Ugh. Where to start? I'm embarrassed to admit that, as a teenager, this was one of my favourite episodes when it first aired. I though the concept of being trapped inside a board game was really cool. And yes, the idea still is pretty great, but when it's executed like this it just makes you want to turn away in shame.
The concept of the episode isn't the problem, it's the poor writing and absolutely horrendous acting involved, from both guest stars and the main cast. Alexander Siddig again comes off the worst here, I can only assume that it's a mixture of him following direction and having very little experience. Falow is way too over the top, and the Wadi in general are a stupid design in all aspects. The less said about the hopscotch scene the better, you can almost feel the embarrassment the cast members were experiencing.
The only ones who come off well here are Quark and Odo. Odo gets a fantastic scene with Lt. Primmin (we won't be seeing him again), mocking him about Starfleet procedures. Quark has a funny grovelling scene in which Armin Shimmerman doesn't hold back chewing up the scenery. And the writing of the episode itself isn't a total loss, the opening scene with Sisko and Jake is just a beautiful father/son piece.
To make matters worse, the episode drags. The final sections in the cave just seem to go on endlessly. This is a really weak moment for the show, but for all that I think I still prefer it to the terrible previous episode ('The Passenger'). There's at least an element of silly fun to be found, but for God's sake don't show this to anyone you want to introduce to the show or sci-fi TV in general.
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@dgw We all have a dark section of our past that we try to forget...
One of the things I enjoy about this episode is how it shows the main characters isolated and working together, each of them playing to their own strengths. Terry Farrel has been given very little to do as Dax throughout the first seasons, and I would say that this is the first episode where she's actually been given the chance to act. She does a great job, too, especially once her symbiont is removed and the calm, confident personality allowed to her by Dax disappears and we see how scared and young Jadzia is. We are given a great look into how the Trill work, too.
The guest cast are excellent, too. Tim Russ is barely recognisable as a Klingon. John Glover gets to change from a timid character into a different person. It's remarkable to see how different he plays it once he's joined, laughing with Sisko about their past adventures. The commander himself works against Verad and his crew brilliantly, playing on their emotions and never backing down. Meanwhile, Bashir shows that he isn't easily intimidated and O'Brien... well, O'Brien gets shot and rolls around in pain.
I like this as a display of friendship between the characters, they've reached a point where they trust each other. The problem I have, though, is Quark. He does something absolutely despicable and is told several times through the episode that he's finished. None of these people will ever trust him again. And yet, the episode ends with zero repercussions for him and all is forgotten. That doesn't ring true at all.
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I guess someone had to leave room for the others to act, so Colm got the short straw this time around.
This stage of DS9 is still mostly following the episodic formula of the Trek shows that preceded it, so the lack of any consequences for Quark is hardly surprising. It's not until later—a season or two, as I recall—that the show really gets into cross-episode persistence. I remember interviews with the creative staff on my DVDs saying that the push for longer and more involved story arcs was something of an ongoing battle. Given the "reset button" basis of its predecessors, it's not surprising that it took DS9 some time to break out of that mold and evolve the franchise (only for Voyager to keep treading the old path, generally).
I seem to have questions about the scene with June and Moira in the subway: why did they let themselves get separated like that? Why didn't one of them say "oh, I'm with my aunt / she's with me" ? Why didn't Moira call her over?
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@lefthandedguitarist
I think they were afraid they'd say something wrong and get each other caught. By not saying anything at least one of them made it out of the city.
Hmm...this is feeling less and less like a dire dystopian cautionary tale and more and more like a typically cliched female author's rape/sub fantasy (a la FSoG, but in this case written by a feminist who apparently also likes to be on top). Not having read the original, I'm wondering if it's just the screenplay, but whatever is the case, I'm rapidly losing interest.
Also Elisabeth Moss needs to see a vocal/diction coach. There were at least 3 lines of hers which remained totally incomprehensible no matter how many times I flicked back and re-listened, while at least another 4 required more than 2 replays to catch the intended dialogue. Actually, that's the director's fault really, but anyway, not great.
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@bouncyeyeball Yes, and I was talking about the screenplay, which is why I qualified by saying I hadn't read the book. The female characters are shown as extremely subservient, more so than their circumstances could possibly engender. Take for example the pre-Gilead and post-Gilead depictions of Offred, there is no believable way that this transformation could happen in such a short space of time. Change like this could barely happen across one generation, let alone the 5 or so years depicted (my guess based on the age of Offred's child). The TV series therefore comes across more as a rape fantasy (particularly eps 3 to 5, later episodes get slightly better) than a dystopian tale. Comparing it to FSoG was a joke, as should be clear from the rest of my bracketed remark, and was more about the unevenness of the screenplay than drawing a comparison between Atwood and James. If the screenplay is faithful to the book, then my criticism stands, and you don't know that either because as you said you haven't read it yourself, so feel free to take back calling me uneducated and simple-minded. :D
Riker calls for emergency attention from security, so who shows up? Worf, with Geordi. Neither has a phaser. La Forge isn't even part of the security division—at this point in the series, he's the helmsman. But Dr. Crusher happens to bring along a phaser when called to a medical emergency onboard the ship… because that makes sense. (We'll try to ignore how Worf and Geordi play along with Admiral Quinn's lies about what happened to Riker. That's also bad.)
That chair Remmick is sitting in looks an awful lot like the one used for Admiral Jameson in "Too Short a Season". That's because it was the same prop, redressed.
Not a nitpick, but doesn't fit into the review proper, either: I had no idea Captain Rixx was a Bolian. This is the first appearance of the species in Star Trek, and I guess I'm used to the later makeup design—which uses a much more saturated blue. Bonus trivia: The Bolians were named after Cliff Bole, who went on to direct a total of 42 Star Trek episodes across TNG, DS9, & VOY. He also directed on numerous other well-known shows like MacGyver, The X-Files, Baywatch, and Charlie's Angels.
Some background information on what was happening in the television world at the time explains why this episode wasn't as good as you might think it should be. After all, it's clearly meant to be a taut thriller about the possibility of Starfleet being seized by aliens. It's obviously meant to be part of a larger story arc—that started several episodes back, when Quinn gave Picard that warning.
The writers' strike of 1988 was ultimately responsible for this letdown. This "Conspiracy" plotline was meant to be intertwined with the Borg, who were to be introduced at the start of season two. But the writers' strike delayed the rest of the Borg storyline several months, and this piece of it was dropped. That's why nothing ever comes of the "homing beacon" Data reports.
It's too bad. Aside from it being entirely too easy for Picard and Riker to win against the "mother creature" (in Remmick's body), I enjoyed this one. It's not perfect, but "Conspiracy" as part of something bigger would have been better than what ultimately happened: treating this like any other incident-of-the-week—essentially, pressing the "big reset button" and pretending like these events never occurred.
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@finfan For this one in particular, I spent a fair bit of time reading IMDB's trivia, looking for background on Google (ending up at Wikipedia), and putting it all together in my head—with some help from writing and rewriting paragraphs several times.
That's the general process. If I'm curious about something in the episode, whether an on-screen detail or just a hint at production stuff (like the writers' strike), I'll go research it after writing my nitpicks down. (I try to write down only nitpicks/goofs I personally noticed, though occasionally something too good not to mention slips past me and I crib it from IMDB…)
It's interesting that you mention books. I, too, have several Star Trek reference books but it's far more convenient to simply leverage the Internet for research after (re-)watching an episode, since I'm already on a computer.
I understand Grace's point of view but I completely side with Ben on this one. This was a good fall finale, though it doesn't make up for the bad previous episodes.
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@legendaryfang56 Agreed. I see how crazy it must feel to be in her shoes, but she's letting her grief get in the way of the fact that her son literally would have died/been tortured if Ben hadn't done what he did when he did it. The only other explanation I can think of is either Ben didn't tell her everything or she wouldn't listen to everything.
I'm not too sure how I feel about Olive's storyline. It seems like pointless filler that will hold no importance other than to potentially hook her up with Maxine and as a tool to have her do something, to have some focus on her as she is one of the main characters, all because she's now the only one in the family who doesn't have Callings. I hope it has some sort of positive, worthwhile pay-off, in the end, preferably resulting in her having Callings too. I don't see any other significant, worthwhile conclusion to whatever's going on with her. Now that Grace is having them, for whatever reason, Olive is being left out, and I hope the main purpose of her storyline is to result in that no longer being the case. Simply used as a plot device to give her a romantic partner would be immensely disappointing. I hope that route of things won't be taken. At the very least, I hope that won't be the only reason for this storyline of hers.
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@roguescholar
Now that I think about it, Maxine simply using Olive seems more likely. My first impression was that it was going to be romantic. I'm probably wrong on that.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[6.0/10] Oh man, what a crock this is. It is so full of cheats and shortcuts and self contradictions that it's hard to take any of it seriously. Suddenly, we've pivoted to the prospect of mortality and self-sacrifice as the most important theme of the season, despite the fact that those have been, at best, tangential to the ideas the show was exploring up until...last week.
And it's totally contradicted by what the episode actually does! Picard trying to "give his life" to prove to Soji that organics is good would have more weight if we hadn't seen him jump into death-defying situations throughout the season. What makes this one any different? And when he "dies", it's not because the Romulans blast him or really anything to do with his grand stand. His brain abnormality just acts up when it's dramatically convenient, with no apparent connection to his attempt at self sacrifice.
Then the episode just wipes away that sacrifice anyway! I can't tell you what a cheat it feels like to have Picard die, learn a very important lesson about the beauty of life coming from the fact that it's finite, only for him to then immediately cheat death! Then the whole bending over backwards to try to explain that even though he has an android body now, he'll age normally feels contrived and bullshit as hell. It's a dumb plot choice that immediately contradicts the episodes laudable themes about accepting mortality as something inherently human.
It's not all bad. As deus ex machina as Riker's arrival, it's still a cool moment. As weird as Data looks in the "quantum simulation" (oh brother), his death and appreciation for Picard's love is moving. And even if Jurati feels like she's from a different show, her quips and jibes got a chuckle out of me.
Everything in this finale is just so rushed and glancing and ultimately unsatisfying. There's some good ideas here, but they're all shortchanged for a meditation on death that feels out of step with the show's ideas to this point, and a bunch of easy plot fixes and character relationships that haven't actually been developed.
On the whole, this season was a real missed opportunity. Assembling this kind of talent and deploying it only for this wobbly mess of a season is a big shame. I'm a sucker, so I'll be back for season 2, and I hope they'll work out the kinks But after this, I'm not terribly optimistic.
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@andrewbloom There must have been some kind of mental connection between us as we kind of wrote the same at about the same time.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[6.0/10] Oh man, what a crock this is. It is so full of cheats and shortcuts and self contradictions that it's hard to take any of it seriously. Suddenly, we've pivoted to the prospect of mortality and self-sacrifice as the most important theme of the season, despite the fact that those have been, at best, tangential to the ideas the show was exploring up until...last week.
And it's totally contradicted by what the episode actually does! Picard trying to "give his life" to prove to Soji that organics is good would have more weight if we hadn't seen him jump into death-defying situations throughout the season. What makes this one any different? And when he "dies", it's not because the Romulans blast him or really anything to do with his grand stand. His brain abnormality just acts up when it's dramatically convenient, with no apparent connection to his attempt at self sacrifice.
Then the episode just wipes away that sacrifice anyway! I can't tell you what a cheat it feels like to have Picard die, learn a very important lesson about the beauty of life coming from the fact that it's finite, only for him to then immediately cheat death! Then the whole bending over backwards to try to explain that even though he has an android body now, he'll age normally feels contrived and bullshit as hell. It's a dumb plot choice that immediately contradicts the episodes laudable themes about accepting mortality as something inherently human.
It's not all bad. As deus ex machina as Riker's arrival, it's still a cool moment. As weird as Data looks in the "quantum simulation" (oh brother), his death and appreciation for Picard's love is moving. And even if Jurati feels like she's from a different show, her quips and jibes got a chuckle out of me.
Everything in this finale is just so rushed and glancing and ultimately unsatisfying. There's some good ideas here, but they're all shortchanged for a meditation on death that feels out of step with the show's ideas to this point, and a bunch of easy plot fixes and character relationships that haven't actually been developed.
On the whole, this season was a real missed opportunity. Assembling this kind of talent and deploying it only for this wobbly mess of a season is a big shame. I'm a sucker, so I'll be back for season 2, and I hope they'll work out the kinks But after this, I'm not terribly optimistic.
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@finfan Perhaps we were cloned from the same positronic neuron! :-)
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[6.0/10] Oh man, what a crock this is. It is so full of cheats and shortcuts and self contradictions that it's hard to take any of it seriously. Suddenly, we've pivoted to the prospect of mortality and self-sacrifice as the most important theme of the season, despite the fact that those have been, at best, tangential to the ideas the show was exploring up until...last week.
And it's totally contradicted by what the episode actually does! Picard trying to "give his life" to prove to Soji that organics is good would have more weight if we hadn't seen him jump into death-defying situations throughout the season. What makes this one any different? And when he "dies", it's not because the Romulans blast him or really anything to do with his grand stand. His brain abnormality just acts up when it's dramatically convenient, with no apparent connection to his attempt at self sacrifice.
Then the episode just wipes away that sacrifice anyway! I can't tell you what a cheat it feels like to have Picard die, learn a very important lesson about the beauty of life coming from the fact that it's finite, only for him to then immediately cheat death! Then the whole bending over backwards to try to explain that even though he has an android body now, he'll age normally feels contrived and bullshit as hell. It's a dumb plot choice that immediately contradicts the episodes laudable themes about accepting mortality as something inherently human.
It's not all bad. As deus ex machina as Riker's arrival, it's still a cool moment. As weird as Data looks in the "quantum simulation" (oh brother), his death and appreciation for Picard's love is moving. And even if Jurati feels like she's from a different show, her quips and jibes got a chuckle out of me.
Everything in this finale is just so rushed and glancing and ultimately unsatisfying. There's some good ideas here, but they're all shortchanged for a meditation on death that feels out of step with the show's ideas to this point, and a bunch of easy plot fixes and character relationships that haven't actually been developed.
On the whole, this season was a real missed opportunity. Assembling this kind of talent and deploying it only for this wobbly mess of a season is a big shame. I'm a sucker, so I'll be back for season 2, and I hope they'll work out the kinks But after this, I'm not terribly optimistic.
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@andrewbloom "Everything in this finale is just so rushed and glancing and ultimately unsatisfying. There's some good ideas here, but they're all shortchanged for a meditation on death that feels out of step with the show's ideas to this point, and a bunch of easy plot fixes and character relationships that haven't actually been developed."
This.
I've enjoyed most of this first season but this was by far the weakest episode. The plot felt paper thin and rushed. While I agree Riker's arrival was a cool moment, the actual staging of that "battle" was terrible and the orchids defending the planet was really difficult to visually decipher.
I hope season 2 goes more conventional with its stories - or at the very least gets some better writers.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[6.0/10] Oh man, what a crock this is. It is so full of cheats and shortcuts and self contradictions that it's hard to take any of it seriously. Suddenly, we've pivoted to the prospect of mortality and self-sacrifice as the most important theme of the season, despite the fact that those have been, at best, tangential to the ideas the show was exploring up until...last week.
And it's totally contradicted by what the episode actually does! Picard trying to "give his life" to prove to Soji that organics is good would have more weight if we hadn't seen him jump into death-defying situations throughout the season. What makes this one any different? And when he "dies", it's not because the Romulans blast him or really anything to do with his grand stand. His brain abnormality just acts up when it's dramatically convenient, with no apparent connection to his attempt at self sacrifice.
Then the episode just wipes away that sacrifice anyway! I can't tell you what a cheat it feels like to have Picard die, learn a very important lesson about the beauty of life coming from the fact that it's finite, only for him to then immediately cheat death! Then the whole bending over backwards to try to explain that even though he has an android body now, he'll age normally feels contrived and bullshit as hell. It's a dumb plot choice that immediately contradicts the episodes laudable themes about accepting mortality as something inherently human.
It's not all bad. As deus ex machina as Riker's arrival, it's still a cool moment. As weird as Data looks in the "quantum simulation" (oh brother), his death and appreciation for Picard's love is moving. And even if Jurati feels like she's from a different show, her quips and jibes got a chuckle out of me.
Everything in this finale is just so rushed and glancing and ultimately unsatisfying. There's some good ideas here, but they're all shortchanged for a meditation on death that feels out of step with the show's ideas to this point, and a bunch of easy plot fixes and character relationships that haven't actually been developed.
On the whole, this season was a real missed opportunity. Assembling this kind of talent and deploying it only for this wobbly mess of a season is a big shame. I'm a sucker, so I'll be back for season 2, and I hope they'll work out the kinks But after this, I'm not terribly optimistic.
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@2ls1t Yeah, despite a much higher budget than during the TNG days, the space battle here wasn't any more visually interesting than the ones from the early nineties, which says something about the series's visual acumen. It's a shame.
With how bad our world is right now, sometimes you just need to cry, and damnit I cried until I couldn't anymore. This last episode was more emotionally charged than any episode of Discovery, and I'm all for it. So much nostalgia. I hope Sir Patrick Stewart hangs around for many seasons to come.
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@geraldbrent1 ...still crying...mostly for Data. So beautiful that he saw Picard as his spirit guide, or "Light Being," and how they made us wait a beat before revealing that.
I was pretty sure Picard was going into the golem. Once they killed him I was certain. I would like to tell them to go screw themselves for killing Data. Again! All in all, it was pretty good. Riker was a bit of a surprise. A welcome one.
What I found less than pleasing. All the ships being the same. All the Romulan ships were one model and all the Star Fleet ship were one model.
The synthetics were wishy washy. First they like Picard. Then they don't like him. I guess they all went back to liking him in the end because they didn't try and stop him or Soji.
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@anthoney65 I always thought the Romulan culture rather uniform. So I wasn't too surprised nor disappointed about their fleet.
But I urge you to take a closer look at the Starfleet fleet. I was positively surprised how many different types of ships the producers had generated.
Raffi and Seven all of a sudden interlocking hands at the end as if they've a budding relationship was a complete WTF and 100% unearned. There's been no indication that Seven or Raffi are bisexual. If anything, I was half-expecting Seven and Rios to kiss after Picard's death. Have Raffi and Seven even shared much screentime??
It feels like lame pandering - if the show wanted to include an LGBT relationship (which would be great), I'd rather they had explored the hinted at attraction between Elnor and Hugh before the latter's untimely demise.
Beyond all that, this finale was weak and a disappointing end to the first season. Above all else, I hope that's the last we've seen of Narek.
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@paulvincent83 "It definitely seemed like Seven had a relationship with the woman she wanted to kill" now you mention it, I do recall this but I still think it was unearned.
The season spent way more time on Raffi's interactions with Picard and Rios, and even Jurati - not to mention we had a side story involving her son from a previous heterosexual relationship. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against it but it was way too rushed (as was this finale in general, in terms of plot). If they wanted to explore Seven and Raffi's relationship, they could easily have let it breathe across season 2.
This is not Star Trek and this picard is not Picard from TNG.
ok how it's the first episode??
script is really dumb and doge is a mary sue, this episode was bad but not bad as STD, but its still bad, these ppl dont understand Star Trek, no surprise they fuck up again.
I've watched TNG with a smile in my face, this trash named STP i couldn't fake one.loading replies
@axonrlp Patrick Stewart doesn't get Star Trek? It might not be what you want it to be, but as far as I am concerned it is Star Trek - More movie Trek than TV-Trek, but still Star Trek.
Given Stewarts interview back when First Contact came out you could have known that this would contain way more action than TNG.
This is not Star Trek and this picard is not Picard from TNG.
ok how it's the first episode??
script is really dumb and doge is a mary sue, this episode was bad but not bad as STD, but its still bad, these ppl dont understand Star Trek, no surprise they fuck up again.
I've watched TNG with a smile in my face, this trash named STP i couldn't fake one.loading replies
@axonrlp Yes, I do know the franchise.
I have seen everything but DIS Season 2 at least twice, most Episodes in all shows at least 3 times.
I agree with ST:DIS being a catastrophy. I however DON'T think Picard is overly PC or a fail at all.
Is it comparable to TOS or TNG? Certainly not.
It however is more than consistent enough with the existing canon - opposed to DIS. It is something completly different, but franchises do need to evolve. No one but hardcore fans would watch a show with the pace of TNG today.
Discovery altered its pace and everything to serve those potentially new customers while disregarding existing fans (including a dare to fans not to watch it from Lorcas actor...) - Picard walks that line.
The only thing I really don't like is, that it is a grand arc show "aired" in weekly installments.
Also: Can you please pinpoint where Picard is overly PC? Yes, there are way more non-white people in it, but I wouldn't call that overly PC. Especially considering that the whole crew is white!
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[9.0/10] It’s just supposed to be business. You come in. You sign the forms. You check the boxes. You pay the fine. You don’t get sentimental. There are practical reasons to do this thing, reasons that, coincidentally, involve your continued safety and freedom.
But then you look at the person standing across from you, a person whose joy or pain matters to you, and suddenly you can’t pretend that this is all just a ministerial act, just a necessary concession to the gods of bureaucracy or the legal system. Instead, it becomes something meaningful, something personal, that has an emotional import and connection that makes it more than just business as usual.
So yeah, Kim and Jimmy are married now. After fans reeled from last week’s cliffhanger, it turns out their union isn’t a last desperate act of mutual self-immolation or an impulse borne of bad family lessons. It’s a means of protection, so that if Kim is implicated in Jimmy’s lies once again, she can never be compelled to testify against him as her husband.
And yet, my favorite moment in an episode not short on great moments comes when the two of them face one another in some dingy courtroom, enduring the world’s least romantic wedding ceremony and, against all odds, they’re both moved by it. It’s an outstanding piece of acting from Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn, who hardly say a word in the scene, but whose faces and subtle changes in expression let slip that however much these two people themselves this wedding is a practicality, it is actually a fleeting moment of romantic transcendence for two people who, whatever their problems, do genuinely love one another.
It sets the tone for “JMM”, an episode where people try to keep things professional, detached, and calm, until it’s contrasted with something much more personal, much more piercing, that wins out.
That’s certainly true for Kim. The episode doesn't spare us the aftermath at Mesa Verde in the wreckage of Saul’s stunt last week. “JMM” involves Kim and Rich low-key groveling before a miffed Kevin Wachtell, all but ready to fire their firm. The partners do the respectful, deferential thing, evincing the sort of demeanor that’s expected between lawyers and their clients, and take responsibility for the failures that led to Wachtell and his company getting fleeced for hundreds of thousands of dollars by Saul. And all it gets them is a dismissive, perturbed kiss off from Kevin, along with the admonition that Kim can do better than her shady beau.
But after walking out the door, Kim decides that she won’t take that lying down. She barges her way back in and is frank with Kevin, about how she really feels, in a way her deferential act wasn’t. She tells him that time and again they advised him against every step that led down this path, and he rejected their advice and barged ahead. It’s not entirely true (or at least omits how much fuel Kim threw on the fire), but she challenges Kevin, approaches him candidly and directly and, most important of all, personally. He respects that and, with a terse but telling response that he’ll see her on Thursday, lets her know that she’s keeping the business.
That directness matters. It builds on a frankness, a realness, that Kevin respects in Kim far more than all the fancy degrees and smarty pants advisors he low-key loathes given his faux-blue collar roots. Truth and honesty gets to him in a way that the usual routine in this situation doesn't and wouldn’t.
There’s a similar contrast between the professional and the personal in Gus’s part of the episode. His first appearance in “JMM” is in a bland boardroom meeting, where fast food CEOs are golf clapping over quarterly percentage increases and plastically delighting over the unprecedented advent of spicy curly fries (which, in fairness, do look pretty tasty).
But the tenor of the conversation changes when we see Gus, Lydia (!), and Peter Schuler behind closed doors. Breaking Bad fans will remember Herr Schuler as the Madrigal exec who had an...unfortunate reaction to the DEA’s investigation. “JMM” plants the seeds for that fatalistic response to external pressure. Schuler is deep in the muck on this, helping to fund Gus’s operation and far enough into it to know and worry about the threat posed by Lalo and the cartel. He’s panicked over auditors, desperate not to get caught, and ready to throw in the towel.
That is, until Gus makes it personal. I don’t want to speculate too deeply about the friendship that Gus and Schuler share, but there’s a familiarity and intimacy to their interactions back at the hotel. Gus persuades his benefactor to stay in the fight by holding him by the arm, looking him (and by extension, the audience) in the eye, and calling back to a shared history together. It’s that gesture, that remembrance, that keeps Schuler mollified enough to give Gus a little more rope, a little more time, far removed from the practiced smiles of the boardroom.
It’s personal for his mole too. Nacho ends up helping Gus burn down one of his own restaurants, under orders from an imprisoned Lalo, to keep the pressure on for the Salamancas and to keep up appearances for Fring. It is, as always, a cool and cathartic sequence on this show, and Gus’s chicken slide grease explosion (which he cooly walks away from, naturally), is a visual highlight.
But for Nacho, however cool this may be, it is something he does not out of loyalty or anger or a sense of rivalry, but because it’s just his job. It’s the necessary evil to protect the thing he actually cares about -- his father. In his meeting with Mike, he tells his new handler that he wants out, that he wants to whisk his dad away somewhere that the cartel can’t get him, because the separation from his “career” and his family is getting thinner by the second.
At the same time, Mike is finding peace on that front. If it weren’t for Kim and Jimmy’s strange but endearing wedding, Mike’s interludes with his granddaughter and daughter-in-law would be the sweetest thing in the episode. He reads to his son’s little girl. He reminisces with Stacey about his boy’s elementary school age antics. And he tells her that he’s better, that he’s accepted what his professional situation is and doesn't want to fight it anymore. More than anyone in the show, Mike is able to find equilibrium by accepting the “hand he’s dealt” in his job, and enjoying the private, personal things that job (hopefully) exists far away and apart from.
He does, however, still have a job to do, and right now that means getting Lalo out of prison so that Gus can force him south of the border where it’s harder for Lalo to call the shots. (And hey, if it gives Gus a chance to take the guy out, all the better). That leads to Mike crossing paths with Saul for the first time in a long time, feeding Saul the dirt (which Mike himself created), to get Lalo out on bail and back to Mexico.Jimmy is genuinely conflicted about it. As ready, willing, and able as he’s been to represent the, shall we say, less than reputable members of the community, becoming a “friend of the cartel” is a horse of a different color. He says as much to Kim in a heartening moment of honesty and candor between them. He thinks about the money, “ranch in Montana” money, but when she asks him if it’s what he wants, he says no. It’s about the thrill of the chase, and about making a life for and with the people he cares about with Jimmy, not necessarily the size of the bankroll. Money’s a means to an end, not an end unto itself for him.
Still, Mike shows up on his doorstep, notes a mysterious benefactor, and between that and the intimidation of a scary crime lord telling him it’s better to be in front of the judge than the cartel, he does what’s expected of him as a zealous advocate and professional. He uses the info that the prosecution’s star witness was coached by “some P.I.” to cast the judge’s ire on the state, and deploys a phony wife and family to show ties to the community. It works! Despite facing a murder charge, Lalo receives a bond and can afford it despite a hefty price tag.
But something’s eating at Jimmy through all of this. In contrast to the fake fiance and moppets he scares up to sway the judge, Jimmy looks across the aisle at the real family of the victim. He sees a poor kid’s mother crying in the courtroom, where he’s helping a cold blooded killer evade justice. Even when it’s done, he peaks at them from around a corner, with his reflection on the marble helping to represent the duality of him in this moment.
It’s too neat and clean to divide this man into Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman. There’s elements of each in the other. But there’s always been a side of the man whose born initials are “JMM” that wants to win at any cost, and a side of him that genuinely cares for people and can feel their pain. There are so many exit ramps in Jimmy’s life, so many places where he could have changed directions and not become the shyster we met in Breaking Bad, and this moment, where the palpable, deeply personal pain felt by this poor family cuts through his typical mercenary craftiness is one of them.
But it’s not to be. Howard Hamlin intervenes, revokes his job offer, and calls Jimmy out for his recent antics with bowling balls and prostitutes and other schemes to mess with Howard’s life. To say that Saul reacts poorly is an understatement. He lashes out at Howard, accusing him of killing Chuck, declaring that a job at HHM is beneath him, loudly and publicly promoting himself as a god, whose stature and grandiosity are so great as to make Howard’s piddling little offer to him infinitesimal.
That’s the thing about Jimmy. He didn’t become a lawyer because of a supposed deep respect and admiration for the law like Chuck. He didn’t do it as a way out and a way forward like Kim. His reasons were always personal. He wanted to impress his brother. He wanted to make Chuck proud. His business life and his private wants were always mixed and matched.
Only here, that motivation has changed. There’s still good in Jimmy, the impulse to gaze at the mournful expressions of a victim’s loved ones and have it give him pause over whether he’s doing the right thing. But the polarity of the personal has changed for him. He’s no longer just in the legal business to earn Chuck’s respect or make a living or fund his dreams with Kim. Now he wants revenge, to show Chuck’s ghost, and every living manifestation of the people and institutions and norms that have made him feel “less than” and looked down upon his whole life that he’s better, and more important, bigger than everyone who once thought less of him.
For Jimmy it always starts out as business, as a transactional thing he does without real consideration. Then, time and again, he has that moment of pause, that moment of restraint, when he thinks about the emotional impact of his choices. But then, inevitably, his personal grievances, his perceived slights, the personal baggage he’s carried for so long, shoves him back toward being Saul Goodman. No deep look into someone’s eyes can change that, however much we might want it to.
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@andrewbloom loved your review, as usual.
My favorite moment was Jimmy blowing up at Howard because Howard called him out on his scamming - and it was JUST like Kim blowing up at Rich for calling her out on the Mesa Verde scam in the previous ep! Jimmy and Kim are perfect for each other lmao...
Otis is seriously pissing me off this season. Back in season 1 he was, for the most part, "compellingly odd" as Maeve once said. This season, however, he's been doing nothing but antagonizing everyone around him from his mother to Jakob to Ola to Maeve and it's annoying as hell. The speech he made in this episode was just a bunch of self-righteous bullshit. I've been shipping him with Maeve from the start, but tbh now I think Maeve deserves better than this entitled little shit.
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@aniela-krajewska I get where you’re coming from and I agree he was being hugely annoying this episode (then again most people are when they get shitfaced in an emotional state). However, it’s also Otis who has been antagonised all through this season. He just boiled over this episode. I think he also had a right to express his feelings at the dinner table, when no one else dared. Hey not even his mother could honestly talk about hers. I actually agreed with Otis there.
You’re also forgetting how he’s always trying to help everyone even when he doesn’t really want to. He always puts others first. And then this mess comes out of it, where he feels like he’s just the one getting trampled on. I totally can’t be mad at that.
As long as Otis catches himself again, it‘a just an outbreak.
Well that was a surprise! It reminded me of a Fringe episode. Great work. Sad that the season is cut short but the media has everyone panicked and fearful over a virus that is only dangerous to 3-5% of the population. But that'll come out in time.
Looking forward to season 8.
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@tropolite oh, f*ck off with your "it's just a flu, bro!" conspiracy theories bullshit.
I thought you people would realize how dumb this take was by March.
There are going to be a lot of issues with this series, that’s obvious.
The first one for me was how the young guy was found in the toy store by the old mentor. In a later scene he even says “you found what I couldn’t” (the location of the next target) but he obviously did find the place - just in time to save the young guy.
Nevertheless, I’m going to watch a couple of more episodes and try not to nitpick the pleasure right out of it. For me, that’s a very big order…so I’ll refrain from detailing any more complaints.
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In a later scene he even says “you found what I couldn’t” (the location of the next target) but he obviously did find the place - just in time to save the young guy.
I felt that it was pretty clear he was following young Jonah. For a time I thought he even intentionally let him "find" the secret room and intentionally let him "take" the photo just to do a sort of test on him and see what he would do. But I definitely still feel that he was clearly being followed.
As for why he didn't break in immediately. I'd guess it wasn't immediately obvious that Jonah needed help and after a while it became obvious and he breached. Not that there aren't other nitpicky issues in the episode there's a bunch for sure including a few anachronisms but that one seemed fairly TV-level reasonable.
When Voyager tackles big story lines, it can take me by surprise. This is a gorgeously twisty episode that doesn't worry about how much it tries to fit in, starting in one place and taking us on a winding path to get somewhere new. I have to congratulate the writers on handling it all so well.
I'm really glad to see that the Maquis are still not entirely comfortable on board the ship, because they do tend to blend into the background in most episodes. It's just a shame that any time we meet one it has to be a new character and actor. The show would have been so much better if there were all people that we had been seeing since the start.
The death and funeral scene at the start really didn't work for me at all for exactly the reason that we don't know or care about the character who died. All of our main cast were talking about how well they knew him, how he had saved their lives and it falls flat. Chakotay especially fails here as he gives one of the most underwhelming and unemotional funeral eulogies - I don't really think that guy truly cares about anyone, or else Robert Beltran was just bored out of his mind.
Always happy to see Seska back, and her interactions with Maje Cullah were a bit more nuanced here, less evil villain. The Trabe kind of suckered me in, I was hoping they would actually be good guys. Nice nod to The Godfather Part III with the big mass execution.
The ending is a bit of a letdown with Janeway realising that the Starfleet way is the only way (it really shouldn't be), and giving a cheesy motivational speech.
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@dgw Great minds, and all that... ! :D
When Voyager tackles big story lines, it can take me by surprise. This is a gorgeously twisty episode that doesn't worry about how much it tries to fit in, starting in one place and taking us on a winding path to get somewhere new. I have to congratulate the writers on handling it all so well.
I'm really glad to see that the Maquis are still not entirely comfortable on board the ship, because they do tend to blend into the background in most episodes. It's just a shame that any time we meet one it has to be a new character and actor. The show would have been so much better if there were all people that we had been seeing since the start.
The death and funeral scene at the start really didn't work for me at all for exactly the reason that we don't know or care about the character who died. All of our main cast were talking about how well they knew him, how he had saved their lives and it falls flat. Chakotay especially fails here as he gives one of the most underwhelming and unemotional funeral eulogies - I don't really think that guy truly cares about anyone, or else Robert Beltran was just bored out of his mind.
Always happy to see Seska back, and her interactions with Maje Cullah were a bit more nuanced here, less evil villain. The Trabe kind of suckered me in, I was hoping they would actually be good guys. Nice nod to The Godfather Part III with the big mass execution.
The ending is a bit of a letdown with Janeway realising that the Starfleet way is the only way (it really shouldn't be), and giving a cheesy motivational speech.
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@lefthandedguitarist I love when I don't have to write a top-level comment at all because someone else read my mind :)
Of all TNG episodes, 'The Wounded' feels like the one which firmly leads to the creation of Deep Space Nine. Chief O'Brien, having been given more and more screen time over the past couple of seasons, is finally given something of a leading role and a huge amount of character development. I would think that it's this episode that brought his character over to DS9. I really love the dinner scenes with Keiko, and of course the fantastic talk in Ten-Forward.
Additionally, we get to meet the Cardassians for the first time. These guys are just incredible, and I think one of the most developed alien races in popular science fiction. A big part of their success is down to the casting here, with Marc Alaimo playing Gul Macet. It's no coincidence he was later cast as Gul Dukat throughout DS9 (and for me, by far and away the best Trek villain ever). He brings a great deal of menace and intellect to the role, but we also get depth when you look at all 3 of the Cardassian actors together as they each display very different personalities. If they hadn't all worked so well I'm not sure that the Cardassians would have become some an important part of the franchise. There are wonderful scenes on the bridge as Picard has to deal with events while Macet watches on, tense stuff.
The weaker parts of the episode for me come in the form of Captain Maddox. Maybe it's because we've gotten so used to Picard as an example of a leader, but this guy just crumbles in comparison to him. It's also odd that we never see any of Maddox's crew and have to assume that they are just blindly following his bizarre orders.
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@lefthandedguitarist not wanting to sound picky but it's Maxwell not Maddox. That was maybe a carry over from the previous episode ? :wink: I am surprised thought nobody noticed it before.
I like your look on the Cardassians. I became a big fan of Alaimo later on DS9. Really good actor that can stand up against anyone.
what the fuck was up with that intro. was waiting desperately for it to stop. actually skipped ahead in the show after 5 minutes till Elliot is waking up in bed. Absolutely not needed intro and would have much rather preferred another 10 minutes of actual show and not 90s sitcom satire.
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@patrickisfrench it was not a pointless scene. there is a deep message in it, the ''switch'' of personality, his father protecting him, what weird things go on in the mind of a schizophrenic, his defense system
what the fuck was up with that intro. was waiting desperately for it to stop. actually skipped ahead in the show after 5 minutes till Elliot is waking up in bed. Absolutely not needed intro and would have much rather preferred another 10 minutes of actual show and not 90s sitcom satire.
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@patrickisfrench this is how shows build empathy. If you are watching for pure pleasure, it isn't gonna satisfy because Mr. Robot has never been about pleasure. It's always been about suffering with the characters, feeling their confusion, pain, anger, loneliness, etc. The "dragging on" was so YOU felt what Eliott was feeling.
Wait... What?
But.. But.. but.. what about that stuff with Ray? He couldn't have done that from within, right?
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@possamai I think Ray is a warden in the prison and asked Elliot for help. The computer work always happens at night it seems because it's always dark outside judging from the windows in Ray's office. The guys that beat Elliot up are either corrupt guards or his minions inside the prison.
haha there's a little Android and iOS fanboy/fangirl battle here; yet none of these guys ever heard of Maemo, MeeGo or Symbian.
I'm still waiting to see whether we even get to see a Nokia device appear in the show. All you ever see are your typical Apple products and Android s%*t, some Amazon... We needa see some retro 90s-00s hacking! (looking @ young Elliot)loading replies
Hmm, WebOS, Firefox OS… the failed Ubuntu Edge would be a killer device type for this show, I think. Too bad it fell so far short of its funding goal, I wanted one.
Wow. This was... beautiful. While I am sad to see Vera's arc come to such a sudden end, the last "act" of this episode was pure catharsis.
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@sj95 Vera stole this episode, it was unreal. Esmail really did hide the 3rd personality so well.
After last week's outing, this one was bound to be a letdown no matter what, but the decisions on where to place the focus for the hour made it all a little worse than it had to be. Thankfully, there was Leon. Go with the LLC, Leon. Go with the LLC.
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@calex I wasn't referring to the final arc of the show, but to the EPISODIC letdown that was inevitable here after last week's high point and its culmination of so many arcs. In general, though, I believe that most shows that are given a chance to write their way to a clearly defined ending date -- which isn't all that many, given that most shows get cancelled without warning -- manage to be underwhelming. Among those that I've watched personally, the biggest offender ever without any doubt was LOST, with THE X-FILES as a close second; and the most recent successes have been 12 MONKEYS and ORPHAN BLACK, but I honestly can't think of any more recent successes off the top of my head. It's just rare, even when the writers have a specific amount of time given to them to wrap things up. I've said more than once that most writers should be GRATEFUL when their shows are cancelled without warning since they can get all indignant and pretend that they had the Best Ending Ever all planned out and ready to go...when in reality they were probably pretty clueless about where they wanted to take things next.
Lmao "I can still hear the sound of her fist hitting your face and your head bouncing off the floor...it was like, thwack, and a kathunk."
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@thenightwolf I loved how Missy delivered the onomatopeias, lol
