finished that 70's show and I was like now what? Malcolm and the Middle is literally a golden show. Laughs almost in every episode... swear they don't make shows like this anymore.
It’s wild that Sarah is even wearing the same exact clothes that she did in the game. The attention to detail is insane so far.
I also love how they used the actual voice actor to play the roll of a Marlene
IT'S A SAD DARK DAY IN
THE MCU WITH THE LOSS OF CHADWICK BOSEMAN
HE WAS THE TRUE KING OF THE MCU AND A TRUE WARRIOR JUST HOW HE WAS IN LIFE. WITH GREAT SADNESS AND A HEAVY HEART
I SAY WE ARE AN AVENGER DOWN. THANK-YOU FOR BRINGING
THE BLACK PANTHER
TO LIFE IN THE MCU
LIKE ONLY YOU COULD.
IT WAS AN HONOUR SIR
YOU INSPIRED THE WORLD.
KING T'CHALLA
REST IN POWER
WAKANDA FOREVER
Brian Tyree Henry still got that Eternals strength the way he sent that dude through a glass door with just a gentle shove
I don’t get the negativity. Honestly you people are so entitled. The lack of context is intentional and there are several clues as to why it’s that way. It’s not a 50s to show (we haven’t seen them imitate a 60s tv show yet, that’s next week). It’s going to change probably every week, even up to the point of imitating modern tv shows like the office from what they’ve said. And the context is clear enough by the end of the second episode. Even without reading additional articles to explain the more subtle hints, you can tell what’s going on at least loosely. Plus it does a great job lampooning the absurdity of 50s tv and ideals about homemaking and marriage. To hilarious effect
Jonathan Banks is ridiculous good. He does so much with so little; plays the stoic, taciturn old hand so well, that it's tempting to think of that as the sum total of what he is. In both Breaking Bad and Community, he plays a perpetually grumpy, vaguely prideful, uber-competent ruffian, and does so with such skill, that it's easy to go back to that well again and again.
But then in an episode like "Five-O", he hits a note of vulnerability. He sits in the dark, and the tears well in his eyes as he talks to his daughter-in-law about how he "broke his boy." Mike Ehrmentraut is not made of stone. He is a simple man in many ways, who is remarkable for how unremarkable he is at times. But there is a beating heart beneath his steely exterior, one that grieves for his lost son, that blames himself for allowing it to happen, and who throws himself at the mercy of his son's wife out of a sense of guilt and fairness for having taken the man she loves away from her.
That scene is so damn quiet. There's no music to subtly or not-so-subtly massage our emotions one direction or another. There's little of the cinematic flourishes that made Breaking Bad and its successor stand out in a sea of often bland direction on television. There's just close ups of a wounded animal spilling his guts over his greatest regret, and a similar shot of his daughter-in-law, who carries a similar look of hurt but also one of understanding. It's one of the most powerful, tragic scenes in this young series, but also in its more celebrated predecessor, that deepens an already enthralling character and shows that Mike is far more than just grump and handguns.
At the same time, as good as that final scene is, it shouldn't overshadow how well the episode that precedes it is constructed. Apart from the story of Walter White, apart from the story of Jimmy McGill, "Five-O" is a wonderful little short story that works almost entirely separated from the narratives of the protagonists that Mr. Ehrmantraut finds himself associated with.
It is both a mystery and a character piece, offering details both about what led Mike to where he is when we meet him at the parking booth in the beginning of Better Call Saul, but also examining who he is and the baggage he carries with him when we first meet him in Albuquerque.
The episode begins by, not in so many words, asking a number of questions. How did Mike get shot? Was he speaking on the phone with Matty the night before he died? What brought him to Albuquerque in this state? Why won't he tell his daughter-in-law? What did they talk about? Who killed Matty? Who killed his partners on the force.
Then, one by one, the episode cuts back and forth between the present and the future, answering these questions and presenting new ones as it goes. At one point, I believed that Mike had killed his own son for some reason. Or that he at least knew what was going to happen, but didn't stop it.
Instead, the episode doesn't leave the audience guessing for long. Even as it tosses out breadcrumbs, and lets silences linger that make more of an impact than any dialogue, it eventually shows you what happened before it tells you the rest of the story.
The sequence where Mike takes out his son's murderers is masterful. The subtle touches show who Mike is and what he's about. He's capable and smart, as seen in the way he anticipates the dirty cops taking his weapon and breaks into their cop car to plant another one. Despite his anger, he's nervous about his plan, as seen in the way his hand shakes as he makes sure to let his targets know that he's having a few as he holds his glass of whiskey. And he's wily, playing into their expectation that he's drunk, leading them to take him somewhere that an execution can take place without too much notice or trouble.
Then his demeanor changes, and he does what he feels he needs to, and we get everything we need to know except the last piece of the puzzle -- how Matty got mixed up in this in the first place. And that leads us to that final scene, with Mike at the most open and honest and wounded as we've ever seen him.
And we learn things about one of this franchise's greatest characters that were unknown before "Five-O." We know that he's a drunk, who managed to crawl his way out of a bottle. We know that he was a dirty cop, or at least one dirty enough not to raise any suspicion because That's Just How Things Are. And he is a man who carries on with a tremendous sense of shame for the man he was and what it led to. He views himself as someone unworthy of his son's admiration, as someone whose failure to live up to the sterling image his son had of him led to his son's death. Mike is not a sentimental man, not one to wear his emotions on his sleeves, but "Five-O" makes it clear that he carries that weight with him wherever he goes.
While Saul appears for an important segment here, this episode is not about him. He's a supporting character in Mike's story. And yet in the midst of all this great standalone storytelling and character development of Mike, the folks behind Better Call Saul still take time out to lay the groundwork for why a pair of individuals like Jimmy McGill and Mike Ehrmantraut would find each other useful and build a relationship, if not necessarily a friendship together.
To that point, "Five-O" is a great episode of Better Call Saul, that deepens our understanding of one of the series's major players. But even apart from that, it's just a wonderful, heartbreaking, self-contained story about a man who went along to get along, with booze and kickbacks and thirty years of the usual business along the way, and woke up when he failed the person in his life who mattered the most to him. It's easy to love Mike Ehrmantraut, the old badass with a code; but it's even better to love Mike Ehrmantraut, the grieving father ready to live with whatever consequences are to come for killing his son's murderers, who still struggles with the thought that he corrupted something pure and beautiful, and feels responsible for taking away his granddaughter's daddy, his daughter-in-law's husband, because he was not as good of a man as he might have been.
8.9/10. I love the theme for this episode. I love the fact that Jimmy is genuinely distraught at the idea that he went the extra mile, proved that he is better and more committed than his well-heeled competition when it comes to these big fish clients, and they still won't hire him because he's "the kind of lawyer guilty people hire." And so he uses his hush money to both imitate and antagonize the kind of lawyers that respectable people hire, who are inadvertently and intentionally making his life harder. He both resents and envies their respectability, and so when the Kettlemans pay him off, he uses it as the rock upon which he will build his church.
But then he realizes that aping someone else's respectability isn't enough. Instead, he has to inject more of himself and what he does best into the routine in order to beat the big boys at their game. So he stages a rescue, makes the paper, and now has a name in the public consciousness to go along with his new, more respectable look. Everything in the episode is an effort to level the playing field, but with a fractured method for doing so that fits in with the rest of the fast talking conman ways Jimmy has mastered. He tries to go straight, in an almost cartoonish reaction to Hamlin, but eventually melds Hamlin's veneer with his own tactics to carve out something for himself (and win the minor admiration of his semi-perfunctory love interest)
And yet, he knows his brother won't approve. The scene where his brother, ever the voice of disapprobation, shifts from pride, to a frenetic and incredibly well-shot sequences that conveys his panic and sense of unwellness in venturing into the outside world, to the resignation and disappointment when he realizes what Slippin' Jimmy has pulled off, was an incredible way to end the episode.
And if the thematic stuff didn't do it for you, it was also a hilarious episode! Just the very image of Jimmy's billboard (and Hamlin's bewilderment at it) was great. The exchange about "Hamlindago" was a hoot. Jimmy's nigh-three stooges routine with the local college camera guys had a great comedic rhythm to it, and even little details like Chuck finding a rock to put his five dollar bill under in the midst of his disorientation was a stealthily hilarious character detail. One of the most easily forgotten parts of what made Breaking Bad great is how it wasn't afraid to be stupidly, or dryly comic even in the midst of its intense, dramatic stakes, and "Hero" seemed to embrace that element of its predecessor.
Great series so far. Obi Wan season 1 was clearly a missed opportunity and shite next to this.
I like Gus flirting - or trying to - with Walter during that dinner scene. I definitely didn't catch that nuance during my first viewing and especially after that episode of BCS.
EDDIE MUNSON PLAYING MASTER OF PUPPETS IN THE UPSIDE DOWN WAS LEGENDARY!
"Chrissy, this is for you."
[8.4/10] I'd speculated about how Kim would depart Jimmy's world. I feared she might be killed. I thought she'd get fed up with his misdeeds and leave him over that. What I didn't expect was that it would be spurred by a moment of self-recognition born of a terrible tragedy. Kim still loves Jimmy, but she recognizes that they're "poison" together, that they get off on the joint cons, and that when they do, people get hurt. She is one of the vanishingly small number of people in this franchise to recognize that she's on a destructive path and take drastic action to stop it. It's one of the most unexpected, but ultimately satisfying ways to have her exit I can imagine.
And it puts her in good company. Jimmy is as horrified by what happened as Kim is, but he can envision moving on, he can picture maintaining this life despite where it led them, he can see forgetting this some day. Kim can't. It's the same way Gus cannot forget his former partner Max, someone he loves, whose memory lingers with him when he gazes into Don Eladio's pool and holds him back from continuing to flirt with the handsome waiter who chats him up over a glass of a wine. It's the same way Mike cannot forget his son, which leads him to tell Nacho's father the truth about what happened to his child.
Mr. Varga shrugs off Mike's promise that justice will be done, recognizing that what he's talking about is vengeance. He declares that vengeance is a cycle that doesn't stop, and we know from Breaking Bad that he's right. Gus hasn't beaten the Salamancas or Don Eladio. Mike hasn't completed his tour of duty so that he can retire and spend time with his granddaughter. Jimmy can't avoid crossing paths with the cartel again. They're all in this now, and their victories bring them no peace, only pull them deeper into the muck of this, and closer to their ignoble ends.
But Kim breaks away. She cannot forget, but she can act to stop this from happening again. Her final scene with Jimmy (for now at least) is more quietly heartbreaking than explosive and dramatic, but that suits the gravity of this. And in her absence, Jimmy is free to become Saul, as an indeterminate time jump to the man in his huckster faux-finery confirms. The last thing holding Jimmy back is gone. Saul Goodman is here. He can't stop. And despite the woman in his bed, the bedraggled secretary on his phone, and the crowd of people in his waiting room, he is alone.
EDIT: If you'd like to read my usual, longer review, you can find it here -- https://thespool.net/reviews/tv-recap-better-call-saul-season-6-episode-9/
[9.5/10] They got me. They really did. I believed that Saul would do it, that he would find a way to lie, cheat, and steal out of suffering any real consequences for all the pain and losses he is responsible for. I believed that he would trade in Kim's freedom and chance to make a clean break after baring her soul in exchange for a damn pint of ice cream. I have long clocked Better Call Saul as a tragedy, about a man who could have been good, and yet, through both circumstance and choice, lists inexorably toward becoming a terrible, arguably evil person. I thought this would be the final thud of his descent, selling out the one person on this Earth who loved him to feather his own nest.
Maybe Walt was right when he said that Jimmy was "always like this." Maybe Chuck was right that there something inherently corrupt and untrustworthy in the heart of his little brother. This post-Breaking Bad epilogue has been an object lesson in the depths to which Gene Takovic will stoop in order to feed his addiction and get what he wants. There would be no greater affirmation of the completeness of his craven selfishness and cruelty than throwing Kim under the bus to save himself.
Only, in the end, that's the feint, that's the trick, that's the con, on the feds and the audience. When Saul hears that Kim took his words to heart and turned herself in, facing the punishments that come with it, he can't sit idly by and profit from his own lies and bullshit. He doesn't want to sell her out; he wants to fall on the sword in front of her, make sure she knows that he knows what he did wrong.Despite his earlier protestations that his only regret was not making more money or avoiding knee damage, he wants to confess in a court of law that he regrets the choices that led him here and the pain he caused, and most of all he regrets that they led to losing her.
In that final act of showmanship and grace, he lives up to the advice Chuck gives him in the flashback scene here, that if he doesn't like the road that his bad choices have led him, there's no shame in taking a different path. Much as Walt did, at the end of the line, Saul admits his genuine motives, he accepts responsibility for his choices after years of blame and evasion. Most of all, he takes his name back, a conscious return to being the person that Kim once knew, in form and substance. It is late, very late, when it happens, but after so much, Jimmy uses his incredible skills to accept his consequences, rather than sidestep them, and he finds the better path that Kim always believed he could walk, one that she motivates him to tread.
It is a wonderful finale to this all-time great show. I had long believed that this series was a tragedy. It had to be, given where Jimmy started and where the audience knew Saul ended. But as it was always so good at doing, Better Call Saul surprised me, with a measured bit of earned redemption for its protagonist, and moving suggestion that with someone we care for and who cares of us, even the worst of us can become someone and something better. In its final episode, the series offered one more transformation -- from a tale of tragedy, to a story of hope.
(On a personal note, I just want to say thank you to everyone who read and commented on my reviews here over the years. There is truly no show that's been as rewarding for me to write about than Better Call Saul, and so much of that owes to the community of people who offered me the time and consideration to share my thoughts, offered their kind words, and helped me look at the series in new ways with their thoughtful comments. I don't know what the future holds, but I am so grateful to have been so fortunate as to share this time and these words with you.)
EDIT: One last time, here is my usual, extended review of the finale in case anyone's interested -- https://thespool.net/reviews/better-call-saul-series-finale-recap-saul-gone/
It's hard to stay on top of all those new shows coming out, but this is really, really promising and very refreshing!
Bill Hader does kinda look like a block. This show is showing some promise and a good dilemma for Barry.
I am convinced that Barry wanting to take up acting after walking into that class and hanging out with the other students feels kind of sudden (despite him already being bored/wondering if there's more to his life than being a hitman). His confrontation with Gene after the class was also so strange to me because I don't get what Gene was trying to pull and why he thought Barry was doing an improv (I guess the stuff he said did sound crazy).
I liked the first episode though. There were funny moments, and I really liked that scene at the end!
‘Mommy, are you a superhero?’
‘I am a black woman in America. Superheroes ain’t got shit on me’
I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY BUILT UP BLACK NOIR'S BACKSTORY THIS SEASON TO MAKE HIM DIE LIKE GARBAGE......... I KNOW THEY KNOW THAT THEY COULD'VE DONE MUCH BETTER.
this show is fucking underated
underappreciated brotha, I had fun for sure
insanely good episode and the final sequence was a masterpiece. this season has absolutely shattered me so far
Dang wtf I haven't cried for a tv series in a while tbh..... Only ones I can think of are Breaking Bad when Jesse was making his wooden box
it's all coming together now but damn wtf! The last episode where Jane/El massacres all the kids at the lab was brutal and now knowing this makes all the prior seasons creepier because of what we saw when she attacked Angela at the fucking skating rink like just imagine she had her telekinesis...... it would be "The Boys" season two finale all over again!
Second best season opener!!!!.....behind season one obviously. Such a nice pace with the new character Introductions wasn't too overwhelming. Looking forward to the rest.
RATING - 88%
A lovely but still funny easing back into the core cast's chemistry. Van and Darius are a hoot together.
So far it's insane...
the small banter between dustin & steve is so fun, i love these two
& i feel like nancy's gonna feel so much guilt over what just happened to her assistant editor, it's like barb all over again, damn :(
Loving the Mike and Will angst
