yet there's also something disquieting when Jessica beats the hell out of Kilgrave in that cell, or when she shocks him as he stands in ankle-deep water. He deserves punishment, and how a victim confronts their abuser is rich thematic material. But make no mistake, this is torture, and that makes it disturbing to some degree even if Jessica has as much moral right as anyone to take revenge on Kilgrave and attempt to use these methods to save Hope. To some extent, you just have to say "it's a TV show" and appreciate that we're talking about comic book stories here, but still, putting it all in flesh and blood on the screen makes the violence uncomfortably real at times.
But then that ending, where so much comes spilling out all at once. The shock of Kilgrave's mother stabbing him. The turn of him telling her to stab herself. The realization that Hogarth (probably) disabled the shock mechanism. Trish unwittingly freeing Kilgrave and almost being forced to shoot herself in the process. The struggle to save Kilgrave's Dad and the detective. And, of course, the twist that Jessica is, in fact, now immune to Kilgrave's powers. It was a heart-pumping finish to what was likely the most intense hour of television this show has offered thus far.
This will probably become more beloved than Dune for being a bigger, more action driven film. Personally I prefer the first film by a long shot, but there's a lot to like here. I loved Paul's new journey for this installment as it doesn't develop in the way you'd expect based on the ending of the first film. The themes of colonialism, false prophecies and religion reach a level of depth that cannot be found in other sci-fi/fantasy contemporaries like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars; this film certainly made me understand why this story is taken so seriously as a piece of literature. Despite the source material being so old, there's still something new and refreshing about it. You don't often see major Hollywood productions calling out religion as a manipulative force helping the people in power. On top of that this brilliantly subverts the concept of the hero's journey we've become accustomed to by everything that was in one way or another inspired by Dune. The acting is pretty great, Timothée does a great job at playing the transition Paul goes through. Despite his boyish looks I was sold on his performance as the leader of the Fremen. Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem are also scene stealers. The visuals are once again mindblowing, in terms of set/costume design, cinematography and CGI this is as close to perfection as you could get to right now. The vision and scope of this movie are truly unmatched, which leads to some breathtaking sequences that I'll remember for a while (sandworm ride; the black/white arena fight; knife fight during the third act).
However, for all the praise I have for Dune: Part 2, I think Denis is being uncharacteristically sloppy with this film. First of all, Bautista and Butler feel like they're ripped from a different franchise altogether. Their over the top, cartoonish performances are more suited for something like Mad Max than the nuanced world of Dune. The bigger cracks start to appear when you look at the writing. The brief moments where the movie pokes fun at religious zealots through Javier Bardem's character, while funny, probably won't age very well. Like the first movie, it has a tendency to rely too much on exposition and handholding, a problem which might be worse here. I feel like a lot of the subtlety is lost in order to make the movie more normie proof, and that's quite annoying for a movie with artistic ambitions like this one. For example, there's this scene where Léa Seydoux seduces Austin Butler's character, and everything you need to know as a viewer is communicated through Butler's performance. Cut to the next scene, where Seydoux is all but looking at the camera saying "he's a psychopath, he's violent, he wants power, etc.". I just feel like compared to Villeneuve's precise work on Blade Runner 2049, he's consciously dumbing it down here. It's understandable and somewhat excusable for a complex story like Dune, but he occasionally takes it too far for my liking. Then there's the love story subplot between Chani and Paul, which almost entirely misses the mark for me. It feels rushed, there's no chemistry between the actors and some of the lines are painfully cheesy. Because of that, the emotional gutpunch their story eventually reaches during the third act did little for me. Finally, I'm a little dissatisfied with the use of sound. I loved the otherworldly score Zimmer came up with for the first Dune, however this film is so ridiculously bombastic and low-end heavy that it starts to feel like a parody of his work with Christopher Nolan. For the final action beat of the film Villeneuve cuts out the film's score, and it becomes all the more satisfying for it.
Overall, I recommend this film, however maybe temper those expectations if you're expecting a masterpiece. There's a lot to admire, but it's flawed.
6.5/10
I'm not so sure whether I've simply forgotten how to have fun with really stupid movies or whether Matthew Vaughn simply can't manage to make his truly dumb movies fun anymore. After 'The King's Man' and now 'Argylle', however, I'm leaning towards the second scenario. Because in the director's new movie, it feels like he's shouting 'Have fun already' in the audience's face the whole time. But you just can't force that to happen.
Vaughn's unique style is still clearly recognizable, but somehow it no longer works as well as in his earlier films. This is particularly evident in the colorful and absurd action sequences in the finale, which are extremely dynamic but still bored me to death. And honestly, the whole cliché of CGI fluids splashing around in action scenes and leaving no trace on the characters' clothes is something I just don't want to see anymore (I'm looking at you, 'Renfield').
The story can't save the movie, either. Apart from a whole series of twists, one of which is stupider than the next, it has nothing to offer. The characters are also weak. On top of that, the runtime is far too long, so I definitely won't ever watch this movie again. Accordingly, I have absolutely no interest in this franchise or the hinted-at crossover.
This is a very weird movie, but not by its content. Hard to tell whether it was worth watching.
Visually it's nice, extremely clean and ordered. But 90% of what happens has absolutely no interest. Family picnic. Wife showing the garden to her mother. Some random conversations. Dictation of work letters. Administrative work. It is very boring, soporific even.
The only interest comes from knowing who those people are and the whole context, and the contrast with the banality of their lives, with the clinical simplicity of administrative decisions.
The whole camp is hidden behind a wall. There is just a background noise, far away, muffled, some cries, some gunshots. And the chimneys smoke.
Among what is banal but extremely shocking by the context:
- The mother complaining she could not get her neighbour's curtains.
- The commander getting a new post, but her wife complaining about losing her garden
- The sales pitch of the new generation crematorium
- Being so happy that the plan is named after him that he calls his wife in the middle of the night
- Ashes used as fertilizer in the garden
The only small moments that acknowledge the violence are:
- the wife, upset, threatening the maid that she could have her incinerated just like that
- the commander having a young girl sent to his office
- in the commanders meeting, the word "extermination" is said once, but all the rest is just logistics and quotas
At the end, a cutscene shows people cleaning the camp, and it takes a while to realize they are cleaning the current day Auschwitz museum, I guess showing the continuity of mundane tasks in all circumstances.
So in the end, this is definitely a work of art that succeeds in what it's trying to achieve. However the boringness is what makes it special, and you can't avoid the fact that it is mostly boring. Not to watch when sleepy or tired.
I can say straight up this will not be a movie for everyone, but it really clicked for me. I would also say a blind watch is preferable in movies like this, I went in knowing almost nothing and if possible I think that's the way to watch the movie if possible.
For me it was incredibly immersive once established, with incredible sound design and score. The slow build of tension, unease and dread as things unfold. I'll admit, I've always been a fan of mediums that give the viewer the same amount of knowledge of whats going on as the characters have, and this nails that.
The premise has a whole has been done many times before, including this years Knock at the Cabin, but I've not seen that or read the book it was based on. But in relation to the other similar films, this takes the top spot for me.
While the ending itself is probably the weakest part of the movie for me personally because it answers just slightly too many questions a little bit too easily, the journey to get there was still worth the time and I think the ending might still work for others.
From the beginning, that coffee mug has been a symbol of the way that Jimmy doesn't really fit in his new circumstances. "Bali Ha'i" doubles down on that symbolic motif throughout the episode, to show the several ways that the nascent Saul Goodman is a square peg who does not quite belong in the hole he's trying to fit into.
It's clear in the episode's creative and enjoyable cold open, which features Jimmy fighting insomnia in his generic corporate apartment. He takes those odd wicker balls that seem to be the default decoration for an upper class setting and turns them into fun and games, whether it be an impromptu hallway soccer game or a spate of trick shot basketball. He turns on the television and finds that Davis & Main has decided to adopt his idea to use commercials in order to reach more potential Sandpiper clients, but went with a bland white text with voiceover production in lieu of his attention-grabbing spot. Eventually, he returns to his hovel in the back of the old salon, clears out enough room for his fold out couch, and is finally able to get to sleep.
The broader implications are straightforward. Try as he might, a man as colorful as Jimmy doesn't fit into the antiseptic world he's stepped into, with the generic living space, the anodyne commercial, and the slick corporate car that doesn't quite accommodate his oversized novelty coffee mug. So when, at the end of the episode, he pulls out a tire iron and bashes in the cupholder until there's enough space, it's not just a scene of day-to-day frustration, it's a quiet act of rebellion that speaks to the way in which Jimmy is growing ever-weary of the space he inhabits.
But the episode's focus is on the way that the same weariness and frustration extends to Kim, who is out of the basement, but not out of the doghouse at HHM. The episode features scenes showing how both Kim and Jimmy are feeling boxed in, cornered, and unfulfilled by their current circumstances. Jimmy is cataloguing clients in a tedious session where the meticulous Erin is triple checking his every word. Kim is trying to do the very simple act of going to lunch, while Hamlin sends an envoy of his own to keep her at her desk during the lunch hour with only the promise of ordered-in lunch from "that fancy new salad place" to placate her.
Interestingly enough, Kim, unlike Jimmy, is offered an attractive out. After Kim is left to argue a losing motion in court, Schweikart her opposing counsel, compliments her for going down swinging and takes her out to lunch. There, he offers her a golden ticket: a partner-track position, a clean slate in terms of her student debt, and the benefits of being hand-picked by the partner with his name on the door. But more than that, Schweikart's best point comes when he tells her an old war story and explains that he left his old firm because he felt like the folks in charge there didn't have his back. (Incidentally, the Pacino-like Dennis Boutsikaris does a lot with a little in that brief scene and his performance helps to cement the attractiveness of what Schweikart is offering.) It's particularly salient at a time when Kim is questioning whether she has a future at HHM given the frosty reception she continues to receive from Hamlin.
It's clear that Kim feels a certain loyalty to HHM that she is loath to give up on. She tells Schweikart that she's been there for a decade, that they brought her up from the mailroom, and that they put her through law school. But Schweikart responds by noting that they're making her pay them back, that it's not kindness or generosity on their part, but sheer self-interest -- they not only didn't give her a "gift" by sending her to law school and putting her to work, but they're taking advantage of her by not using her to her full potential and sending her on fool's errands like arguing that motion.
The accusation has all the more force when, in an excellent scene, Hamlin is stone cold to Kim as they walk to meet the Mesa Verde clients, and then mechanically turns on the charm a few steps before they walk into the room. Not only does Kim have reason to doubt that Hamlin, and the firm he oversees, truly have her back, but she has reason to doubt he ever did, or at least sees that with an ability to shift his demeanor and put on whatever mask suits him at the moment, she can't trust that she'll ever really know where she stands with him.
As much as last week's "Rebecca" was a showcase for Rhea Seahorn as Kim, this week's episode gives her all the more opportunities to convey her character's emotions in subtle ways: the way her eyes light up for split second when Schweikert encourages her to imagine what she could at a firm that acknowledged her talents and abilities, the look of longing she takes on when sitting at the bar and looks at Schweikert's business card, the gradual smile that spreads across her face as she listens to Jimmy's voicemail, the clear conflicted stare she offers Jimmy when he asks her about the job offer. It's a virtuoso performance that does a good job of selling the thoughts Kim is turning over in her mind without ever requiring her to say them out loud.
"Bali H'ai" brings these two individuals, each feeling the desire to buck against the tides meant to hold them in place, reunite to blow off steam by conning another rube at the same bar. The rub of that sequence comes later, when in the morning after setting, Kim admits she has little interest in cashing the mark's $10,000 check, she just wants to keep it as a trophy, as a symbol of what both she and Jimmy are capable of when they're not constrained by the strictures and authority figures that keep them in their gilded cages. Jimmy is trying to convince himself as much as Kim when he tells her that he took the Davis & Main job because it's what he wanted, not because of her, and Kim is trying to figure out what she really wants and where her talents are best used. There's a greater strength to Kim that suggests she'll find her path, even as the more temperamental, if charming Jimmy McGill (whose answering machine song was adorable) seems more and more poised to trade in the good life for the much scrappier one in which he's much more comfortable, whether he means to or not.
Mike also finds himself backed into a corner in this episode, locked into a world he's been trying to get away from. After what was supposed to be a one-off transaction with Nacho, Mike finds himself embroiled in a dispute with the Salamanca family that requires him to continue to dabble in a criminal world he never wanted to return to in the first place.
There's something undeniably compelling about Mike as the reluctant badass. When he stands up to Arturo (Hector Salamanca's henchman) without intimidation, when he slips carbon paper under his newly purchased doormat in anticipation of another attempt to rattle him, when he uses his incredible sense of anticipation and misdirection to neutralize his would-be assailants, it's exciting and culminates in one of those trademark sequences that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. But when Mike's hand trembles after he methodically cleans off the gun he used to pistol whip the intruders, much the same way it did while he sat at the bar and waited for Matty's killers in "Five-O", it's clear that he wants no part of this.
But the appearance of Hector's twin nephews (a thrilling moment for Breaking Bad fans) forces Mike's hand. In my review of "Gloves Off" I wrote about the ways in which Mike has common ground with Batman. "Bali Ha'i", on the other hand, puts the grizzled grump in the unexpected company of Superman, the "big blue boyscout" who occasionally teams up with his counterpart from Gotham. The challenge for writing Superman stories is how to create stakes and tension for a character who is impervious to nearly every threat. Similarly, when a character is as uber-capable as Mike has been depicted in Better Call Saul, it can be difficult to make it seem like anything is a genuine threat to them. And yet, the answer in each case is to show that no matter how strong the character at the center of your story is, the people close to them, the ones they're trying to protect, may be quite vulnerable. The striking image of The Cousins gazing at Kaylee from the distance, and the sharp change in Mike's demeanor says everything about how to put pressure on someone as calm and collected as Mr. Ehrmantraut.
But the end game in the episode is telling. In a wonderfully tense scene, Mike stands up to Hector even as he's acquiescing. And when Nacho comes to his house to make the delivery of Mike's ransom money, Mike offers him half. Even though Mike himself has gone through quite a bit, he has a code and principles, and the fact that he didn't do the job he hired to do means that Nacho is entitled to some of his investment back.
Sure, it's partly just good business, but that sense of honor is also a part of Mike that he cannot turn off, even in the "no honor among thieves" setting he finds himself in, in the same way that Jimmy cannot escape the colorful conman side of who he is, and Kim cannot ignore the conflicting parts of her that value loyalty but also the thrill of that con and the idea of living up to her potential. "Bali Ha'i" finds three of the major characters in Better Call Saul each being walled in through circumstances beyond their control, and explores the way that who these individuals are at their cores is something they cannot ignore or squelch, even when that part of them is clawing at the walls.
This was a very good episode of Homeland. What I appreciated about it was the fact that, after all the ramping up excitement of the last couple of episodes, this was mostly about dénouement, about aftermath. It was quiet, about how the folks we know and have gotten to know over the course of the show are recovering from these events, or failing to recover.
This season has essentially centered on one major theme – whether Carrie could ever have a “normal” life, or whether she was simply too tainted from her past to ever have something like that.
And that comes through in Peter Quinn's death. Here is someone who couldn't escape the darkness, as he puts it, who tried to get out time and time again and found himself doing the same things over and over, turning to false sources of solace, and having the one person whom he truly seemed to care about over the course of the show risk his life for what she thought was the greater good, leaving him in a vegetative state. I haven't loved Quinn's arc, to the extent it's existed, over the course of this season, but I like him as a symbol for Carrie, as a sign of what going too deep into the world of spies and spooks leaves you with, and as another notch on Carrie's belt for people who have been caught in the web of her terrorist-hunting and paid the ultimate price for it.
It's also reflected in the scenes with Jonas who, more than any other character in this show, represented the normal life that Carrie yearned for. And he, as calm and understanding as he is, was kind with Carrie, but told her that he couldn't do this anymore, that he couldn't unsee what he'd seen. That not being a part of the world that Carrie had lived in for so long, he couldn't just accept it. And that was devastating to Carrie because Jonas symbolized that quieter, more idyllic life.
One of the recurring themes of The Sopranos was Tony Soprano as a malignancy, as someone who tainted everything and everyone he touched. This season of Homeland has leaned into the same type of thematic resonance. Carrie wins again -- she, with the help of noble Qassim, stops a major terrorist attack. But there is a cost. There's the cost of her ability to be a partner, to be a friend, and in some ways to be a mother. Carrie wants to move past all of this, she tells Saul as much, but there's a looming sense that she cannot escape it, that she is inexorably pulled back into intelligence work as the ghosts of her past resurface, and yet that continuing on in the same direction, whether by choice or necessity, just digs that hole deeper.
Carrie is a black hole, hurting those close to her even as she saves thousands, and that's a beautiful, tragic thing. I find myself drawn to stories where greatness extracts a price, where people make sacrifices, of themselves of others, to do something bigger and more important than themselves, and but find that they cannot emerge from these sacrifices unscathed, that there are scars and bruises and pains that are not so simple to recover from. This season played in that space to a significant degree, and proved to be the show's strongest since it's first because of it.
On the other end of this is Saul, who had been in so deep for so long that it was a shock when he found out that Allison was playing him. His scene with Ivan was an amazing one, where both actors conveyed a great deal apart from what they actually said. It was quiet, and intimate, and communicated the layers of emotions each was experiencing throughout the entirety of it.
Allison's part in all this carried a certain tragedy as well. She too felt like a bad actor but an understandable one, who was rendered compelling from the actress's performance as much as the writing. Miranda Otto was a boon for Season 5, and her character's ignominious end closed the loop on the aspect of this season that lit a fire under the plot, but also gave us as much character detail to dig into as it did story.
And then there's During, whose entire game this whole season was as mundane as wanting to date, and possibly marry Carrie. I'm tempted to reserve judgment to see what they do with his character in the next season as so much of his role here ultimately looked like a set up for that, but it's an underwhelming finish that may ultimately be more satisfying than if they had done something more bombastic like revealed he was in league with the SVR the whole time.
Then there was the last bit of tragedy with Laura Sutton and Numan. Sutton has been far from my favorite character this season, but she went out with a bang. Faced with the quiet strength of Astrid, there was something palpably sad about Sutton being strongarmed into recanting her positions to save Numan. I had a hard time with Sutton from the beginning, feeling like her intentions to release the documents writ-large were, at best, misguided and short-sighted. But there is something very sympathetic about a person having to go against their principles, against the things they stand for on a day-to-day basis, because the life of someone who's helped them tremendously is at stake. It ties together lightly with the broader story of Carrie, that no one escapes from this game unscathed or with their ideals intact.
All-in-all, this is as good a season as the show has been able to put together since its first. There was a unity of purpose to Carrie's story and the larger mystery that unfolded from episode-to-episode. It was far from perfect, but it still stands as an achievement and proof that this series still has juice left in it after its stellar start.
This was an episode comprised of three stories from three of the show's most significant characters. One was great; one was good; one was godawful, all for different reasons. Let's take them in turn.
Saul's storyline was tremendous, and much of it has to do with the direction and cinematography of the episode. Mandy Patinkin certainly held up his end of the bargain, but the way his scenes were structured really elucidated Saul's paranoia without having to be more explicit about it. The way the camera seemed to be spying on him (a technique the show would employ in its first season) sold Saul's feeling cornered and needing to do something risky and/or desperate. I also appreciated how he gave Carrie the kiss off at the beginning of the episode, but that what he was experiencing gave him reason to believe her. Straining the relationship between your two most significant characters and then bringing them back together is an old trick, but they're doing the legwork to make it plausible and compelling. At the same time, it was nice to see Saul using those spy skills again, from downloading the documents after creating a diversion, to slipping During the drive without his CIA tail being able to catch on. Great stuff.
Carrie's storyline was only OK, but it was heightened tremendously, as always, by Claire Daines's acting. Whatever they are paying Daines, it isn't enough, because in scenes where her character is lonely or isolated or desperate or blindsided, the written dialogue does her no favors -- full of cliches and weak lines -- but she sells in her reading of those lines, in the pained or blindsided or wistful expressions that show she's at the end of her rope, and in the way she carries herself that lets the audience buy into her situation. She's succeeding in a herculean task on that front, and it elevates the material.
The Quinn storyline, however, was ridiculous, in a bad way. I realize that any show, especially one involving spycraft, is going to require a certain amount of willing suspension of disbelief, and a tolerance for things working out just as they need to for the plot to move along. But my god, a nearly-mortally wounded Quinn being rescued by a random good samaritan who just so happens to be flatmates with a terrorist who was released because of the very documents that Carrie is so worked up over and revealed Saul's plan with the Germans? That just strains plausibility too far. It's far too convenient as a plot development, and Quinn overhearing a terrorist plot, and then becoming the Pirate King by killing the terrorist guy in a final showdown rumble at the end of the episode was just too cartoonish for me to bear. Really hacky stuff. I don't know where they're going with all of this, but it had better be good to justify this level of B.S.
I would rate this at roughly a 7.5/10. Again, things seem to be falling into place.
The star of the episode was the actress Allison, who did a tremendous job selling the character's anxieties and concerns about her Russian mission without making it feel too over the top. Mandy Patinkin was in rare form was well, in both his tet-a-tet with Dar Adal and in the various scenes were he gave of an air of being a caged animal.
I liked Carrie's story too, though again, not as much. I'm coming to appreciate the structure of this season, where there is a central conspiracy that Carrie and her band of merry men are slowly but surely uncovering it and tying disparate threads together. The sequence with her snooping through the Iraqi lawyer's house was appropriately tense, and her cab driver friend being killed in the snooping process is another great way to feed back into the season that Carrie is a force of destruction, hurting people she cares about in her wake.
Also, the grammar of television suggests that there's more to During than he's letting on. It seems unlikely that he's in league with the Russians, because why would he give Carrie that thumb drive if that were the case. But he definitely has another angle on this whole situation, hinted at in his statement in the church that he's not a good man, and his manipulative conversation with Jonas (and earlier with Carrie) where he seems to be keeping the two of them apart. Maybe it's as simple as him wanting to be with Carrie, but it feels like there's more there and I'm not sure what.
Otherwise, Saul defecting was a taut sequence with a lot of interesting directions the story could go. Quinn's adventures as the Pirate King of Berlin were better than last week, with Dar Adal's involvement an intriguing wildcard, though it all still seems fairly implausible, especially that these extremists would follow his every word. And Carrie + Allison after more of the cards are on the table is a promising development to come. As is often the case with this show for me, I am intrigued, if still a bit mistrustful, as to where they're going with all of this.
I liked this one. Jessica's plan to get herself locked up in a supermax prison was dumb, but 1. everyone more or less told her it was dumb, and 2. that was kind of the point. After what happened with Luke, Jessica wasn't thinking things through, but just viewed herself as a cancer that needed to go away. It would, in some ways, be an escape for her, a sense that she's removing herself from these proceedings, even if there's little reason to think that her plan would work, even less to think that it would actually deter Kilgrave, and if she really wants to help the greater good, she should follow Simpson's advice and just kill Kilgrave.
Killing is always an interesting area to explore in comics. Batman's embargo on killing is motivated by an interesting concept that if he crosses that line once, even in extreme circumstances, he doesn't know if he'll be able to stop. In this series, the same embargo with respect to Kilgrave is represented by two different ideas: the first is Jessica's, which is that she needs Kilgrave alive to save Hope, and the second is Trish, who thinks it's not their place to deliver lethal justice.
But I find myself agreeing with Simpson. For Jessica's part, leaving Kilgrave alive led to the death of Reuben, not to mention the harm that's come to all the other people that Kilgrave has controlled since, and that's just what we've seen. Who knows what pain he's caused. I feel for Hope; I really do--frankly more than I feel for Jessica--but the greater good is to prevent Kilgrave from taking any more lives or hurting any more people, even if it means Hope has to bear the brunt of his deeds. For Trish's part, there's little to indicate that the justice system is equipped to handle someone like Kilgrave, that even if they managed to capture him and turn him over to the authorities, that he wouldn't be able to manipulate his way out of the situation and go wreak more havoc. That said, even I disagree with Jessica and Trish, I think their moral philosophies make for interesting character motivations and storytelling possibilities within the frame of the larger narrative.
That said, I didn't really care for Jessica's "last day of freedom" mini-plot. For one thing, we know this isn't actually her last day of freedom. There are six more episodes than this, and it'd be a bolder stroke than I imagine the series would countenance to keep her locked up for the back half of the season. So there's no real stakes to it.
But even just treating it as Jessica thinking it's her last day of freedom, it doesn't really work. Again, I didn't buy into the Jessica-Luke relationship as much as the show seemed to want me to, so her stop at his bar rings a bit hollow. I did enjoy her visit to Trish's mom, since it added an interesting new dimension to both Jessica's history, both recent and long past, and did the same for Trish. But all the other "last meal" elements, like the visit to the top of the bridge, just seemed overdone given that we have every reason to believe she won't end up in jail.
Surprisingly, my favorite character in this episode was Malcolm, who's transition from generic junkie to character who knows what it's like to be controlled by Kilgrave makes him someone who can believably push back on Jessica, and who showed both strength and vulnerability in how he tried to prevent her from taking the fall for Reuben. I'll admit, he seemed largely like a prop, even after the reveal of what had been done to him, but he really came into his own here, both in terms of story and performance.
And, of course, Kilgrave continues to be an incredibly interesting part of this series. The scene with him in the police station (with more Clarke Peters!), and his continuing, utter creepiness in pursuing Jessica is the live wire that runs through this show. It makes sense that she would become an obsession for him as the only thing that his powers couldn't ultimately compel, and the way in which he finds a new way to invade her privacy a little bit more each episode makes him the perfect, disturbing villain. Again, he's probably the best motivated, most unnerving villain that the MCU has put forward thus far.
The flashbacks to Jessica's memories of her childhood home lay it all on a little thick, but as is often the case in this show, despite the shortcomings in execution, it points the narrative in an interesting direction, and I'm curious to see where it's going.
Let's start with the good stuff. Rosario Dawson is great, and I am so pleased that she is essentially the Coulson of the Netflix corner of the MCU -- the common character among the different shows. There's a good-hearted but world-weary quality to her performance that makes any scene she's in a better one. Seeing her and Jessica bounce off of one another was a treat, and I hope we see more of it in the future.
Also, I was a bit bearish on Kilgrave's dad when he first showed up, but his desperate, exasperated scenes when he was mind-controlled by his son were very well-done and disturbing. The horror of what he has to do, of how he knows what he's participating in, came through very well.
By the same token, Kilgrave himself has been an unending highlight in this series. David Tennant's given a virtuoso performance, showing how deluded Kilgrave is, how upset he is by the "loss" of something he never really had, and the childish fantasies he harbors of getting his revenge on the woman he "loves". His scene on the balcony risked laying it on too thick, but Tennant's performance saved it.
That said, the end game didn't really do it for me. The "Say something you'd never say" "how about 'I love you'" didn't land the way it was supposed to. Again, I buy the setup in theory, it just felt too corny to work in the moment. I like that Jessica and Trish are, essentially, the central relationship in the show. That includes Luke, who was involved in his best and sweetest scene in the show so far when Jessica laid down with him and spilled her guts -- it's unfortunate that the most compelling their relationship has been takes place when he's unconscious. But Jessica and Trish are the core of the show, and you saw that in the final Kilgrave scene, but that moment in particular just felt too obvious.
It's also time for a nitpick. While I can appreciate the "Kilgrave's trying to increase his power so he can sway Jessica again" story, it bugged me, in a Comic Book Guy sort of way, that he was able to command people over the hospital P.A. system after it had been previously established that his power didn't work through wires. Boosting his range or abilities shouldn't change that, especially if, as his dad claimed, his powers work through a virus. It's a superhero show, and so by definition you have to cut it some slack in the science vs. plot-necessary magic department, but it was an inconsistency from what the show had already established and handwaving it with "he's more powerful now" felt like an insufficient rationale for the change.
I also thought the ending was too predictable. It was fairly obvious that Jessica was faking, and I even called the neck-snap to close it out. They at least tried to handwave it by having Kilgrave initially skeptical, and wanting to test it out first with Trish. But Kilgrave has shown himself to be far more sadistic than just making out with Trish to test Jessica. Why didn't he tell Trish to start slitting her wrists or jump into the bay or something along those lines to really test Jessica? It seemed out of character for him to go with something as mundane as a smooch-session and "I'm really leaving this time." That really hurt the ending of his story, even if the performance was still good.
And the final scenes were a bit too on-the-nose for my taste as well. "They say everyone's born a hero." Who? Who's said that? Ever. I'm not really a fan of voice over, and that whole bit attempted to tie things up a little too neatly. The whole idea that Jessica can "fool herself" by helping all those people who are calling her (see, the world thinks she's a hero now! Get it!) is a fine theme to go with, but making it so literal as to just put it out there is too hamfisted. As seems to be the case with the show, I like what they're trying to do, but don't really like how they do it.
Overall, I walked away from this season pretty lukewarm. There were some extraordinary episodes, some godawful episodes, and a good chunk that was more of a mixed bag. There's a lot of promise, and a lot of interesting ideas at play, but hopefully in the next season, now that the show has found its voice and settled down a bit more, they can nail down some of those themes into a tighter show.
[7.8/10] I appreciate the choice to conflate something as geopolitically momentous as the end of The Troubles with something as personally momentous as the act of leaving your childhood behind. The choice to vote yes on the titular agreement is juxtaposed with the choice to accept adulthood, and the inevitable changes that come with it. Granda Joe lays it out -- it’s easy to be afraid that it could all be for naught, but it’s tougher, in some ways, to imagine there could be something better, even if it’s scary.
The finale does some of those full-circle things that help mark that this is a big closing event for a show. We open with a montage of the major developments, big and small, that have taken place over the course of the series. The whole thing ends in a big dance party and celebration that includes most every character of note boogieing down together in one big brouhaha. They dust off the Cranberries again and show most of the cast making their choice on the ballot before venturing into that big wide world and with it, the future. The show does a good job of marking the milestone, for the series and for the lives of its characters, that this represents.
And I like that for all Erin’s literary aspirations -- devolving from Hamlet to a “Shakespeare Simplified” book to a teen magazine -- these experiences genuinely did give her a voice that helps her to articulate not only her own perspective on growing up, but on her country’s perspective on emerging from ages of sectarian violence into a new period of peace. The hints that this show is, more or less, what Erin was talking about when she said she’d write this down “someday” are a little too cute, but I like that idea as the capstone to her growth and her arc over the course of the show.
The side stories we get along the way are good too. Sister Michael is my favorite character in the show, so pretty much anything they did with her was going to meet with my approval (including her chalking up Jenny Joyce’s song as another “atrocity” that the troubles has visited upon them). That said, I really like where they went. More than anyone, Sister Michael seems perpetually disgruntled about her job and this school. But when the bishop is ready to reassign her, she looks wistfully about the place that’s been her calling for the last several years, affirms that she appreciates her work and feels as though she makes a difference, and ultimately succeeds in her fight to stay. Watching her fight for the thing she seemed to disdain, because deep down she appreciates it, is softly moving.
I also appreciated the fight between Erin and Michelle over how the agreement would free her brother, who killed a man amid The Troubles, from prison, and whether or not that’s a good thing. (Did we know that before now? Feels like a line that got tossed off semi-joking in season 1 that’s being played straight now.) The show wrings good comedy from their tiff, with Clare’s inadvertent game of phone tag being the funniest bit in the episode. But it also pays off the dispute nicely, with both acknowledging the shades of gray, the lack of clarity in resolving what’s good and what’s bad, and in line with the broader ideas of this episode, connecting their own uncertainty over how to reckon with such things personally with the people of Ireland’s difficulty in doing the same.
Connecting it to dueling parties between Erin/Orla on the one hand, and Jenny Joyce on the other, makes for some good set pieces. The fact that Erin has to share her party with Orla, share her theme of literary heroes with Orla’s of monkeys, and share the parish hall with a first communion, adds to her parade of amusing indignities. By contrast, Jenny’s party is appropriately tricked out, replete with a famed singer from Derry. The big shindig gives the show a chance to go a bit wild. And the imagery of Clare blacking out Jenny’s party to bring it to the rest of the Derry Girls on foot is a nice way to give everyone a win.
(As an aside, I don’t know if it was covid or scheduling commitments, but Nicola Coughlan was apart from the rest of the cast for a lot of this episode. It’s not a hindrance to the episode necessarily, but it’s a little conspicuous in a series finale.)
The other bits we get here are all solid. Gerry bristling at having to house cousin Eamonn, who’s in no hurry to get his roof fixed and is ready to take advantage of the Quinns’ kindness, is worth a laugh. Granda Joe puzzling over what the agreement actually means, and the family’s reactions, are worth a few laughs. And my favorite part of the episode may actually be the opening, with Orla’s free-spirited, musical wandering through the town, which comes with a great energy and carefree air that signifies the spirit of hope amid uncertain possibilities “The Agreement” represents.
The thought that lingers with me is Joe’s prophecy to his granddaughter, that one day she’ll tell these tales to her kids like they’re ghost stories. I didn’t grow up amid the end of The Troubles, but I’m old enough to know what he means, to feel like your childhood took place in a different world, one you can describe and explain, but never truly account for to someone who wasn’t there before so much changed. This finale isn’t perfect, but it and Derry Girls as a whole, is the best way to capture a few of those ghosts, share them with people who might appreciate them, and conjure those days again. It did it all with great humor, an incredible sense of place, and a poignancy that remained until the final moments of the show.
Another Bond pastiche from Matthew Vaughn, and once again it’s worse than the last one. Here we have what is basically another Kingsman film, but this time it’s made for the wine moms who had found their new favorite film with The Lost City. The plot is quite bonkers, it's so dense and the amount of schlocky plot twists indicate that Vaughn’s at least somewhat aware of how tasteless it all is. Sometimes you can still find traces of the cleverness you’d expect from him, but generally it favours being loud and cringe. I understand that he’s targeting a different demographic here than with Kingsman, but the end result is so tame and commercial that it feels more like typical streaming filler (Red Notice, Ghosted). Some of the acting is atrocious. Obviously Rockwell puts in the best work, but it doesn’t make up for the stiff performances by Cavill, Howard and Lipa (though she gets a pass for being Dua Lipa). The directing is also noticeably a step down compared to Vaughn’s previous stuff. It doesn’t feel like he put much heart and soul in this, because besides some good stuntwork it looks like shit. There’s just so much plastic sheen (artificial bright lighting, tacky CGI, unnatural compositions and camera movement) that it becomes incredibly ugly to look at. You could pass that off as ‘well it’s meant to be cartoonish’, but I’m not going to make that leap when there’s this little artistry to it. Vaughn needs to stop making these, the whole thing feels predictable and played out.
2.5/10
I will ignore the historical inaccuracies, false character portrayals and the english speaking sinse this is Hollywood after all and they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
I was never sold on any of the characters or performances. Joaquin Phoenix does some overacting and I still don't know who his character is by the end. Poor character study. Phoenix and Kirby have no chemistry. Their relationship is so boring and they focus on it to no avail because I have no idea what makes this relationship tick.
There's undeniably some comedy incorporated into the movie at times but I was laughing in some serious scenes—it's camp! You can tell this was intended as a 4h movie because the editing and pacing are flagrantly bad. It's as if important scenes are missing. The 4h version could solve a lot of these problems, sure, but I doubt most people are going to rewatch this. So why release this version in theaters?? I don't like the look of the movie either, it's all so... blue.
The score is nothing out of the ordinary but it's good. The costumes look great. The action sequences are hit and miss. They look great (except for the blue filter), the set pieces are memorable and epic but I find the sequences short-lived. Edited maybe? In addition, the action loses a lot of weight because of the camp, rushed story and poor characters. Overall, Napoleon is one of the biggest disappointments of the year.
Watch this show, it is so very important to our world today.
It's a warning shot to all of us, that the planet is in dire danger unless we change course on the food we eat so very much of. As a consequence, we may very well kill not only ourselves, but all humankind on the planet due to global warming disasters as a result of the greenhouse gasses these meat-farms produce, as well as the ever-more dangerous health hazards they present.
The fix for this starts when we decide now to eat less meat At least less. We must reduce societal demand to buy these meats, to make less animals farmed, to reduce the acceleration of produced greenhouse gasses, to therefore help avert a preventable planet-wide catastrophe.
If that wasn't enough, making this change is also self-beneficial, as reducing meat consumption also improves ones health and wellbeing. This show collects and provides all the scientific statistics to show how multiple types of Fat on your body can be trimmed, while increasing your muscle mass, without eating as much (or any) meat. The conclusion reached at the end is that we can do it, and we must do it, for ourselves :person_tipping_hand: for each other :people_wrestling: and for the whole planet :earth_africa:
The most straightforward genre film Fincher has made since Panic Room, and probably his goofiest effort since The Game. It’s not great, what’s really lacking here is that inventive spark that makes his best work tick. The script is generally cliche, repetitive, predictable and sometimes cheesy. That’s not entirely surprising given that the film’s based on a graphic novel, and thankfully the film is at the very least somewhat aware of its own shortcomings. For example, there are some really funny moments of dark comedy through the film’s use of cynical narration. I also feel like Fincher is self-inserting himself in Fassbender’s character here (it’s kinda obvious if you’re familiar with his other work), but that ultimately doesn’t lead to a new, unique insight. It’s not a secret metaphor for filmmaking or Fincher’s career, at least I’m not seeing that. At most it just feels like Fincher taking a laugh at himself. It’s also not really reinventing the wheel when it comes to the way that it explores the serial killer as a cinematic archetype. Instead, this movie is at its best when Fincher’s finding new ways to present familiar ideas. The set pieces are pretty decent, he still knows how to bring the tension, shoot with precision and use great sound design & score. His use of songs from The Smiths adds a cool stylish touch, or it comments on scenes in an ironic way. Again, the sum doesn’t add up to something special or unique, but because it's made with a lot of skill and sleek style, it doesn't feel as disposable as a lot of other films like it.
5.5/10
Amazing,Unpredictable! Watching it was a roller coaster of emotions,sometimes the movie is a dark comedy , after that a romantic comedy, the next minute a revenge thriller, It's tonal shifts made me laught,cry,angry,fearful,happy and eventually made me think a lot about the ending , i think it's going to be devisive between people.But for me it worked and when i play the movie in my head and what this character has been dealing with in her life i think it fits perfectly.I felt satisfied
The subject matter we're dealing with here is very challenging to adress in a movie and Emerald Fennell(writer and first time director) is not afraid of exposing all the parties involved when something like that happen and how everyone involved could deal with it , she knocked it out of the park.
Carey Mulligan gives what i think migt be the best performance of her career , i really hope she could snag an Oscar nomination
She killed it as Cassandra this young woman with a tragic past who's on a journey of her own trying avenge what happened to her , perfectly casted here and i wouldn't imagine someone else taking that role.
You don't really know how to feel about her like sometimes she's likable and funny , the next minute she goes dark and very serious and frightening , those shift personnalities were well executed! The cast was great too , everyone nailed their part really !
The movie does not answer eveything that happened , there a times you wonder what happened to that guy and what happened to that woman because they don't show you so you make your own image of the events or you trust Cassandra's word's which i very much liked, it leaves you making you own assumption for some parts.
Overall, the movie is well directed , the writing is so strong here and a screenplay oscar nomination is very plausible and it's just very a beautiful movie to watch , the colours the cinematography, the sets, it's like you're in a candy world , the soundtarck is great and the use of music was on point .
This movie is ambitious and important and i don't think it will be forgotten by people , it just needs time to grow .
9.5/10. Now this is more like it! Despite the fact we cut to various scenes involving Hogarth, Trish, and Simpson, in many ways, this feels like a bottle episode, in spirit if not in execution. The bulk of the episode centers on Jessica and Kilgrave in Jessica's old house. Sure, there are some fireworks here and there (and some clumsily executed flashbacks), but most of it just centers on their interactions, on exploring the two characters, independently and in relation to each other, and that makes it the most interesting hour of television this show has put together thus far.
In addition to the character development, I really loved the moral dilemma the episode put Jessica in. I wrote in my review of the last episode a lot about the idea of the greater good and how that concepts doesn't necessarily align with the worldviews of either Jessica or Trish. But here, Jessica at least struggles with the idea of what it would mean if Kilgrave could be made into a force for good, even at the cost of Jessica's own happiness, safety, and well-being. The choice she makes at the end is very much in keeping with her character (a point the dialogue underlines a bit too boldly), but the fact that she seems genuinely affected by the decision, that she actually consults Trish to try to figure out what the right thing to do is, elevates this episode.
I also appreciated the way the episode explored Kilgrave without condoning him. It's a fine line to walk between making a bad guy more three-dimensional than an old school evil-for-evil's-sake villain, but also not trying to make them so sympathetic that it becomes a cliche, or, as is the danger here, that you present it as a justification for the character's bad deeds. But in this episode, the details we learn about Kilgrave --his parental abuse and neglect as he was experimented on--make him more comprehensible in his personality, but his casual disinterest in the value of human life, makes him seem all the more terrible. It's a tough balance to strike, but the show does it incredibly well here.
At the same time, I was very glad to see the scene where Jessica actually confronts Kilgrave about raping her. Much of the series has presented Jessica's trauma (the broader mind control not just the sex) as a rape metaphor, and while making that metaphor explicit risks making the presentation of the theme too on-the-nose, here it's just right. The anger and hurt in Jessica's voice, and the nonchalance of Kilgrave in response, magnifies the horror of what happened in the right way, and creates a conduit for the pain and frustration we've seen Jessica sublimating and projecting up to this point.
By that same token, I thought it was an interesting twist that Kilgrave doesn't see himself as murderer or a rapist. His characters is in some ways a takedown of the "nice guy" trope. The fact that he's absolutely torturing people, commanding them to do terrible things, and taking advantage of people to get his way, and yet sees himself as blameless for those people's actions makes him a more interesting villain. Mick Foley once said that the best bad guys believe that their actions are right, and it's interesting to see that concept reflected in Kilgrave.
To the same end, I appreciate the episode building on the idea put forward in the last episode, that what interests Kilgrave about Jessica is that she is someone who could walk away from him. There's a world-weariness to him when he tells Jessica that she has no idea what it's like not to know whether people genuinely want to do what he tells them to or not. He is a spiritually deadened man who fixates on the one person, the one facet of his life, he cannot truly control. That's what makes his character so frightening, disturbing, and compelling.
And Jessica too is never more compelling than she is in this episode. The way that she's cornered, trapped into living in this waking nightmare in the hope that she can use it save Hope or at least keep Kilgrave from hurting anyone else is rich material for the character and Kristyn Ritter. Her utter disgust for Kilgrave radiates in every moment they share the screen together, and yet the moment where Kilgrave uses his powers on the loathsome neighbor, you can see the slightest crack in Jessica's facade, the briefest hint of guilty appreciation that she just as quickly reverts from when Kilgrave touches him. It's a tremendous character moment that sets up the broader conflict for Jessica in this episode.
There's a lot of talk here about wiping the slate clean, about atoning for past deeds. That is, in many ways, the core of Jessica's character -- a sense that she is laden with guilt, but also trying to take some steps to make good on her promise in the world. This episode takes that idea to an extreme and is all the better for it.
And, god help me, I even love the Hogarth-Wendy storyline here. Part of that is that Carrie Anne Moss and the actress who play Wendy do a great job in conveying their characters' feelings--Wendy's open wound, and Hogarth's more reserved but still palpable regret. Frankly, apart from all the superhero stuff, I would gladly watch an episode devoted to the quiet domestic drama between the two characters, because there's a lot of interesting ideas of a good relationship gone bad at play there, and it's compelling even as it seems tangential to the main plot of the season.
There is, of course, the big blast and cliffhanger at the end of the episode, which, along with Kilgrave's brutal treatment of his servants, suggests whatever a force for good Kilgrave may be, he may be unredeemable. But for once I'm excited to find out where they're going to go from here.
[8.0/10] A wonderful end to the season. I like how this one pivots from the show’s usual low-stakes hilarity and casual infighting and ribbing among both the adults and the kids, only to show that they stick together when it really counts. In other hands, it could be saccharine, but here, it feels earned.
I like the low-stakes hilarity though! Gerry having to dicker with the photo shop clerk over whether or not he has his claim slip to get his pictures, despite the fact that he’s in them, is a hoot, especially when Granda’s undermining him at every turn. Sarah’s obsession with getting the pictures back because she was so thin you can see her collarbone, only to find that the clerk has a crush on her because of her stately clavicle, is equally absurd and amusing. And I like what a hard time the clerk gets from Grandda after Sarah brings him home, suggesting that his animus for Gerry isn’t personal. Maybe, it’s just that Mary and Sarah are reflections of his “perfect” dear deceased wife, and so nobody's good enough for them in his eyes.
Likewise, the happenings at the school are pretty hilarious. As in episode 4, I like this as a story of Erin trying to be bold and magnanimous in publishing a story about a gay classmate, only for the cosnequences to demonstrate that she was self-centered and self-serving about it, and blanches at other people having needs beyond her own. The way she rejects Clare after Clare admits to being the one who submitted the essay is low-key heartbreaking for Clare and infuriating for the audience.
Apart from the seriousness of it, the humor here is stellar too. Oh my god, Sister Michael is my favorite character on the show. Her deadpan asides and wry barbs are just winners every time. Comments about letting things happen out of boredom, facial expressions in reaction to poor talent show acts, and jabs about amateur singers making her appreciate professionals are all brilliant.
Plus the rest of the shtick is good too. Michelle trying to make this about her and missing the irony of accusing James of homophobia is funny as always. James gripes about censorship and yells of “I support gay people, though I myself am not gay” is chuckle-worthy. And even Mary’s line in the sand about doing a half-load of laundry being against everything she stands for was a funny bit.
But it’s the ending that takes this to another level. Orla doing a step routine that everyone laughs at is an odd inciting incident. And yet, it works as a way for Erin to take a stand in favor of supporting her friends, no matter what they’re doing, in a way that subtly communicates her support to Clare. It’s a little rushed, and I’d still like to hear an actual apology from Erin, but the spirit of the thing works, and the image of them all dancing silly together on stage as a show of solidarity with their pals is downright heartwarming.
Likewise, maybe I’m just a sucker for the Cranberries, but seeing the adults stand aghast at news of a terrible attack moved me. There’s great meaning in the cuts between their agape faces and the girls dancing away -- a sign of how terror and violence was always right there in the corners of the frame, but how they were living their lives and growing and maturing, if not blissfully unaware, then at least undeterred in continuing to live their lives at teenagers.
The peak, though, comes from two unsentimental characters. Sister Michael showing the slightest appreciation for their show of friendship gives it extra oomph, since she is not quick with praise or shows of emotion. And Grandda putting his hand on Gerry’s shoulder shows the gravity of the incident and the similar sense of solidarity that runs through the Quinn family. The world may be falling apart in places, threats may be right outside the door, but despite their squabbles and foibles, these people care for one another and stand by one another. It’s hard not to be moved by that, even in such a hilarious show.
[8.4/10] Oh man, the comic dialogue in Derry Girls is just so good. I’ll confess that I need subtitles to follow it sometimes, but the rapid-fire, back and forth lines about this and that are so darn funny. I just love it.
I also love Gerry as the last sane man in this family, trying to keep all of these nuts together and getting no respect for it. I feel bad for the poor chap, but I’d be lying if I said it weren’t hilarious to watch him finally stand-up to someone, at his family’s urging, only to get nothing but guff from them when he inadvertently makes a waitress cry. Likewise, Granda’s big talk of knowing what to do and having a handle on things, only to get his family trapped in the middle of the Orange parade is a hoot.
If that weren’t enough, the unexpected arrival of a Catholic rebel in the family’s trunk is a nice bit of comic escalation. Emmett is an amusing character in and of himself, with his matter of fact tone about needing to get out of Derry and hiding in a random family’s boot to do so. Everyone’s debates about what to do about him leads to even more laughs.
Plus hey, comedy about people overreading into psychic predictions is always my jam. Sarah’s tarot card guess that they’ll face grave danger on the road, Erin’s attempt to deny it as nonsense, only for her to mistake the “big clock” for a bomb and Emmet’s lighter for a gun is a hoot. There’s some great physical comedy from the actress who plays Erin, and everyone’s deadpan response to it is great.
The smaller gags are good too. Michelle also buying the tarot reading that she’ll meet her soulmate soon, and trying to talk herself into Emmett as the beau got a laugh out of me. Clare’s obsession with finishing Moby Dick and applying it to everything they’re experiencing was worth some yuks. And poor James, everyone slating him for being English/”gay” and making him responsible for the neighbor’s “second best tent” is quite amusing as well. His rant about wanting someone to explain Derry to him because “sometimes I feel like I’m through the fucking looking glass here” is classic.
More than anything, I just love a taste of this cultural experience. I know vaguely about The Troubles, but putting the experiences of cultural anxieties and tensions and even freaking out about having to use different money in a lens of comedy makes it feel like an off-kilter but still fascinating form of tourism. I guess I’ll have to put on my best Australian accent for it.
Overall, another real winner from this show.
