[7.6/10] This was my favorite episode of the series so far. I like how this one is tinged with regret for Picard, both professionally in how he feels like he's failed the Romulans, but also personally with how he feels like he failed Elnor. At the same time, I like that we get some of the counter-reaction here, with the local Romulans closing ranks and resenting the broken promises of the Federation and other outsider. Elnor's reaction to Picard, and their strained paternal relationship, seems like fodder for good and meaningful complexity in the show's relationships, so color me intrigued about where they go from here.
Unfortunately, the business on the other half of the show was terrible. Soji and Narek are a terrible pair, and their "spies in love, who don't trust each other" dynamic is limp as hell. Plus, what the hell is the deal with Narek and his sister. Why is the show going so strong on the bizarre incest vibes there.
But hey! Seven of Nine! Sure, the opening credits spoiled it, but she still gets a cool entrance and a badass line to join the show with. This is the first episode that left me encouraged about where we could go from here!
8.5/10. Blood of my blood. The title gives it away. One could say this every week about a show so centered around familial legacy, but this episode of Game of Thrones in particular circles around familial connections, between parents and children and the other ties of kin that pull us into place and break our hearts in the process. These people save us, help us, make us stronger, but they also have a unique capacity to wound us, to frustrate us, and to unravel us.
Nowhere does the episode explore all sides of this than more than Sam's return visit to Horn Hill, which proved to be the most magnificent slice of the episode, despite the smaller stakes and lack of major reveals. Much of the time on Game of Thrones is spent focused on the larger machinations of the plot. Even when we're not devoting time to the dragons or magic or other fantastical elements of the world, we're focused on the stakes of not just the individual characters, but on the titular game of thrones as different players vie for power, and on the existential threat coming from the north.
Despite this, Sam's visit home has the feeling of something apart. There's no magic at play. While his stop is intended as a respite for Gilly and Sam Jr. on Sam's way to the Citadel to earn his maester's chain and ostensibly help Jon, there's little larger relevance to it when it comes to the show's overarching story. Instead, it's a quiet character piece, one whose chief purpose is to tell us more about who Sam is, where he came from, and what he's become since he left home.
To that end, in many ways the scenes at Horn Hill feel more like a costume drama, something of a piece with Downton Abbey than with the swords and sorcery and political intrigue of business as usual on GoT. It's a pleasant departure, and it feels so unique because it puts the focus on something very rare within the world of Westeros, at least the part of it we're privy to -- an intact family, and the harshness and difficulties that can exist within them even when your kin are not being torn apart from one another by rivals and medieval honor.
So we see Sam embraced by his mother and sister. We see his Wildling bride, clearly not the type of highborn lady who might be expected to meet with their approval, welcomed as a daughter and a sister into their homes. We see little Sam Jr., held by his grandmother and promised the world, spoken of with love and told he'll one day be great like his father. In the beautiful open air of Horn Hill, family is a kind embrace and a welcome home.
And then they all sit at that table. And the silence and tension is thick. And Sam and his brother make small talk, and Gilly struggles with her knife and fork, and a perfectly cast Lord Randyll Tarly scowls at the head of the table. All of a sudden, a conflict between Sam's old family and his new one occurs. Lord Tarly barks and growls at his son, calls him fat, a disappointment, unworthy of his mother and his name. Sam looks down, confessing later that he worried his father would not take his erstwhile wife and child in. But Gilly will not stand for it. She's seen him be more than measure up as the kind of man his father claims he'll never be. He's defended Gilly and Sam from worse than any horror Lord Tarly is likely to face. But the head of House Tarly continues to debase his son, continues to tear him down in the way that only a father can. And at that table, family is judgment and pain and something to suck you back down into who you used to be.
Finally, Sam goes to say goodbye to Gilly and Sam Jr. He is a defeated man. He's capitulating to a father who hates him in the hopes of protecting the people he cares for. There was something so unbelievably endearing about he and Gilly's walk to dinner, like a pair of teenagers dressed to the nines, stumbling off to the prom like baby deer. They keep each other up, and now he feels he has to leave her. He kisses her, and walks out that door, and seems to be giving in to his father's assessment of his life, love, and worth.
But then he comes barreling back through the door and declares that he's taking Gilly and Sam with him to the Citadel. They are his loved ones now, and it's them who make him feel like the man he is, who enervate him to become stronger and do more rather than be resigned to the weakness Lord Tarly ascribed to his first born son. Sam takes House Tarly's valerian steel sword, claiming his birthright and his place as a Tarly worth of the honor. He brings his wife and his son and storms off to claim his own destiny, to forge his own kin apart from the man who degrades him. And here, family is strength; family is the future; and family is love and devotion once more.
But in King's Landing, choices that strain the relations between father and son do not move only in one direction. As Jamie leads the Tyrell army to the steps of the Sept, ready to take back Margaery and Loras and Lancel, he challenges the High Sparrow. The crowd jeers as the spears and shields are raised and conflict seems imminent. Then, the High Sparrow reveals his trump card. Out walks Tommen, Jamie's son, to announce a union between the Crown and the Faith.
Olenna, the grand dame of Game of Thrones announces in memorable fashion that they've been outflanked. The High Sparrow is craftier than anyone in the Red Keep imagined. He found how to get to the king -- through his mother and through his wife. And now the group that Cersei brought into the fold has taken over, has the ear of her son. Jamie is stripped of his command and sent off to Riverrun. Though Tommen does not wield the kind of hatred Lord Tarly does, he too has his kin before him and deems him unworthy, and though Jamie doesn't blame his son, he's clearly infuriated.
It's then that his sister calms his nerves. She too is aghast at their son having been swayed by the Sparrows, but she has a plan to retake control. As uncomfortable as it is to see, Jamie and Cersei are blood as well, and when they describe one another as the only two people in the world, it is an affirmation, to an extreme degree, that their family is all that matters.
And in one of the episode's most striking scenes, Arya actually seems to understand Cersei for just a moment. When she's prodded by the actress whom she admires to explain how she would change the stage-Cersei's response to her son's death, there's a moment of recognition. Arya says that Cersei loves her son more than anything, so she wouldn't just be sad, she would be angry and want to kill the people responsible. And as Arya witnessed her father killed in King's Landing and felt those same emotions, it's a stark moment of maturity and growth from Arya, an understanding that she and Cersei are not as different as they might seem, that they both felt strong connections to their family, to their loved ones, and were moved to shake the world on its axis in order to defend and avenge them.
The way the actress helped her reach that realization, to remember who she is and how she started on this journey, helps her to cast aside her mission. She is not no one. She is a Stark. And Starks are not murderers for hire. Her father taught her to be someone with honor, even if honor in Westeros is a fractured, fragile thing. Like Sam, she reclaims her sword, and with it, her birthright and heritage. She is not simply a girl; she is Arya Stark, and carries with her all that it means.
And even that is not the last of the familial bonds shown to be brought closer and exploited in "Blood of My Blood." A long absent Walder Frey admonishes his sons for failing to hold Riverrun. He summons Lord Edmure, his prisoner since the Red Wedding, in order to hold power over his father, The Blackfish. He too speaks of his legacy, of the way his children have disappointed him, and how they can use the connection between a father and son to defeat the Blackfish.
And the mother of dragons returns to her "son." Named after Dany's fallen husband, Drogon is indeed the blood of Targaryen blood. While the CGI is still a little shaky, only someone with that sort of bond of kinship can ride the back of a dragon. She is strengthened by this connection, made greater and more powerful by her "child." She tells the Dothraki who have followed her into these desert mountains that though Khals of the past have taken only a few bloodriders to protect their leader, she will not be so constrained. They will all be her bloodriders; they are all her children, and they are all the blood of her blood.
Finally, when Bran Stark seems done for, when the wights are about to engulf him and Meera and extinguish the fire they have begun, a mysterious cloaked figure emerges, wielding a fire and a scythe and defeating the undead warriors in impressive fashion. After he takes them to safety, he has Bran drink the blood of his kill to fortify himself. And he reveals that he too is the blood of Bran's blood. He is Benjen Stark, Bran's Uncle, who has been saved and turned by the Children and called to be the latest of Bran's protectors. Unseen since the first episode of the show, Benjen is a welcome return, who shows that, as Arya demonstrated, the blood of the Starks still flows across the land, even if it's threatening to freeze.
For the first time in forever, it feels as though the pieces are falling into place as we moved toward the end game for Game of Thrones. Dany wonders who would have the ships she needs to take the Seven Kingdoms just as Yara and Theon are heading her way with a fleet of them. Benjen once again shows the effect that fire has on the Wights as we see, halfway across the world, a queen ride a dragon. Long forgotten corners of Westeros, from Walder Frey, to Balon Greyjoy, to the Blackfish, emerge once more poised to make their impact on the major stories of this world. Jon and Sansa are poised to rally their allies to retake Winterfell, Arya is ready to return to her former mission, and Bran has been reunited with his family as more of the ever-expanding world of Game of Thrones starts to come to a head.
And in the midst of all this, we are reminded that from the nation-altering strife of the king and his parents, to the simple, sweet moments between a disowned son who hopes to do better by his own adopted child, these events are shaped by families great and small. There is no doubt much more blood to be spilled in the game of thrones, but its current pulls each of the players across their great land, and makes them stronger, more devoted, more certain, more powerful, and helps to clarify who they are and where they belong within it.
That reuninion of the Starks after so long, after so many seasons was so rewarding. And yet they all clearly showed the distance that has grown in between them during that time. Such great acting.
And wow that duel between Arya and Brienne was so amazing! I loved seeing the two different styles and the mutual respect that appeared after. That delightful smirk of Sansa and her answer of "no one" was perfect.
The cave scene was great for two reason. 1) I also loved the chemistry between Daenerys's and Jon Snow was great in the cave. Besides deepening the backdrop of the almost forgotten children of the forest lore (for me anyways), it 2) strengthened Jon's case that the White Walkers are REAL. The blue eyes in the cave drawing and that music was great at reminding me of the battle at Long Lake- in that eerie and terrifying finale where all the dead rose again as Jon rowed away from the beach.
I honestly thought that Jon was gonna tell Daenerys to attack King's Landing. The response he made started so neutral in the beginning I didn't think he was gonna say to not go. Besides that I loved the tension between Theon and Jon was great as well. There's so much tension going back and forth in this series now that there's a longer history of betrayals and cruelties this season is turning out to be really exciting.
This battle at the end totally exceeded my expectations. Small battle- another loss like the short conclusive clips of the Casterly Rock battle and in the seas with the Greyjoys.
That moment when u hear the thunder I knew the Dothraki where coming~ what I didn't expect was to see a dragon......HOLY SHIT LOL those precious seconds before the dragon spew fire was glorious. Was really anxious during the whole battle to see if any of my favorite characters would be killed. Danerys was there, Jamie was there, Tyrion was there, . Knowing that GoT has no qualms about killing main characters made this battle extremely tense. xD
Having Tyrion there and Jamie on the same battlefield also brought huge tension. Add into addition the new ballista as well as that shot into the dragon made me think Daenerys was done for. Then I thought Jamie was done for from that fire breath. Honestly this battle had me on the edge of my seat the whole battle. Jeezus.
Very disappointing episode. Anyone saying it’s the best episode of this show is just caught up in the hype.
Visually, this episode was fantastic. And as a stand-alone episode, it was very good. But when you take this as an episode of Game of Thrones and think about everything that led to this, it’s undeniably disappointing.
Barely anyone died. Most of the characters had super thick plot armour. Lots of plot holes. Anti-climactic ending. I don’t mind that Arya killed the Night King. I also don’t mind how it happened. But for it to happen so soon... the army of the dead have been hyped up since season 1 as the true enemy, and we were told that they were the most dangerous army in the show. Yet all they accomplished was the deaths of a few side characters. It’s pathetic compared to the feats of other characters and armies in past seasons. The Night King should have taken Winterfell and killed at least a few main characters. The survivors should have them retreated somewhere and then beat the Night King in a later episode. The Night King and the army of the dead did not come across as very threatening by the end of this episode. They were unable to kill any main characters, and they were defeated in the first proper battle they took part in.
Very disappointing. My rating is only as high as it is because of the great visuals and the value of the episode as a stand-alone piece of television.
I'm just judging this episode. I try not to judge the entire season (see my season 2 comments for that). This episode is actually quite okay. It didn't answer all my questions. Some aspects feel rushed. Parts of it still don't make sense. But they tried to connect some of the loose ends. I appreciate this. It actually foreshadows the next huge mystery - a cliffhanger for season three it seems. Not sure whether season 3 should again deal with such a gigantic threat to humanity. Where are the quieter stories?
After the talk with Q, the mother Picard story makes at least some sense. It's just another trial I presume - and another lesson for Picard. Q can't stop being Q. And of course selfish Q designed this lesson also for his own benefit. Lonely Q needed a warm goodbye and he got that. And since writers are still lazy, Q (temporarily) gets his powers back so that they can travel back to the 24th century and where the boy is alive again. Convenient. He's omnipotent when that's needed by the authors. They say it has to do with energy balances/budgets. Creating a cure, hacking into Soong's computer and printer, teleporting himself from France to California and sending most of the crew back and resurrecting a dead crew member still works just fine. "Finger snapping" at Renée, traveling to Guinan's bar or to the FBI cellar or stopping Renée (so he doesn't need to ask Soong to do that for him at the party) won't work. Sure? But Q's goodbye is actually surprisingly touching. Q also indicates what he was really up to. Sort of. It's still mysterious how the whole story actually worked.
That's my newest (and likely flawed) interpretation of what happened:
Q is the omniscient good guy. Powerless or not - his plan works just like intended. Q has two goals (Forget the lame forgiveness story with Picard's mom - that's just one of Q's strange lessons. I refuse to give a report about those events. Also forget that he wants a friend before he dies)
* He wants to save Picard in particular before he's able to self-destruct his ship hereby ending his life.
* He wants to save Picard (and possibly all humankind) from the dangerous anomaly that appeared.
For some reason he needs allies to do so. That's why he needed a cooperative and friendly Borg collective with a special benevolent base attitude and a Queen that possesses insight to her future. For multiple reasons:
* Q apparently knows that the Borg are the only race powerful enough to fend this anomaly off.
* In 400 years time, Q needs a Queen that wants to help to save the Federation from the negative effects of the anomaly: he needs a potentially friendly collective.
* Even the Borg need time to prepare for the advent of the anomaly (let's say 400 years) and they must know when the anomaly is about to appear.
For his plan to work he needs a malleable Borg Queen who can be persuaded that a more cooperative and friendly Borg tactics might be a new approach that is worth to be tested. Thus, Q flings them into a particular timeline in which an (isolated and almost certainly desperate) Borg Queen faces yet another total defeat (one of many in different timelines - Borg sense other timelines it seems) because their confrontation approach was unsuccessful once again. She's disillusioned enough to try something new. Q made also sure that Picard, Jurati and Seven hold powerful key positions in that society which enable them to kidnap this Queen in the first place. Q (disguised as a shrink) created this timeline by stopping Renée from wanting to fly into space. W/o her discovery, a global environmental catastrophe can't be stopped and humanity becomes a race that first stops taking care of Earth and consequently starts to conquer other worlds (and relies on Soong's technology) in order to compensate.
Now things play out just like Q intended (free will is just an illusion): Time travel to 2024 (Is that something the Borg can do whenever they want? Why don't they do that more often? It's also very convenient that the Borg Queen has insight into the arrow of time and knows that 2024 is the date where things were manipulated by Q). Naturally, the Queen's first plan was to take advantage of the 400 years head start (that's probably why she was helping with time travel in the first place), escape and assimilate 21st century humanity to neutralize the future "Terran" threat, but Jurati can stop her from doing this and Q knew. Jurati and the Queen merge. The Jurati/Queen eventually becomes a benevolent factor and now possesses Jurati's knowledge about the advent of an anomaly in 400 years time.
Now, the original timeline needs to be restored. Q made this an easy fix. Picard has a five minute talk with Renée and that's sufficient to make her fly into space again. It doesn't matter that she's a Picard ancestor I believe. The protagonists around Picard can't know what exactly will restore the timeline (and the Watcher doesn't know either). But the mere fact that Q interfered as Renée's shrink, makes them believe that it's important that Renée changes her mind, overcomes her fears reverberated by shrink-Q and will become part of the Europa mission crew after all. Ultimately, Q knew that the original timeline will be restored and that they will protect Renée from Soong. When all his silly games and his little decoys (Soong, Kore, Talinn etc. [more on that later]) are finished, the crew is "finger snapped" back into the 24th century.
The Borg (better to say, this presumably isolated peaceful collective under Jurati's command) now had 400 years to hide from other belligerent part of the collective (those who fought the Federation in TNG and VYG) and to come up with a theory about the anticipated anomaly that's about to appear in that very moment. Conveniently, the Jurati-Queen knows what she has to do in 400 years time to set the chain of events into motion: appear at the right moment, summon Picard fro retirement, disguise that she's actually Jurati, scare Picard, make Picard activate auto-destruct (remember: she know all of that because she [Jurati] was there when the events unfolded for the first time - or she was told what is about to happen). This makes Q intervene and trigger the story. Thus, it's not entirely clear whether the Borg or Q set this chain of events into motion. Doesn't really matter. Both Q and Queen-Jurati knew enough about the past and future. In their perception all the events triggered were inevitable, the actions of the Borg and Q are indivisibly interwoven and Jurati just needed to repeat the steps she knew will be necessary to alert Q who promptly intervenes.
Now, Picard lives through the whole story (as described in episodes from 2 to 10). Based on this experience he is able to identify Jurati. Again: She of course couldn't reveal herself before - otherwise Picard would not have activated auto-destruct. Now knowing that it's Jurati-Queen, Picard assumes those Borg will probably be benevolent. He now stops the circular chain of events by deactivating auto-destroy. Thus, Q has no reason to reappear and the Borg save the galaxy indeed. End of story.
The Soong story doesn't really matter. It's really anyone's guess why Q wants to "liberate" Kore (it's certainly not important for season 2. And what's with Kore? Is she Soji after all?). I don't understand why Q - powerless or not - asks Soong to kill Renée. I mean, at that point, Picard is about to have his little motivational talk with Renée and that will restore the timeline. Just like it was always wanted by Q. Why does Q need Soong to interfere? I don't get it. Unless, he needed Q's Tesla to trigger Picard's coma and unless the subsequent conversation between the Queen and Soong (where his great future is revealed if he only stopped Renée) wasn't enough to start another attempt by Soong to go after Renée again, so that Talinn could die in the process of preventing that. (Not sure if he needed Q's extra motivation - it seems that he was easily manipulated by the Queen to do whatever she wants him to do) Plus, his development from unethical scientist to mad über-villain and violent Borg fire team leader is kind of surprising. Is that only because Q and the Queen (unimpeded by Jurati) give him an insight into "one of his possible futures"? Will he continue to fight for his desired future? Will he for example try to erase the recordings of the Europa mission and kill its crew when they come back?
She's a pretty useless character. She basically just told them that she's trying to protect Renée. Other than that she provides a transporter and camera surveillance of Q manipulating Renée. But she has no clue what to do either. Is Renée supposed to fly into space or not? She doesn't know. She wants to protect Renée (that's why she stops Soong) but how could she know that Renée is safer in space than she would be staying on Earth? Q perhaps only really wants a person like Tallinn in this story, so that she can be killed. Picard is supposed to learn a lesson about this loss: He needs to fix his relation with Laris when he's back (or is Laris actually an actual reincarnation of Tallin? That part I don't understand). Why is Soong dragged into the murder? It's just another of Q's silly games I presume. Doesn't really matter (for the time being). Anyone who has access to the launch pad and the quarantine area could have been motivated by Q to endanger Renée's life in a way so that Tallinn feels the need to step in. Still don't understand how the Jurati-Queen could possibly predict that Tallin's sacrifice (she's the "second Renée" that needs to die that the Jurati-Queen was so mysteriously referring to) is necessary to stop Soong.
###B-, C- and D-plots
There are more sub-plots. But they don't have any consequences (like the stories with ICE, FBI, Rios and his affair, Guinan [mostly fan service. Interesting to know that she knew most decisive parts of the story but kept this as a secret during her time aboard Enterprise], Elnor, Seven & Raffi).
Could it be more complicated and does it really make sense?
There's also a more or less sound explanation for the watcher. It feels very detached from the story; like an appendix to the episode or a preparation for Kore's role in season 3. The traveler from TNG that recruited Wesley was a watcher, too. Sort of guardian angels. Did they need to re-introduce Wesley to explain this part? I was glad when he left TNG for good. Plus, I still don't understand why Data looks like Soong. That's not explained in this show. Why would Data's designer (another guy from the future Soong family branch) would design a robot whose face looks like the face of an evil and mad ancestor?
Season finale! Exactly like in last season, it's time to tick some boxes. Lesbians anyone? Check! Makes no sense. They didn't even try to tell this romantic story since it was first implied in season one's finale. Or did they try, but failed to make their love special or even feel romantic? Nothing wrong about a good homosexual love story, but it ain't very well told. Another box to tick: save the cast for a possible return in season 3 and create a happy ending. That's so American/Hollywood. Even if that involves - like in season one's finale - to resurrect a crew member out of the blue.
PS: it's 2024 and they still don't do backups - let alone encrypt their data or use passwords.
Why didn't Rhaenys kill them all and end the whole situation? Then there would be no war. Was that her saying she was on their side?
If not, then this is one of the most stupid moments in the whole show.
But why would Rhaenys be on their side? When Rhaenyra is the true heir (and also will be the first queen, like she would have been).
And she might have got Driftmark for her granddaughters in a negotation with Rhaenyra instead of it passing to her bastard. But even besides that, she just had her granddaughters betrothed to Rhaenyra's sons, further sealing their alliance.
Even if Rhaenys was going to be on the greens side, she could have stopped an entire war by killing them.
How did she even get to the dragon pit past the guards.
Why aren't there any dragons protecting the kings coronation, don't they have like 5 of them?
The white worm part was rubbish.
I've been on the blacks side for a couple episodes now, and i don't like how much the show has painted the greens as the bad side and the blacks as the good side. Rhaenyra is the legitimate heir, and would be a good queen. Alicent wants Aegon king because of a misunderstanding of Visery's last words, and Aegon would seem to be a bad king. But ok, that's how things go.
If Rhaenys was undecided, then she still could have averted an entire war by killing them.
I'm guessing since she didn't say anything and flew off, she's on Rhaenyra's side.
It was a good episode overall, but the ending was stupid.
Seriously: even him? I mean, it's not him - but it's him. I appreciate the nostalgia but enough is enough. Somewhere the line must be drawn. This is not a story; this is a Trek reunion. Plus, it's not a show in its own right when they "just" steal parts from earlier installments. Checking whether someone's a conspirator the old-fashioned way? Watch no further than TNG Season 1 "Conspiracy". Changelings infiltrating Star Fleet command? Look no further than DS9's Dominion wars. TNG shows you how not to drag out a story like this; DS9 shows you how to tell such a story over the course of several seasons. Picard gets the pacing wrong. The (presumably simple) main story is oddly drawn out. Think about this episode. What did really happen? They prepared a trap (in order to do what exactly? They think they have Riker? But did they expect bring Riker with them as part of the boarding party? They tried to get away from this ship for 6 episodes and now they think it's a good idea to lure them aboard? I don't get it.) They failed. The ship was taken over and we're not closer to anything. What are they trying to achieve? Rescue Wil, uncover the weapon or what ever this is the shape shifters want to use on Frontier Day? Shouldn't they try to disclose and end the conspiracy first? There amust be a way to inform trusted officers within Star Fleet. There must be a way to convince them that they are no fugitives. There must be a way to purge Star Fleet from the changelings. All while the show has no time to decently tell its too many B-plots or portray its too many characters. Stealing doesn't stop there. Remember Odo's origin story? His trauma? Stolen! Remember Lore pretending to be Data? Stolen! The list goes on and on.
Still not revealing the Jack mystery? Another cliffhanger? Frau Greta Farbissina [James Bond logic: who must be mad because she's a villain because she has a scar] obviously is about to lift the veil but I'm sure that next episode won't start with her simply telling us what's wrong with the Crusher boy (this one - not the older one). Still nobody bothers to find out? JLP thinks it's because they need a blood sample of Jack to emulate him? Plus, they need JLP`s corpse to do so? Whaaaat? Why that? It makes no sense on so many levels. Why is nobody pressing the boy hard on the mystery BS of his? "I'm different. I can feel things." Gosh. Why is nobody asking him to elaborate on that so that can be examined thoroughly? "I don't want other people to be in danger because of me". Gosh! What exactly does he think he did to his mother all the time? That's perhaps the most annoying aspect of this show. Let's get over with this. Nobody cares about Jack anyway. He's a prick. And the show didn't invest any time to portray him in a way that makes me bond with him.
PS: the whole boarding operation is stupid. Those laser shoot-outs remind me of Star Troopers. The force fields are conveniently lowered by Data when they needed to be lowered to turn tables. Seizing the bridge is too easy. No wonder: when that's convenient, Seven must act stupid. That's not our Seven from back in the day. She's just fan service in this episode. How could she not know that Changelings could mimic the floor if they wanted to? Didn't she watch DS9 on TV? I've seen more exciting boarding operations in TNG and Voyager. What happened to switching off the power to the turbo lifts? What happened to climbing ladders? What happened to hiding in Jefferies tubes? What happened to arming yourself with the big guns when you're about to be boarded? What happened to well devised traps? Well, perhaps I'm wrong and let them take the bridge was the actual trap all along. Maybe. Let's see. In any case our heroes will regain the upper hand. It's a tiring cycle ....
Vikings turning into a WTHITH series wasn't what I expected when I first started watching it back when season 1 just came out. What does WTHITH stand for you wonder? Why The Hell Is This Happening
Why the hell is Lageartha dying in such a weird, uninteresting way that just leaves me thinking "wait, what, why"
Why the hell is there a plot involving Ivar's dead wife that is now ressurected and SOMEHOW ended up in Ukraine and SOMEHOW she met prince Oleg and told him all about Ivar and if it's not actually Freydis then it makes no sense and is unbelievably stupid
Why the hell does the Flatnose guy that Edge plays suddenly does a complete 180 and saves Bjorn when his goal all along was to kill him
Why the hell does the guy that saves Bjorn that looks like he's 45 say that he's too young to remember Ragnar
Why the hell there isn't a single character from season 1 alive anymore (and played by the same actor)
Why the hell there hasn't been one scene involving King Alfred this season
Why
Fuck me I'm glad that this is the final season. Let it rest already.
[8.5/10] Expectations can be a difficult thing to manage. When you hear that an actor is going to reprise one of your favourite roles of all time, it's easy to get excited. When you see trailers and it looks good, you get more excited. When you start hearing positive early reviews, your excitement level can go through the roof. If anything, I was worried that my expectations for Picard were just too high, and I was only going to be disappointed.
But almost from the opening moments of this premiere, I was swept up. Picard avoids excessive nostalgia (but provides just a nice amount) and begins by telling a tale full of emotion and character. It's markedly different from Star Trek: Discovery, both in terms of visuals and writing. The pace is measured and characters are given room to breathe, the action is sparse but hard-hitting. Patrick Stewart himself is a frailer man than the one we remember, but there's no mistaking that this is our Jean-Luc Picard back on screen.
It's still early days and there are a lot of directions this story could take. But here I was surprised at just how impactful some of the emotional moments and revelations were. Isa Briones is strong in the role of Dahj, seemingly an unknown "daughter" of Data's,, but it was Picard's reaction to it all that made it have so much more weight. No mention of Data's other daughter, Lal, but that may come up later.
There was some awkward exposition early on with an interview sequence that didn't quite hit the mark due a mix of writing that was a bit too on-the-nose and the actor for the interviewer feeling weirdly out of place. For a mostly calm opening there was a surprising amout of information and story to be digested here and a lot of questions that I can't wait to be answered.
[8.2/10] It’s hard to talk about Arrival without spoiling the film. So much of what makes it more than just a well-done first contact story is tied up in its later developments. They recontextualize enough of the prior proceedings that trying to discuss the import or quality of the film without mentioning them is like trying to give someone directions without letting them know the destination.
But its premise is fairly straightforward. Aliens have come to Earth, in twelve ships scattered across the globe. Louise Banks (Amy Adams) a linguist, is brought by the U.S. Military to the ship in Montana, in attempt to help us communicate with the extra-terrestrial presence. With the help of theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), and buffer provided by Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker), Banks slowly but surely finds ways to talk to these beings, with the American team alternatively working with and against similar groups in other nations attempting the same.
And then there’s the twist. The birth, death, and tragedy of Louise’s daughter, implied through the grammar of film to have occurred prior to the alien encounter we witness, actually happened afterward. The estranged husband hinted at early on turns out to be Donnelly. And Banks herself, through learning to think like the heptapods, and eventually direct contact with the aliens, becomes unstuck in time. She experiences moments from what we’d consider the past, present, and future, in non-linear splendor, mixing them up like a memory collage.
Despite the narrative trickery employed, the reveal itself isn’t so unfamiliar to those acquainted with the novels of Kurt Vonnegut, Watchmen, and even Star Trek: The Next Generation. But what the twist lacks in novelty, it makes up for in thematic resonance. Like those works, Arrival uses the time-dilated nature of its story to comment on processing trauma, the value of one’s experiences and life itself in a chaotic universe, and the potential of the human mind to expand to contemplate greater possibilities.
You’re unlikely to find a film this year with as many intriguing philosophical implications as Arrival. In that, it is akin to The Prestige, as a film with a twist that initially knocks over the viewer with how it changes the reality of what’s been depicted up to that point, but that makes its bones from the implications of that new reality. In both films, what the reveals show about the characters, and say about the value and nature of human life, linger long after the shock of the twist dissipates.
But the force of the movie does kick into high gear after the non-linear way in which Louise begins to experience time is unveiled. It answers the plot-specific mystery that Arrival presents – why did the heptapods come here? They, it turns out, have experienced time in this fashion from the beginning, the thoughts and information able to exist simultaneously in the past and the future. Their journey is to help Earth unify, to serve as a catalyst for cooperation, so that three millennia in the future, humanity will be able to help them. It is an intriguing and clockwork explanation for their presence.
Beyond, however, the on-the-ground (so to speak) plot mechanics of Arrival, what makes it stand out is its exploration of how this change in temporal perspective changes how individuals think, how they value different things in their lives, how they approach and view the world. The film reflects this in interesting ways.
The heptapods’ language is circular, more symmetrical and again, non-linear to reflect their perspective, tying into the motif that learning a language rewires your brain to a certain extent. Louise naming her daughter Hannah, which the episode notes is a palindrome, reflects the way this same symmetry and perspective has filtered down to her. And the film itself often frames Louise symmetrically, using a flat background or one-point perspective to balance the images.
But most notably, that mode of thought changes Louise’s perspective on life writ large, estranges her from eventual husband Donnelly, and motivates her to both marry him and have a child, knowing that each choice will end in pain. The cinch is that for Louise, these decisions do not “end.” They simply are. They exist on the same continuum as all moments, not greater or lesser in priority or order than the others.
And for that, for the gift given to her by the heptapods, she chooses the path that will increase the amount of bliss she enjoys, where she experiences love, where she is enriched. Amy Adams understated performance gives life to this epiphany. Freed from constraints, in philosophy and temporal perspective, of having to fear loss and hardship, she pursues those paths that will make her life more worthwhile, that will give her more moments of happiness and wonder and fulfillment, regardless of any chronological path from joy to sadness.
It’s a laudable message, that applies even to the humble folks who still experience time in a linear fashion. Much of cinema tackles ideas about coping with loss or valuing the good times even in the shadow of the bad. But the device of the scattered timescape of Louise’s life, seen as an accumulation of experiences and not a linear progression, drives that point home in a unique way. Much of Arrival is about broadening perspectives, and the scattered scenes combining what was, what is, and what will be help to cast the same broadening spell on the audience that the heptapods do for Louise.
That’s part of why talking about this film without talking about its twist is so hard. The way Arrival tells its story, the ways those moments are sequenced in the film, is so essential to what the film is trying to say that discussing it apart from that perspective is unavoidably lacking. In a film about altering perspective, there is only so much to say without talking about how it attempts to shift the audience’s own perspective in the process. Arrival uses the alien and unfamiliar to tell a deeply humanistic story, about unity, philosophy, and worth, through one individual who comes to see them all very differently.
"I understand that I hurt you." - Sooo... still no apology? And Eric wants this guy more than Rahim? Ughhh... Don't want to be a d*ck, but I really hope that Eric will experience Adam not being able to catch him. The only moment I almost teared up was when I saw Rahim crying. I really like his character, it's a shame that Eric just had to choose Adam anyway. I mean, of course, feelings should come first (most of the time) if you choose a partner, but I just don't get how can he fall for and choose his dumb ex-bully over a sweet, honest and smart guy. This plotline was a huge disappointment.
Viv and Jackson, on the other hand, were adorable! They were so cute hugging and holding hands while walking! Even if just as friends (for now, hihi).
Oh, how much I knew that Isaac would delete Otis' voice message... I get that he wants Maeve for himself, but using dirty tricks to achieve that because he knows he'll lose the fair way... Back to 100% Team Otis.
I didn't really like Erin from the start, it was pretty obvious that she was gonna start using again, especially when she was caught in her lie about her being fired. I really pitied Maeve for having to deal with a "mother" like this - after being neglected and abandoned by her in her childhood, she comes back, makes Maeve believe that she's changed, then ruins her life again by starting the vicious cycle from the beginning. And she dares to say she'll never forgive her own child for reporting her for the sake of saving Elsie from what her other children had gone through. (Oof, this sounded a lot less difficult of a sentence in my head. xD)
Anyway, Maeve is a wonderful and brave human being. I just hope she won't date Isaac for too long in the next season before getting to know the truth about Otis' feelings (because I guess this will happen, too, if they went cliché with the "bad guy" topic regarding Eric).
A cinematic masterpiece and benchmark for movies to come.
In "Interstellar", a film written and directed by Christopher Nolan,
climate change has decimated most of the world's food supplies.
Towns are regularly ravaged by fierce sand storms, and
everything is covered with thick layers of dust.
A very select group of scientists set out to embark
on humanities most ambitious mission: travel through
a newly discovered wormhole into another galaxy.
They hope of collecting the necessary data to either move
many people onto a new experimental gravitation spaceship, or find a new Earth altogether.
I have now watched this movie twice at an IMAX.
After my first viewing, when the credits rolled,
I sat there perplexed and was unable to move. I was paralysed
by what I had seen. I looked around, I was not the only one.
Unquestionably, one of the greatest movies I had ever seen.
I was almost ashamed to admit it, because it felt like I had no
say in this decision whatsoever.
There are many moments when "Interstellar" transcends into
something so artistic, you are left speechless and are moved to tears.
The cinematography and directing is, even by Nolan's standards,
his best work so far. I think his talent is even too profound for
the Academy of Motion Pictures, hence why he has yet to receive an oscar
for directing. Personally, after watching "Interstellar", I consider
him to be the best director that is currently alive, only rivalled
by Kubrick and Hitchcock.
Hans Zimmer wrote the score and I really recommend to read how
he translated Nolan's fantastic ideas into music.
I get goosebumps just thinking about the high-speed docking scene,
and you will, too! The sound engineers did an amazing job contrasting
the cosmic silence with Zimmer's incredibly ethereal music.
During the rocket launch, the entire theatre shook and you were
really feeling the thrust.
If I was forced to describe the score, I would say it was
heavily influenced by Johann Strauß, Philip Glass and Bach.
Truly a masterpiece that deserves to be revisited many times and
among all the great soundtracks he has ever done, this is simply
on an entirely different level. His most intimate work.
The visual effects were breathtaking - quite literally.
The on-screen silence during certain parts of the movie
was only rivalled by the complete and utter silence
of my fellow IMAX watchers. Nobody said a word, nobody moved.
Just hundreds of mesmerized people staring at the screen,
or digging their fingers into their armrests during
some of the most tense moments I have ever seen.
"Interstellar" depicts astrophysical concepts that
have never been seen or discussed on-screen before.
"Awesome", in its most literal sense, really describes it.
When I set out to write this review, I really tried to
avoid superlatives, and give you a more nuanced opinion
of why I think this movie deserves to be ranked among
the best, but I now see how I have failed.
I recommend to watch "Interstellar" at an IMAX,
or the best movie theatre around you.
It's not something you should rent at a Red Box or watch on Netflix.
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light." -Dylan Thomas
This is the mid-season finale, right? Or does this season only have 10 episodes as well?
While I enjoyed this season a lot and I'm kind of sad that it's over, it was the weakest of all seasons for me. There were too little epic fights for my taste. The whole Wessex story line was kind of redundant as it didn't connect with any of the other story lines. The whole "Let's attack Paris again" plot felt like an extension for season 3.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it quite a lot since it's Vikings but I think that they could've progressed more with the main plot. It was basicly a huge build-up until this point. Then again, I don't know any of the sagas exactly in detail, so I can't tell how close they actually sticked to the 'true' story.
Talking about this episode in particular: I enjoyed the fight a lot. Could have been a bit longer in my opinion, but the outcome was as expected. Also I'm not sure if Ragnar is still sick from season 3 and / or a drug addict or something similiar. Someone please elaborate.
I like the idea about the timejump of 10(?) years. Although I am curious what happened to the other characters we don't see (especially Lathgertha, did she survive the battle at Paris?), I think this helps the story moving forward and introducting a lot of new characters - Ragnar's sons are supposed to be crazier and brutal than Ragnar himself after all.
The last 5 minutes were great. Kattegat became quite a huge city! That speech from Ragnar showed us again why Travis Fimmel is such a great actor. I'd be really sad if the writers decided to kill off Ragnar at that point, but I can understand it. The next (half) season shall be the reign of Björn (who was a total badass in this season as well) and his brothers.
Overall, great acting and a satisfying experience with a bit of lackluster at the story side. My fingers are crossed for the next season.
Pros
+Fight scenes were pretty intense and not as hammy as they have been in other episodes with The Others and Wights
+Melisandre returning was good
+Dragon fighting was great and properly brutal
+The Night's King's assassination was pretty great, I liked how they led us on twice with Dany trying to kill him with dragonfire and Jon trying to duel him fairly and both failing before Arya got him
+Theon's redemption was godly and I can already tell people are going to be overlooking it in favor of other scenes unfortunately
+Beric Dondarrion getting brutally stabbed in the hallway was pure cinema, great cinematography
+Brienne and Jaime's unbeatable tag team fighting was great
+Acting was noticeably solid this episode, even actors I don't exactly like did well here, the writing being more competent than most episodes definitely helped
Neutral
* the Dothraki getting all hyped only to do literally fucking nothing was actually hilarious
*Lyanna Mormont bit was the only really cheesy part but it was kind of fun
*Arya chase bit was a lot longer than it needed to be
*Sam just lying down on a pile of bodies doing nothing for the last half of the battle was kind of hilarious too
*Crypt parts broke up the action a bit and served their purpose but also didn't bring that much to the table
Cons
-There were a number of scenes that tried to create tension by prolonging whatever action was happening (like the absurdly long wait at the start, or when Melisandre set the fire to the moat, etc.) and I don't feel like most of it was necessary or added anything but time to the scene
-Not enough important people died for a show that made it's name for not giving plot armor to main characters, there were a few too many scenes where one should've died and was saved at the last second by another character that had no business being at that part of the battlefield (I'm looking at you Jorah! fucking teleporting outside of the castle to save Dany. I'm onto your sorcery)
-Too Dark, hahaha I know dumb complaint but it was noticeably annoying at points
-Didn't really explain why Bran just decided to control the ravens for a bit (I'm also secretly disappointed he didn't steal the Night's King's dragon)
-No giant ice spiders
-Tactics made no sense as usual but magic zombie fighting wouldn't anyway so that's not completely unforgivable.
yeah I know I put a lot of critical points here but the critical parts were all minor to me and the good parts wayyyyy outweigh them. It was a great episode, it sets up an interesting ending to the series. Never thought Cersei would actually be the big baddie at the very end when they could have the Night's King but I'm not against it either. Can't wait to see Jaime stab her and pull out a flaming sword :smirk:. also the Cleganebowl/Trial of the Seven/whatever shit they set up for the final encounter will be wonderful
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.
[9.8/10] One of the ways you can tell that a show is great, not just good, is when it’s engrossing even when there’s not anything particularly exciting or notable happening. It’s easy to be engaged, even giddy, about Better Call Saul in the midst of McGill-on-McGill courtroom combat, in the middle of another of Jimmy’s capers, as Mike Ehrmantraut is springing another one of his traps, or when another little Breaking Bad easter egg pops up. But the mark of a great show is that it can be just as transfixing, just as mesmerizing, to watch Chuck have dinner with his ex-wife, the moment laden with hopes and expectations, with little more happening than a conversation between old friends.
Better yet, that flashback to a time when Jimmy and Chuck were using their scheming in concert and not against one another isn’t simply a flight of fancy to contrast their later antagonism, or a simple pleasing vignette of the early point of Chuck’s condition. It’s a character study, a set of scenes that never comes says anything outright about Chuck McGill, but tells us so much about who he is, how he reacts to obstacles and difficulties, and quietly sets up the bigger fireworks to come.
It shows that Chuck is a prideful man. That’s not much of a revelation, but what’s striking about the flashback are the lengths that he goes to hide his condition from his ex-wife, Rebecca. He concocts a story about a mixup with the electric company (poetically enough, involving transposed letters on an address), and tries to keep it all under wraps.
When Rebecca uses a cell phone that causes his “acute allergy to electromagnetism” to flare up (featuring superb camera work and sound design to convey his perception of it), he throws it out of her hands. But when called to account for his behavior, he doesn’t come clean about why he did it. Tellingly, he not only comes up with an excuse, he not only turns the blame onto Rebecca herself rather than accept it for be honest, but he frames it in terms of propriety, in terms of what’s “right,” in terms of a decorum that he sees himself as adhering to and chastises others for not meeting his standard. It is a defense mechanism, a self-preservation method, one that in that moment and in the future, causes him to mask his frustrations in grandiose notions of propriety and principles rather than face his own failings and prejudices.
But most importantly, even when Rebecca is effectively storming out, an act that would thwart the elaborate lengths he went to under the clear purpose of winning her back, he keeps Jimmy from telling her the truth. Even though Chuck seemed on the cusp of making a breakthrough with a woman he clearly still had feelings for, he could not bear to be thought of as sick; he could not bear to be though of a lesser; he could not bear to be thought of as crazy. Jimmy McGill knows that, and though he clearly takes no pleasure in it, it’s how he takes his brother down.
In just five minutes, Better Call Saul gives its audience a snootful of character detail and foreshadowing that establishes and reestablishes every hint and bit of shading to make the series’ peak drama at the end of the episode that much more understandable and meaningful. It’s a sign of this show’s virtuosity, and the way it understands tension, character, and storytelling like no other show on television.
And that’s just the first five minutes! “Chicanery” goes full courtroom drama in a way that BCS, despite being one of the best legal shows to grace our television screens, hasn’t really done before. The show sets it up nigh-perfectly, laying out witness testimony, objections, and grants of “leeway” that make sense in context while also providing enough wiggle room for the major characters to be a little more theatrical that would be typical for a disciplinary proceeding.
That extends to the episode’s supporting characters as well. Kim Wexler, who is Better Call Saul’s secret weapon, is not only sharp and decisive in the courtroom, but amid all the intra-McGill squabbling, gets a big win. Rather than relishing in her success, Kim distinguishes herself from both McGill brothers by coming clean to the representatives from Mesa Verde about all this ugliness, only to have the head of the bank brush it off and call her the best outside counsel he’s ever had. It’s subtle but important way that Kim and Jimmy fully win here, and that the blowback from Chuck’s machinations do not sink the client and the work that Kim has put so much effort into.
It also extends to Howard, who, while frequently a cipher on this show, continues to offer some of the most pragmatic and complex approaches to these situations of anyone. He is clearly on Chuck’s side, and clearly interested in preserving the good name of his firm. But he is also firmly honest on the stand, complimentary about Jimmy when he doesn’t have to be, frank about how his rise and fall within HHM, and cognizant of Chuck’s limitations and liabilities in a way that Chuck himself simply isn’t.
What ensues is an incredible chess match, a battle of wits and wills, between Jimmy and Chuck. Chuck carefully rehearses his testimony, again careful to couch his attack on his brother as not coming from a place of affront or weakness in himself, but to an abstract, platonic ideal -- the law. Chuck is out to show that he does not hate his brother; he cares for him, wants what’s best for him, but also wants what’s best for the legal professional he claims to hold so dear.
“Chicanery” subtly undercuts the sincerity of Chuck’s words not just by their rehearsed nature, but in the selection of detail that precedes them. He professes to love the law because it guarantees equal treatment to everyone under the same rules and regulations, and yet he is driven to these proceedings in a jaguar, pulls up to the courthouse in the presence of reserved parking cones, and saunters in as the concerned god on high, blameless for his own misfortunes and ready to direct judgment at those he sees as at fault.
But Jimmy is ready, as always, with a plan of his own, one that is not completely above board. His official goal is to not to dispute that it’s his voice on the tape or that it was tampered with, but that he said what he said because he was concerned for his brother’s wellbeing and more importantly, his sanity. In that, he hopes to convince the disciplinary committee that he did not undertake the elaborate, “baroque” scheme to disrupt his brother’s dealings with Mesa Verde that Chuck alleges, but that he gave into Chuck’s paranoid fantasy so as to prevent his brother from slipping further.
And like the best of Jimmy’s lies, it works because there is a grain of truth to it. We know that Chuck isn’t wrong that even if there was no hard evidence of it, Jimmy unleashed an elaborate ploy to trip up Chuck. But we also know that Jimmy means it when he says he would say anything to make his brother feel better, to prevent Chuck from slipping back into his aluminum foil-lined nightmare. Jimmy may have been admitting what really happened rather than telling Chuck “whatever he wanted to hear,” but coming from Slippin’ Jimmy, that is the truest sign that he genuinely would have said anything, even the god’s honest, to make his brother feel better.
That’s also what makes it so tragic, so impressive but sad, that Jimmy will now do anything to show that his brother is insane. Better Call Saul is tremendous at muddying the moral waters in complex, unassuming ways, but Jimmy’s plan to provoke Chuck may be the apotheosis of an act that is clever, resourceful, full of Jimmy’s trademark showmanship, understandable, and yet also more than a bit diabolical. It’s easy to root for Jimmy, particularly in the shadow of his brother’s superciliousness, but it’s one more case of Jimmy covering up one dirty trick with yet another.
While Jimmy normally revels in that sort of gamesmanship, in the razzle dazzle that makes him as effective as lawyer as he was a conman, he seems to take no joy in it. He reveals that he had Mike take those photographs of Chuck’s apartment to lure Rebecca back, something that he knew would put his brother off balance. But when he stands by the vending machines (which create a subtle buffer to prevent Chuck from confronting him about it) he does not have a wisp of glee at his plan coming to fruition, just the hurt resignation that it’s come to this.
Jimmy, however, is not done. In his final act meant to prove to the disciplinary board that his brother is unbalanced and thus untrustworthy, he resorts to some of the titular “chicanery.” He employs Huell(!) to slip a cell phone battery in Chuck’s pocket, and what follows is one of the best scenes in the show’s history.
It involves a back and forth between Jimmy and Chuck. Jimmy seems to pulling every rabbit out of his hat that he can come up with to expose his brother as a nut. He shows pictures from inside Chuck’s house. He gestures to Rebecca in the audience and even garnishes an emotional apology from Chuck to her. He plays “commit and contradict” with Chuck about his alleged illness, trying to establish for the disciplinary committee that Chuck’s issues are psychosomatic, and getting his brother to affirm that he is not feeling electromagnetic waves from anywhere in particular in the room.
It’s then that Jimmy takes out his cell phone, presumably expecting a reaction from Chuck to prove that his brother would respond to it on sight. Instead, Chuck, appearing wise to Jimmy’s machinations, determines that the phone is without is battery, and it seems, for a moment, like Jimmy’s stunt has been foiled, more fodder for Chuck to demonstrate that his brother is a two-bit huckster, not a lawyer. Instead, Jimmy plays the magician, revealing the final element of his trick -- the battery that Huell slipped into Chuck’s breast pocket.
That is what sets Chuck off, as he pulls the battery out like it’s radioactive and tosses it on the floor. He goes into a deranged rant that ought to earn Michael McKean an Emmy. He howls about his brother’s irresponsibleness, about how Jimmy’s billboard stunt had to be staged, about how defecating in a sunroof, about slights going back to childhood. The camera zooms in slowly on Chuck as he digs himself deeper and deeper, each word making this crusade seem more like the childish vendetta from a mentally-disturbed man against the imagined slights from his little brother than a high-minded mission to uphold the law. As more and more of his angry, pontificating face fills the frame, he stops, and the ensuing shot of the disciplinary board’s reaction says it all.
Jimmy has done it. In front of the state bar, in front of their partners, in front of the women they love, Jimmy exposes his brother as a mentally ill person ranting and raving, not the dignified legal lion he tried so hard to present himself as, in the courtroom and in that dinner with Rebecca way back when. The episode cuts to a far shot of Chuck, seeming so small, so defeated in the frame, as the buzz of the exit sign looms large next to him. This is his Waterloo, the terrible culmination of two brothers’ issues with one another, laid bare in a court of law for all the world to see.
Chuck, more than Hector or Howard or the cartel, is the villain of Better Call Saul. That makes it easy to hope that Jimmy overcomes him. But in that final moment, Jimmy again mixes fact with fiction. His brother is telling the truth. As paranoid as it sounds, as childish as it is to hold onto certain grudges and resentments, Chuck is correct in all of his assessments. And yet, as the opening scene tells us, he is a prideful individual, unwilling to admit to his illness, to his difficulties, as anything that would make him seem the lesser or not in control. That is his downfall, the fatal flaw that not only keeps him from carrying out his plan, but from what we see in this episode, which costs him the love of both his wife and his brother. That is unspeakably sad -- the story of an individual, even a villain, coming so close, and losing everything worth having in the end, when the worst of him is put on display.
Overall, funny but offensive in some ways that are important, in others just mean. I also find it frustrating certain things seem to get more public attention than others. But the comments in general about trans people come off as the "crazy racist uncle" trope of yesteryear who Chappelle himself would mock when they'd excuse themselves by parading their one black friend as if it was an excuse.
I won't even attempt to excuse his mean spirited jokes about the trans community. Whilst his friend may have loved them it's still the sort of thing that wounds people enough to drive them to what I hope he doesn't wish on anybody else.
Some jokes didn't land at all for me, the "antisemetic" joke for instance. I don't get what was funny or offensive about it, probably because I just simply don't get what he's referencing, neither did my Jewish husband. Either way it seemed odd and out of place among everything else. It just made no sense to me at all.
All in all, my viewing experience is probably very different to that of someone who is trans. So I can't and don't think anybody other than trans people should be saying whether it's transphobic/offensive or not.
I'm very conflicted about this as I love Chappelle and feel awful about what happened to his friend. But I know that if he were a white man making the same kinds of jokes about a black person I would be upset, too.
What an absolute perfect ending, and I say this while admitting this ending didn't go the way I expected it to. Like honestly, how many of us actually thought Picard was going to survive this episode? I didn't, but I'm damn sure glad he did, even if we never see any of these TNG characters ever again, which I honestly doubt we won't given the ending. This was an emotional final send off however for this crew that honored and respected each of them throughout the season, every single one of them got their grand moment to shine, Riker with his asteroid, Geordi with his ship, Worf with his rescue, Crusher with her contraction discovery, Data defeated Lore, Troi rescued them in the end with her love for Riker, and Picard saved his son. And how about that borg queen, holy absolute hell was she horrifying looking or what? Anyway, what a beautiful ending that they all deserved, and one last poker game for the sake of it all. Am I excited about the future with Q showing up to tease the next series with the Enterprise G? Sure, but not as happy as I am that the old timers I grew up with got their swan song and somehow, someway, all survived. And if you didn't burst into tears when Riker and Worf decided to stay back to find Picard, basically sealing their death, then damn it I don't know what will satisfy you in life. Was this show perfect? Fuck no. Was the 3rd season without flaws? Bahaha, no! But if you can't appreciate what this really was meant to be here, I don't judge you, I just feel sad you couldn't feel the raw enjoyment the rest of us felt, because this was fucking awesome.
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.
I've seen some gripes that people like Better Call Saul, but that sometimes it feels like it's two different shows hot-glued together. It's true that there's a particular storyline focused on Jimmy's trials and travails with Kim and his brother, and another with Mike getting mixed up with Salamancas. While the leads of each story bump into one another from time to time, there's not a strong plot-based connection between the two of them.
Despite that, in episodes like "Nailed," there's a strong thematic connection between the two of them. In the episode, both Jimmy and MIke have pulled a con of some kind, in the hopes of protecting someone else but in a way that benefits them. Jimmy's adventures at the copy center in "Fifi" led to Kim winning Mesa Verde back, and Mike's road obstacle is intended to draw the cops' attention to Hector and keep him too otherwise occupied to threaten his family, but also leads to Mike pocketing a nice quarter-mil. And each has the added bonus of this windfall coming at the expense of someone they have beef with. For Jimmy, it's a chance to get back at his brother, and for Mike, it's a chance for him to stick it to Hector after causing him such a headache.
And both Mike and Jimmy are pros, so they know how to cover their tracks. Jimmy is meticulous about transposing the address (as Chuck points out, he was never lazy), and removes the evidence of his forgery while Chuck is out of the house. Mike, meanwhile, wears a ski mark, blindfolds the Salamana associate he's ripping off, and makes sure he's neither seen nor heard.
But despite the fact that each of them is absolutely careful not to leave behind any corroborating or identifying evidence, each gets figured out because of who they are, because people who know them know what their M.O. is, and even if there's nothing that ties them to these crimes that would necessarily hold up in court, each incident has the trademark of the man who incited it. Chuck knows that this is what his brother does, that this is who he is, and that lets him piece together what happened. For that matter, Kim knows Jimmy too well to buy Jimmy's pleas of ignorance either. He is a huckster, and the story Chuck tells is perfectly in line with Jimmy's usual methods and motives. By the same token, even though Mike doesn't leave a trace on the road to Mexico, Nacho is able to figure out that it was him who hit the ice cream truck, because only a guy like Mike would have the stones to pull off a heist like that, but would expend such effort to avoid taking life.
And then each of them suffers an incredible setback due to the law of unintended consequences. One of the most striking parts of "Nailed" is how, for once in his life, it seems like Mike is happy. The reliable grump uses his newfound wealth to buy a round for the entire bar, and more notably, he actually smiles in the process! He flirts with the waitress at the diner, and he actually laughs! It's not a sour sarcastic laugh; it's a laugh of incredulity, of relief, that maybe things are going to work out, that maybe he can finally put all of the stress and strain he'd had to deal with since the events we witnessed in "Five-O" behind him.
Then he gets that phone call from Nacho, and as always seems to be the case in Better Call Saul and its predecessor, there's some contingency, some way that the cookie crumbled, that didn't work out just right. A good Samaritan helped the driver that Mike hogtied, and not only did it throw a monkey-wrench in his plans to take Hector off the chessboard, but that good Samaritan was shot and killed for their trouble.
Mike's moral code exposed him to Nacho, and their exchange reveals that for all the effort he went to not to have to kill anyone, not to cause anyone any harm that he could avoid, his choices still led directly to someone being killed, and because he tried to avoid killing a crazy drug lord, or that crazy drug lord's much more calculating uncle, he let a completely innocent life perish. The look on his face when he hears that news shows that it wiped away whatever joy he possessed in the rest of the episode. It's replaced with an expression of utter loss, of failure, of the best laid plans leading to the one thing he was trying to avoid.
And Jimmy has the same experience, albeit in a much different way. Jimmy seems legitimately happy when he and Kim are just palling around, painting their new office and enjoying that joking rapport that makes them feel right for one another. While his feigned surprise is not particularly convincing, there's also genuine glee when he hears that Kim got Mesa Verde back. But there's two things he doesn't count on, and each of them comes back to bite him in a particular way.
The first is that Kim figures out what happened, or at least buys that even if Chuck doesn't have the whole story, or doesn't have things 100% correct, that he's right that Jimmy tampered with Chuck's work in such a way so as to benefit her. After how clear Kim made it that she wasn't comfortable with Jimmy's methods, that she wanted to do things her own way, sink or swim, she understandably feels betrayed, even if she's not yet ready to break things off with Jimmy, let alone give up her client or expose him to the risk of being disbarred or going to jail. Despite that, the scene of the two of them in bed together, and the palpable coldness between them, feels like a mirror image of Chuck and his wife sitting in bed, similarly disconnected, in the cold open to "Rebecca." Chuck's wife isn't in the picture anymore, and we do not yet know why, but that visual rhyme, and Kim's demeanor, suggests that she may not be in Jimmy's life for much longer either.
But there's a more severe unintended consequence for Jimmy as well. Jimmy loves his brother. He hates him a little bit, but he loves him. He doesn't want to hurt Chuck; he just wants to take him down a peg, to stop him from keeping Kim from what she's owed the same way that Chuck did to him. But Jimmy's actions go further than that. They torture Chuck. He begins to suffer under the electric hum of the banking commission's offices once the alleged "discrepancy" is exposed. The blistering buzz of the florescent lights at the copy shop start to take their toll on him. Chuck's clearly at the end of his rope. He's right, but feels like the world is gas-lighting him. And he's right. All at once, it's too much for Chuck, and he cracks his head on the table and crumples to the ground. Once again, Jimmy has plied his trade as best he knows how, never meaning any real harm, but someone he cares about ends up getting seriously hurt in the process. Let's hope that Chuck fares better than Marco did.
In truth, there's a great deal of coincidence and convenience at play in "Nailed." How is it that Kim gets the call to come pick up the Mesa Verde boxes from Chuck's so soon after she wins Mesa Verde back? Chalk it up to narrative convenience. Why would she bring Jimmy along to what is already likely to be a delicate situation? Maybe she knows he's there to gloat and doesn't want to deny him, but figures he'll be on his best behavior. How is it that Chuck not only realizes that Jimmy sabotaged him, but is able to almost preternaturally piece together exactly how he did it? Welll, Chuck's a smart guy, and the show tries to handwave it by having him bring up Jimmy's fake I.D. scam in high school.
So how does Kim obliquely bring up that Jimmy needs to cover his tracks just in time for Chuck to show up to the copy shop when Ernesto just happens to be there? How is it that he just so happens to have the copy shop empty except for him and the clerk with enough time for him to lay out his bribe and his story? How is it that he has the nigh-perfect vantage point to see and understand all that's going on in the shop once Chuck rolls in? Beats me.
The episode, the acting, the direction, the dialogue, the plotting, the themes, and the show are all just too damn good to care. From the wry-edged sweetness between Jimmy and Kim as they're setting up their new apartment, to the perfectly-constructed and tension-filled hit by Mike in the desert, to the hilarious scene where Jimmy talks his way into filming on a school playground, to the frenetically shot and edited final scene where Chuck loses it, to the blistering, incredible moment where Jimmy, Kim, and Chuck are laying it out on the table for one another, there is simply too much greatness in too many modes from this show to be especially bothered by any bit of narrative convenience.
That last scene in particular is an all-timer. In "Pimento," the penultimate episode of Season 1, Jimmy confronted his brother in that same room, with a similar inflammatory atmosphere and tone to their hashing things out. Here, once again only a single episode away from the finale, the show doubles down on that concept. The tables are turned -- this time it's Chuck exposing the double cross, and for that matter, "Nailed" throws Kim into the mix, both to have the other major presence in Jimmy's life represented and exposed to this, but also to stand out as the person who sees each of these misguided men for what they are.
The anger, the betrayal, the pride, the sense of pleading in Chuck's voice as he lays this all out is remarkable. He has been betrayed by the brother whom she had just thanked for looking after him despite their issues with one another. And he has Kim there not just for the boxes, but because he wants to tell her not to make the same mistake he did, of trusting Jimmy. He knows that Jimmy did it for her, but that Jimmy will eventually do the same thing to her--betray her trust, if not twist the knife in quite the same fashion--because he can't help himself. He wants to Kim to see Jimmy clearly, without the lens of affection that's blinded him and which he thinks is blinding her.
But unbeknownst to Chuck, and for that matter the audience, Kim already knows. It's hard to tell at what moment in that scene that Kim believes what Chuck is telling her. Maybe it's Jimmy's less-than-convincing denial. Maybe it's Chuck's declaration that his brother did it for love. Maybe it's just her piecing it together in the space between the accusations and the pleas of innocence. Rhea Seehorn and Kim Wexler play it close to the vest, not letting the viewer be sure what she thinks or what she understands until the moment when her frustration erupts and she punches Jimmy's arm in the car.
Before that though, she offers the frankest, truest, and saddest assessment of the McGill boys that the show has allowed us to witness. The show commits to the feint when it has Kim pushing back at Chuck and telling him that one typo by lantern light is far more likely than Chuck's accurate but paranoid-sounding account of what happens. But then she speaks the absolute truth. Chuck made Jimmy, or at least pushed him this direction. As I've said before, Jimmy idolizes his brother, and if Chuck had returned that affection, returned that trust, just a little bit, who knows where Jimmy's talents might have been put to use.
Thus far, Better Call Saul has seemed to posit that there is something essential about Jimmy that cannot avoid taking the occasional shortcut, that cannot completely suppress his conman ways. But he toiled in the mailroom long enough to make something of himself. He dredged up the Sandpiper case not through pure dishonest trickery, but by using his resourcefulness for good. Maybe Chuck will always see his brother with a law license as a chimp with a machine gun, but with a little guidance, a little help, maybe he could at least be aiming it in the right direction.
That doesn't absolve Jimmy, and neither does Kim. She's right to be sorry for both of them, that each has made awful choices to hurt the other and, meaning to or not, her. For Jimmy, those choices led him to potentially losing the woman he loves, and have left his brother in need of an ambulance. For Mike, those choices have left him with blood on his hands once more. Jimmy and Mike never cross paths, not even for a moment in "Nailed," but by the end of the episode, they're in the exact same place.
[9.1/10] If you graphed Walter White’s transition from mild-mannered science teacher to Heisenberg, there would be a few peaks and valleys, but it would pretty much be a straight, diagonal line. There were always these inciting events, these decision points, that pushed him further and further into becoming the man he eventually became. But the line between Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman isn’t that neat. It’s more like a series of deepening parabolic arcs, where time and again, he reaches the brink of giving in, of becoming the shyster running cheesy ads on daytime television and linking up with criminals, and then he pulls back.
Because Jimmy has been fortunate enough to have wake up calls, to have people who pull him toward the light. Whether it’s Marco’s death or Chuck’s episode or Kim’s crash, there are moments that tell Jimmy he’s gone too far, that he needs to feed his better nature rather than settle into his Machiavellian talents. Those have been enough to keep him in the realm of the (at least mildly) righteous. Each time, some setback emerges that prompts him to gradually drift back to his flim-flamming ways, but time and again, he has the presence of mind to recognize that he’s in a bad place and hold back.
That’s one of the nice things about “Lantern,” the finale of Better Call Saul’s third season. It doesn’t overplay its hand on these sorts of moments. Kim doesn’t have some big monologue about how she’s been pushing herself too hard and it’s all Jimmy’s doing. Instead, she responds to Jimmy’s apology by declaring that she’s an adult and chose to get into the car. She comes close to jumping back into the breakneck schedule that brought her to that point and chooses to rent ten movies and actually relax and convalesce instead.
By the same token, Jimmy doesn’t have any long, drawn out confession or apologia. The look on his face, the held hand between him and Kim, the way he dotes on his friend and partner, says it all. “Lantern” plays the remorse, the realization, in Jimmy’s actions, not in the words he uses so often to bend and blister the truth. After fighting so hard to keep the office going, Jimmy immediately has a change of heart and says it doesn’t matter, setting that dream aside after seeing what it did to the woman he loved.
There’s a good deal of repentance to Jimmy here. He tries to make amends with Irene, to set things right with her and her friends, and continually comes up short. Until he reaches a strange epiphany. He admits to Kim that he’s only good at tearing things down, not at building them up, but then realizes that he can fix things by turning that quality against himself. So he uses that Jimmy McGill cleverness, this time setting up a ruse (that takes us back to chair yoga) and hot mic so he can stage a confession with Erin, the young Davis & Main associate we met back in Season 2. Jimmy applies that same manipulative quality to his own detriment, and it proves to be a clever solution to his attempts to correct his mistakes.
It’s not like Jimmy to be self-sacrificing, to make a move that will not only make him look bad, but effectively screw up the elder law niche he’d carved for himself in Albuquerque. That has the benefit of foreshadowing how Jimmy will need to find a new racket whenever his license is reinstated, but more importantly, it shows the lengths Jimmy is willing to go to, the surprisingly selfless moves he’s willing to make, for Kim and for Irene, in an effort to straighten out and fly right.
(Amid all of this fascinating, unexpected, but largely internal drama, it’s notable that Nacho’s portion of the episode is downright straightforward. The episode pays off the dummy pills it set up in “Slip”, and Hector’s debilitating infuriation at having to put his lot in with “The Chicken Man” established in “Fall”. There’s some minor tension in the scene where Nacho’s father seems poised to stand up to Hector but relents (with a great performance from Juan Carlos Cantu), a bit more when Nacho shows himself willing to train a gun on his boss rather than risk Hector hurting his father before his pill plan works, and the knowing look Gus offers after Hector succumbs. But for the most part, this is where the show simply dutifully knocks down what it previously set up.)
It ties into the symbolism that the episode is steeped in. “Lantern” opens on a young Chuck McGill reading to his brother by lantern light. He’s still supercilious (and it’s a great vocal mimic from the young actor), but the whistle of that gas lantern symbolizes the connection between the two siblings, the fact that despite Chuck’s issues, there is a light still burning for him.
That’s the difference between Chuck and Jimmy. Chuck manages to systematically alienate anyone and everyone who cares about him, from pride, from overconfidence, and from self-centeredness. We don’t know exactly what happened with Chuck and Rebecca, but we know that Chuck pissed away a promising chance for reconciliation rather than admit his condition. We see him push away Jimmy, the one person who really loved Chuck, giving him the devastating pronouncement, “you never mattered all that much to me.”
And when he goes to shake Howard’s hand, with the expectation that he will be welcomed back with open arms, Howard not only rebuffs him, not only sends him off from the firm he helped start, but he reaches into his own pocket to do it. He is so ready to be rid of Chuck, so tired of his crap, so devoted to the good of his firm, that he is willing to pay personally to be done with his erstwhile partner.
That is a wake up call of a different sort of Chuck, one that severs his last connection to the world, that sends him on a downward spiral away from the progress he’d made on coping with his condition. In “Lantern”, Jimmy admits that he’s not good at building things, only tearing things down, a pathology that seems to affect both McGills. For Chuck, that becomes more literal, as he methodically tears his own house apart trying to find the source of the electricity that is driving him deeper and deeper into his insanity.
“Lantern” revels in this, taking the time to show the escalation in Chuck’s madness when he realizes he is truly and utterly alone. It starts with simply shutting off the breakers, then checking the switches, then tearing at the walls, and finally ripping the whole place apart. We’re back to “Fly” from Breaking Bad, an unscratchable itch, an unattainable goal, that stands in for deeper issues the character can’t bear to confront directly. Better Call Saul holds the tension of these moments -- the threat that Chuck will fall off the ladder in his light-bulb snatching ardor, that he’ll electrocute himself grasping at wires buried in drywall, that he’ll cut himself on the shattered glass or sparks of his smashed electricity meter. Instead, it’s Chuck’s own deliberate hand that seemingly does him in.
The last we see of Chuck is him sitting delirious on in his torn apart living room. He is in a stupor. The whistle of the gas lantern returns. And throughout the scene, there is the knock, knock, knock of Chuck kicking at the table where it rests. Chuck’s descent is a straight line, a gradual peeling off of all the people who would give a damn about him. The lantern symbolizes his connections to other people, the quiet hum of the other lights in his life, that he continually had to snuff out to make sure his shined the brightest. That is, in a symbolic and more literal sense, his undoing. The distant crawl of flames that ends the episode sees to that.
And yet, once again, he is right about his brother. That’s the inherent tragedy of Better Call Saul. There’s room for decency in the parts of Saul Goodman’s life we never see in Breaking Bad, but whatever strides he makes here, whatever changes he commits to, we know that eventually, he backslides into becoming the huckster who helps murderers and criminals take care of their problems by any means necessary.
Before he descends into his mania, Chuck offers one last, unwittingly self-effacing assessment of his brother. He asks Jimmy why express the regret, why go through the exercise of pleading remorse and trying to change. Chuck tells his brother that he believes his feelings of regret are genuine, that he feels those feelings, but that it’ll never be enough to make him change, that he will inevitably hurt the people around him. There’s the irony that Chuck himself is scelerotic, that he is just as un-self-aware, incapable of overcoming the lesser parts of himself, but he isn’t wrong. The audience knows that and knows where kind-hearted Jimmy McGill ends up.
That’s the idea this season opened up with, and maybe the theme of the whole show -- you cannot escape your nature. Cinnabon Gene has every reason to keep his mouth shut when a young shoplifter is taken in by local cops, but he cannot help but yell out that he should ask for a lawyer. There are parts of Jimmy that he will never tamp down. Maybe, if his brother had truly loved him, had helped him to channel those parts of himself in a good direction, he could have used his charming, conning ways in service of helping old ladies with wills or other injustices. But there is a part of Jimmy always ready to slip, always ready to go to color outside the lines, to go to extremes, to get his way.
When he does that, people get hurt, people like Chuck. Jimmy is not to blame, at least not solely to blame, for his brother’s (probable) death. Chuck has brought more than enough of that on himself. To paraphrase Kim -- he’s an adult; he made his choices. But Jimmy had a hand in the catalysts for what happened to Chuck, in the things that drove him apart from Howard, that threw a monkey wrench into Chuck’s recovery, that made it impossible for him to return to practice and the life he once knew, the prospect of which seemed to energize and inspire him.
That is going to haunt him. The one thing Jimmy wanted almost as much as his brother’s love was his brother’s respect. Chuck’s likely last words to him will be essentially that he never really loved Jimmy and that he’d only really respect him if he embraced the harmful person he is deep down, and owned it, rather than fighting it. Jimmy won’t learn what happened to his brother and wake up the next morning as a fully-formed Saul Goodman, but that final thought, that warning and proclamation, will linger with him, eat him, even as he makes these grand gestures in the name of being a better man. It’s Chuck’s last awful gift to his little brother.
The changes that happen to people as they grow and evolve are rarely as neat or clean as Walter White’s elegant descent into villainy. They are an accumulation of little moments, stops and starts, peaks and valleys, until another person emerges from the slow tumult. Few people turn into monsters overnight or have one grand moment where they change completely. Instead, for most, it’s just that little by little, moment by moment, person by person, the light goes out.
8.6/10. When I think of The West Wing, I think of going big. The series has never been especially subtle, and when you think of its most iconic moments, the ones that most often take place in season finales, they tend to hew toward bombast: assassinations, explosions, nominations, kidnappings, and grand declarations and recriminations in ornate cathedrals.
That’s why the most impressive thing about “Tomorrow,” The West Wing’s series finale, is how damn small it is. Despite Wells & Company's probable inclination to stick with the show’s usual M.O. and go out with a bang, “Tomorrow” takes a more contemplative stance, one that speaks to the small details of the transfer of power, the prosaic issues that emerge as one administration ends and another begins, and the quiet, human moments of the people who are passing the baton.
Even the crisis of the week is small. President Bartlet and the senior staff can’t get out of the office without pouring water on one last fire. This time, it’s a train derailment thanks to a New England snowstorm. We get an abbreviated version of the ol’ West Wing block and tackle, with what remains of Bartlet’s advisors giving him a rundown of the situation, and the President himself getting a pair of Governors on the phone to resolve this minor cross-border dispute. It’s a nice last gasp for these daily issues that were the show’s bread and butter, which serves as a grace note for the style of storytelling that once dominated the series.
But what’s really striking about the episode is its restraint, the way it doesn’t belabor points that the show might have gone to greater lengths to underline in other circumstances. While Will Bailey notes that the train derailment incident may have been the staff witnessing the final act of governance of the Bartlet Administration, it’s not Jed’s last act as President. Instead, after hemming and hawing and mulling it over for much of “Tomorrow,” he signs a pardon for Toby, only to rap his knuckles on the desk in frustration immediately after.
It’s an incredibly well-done subplot that helps pull the series across the finish line, one that draws strength from how reserved it is. We don’t even see Toby in the episode (something that, I admit, makes me a bit sad). We don’t hear Bartlet vocalizing how he’s conflicted over whether to bail out his longtime friend with whom he’s still clearly perturbed. We don’t have C.J. engaging in a spirited colloquy with the President over the pros and cons of the pardon, or a vigorous defense of her friend.
Instead, the episode takes on a “show, don’t tell" ethos. The fact that the President added Toby’s name to the potential pardon list but-- without having to detail his internal opposition--keeps delaying the signing of it, saying he hasn’t decided what to do yet, tells us all we need to know about how Bartlet feels.
In the same way, the show lets the actors' performances tell the story here. The scenes between Bartlet and C.J. are great bits of nigh-wordless acting, with Allison Janney in particular going a great job at showing how C.J. is trying to stay detached and objective about the issue, so as not to influence the President, but how her affection for Toby and her hope that the President will absolve him subtly bleeds through. Martin Sheen, as always, holds up his end of the bargain as well, communicating the internal struggle going on in the President's head, and his mild regret and frustration but ultimate resoluteness when he does sign that pardon.
The episode uses these same techniques to circle back to the idea of the Inauguration being a day of change for everyone, about the quiet end of one administration and the semi-humble beginning of another. The clockwork rhythm of the portraits and knickknacks being packed up and replace, the “you can do it” speeches offered by C.J. and Deborah Fiderer (who is fantastic here) to their successors, the way that the spirit of Leo McGarry hangs over the episode, all helps to mark the ways in which the new class is starting, and the old class, the one that we came to know over seven seasons, is walking out the door.
Most of the members of the old class get a moment in the sun here, however briefly. In the episode’s most heartwarming scene, the President passes his father’s constitution on to Charlie. Again, he never needs to say that Charlie is like a son to him, and the two don’t hug or anything, but the gesture says so much, and whatever’s left is said by the looks of affection and sincere gratitude on the pair’s faces. Afterward, Charlie, Will, and Kate find themselves with nothing to do for once in their lives, and decide to go to the movies in an amusingly quotidian touch. Finally, in the episode’s most blunt scene, C.J. walks out the White House gate and responds to an inquiring passerby, with some relief and appreciation, that she does not, in fact, work at the White House.
And in the end, we see President Santos sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office. He’s flanked by Josh, Sam, and Bram (and it should be noted that for a campaign that had major contributions from women and people of color throughout, the only senior advisors we see in the room are a trio of white guys), and suddenly there’s a new daily crisis to be fixed. There’s a real sense that the dance goes on, that we take these little pauses to stop and appreciate that a big change is upon us, but then, at least we hope, things flow into business as usual once more, even with (some) different faces conducting that business. Despite the scenes we witness of the Inauguration, the pomp and circumstance of the occasion is undercut by the episode’s focus on the undeniably small and personal and even logistical in the midst of all this ceremony.
That extends to the way the episode treats the incoming and outgoing Presidents here. As The West Wing has done often in its later years, the episode employs a certain parallelism between President Bartlet and President-Elect Santos. Most of what we see from Santos takes the form of little moments shared between him and Helen, where he admits his nerves at the monumental task ahead of him, and they joke around to ease his mind a bit. It’s Santos at his most relatable and authentic. Rather than the perfect candidate who has the right answer for every question, he’s just a normal guy who’s still somewhat shocked that he is where he is, confiding in and having a sweet rapport with his wife, hoping that he’s up to to this incredible challenge.
And on the other end, much of what we see of Jed Bartlet is him reflecting on what he accomplished and what he failed to, confiding in Mrs. (Dr.) Bartlet in the same terms. The show didn’t always utilize Stockard Channing’s talents to their full potential, but the Bartlets as a pair were always one of the show’s great strengths, with an earnestness and honesty between the two of them that always served the show well. It’s nice to see this episode lean on that strength here, showing the ways in which Abigail understands her husband, can pierce through his various fronts, and even seemingly read his mind and reassure him as he steps away from the biggest job he’ll ever do.
But the parallels don’t end there. At the end of the episode, we watch as both Santos and Bartlet unwrap something, and we see their reactions. We never get a glimpse of what exactly President Bartlet wrote to his successor, but in another superbly understated moment, the way that Santos reads it, smiles, and even tears up a little, says more than any dialogue, read in voiceover or otherwise, possibly could.
In the same way, one of the show’s last images is of Jed unwrapping a gift from Leo's daughter Mallory, something that she thought her father would want him to have. It turns out to be one of this series’s holy artifacts – the “Bartlet for America” napkin. And while Jed is wistful and seems even a little regretful about what he left on the table in his time in office, about this incredible time in his life ending, the way his face lights up upon seeing that gift is incredible. In an instant, you can see all the stories of the show, the years of crises and setbacks and victories and moments great and small flash on the now former President’s face, as he warms himself with that thought, allowing him to look fondly on the days to come.
There’s no grand oratories in “Tomorrow.” For a show known for its loquacious bent, we don’t get to hear Santos’s speech, there’s no big monologue from Bartlet summing up his time in office, and there’s not any charged exchanges of high-minded principles. In place of these things, The West Wing’s series finale offers a series of quiet, deceptively complex, achingly human moments among the people who are ending this journey and beginning another one.
The real world of politics is typically not nearly so grandiose as The West Wing's depiction of it. It's as full of bean-counters and pencil-pushers as it is visionaries and operators. But the beauty of this series, and its finale, is the way that it could balance the big work of government--the levers and pulleys and boardroom debates that we imagine when we think of governing--with the stories of the people who were pulling those levers and having those debates. In “Tomorrow,” everyone who orbits the West Wing, including the Presidents themselves, are shown to still be human beings, as impacted by the enormity of these occasions and these changes as anyone, which shows in little moments, little gestures, and little ways.
[8.7/10] The close of “Something Beautiful” makes me think of a scene from “Nailed”, the penultimate episode of Season 2. In that episode, Chuck McGill confronts his brother and Kim about his suspected switcheroo with the Mesa Verde files. He impugns Jimmy’s character and says Kim should open her eyes. And he tells Kim that Jimmy did it for her, that it was a “twisted romantic gesture.”
But Kim defends Jimmy. She admits that he’s not perfect, but essentially argues that he’s a good person, a person she pities for how much he wants his brother’s love, a love that he’ll never get. She chastises Chuck for denying him that and judging him, for threatening to inflict such consequences on Jimmy, denying his theory as crackpot. But when she’s alone with Jimmy, she betrays her true feelings. She punches him in the arm. She expresses her frustration, because she’s no fool; she knows he did it, and she knows Chuck’s right -- he did it for her.
So when Kim returns to the offices of Mesa Verde, the crown jewel of her ill-gotten gains, and sees their vaunted “models” of their expansion plans, it’s overwhelming for her. The camerawork and editing is tremendous, zooming in on this miniature world and making it larger than life, especially with Kim’s place in it. She sees a tiny man and woman in front of the building, the sounds and the feelings rush back, and she can’t help but remember how this all started. It started with this man that she loves taking revenge on his brother on her behalf. That’s not something Kim Wexler can shake as easily as Jimmy seemingly can.
Sometimes you start something, and you don’t know how big it’s going to get, or the difficult places it’s going to take you. “Nailed” is also the episode where Mike knocked over one of Hector’s trucks. In a bitter echo of that scene, “Something Beautiful” opens with Gus’s henchmen recreating that tableau with Nacho and the dead body of Arturo, to make it look like the same goon who attacked Hector’s soldiers before have struck again. It is, in keeping with Gus’s M.O., a meticulous job. No detail is left unattended, and to complete the cover-up, they shoot Nacho in the shoulder and in the abdomen, leaving him to bleed in the desert with nothing but a phone call to the twins to potentially save his life.
There too, the scenes are beautiful, but harsh, as director Daniel Sackheim uses Nacho’s injury and rescue to show both the efficient brutality of Gus’s plan and his goons as Nacho is left to bake and bleed under the desert sun, and the impressionistic resplendence of the flashes of night-lit faces he sees on the operating table of the same veterinarian who associates with Mike and Jimmy.
After that vet gives Nacho his diagnosis and medical advice, he leaves Nacho with one last instruction -- “leave me out of this.” The vet says that the work with the cartel is too hot for him, and he wants out. It’s another bitter irony, because Nacho wants out too. He told his father he was trying. He wanted to keep his family from getting involved deeper with the Salamancas, deep into this morass. But like Kim, he’s too far into it now, and he’s suffering the physical and mental consequence of something he can’t escape from, that’s happened because of him.
And yet, as much as Nacho desperately want out, there are those who desperately want in. Gus, ever the mastermind, has made it so that the Salamancas are without leadership and supply on the streets is running thin. He gets to play the reluctant subordinate to Don Bolsa, agreeing over feigned protest that, if he must, he’ll find an alternative supply of meth with the Salamanca’s pipelines shut off for the time being, a contingency he has clearly been planning for some time. His almost undetectable smile while on the phone with Don Bolsa betrays it. While everyone else is scrambling, in too deep, Gus knows how to play the hand he’s dealt.
But this new situation requires him to go Gale, the latest Breaking Bad alum to appear on Better Call Saul. Gale is as delightfully geeky and puppy dog-like as always, singing along to a rondelay of chemicals sung to “Modern Major General”, reporting his results from the tests that Gus had him run, and practically begging for Gus to let him be the official Pollos Hermanos meth cook.
Gale is one of this universe’s more endearing inventions, to the point that his presence is a welcome little joy in an otherwise fairly heavy episode. It even makes me forgive the show’s increasing, and frankly kind of cheesy, willingness to dip back into the Breaking Bad pool. But here that crossover quality works, because we know Gale’s fate, and what lies in wait for him on the other side of that desperation to join up, the harsh realities that Nacho is facing as he wants out of what Gale wants into.
Sometimes, though, that life on the other side of the glass is just too appealing. That seems to be the case for Jimmy, who returns to the sort of small time hustles we saw him running with Marco back in the day. This time, it means replacing the secretly valuable hummel figurine owned by the copier salesmen he rejected in the last episode with a common, otherwise undetectable replacement, and pocketing the profits.
The ensuing sequence -- where Jimmy’s hired goon tries to make the swap, and inadvertently gets trapped hiding from the company’s owner, who’s in the doghouse with his wife -- is one of the funniest in the show so far. (It had echoes of “squat cobbler” with its absurdity.) The humdrum, almost cliché problems of the owner buying his wife a vacuum cleaner, listening to self-motivational tapes, and ordering pizza in the middle of the night while the would-be thief hides under a desk is a brilliant and hilarious setup, made funnier by how much patience Better Call Saul shows with it. And the coda, with Jimmy misdirecting the owner and rescuing his accomplice with little more than a coat hanger and a car alarm, is the icing on the cake.
But there’s more going on than just comedy here. Mike recognizes that when he turns down the job. He realizes that Jimmy’s after something else, something beyond just an easy score, and that’s a complication Mike is smart enough not to want to get involved in. Unlike Nacho, and unlike Kim, Mike knows when he’s walking into a briar patch he might never walk out of, and he’s been reminded recently enough that few things in the circles he runs in are as clean or “in and out” as he might hope. There’s warning signs going off about Jimmy, and though we know they won’t keep Mike away from the once-and-future Saul Goodman forever, they’re enough to keep him away for now.
And maybe that’s the same sort of realization that Kim is starting to have. At the end of the episode, Jimmy sees the piddling distribution Chuck left for him, reads a mildly condescending but still genuine and heartfelt letter from (so Jimmy knows it’s really from Chuck), and yet he’s nonplussed. Yet again, something that would seem to provoke some outpouring of emotion from Jimmy gets bupkus, while it’s Kim who breaks down and tears up and needs a minute.
Chuck’s letter talks about he and Jimmy’s bond as brothers, about the connection they share despite their differences, about the resilience and hustle Chuck admires in his younger sibling. And there’s two ways to take Kim’s wounded reaction to that.
One is a sense of guilt for having been the thing that motivated the rift between the McGills. Chuck told her it wasn’t her fault back in “Nailed” but he also told her that Jimmy did all this for her. As I’ve mentioned before, part of the larger story Better Call Saul has told thus far is of Kim slowly but surely replacing Chuck as the major person in Jimmy’s life. Maybe being reminded of what led to her getting Mesa Verde, of the bond between brothers that was severed on her account, is too much to bear.
But the other is that she realizes she picked the wrong side. The last time Kim was in Mesa Verde’s offices, she told her counterpart that all that had happened with Chuck at Jimmy’s disciplinary hearing was the tearing down of a sick man. In that scene in “Nailed”, Kim took Jimmy’s side over Chuck’s. Whatever the truth was, she believed that Jimmy’s heart was in the right place, that he was the victim, and that he was a good man.
Now, in the wake of Chuck’s suicide, maybe she’s starting to see his decency, maybe she’s starting to reevaluate the set of events that led her to this place, and her choice to be with a person who seems fine with them all. In “Something Beautiful”’s final image, we see only half of Jimmy’s face, the other half obscured by Kim’s closed door, and there’s symbolism in it. As perceptive as Kim is, she didn’t see the whole picture with Jimmy; she didn’t see the whole picture with Chuck. Now that it’s coming into focus, she finds herself so immersed in something awful, so bound up in it, and all she can do is buckle and try to bear it.
Breaking Bad has already shown us the fates of so many of these characters, how Jimmy, Gus, Gale, Mike, are all sucked in and battered by this world. But Better Call Saul leaves us people like Kim and Nacho, who we can only hope escape this terrible orbit in better shape than Chuck did.
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.
[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.
It's interesting how, out of an entire 45 minute episode, one single scene that explicitly addresses they/them pronouns has got a certain type of viewer bent out of shape. Apparently this equates to the episode being riddled with nonsense, all the more ridiculous since the idea of inclusion and acceptance is so against the Trek ethos...oh wait.
Anyway, sadly this was another weak episode. Normally I'm Georgio's biggest fan but I have to agree with Andrew Bloom's review that her combative quips in the early part of the episode were generally quite forced and poorly delivered. In fact, the script for this episode was noticeably clunky in terms of the incidental dialogue between the cast. Also, while I appreciate the show finally fleshing out Detmer's character after three seasons, I feel like they've possibly miscast her. The actress isn't bad, per se, but her performance comes across as a fairly meek individual rather than someone who ought to be helming a starship. In fact the general calibre of the performances this episode was a bit wonky. The actress playing Osyrra was quite wooden in my opinion, as was the actor playing her nephew.
After a strong start to the season, these past few episodes have rather dragged. I'm hoping the closing third of the season is a return to form as some of the plot points start getting resolved.
Patrick Stewart spins around the wrong way after Brent Spiner "hits" him in Engineering… No wonder that particular fight call seemed extra cheesy.
Both times Graves transfers his consciousness, the implied mechanics leave major plot holes. Who turned Data back on? How did Data get on the floor? Who unplugged him?!
While I wouldn't necessarily call this a great story—it has a lot of elements that were common in science fiction up to that time, and the plot holes are awfully big—it is a great watch. Brent Spiner doing just about anything makes for a great watch.
I'm a bit disappointed to read that a scene where Data was to riff on Picard's bald head, after his attempt at a Riker-like beard failed, was cut from the script. That would have been hilarious. But maybe it would have included another instance of Deanna making some excuse to avoid laughing in front of Data, who is an android and would not feel insulted by it, so… maybe it was better left out. (That bit was very out of character, I thought. Troi shouldn't feel the need to hide her reaction from Data. He'd find it useful feedback, if anything.)
Besides Spiner's usual obvious fun-having, there are some nice little writing touches to think about.
IMDB pointed out (because I haven't read Dickens in forever) that the disease Graves had is probably a reference to a character of the same name in A Tale of Two Cities, which is pretty great.
Graves' name itself, while not really a literary reference per se, is still funny. A man trying to cheat death is named after the thing in which he does not want to end up (a grave). Har har?
(I also realized early on this this episode why Dr. Pulaski must be so dour… She's played by Diana Muldaur, who practically has "dour" in her name… but that's a cheap shot, I guess.)
That last scene was awesome. Too bad Euron couldn't of waited five more minutes for Ellaria to "invade" Yara. That drawbridge smashing someone was a perfect start to a big fight. RIP two of the three sand snakes. One of them cut Euron, did she poison the blade like Oberyn did to the Mountain? If he is poisoned and gets back to King's Landing fast enough maybe Qyburn can save him and turn him into an undead zombie too. So the gift is Ellaria Sand? It makes sense since she killed Cersi's daughter. Also poor Theon, Ramsay has ruined him for life. That cockless coward. The look Euron gave Theon and that laugh makes him certified crazy, right?
Daenerys plotting how to take over the Seven Kingdoms was fun. I'm glad they started right where they left off last episode. It is interesting to see all the women in power at that table. Daenerys calling out Varys was needed. He always seems like he is out for himself. He made a convincing argument but I'm not sure how much is true. Tyrion seems like he has the right idea with taking King's Landing with Westeros armies and Casterly Rock with the Dothraki. Too bad it doesn't look like that is going to happen. Will Daenerys take Olenna's advice and act like a dragon?
So is Melisandre going to be staying in Dragonstone and supporting Daenerys? Does she think the prophecy says Daenerys could be the one to bring the dawn or does she think that is Jon? It was also nice to see Missandei and Grey Worm finally show real feelings for each other. It did cross my mind that this is a sex scene with a unsullied.
Cersi trying to recruit is sad. Didn't seem like many came to her when she called and they aren't all convinced. Jamie talking to Randyll Tarly to become warden of the south but he still isn't sure he is on the winning side. So Cersi has a big cross bow that can go through an old dragon skull. I don't think they will kill any of the dragons. The only way I see any dragons dying is if they are fighting the white walkers. Then the Night King will bring it back and we could have a zombie dragon. Now that would be trouble. Would it breath fire or ice?
Jon leaving for Dragonstone is exciting. Daenerys and Jon meeting will sort of be a family reunion, because you know, Daenerys is his Aunt even if they don't know it. Sansa just keeps undermining Jon in front of everyone so might as well just put her in charge. Littlefinger is now on both Sansa's and Jon's shit list. I wonder how much longer he stays there or if he decides to turn on them?
We finally got the reunion we all wanted, HOT PIE and Arya! But seriously I'm glad someone told her and winterfell so she can head home. Too bad it looks like Jon will be gone. Another reunion with Arya and her direwolf Nymeria was short lived. At least she got to see her pet was still alive even if she has to let her go live her own alpha wolf life now.
That Jorah Greyscale scene was gross. I'm guessing Sam isn't going to get it to work. He was writing a letter to khalessi. Maybe he will try to go to Dragonstone before he loses his mind and maybe the dragon glass could cure him. Stannis' daughter was cured and they lived on Dragonstone, it could happen?
Good episode, things are moving pretty fast.
That last scene was amazing. I love that we are getting huge battles more than once a season, probably because they have more of a budget per episode. Drogon is a total game changer, one second Jamie thinks he can hold off the Dorthraki. The next he is just about shitting his pants. Bronn did show that they are mortal and can be hurt. Jamie charging at Daenerys while Tyrion was watching was great. Tyrion still cares, at least a little, for Jamie and wants him to live. It not often we see two main characters directly fighting each other. Glad to see Daenerys get a win and Jamie not dead, hopefully.
Jon and Daenerys are getting closer. They seem to start to like each other more every scene they have together. Jon finding the cave paintings of white walkers was convenient. Hey look at this giant rock we are going to mine. Oh, look over there, there are old paintings of white walkers. Told you there were real. Jon still won’t bend the knee but he doesn’t want to be the king. A little stubborn, like daenerys too. Someone is going to have to give.
Another stark reunion only this time it didn’t feel as special. Maybe it's because we have seen a lot of reunions lately but it didn’t seem like they were that excited to see each other. Then Sansa’s like, Brans home too. Why did littlefinger give that dagger to Bran? Will Bran find out who tried to kill him with it? Was it actually littlefinger himself, he said he “lost” it to Tyrion. But hey at least Arya now has some valyrian steel.
The Arya and Brienne fight was fun. It crazy to see how well Arya was trained as an assassin by ’no one’. She still is a little girl that can be kicked down by Brienne but still very deadly. Sansa is seeing it for the first time too. I’m sure she is wondering who her sister has become fighting like that and having a list of people to kill.
I love how Davos introduces Jon. "King Snow, isn't it? No that doesn't sound right. King Jon?" Personally I like King Jon Targaryen.
Ahh, the sound of the nattering naybobs of Trekdom furiously trying to clap with one hand. You see, unless a program meets the narrowly specific parameters of what they will accept as "proper" Star Trek lore. Reminds me of those YouTube videos of entitled 16 year old's getting a new Lamborghini or BMW, and then pitching an absolute fit because it wasn't the color they desired. "This is NOT the Trek I was looking for"...... OK Obi Wan Kensnobby you win, we'll all go sit in the basement and watch reruns of the original series, or better yet, just the SPECIFIC EPISODES in each series that meet with your awesomely discerning taste. They rest you may send to the cornfield!!!!
Personally, I thought the producers and writers did a pretty good job of giving us a brand new crew, a brand new ship, an at least interesting situation as far as the story arc, while maintaining the connection to traditional "Trek" with appropriate amounts of fan service and character call backs. The animation, stylistically, is light years ahead of what is offered on "The Lower Drecks, er...Decks", and, the storytelling is aimed more toward the dramatic rather than the comedic. If that's not your thing, cool, but, neither should it be dismissed out of hand.
Personally, I found the amount of tension, thrills and FUN just about right, and the mix of immediate story and long arc balanced enough to hold my attention and leave me wanting more. Again, for a show aimed at the Nickelodeon demographic, that's no small feat IMO.
So yeah, I plan to continue watching it, and, it will be interesting to see if this version of the "Trekverse", can go where the others haven't gone before, or if the naybob's will be successful in stirring up enough negativity to eject the warp core and leave the crew stranded.
