Oh yeah, because accidentally burning a flag is hilarious. I was enjoying the episode right up until that point.
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@artsymusings why? what was wrong with that?
I aspire to have as much energy at 74 as Meryl Streep does.
I think we can all agree that Ben was actually talking to like a plate of cookies off camera and not a person in his dressing room. The question is then, who put them there and were they spiked?
Anyone else get Lucille and Buster Bluth vibes from Cliff and Donna?
“I come from television so I was trained to not question a script.”
Everything is not what it seems, so, I don't think Kimber did it, it is too soon to reveal the killer. I expect next episode they'll focus on Kimber but towards the end, focus will shift to someone else.
Meryl Streep and Ashley Park's voices in that lullaby was so great. Season 3 is amazing so far.
“I can’t cry.” “Why? Are you on Xanax?”
Theory: what if the two attempts on Ben's life were committed by two different people, potentially with unrelated motives?
I really liked Jesse and Selena's chemistry.
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Now I'm convinced that Ben was talking to a plate of cookies, especially given his reaction to and behavior toward the ones at the play read-through from the first episode.
“She was my Kerry” ahhhhhhhhh that was pretty funny having the 4 of them sit up front:skull:
Right as roman started to walk towards the podium I knew he was going to breakdown:sob::sob::sob:
I love Hugo omfg “wolf wolf”
I love watching Kendal slowly build his empire, even tho I’m worried lol because I know it’ll definitely not
Crazy that Lukas, Pennywise, and Floki are all related
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it's woof woof, like a dog, because ken says you're going to be my dog
Did they forget that this is a show about a football team? What is this horrible daytime soap opera garbage?
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It was never about football. It was a character-driven show from the first episode.
what on earth was matesson wanting photos of their faces for? is this a weird sex thing :/
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@thechocolatefinger To enjoy their discomfort at seemingly being put in a position in which they have to take the deal.
am I the only one who thought in the beginning that Logan dying was a ploy to somehow fuck over the kids again :sweat_smile::upside_down:
……nah it was just me & maybe I ended up caring for the bastard in the end (help)
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same. I was convinced until I saw his head. I thought they had a cpr dummy and he was giggling off to the side.
it made it even more of a shock for me. I was in denial.
perfectly played. wow
am I the only one who thought in the beginning that Logan dying was a ploy to somehow fuck over the kids again :sweat_smile::upside_down:
……nah it was just me & maybe I ended up caring for the bastard in the end (help)
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You are definitely not alone in saying that, for like 5 minutes I thought it was Tom pulling some stupid shit to talk to Shiv, and that they were performing CPR on a mannequin or some crap.
am I the only one who thought in the beginning that Logan dying was a ploy to somehow fuck over the kids again :sweat_smile::upside_down:
……nah it was just me & maybe I ended up caring for the bastard in the end (help)
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@mspann97 I thought so too. Because there's a rule that says "no dead body = alive"
The way they picked an episode title that would make absolutely no one suspect anything…
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@katherysm a wedding episode on HBO...shame on me for not putting two and two together by this point
Great episode, but (minor nitpick) they shouldn’t have had Bella go from crying to being perfectly fine and the two of them walking away (and towards a lake? They gonna swim in it or something?) at the end. Bella should’ve cried a tad longer so it didn’t seem to abrupt. She also didn’t cry “Joel” like in the game which stuck out to me.
Again, minor nitpicks but great overall.
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@malus92 fine? you call that despair and shock and utter dissociation on the look on her face fine?
Character A is incapacitated. Character B revives Character A just in time to save Character B from imprisonment. Yawn. Such amateur writing no wonder every episode gets reddit gold. This weeks mega villain eats meat. So he must die.
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@htpcmac except character A never saved character B from imprisonment. the villain must die cause he's a pedophile who beats children did you even watch the episode
Filler episode that added nothing to the story long-term. Meh.
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This episode shows how the two have grown closer, showed Ellie dealing with a problem on her own (two including Joel), and is world building showing some of the groups of people that have come together after the “apocalypse.”
Filler episode that added nothing to the story long-term. Meh.
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@drive95 World-building for Part II and giving Ellie a chance to show her own mettle is filler?
But.... nothing happens. The music was phenomenal though.
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@keverall more than a standard space battle saved by the score, and an unnecessarily long battle with a number of nameless characters with no attachment against a large Space Crocodile. Considering the wait for Season 3, there could have been more here.
Nothing says 80’s like the mall. Damn great episode. The acting is so very good.
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I don't know why the mall should say '80s, since Outbreak Day in the HBO timeline was in September 2003
Banger. Can’t wait for more bashing on current Hollywood.
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@marcusziade I don't know how you managed to get that opinion from that episode. It's a little disturbing, to be honest...
This too early to have a filler episode. Waste of an hour. Watch the first 5 mins and last 5 mins. Rest has zero value to story progression.
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@whos_ur_buddha This isn’t a video game. It’s about the journey.
Except one great space battle nothing happening. Andor is a collection of boring and really great episodes. So far each story arch has started with a quite boring episode and endet with a fantastic episode. Would be nice if we got all episodes of an arch at the same time - make less episodes but each episode about 2 hours. Or make the opening episodes less boring ...
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@markus-schabel For you a song would be nothing more than the chorus. No bridge, no buildup, just the most memorable part of the song, because that's what matters right? Because it's the only valuable thing in the song? Nevermind that the fact the chorus stands out the most is because the rest of the song is built in order to MAKE it stand out. The only reason it's rewarding to listen to it, it's beacause you don't get to listen to it the whole time.
There are no "boring" episodes in Andor. There is a web and flow of building and release, of anticipation and climax. The fact you are unable to see this just shows the ignorance of your opinion.
Except one great space battle nothing happening. Andor is a collection of boring and really great episodes. So far each story arch has started with a quite boring episode and endet with a fantastic episode. Would be nice if we got all episodes of an arch at the same time - make less episodes but each episode about 2 hours. Or make the opening episodes less boring ...
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I love this pacing and the development of the characters and the universe. I have to completely disagree.
Why should I keep watching this? Not interesting nor exiting.
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Why should I even take you seriously? You give no tangible or abstract reasoning for your opinion and you can’t even spell “exciting” properly.
Worthless opinion.
01x03 - The Fog: 8.2/10 (Great)
To put it mildly, “1899” has my brain working overtime, haha. Given Maura’s background as a brain specialist and the episode’s focus on electrical impulses, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it adds credence to the simulation theory. The initial sequence always being a dream followed by an abrupt “Wake Up,” surely hinting at an external force having some control? The show has used this formula for the last three episodes. Do I hear Maura’s voice saying, “Wake up!”? The voice sounds just like her, and because she’s a doctor, the message must have some significance. Later in the episode, though, a few additional details are introduced that might throw a wrench into the whole simulation theory: why is Maura listed as a passenger on the # Prometheus, and why is Eyk Larsen the ship’s captain? Parallel timelines? Is this the “afterlife” after they’ve died? In the episode’s climax, Daniel makes the Kerberos vanish, proving that he and the first mate, Sebastian, have some control over this reality. Don’t know what the hell’s going on, but I’m here for it.
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@suitability Oh, I completely missed it had "E. Larsen" as the captain. Had to watch that again. This show has me totally baffled, and I love it.
Review by Alexander von Limberg
Gosh, I hate plot armor. It's a motherf*** pyroclastic flow! Yet, all main protagonists escape (more or less) unharmed. Fantasy world or not - I don't feel treated in a serious way. They added the eruption only because it looks good and it was a great cliffhanger last episode. It looks awesome indeed, but it's all show and no substance. They refuse to go through with the inevitable consequences. Cowards! Who says that everyone needs to live? (Bronwyn even saved her infamous Met Gala dress - no blood stains, no burns).
Likewise, I don't like the scene between Elrond and Prince Durin. They try to negotiate an alliance. They talk and talk and talk. But nothing results from all the dialogue and multiple episodes. Instead, another miracle/vision saves the story: leaf and metal tell you what to do. Why should I pay attention to all the dialogue, the characters, the father/son conflict, the character's needs, hopes and attitudes? In the end this part of the story is (pre-) determined by a miracle/vision. The Prince does what the leaf tells him. [They did something very similar back at the islands with Galadrial. All her behavior (and bossy misbehaviour) had no consequences whatsoever. In the end it was a vision (and again leaves) that suddenly forged an alliance between Numinor and Galadriel.] That's not good story telling.
The score is again back to mediocre. It was suitable for last episode. But it's annoying in this episode. Music just won't stop. It doesn't help that this is a boring orchestral score - couldn't they come up with something more unique? The music often subdues everything else. And when they chose to focus on actual noises it's totally over-dramatic (like when the boy draws his sword when the Orcs approach. That's not how a sword sounds like when you draw it out the scabbard). I'm not even sure whether the dialogues between the Prince and King or between Galadriel and the boy are actually any good - I'm just annoyed by the melodramatic music during these scenes.
I still don't understand the whole Halbrand story. How did he end up as Lord/King? He used to be a random guy on a raft, a drunk prisoner, a thief and showed interest in becoming a blacksmith. Galadriel noticed that he can pick up a sword elegantly. That's all? That told her that he's a capable soldier? And now it feels like he's somehow (almost) the most capable soldier in the ranks of a FOREIGN army? [Strange enough that Galadriel - previously hated by almost everyone in Numinor - is suddenly accepted as a peer in battle.] In a very expensive armor tailor-made for him? Even a Lord? A King? And nobody questions this? People asked King Charles III. after his proclamation "who voted for you?", and I ask: what's Halbrand's merit or legitimacy? Is that something we have to accept because it was predicted in yet another vision (I somehow missed this part if there was such an omen)? His legitimacy surely can't be based on the coat of arms he carries around, can it? Anyone could have picked this up.
And I still don't know why nobody is alerting the elves. They deal with the drwarves. They deal with the bad omens they observe (like the dying tree). They send Elrond on away missions. I understand this. But all of this is not yet closely connected to the main story. Why does nobody send a messenger to report that Galadriel is back and she and Arondir fight Orcs and witnessed the "birth of Mordor"? Wouldn't that represent the more pressing issues for the elves? Remember: Arondir wanted to alert the other elves when he was caught in that trench. Has he forgotten what his plan was? Not saying that the metal/forge story might not eventually become handy in a war with Sauron and his Orcs - but shouldn't this story connected with the events in the Southlands aka Mordor? And wouldn't that help to convince the dwarf King to help them? It feels like no message is relayed simply because the writers wanted another episode to tell the father/son conflict. Why all that conflict between the King and his son when we already know that the common external threat represented by Sauron will eventually unite elves and dwarfs? It's all so predictable and artificially dragged out by not sending a messenger.
All what I said before sounds very negative. I still enjoy this episode. It's certainly not spectacular and lacks (like the whole show) complexity, but it's still nice to look at.
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@alexlimberg I agree with every critique you made but I have to point something out about Halbrand. He had already said (in episode 2 or 3 I think) that he was some kind of lord or prince from the Southlands that went into self-exile when Morgoth's forces invaded his land. He initially didn't want to return because he felt ashamed for leaving and traumatized by the war/loss.
I agree with you that his ascension to the throne felt very rushed and forced, and to rule what? 30 people? But I guess that goes to show the submissive nature of those helpless peasants that bowed to him just as fast as they bowed to Adar and to Morgoth before him...
props to my boy Dylan G for holding that position for what seemed like an eternity!
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His outtie definitely did muscle shows!
props to my boy Dylan G for holding that position for what seemed like an eternity!
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@abstractlegend Yea Dylan he definitely slaps
Too many diehards giving their "critical" review after being butthurt it doesn't exactly match their expectations. Take their reviews with a grain of salt.
If you go into the show and just ENJOY it for everything it offers, then you will not be disappointed. I've already fallen in love with the characters and the amazing scenery. The acting is on par and the budget is as expected for Amazon!
The only complaint I have is that the orc seemed a bit OP, like fr they didn't seem that strong from the movies, but I digress. Overall, I am thoroughly impressed so far and can't wait to see where it goes!
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@macbethjonathan-gmail-com I actually really liked the orc. Remember, there's been no threats or war or conflict for many years at this point. NOBODY has seen an orc before and suddenly it's right there, savage af, in your living room. And you are unarmed.
Makes perfect sense that the orc's an actual, genuine threat. In LOTR it took trained soldiers and heroes to defeat them after all.
If this were a videogame, this episode is a side mission that you didn't care much about after completing it.
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@the_argentinian But it's not a videogame. It's a drama, about people, not missions. As such it is a very significant episode indeed.
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9[8.5/10] Saul Goodman wants to bribe the Kettlemans. Kim Wexler wants to threaten them until they crack. Gus Fring wants to eliminate Nacho Varga by any means necessary, even if it means dragging Nacho’s father into this. Mike wants to spare Ignacio, and his dad, and will put his life on the line to do it. The goons the Salamancas enlist to take out Nacho shoot wildly at him. But the twins want to keep him alive.
Okay, they probably just want to torture him for information and then kill him. But the point stands. Once again, the goings on in the cartel half of the show seem utterly divorced from the goings on in the legal half of the show. But there’s a thematic resonance. Someone wants to show mercy, compassion, understanding. And someone else just wants to get the job done, whatever it takes.
Only it’s not who you’d expect in one half of the equation. For a long time, the dynamic between Jimmy and Kim was a simple one. Kim cared for Jimmy. She would look the other way at his schemes, sometimes enable them, sometimes even participate in them, but she would also play Jiminy Cricket when she felt he’d gone too far or hurt too many people. Kim possessed a moral compass that Jimmy seemed...less burdened by.
Now the roles are reversed. Jimmy is plenty active in the scheme to ruin Howard. He’s the one reigniting his acquaintance with the Kettlemans, dropping Clifford Main’s name as a hook, and baiting it with rumors of cocaine use from Hamlin that gives the couple hope of exoneration. Saul Goodman, even at this early stage, is no angel.
Except when push comes to shove, when the Kettlemans are onto their game and ready to blow up Saul and Kim’s plans by going straight to Howard, Saul wants to buy them off. Give them something for their troubles, and this might all go away. These are people after all -- bad people, people who defrauded a church -- but people nonetheless.
Kim doesn’t see it that way though. Mrs. Wexler sees two people up to their old tricks, defrauding elderly, indigenous people out of their tax money, who are standing in the way of bringing down someone even worse. She threatens them with an IRS investigation, then intimidates them with a promise to take away everything else they have. Kim Wexler is the stick, and her only regret is that Jimmy still gives them the money afterward.
Holy hell. What world are we living in where Saul Goodman is the angel on your shoulder and Kim Wexler is the devil? What’s so fascinating is that they’re both right. Deep down, Jimmy likes people. He doesn’t want to have to mess anyone up. He feels bad when folks get hurt, whether it’s his twin accomplices in the series’ first episode, or his elderly client, or even Clifford Main himself. Jimmy holds grudges sometimes against folks like Chuck or Howard, but he regrets when others get caught in the crossfire. There is something kind about that.
Kim has no sympathy for these people and quietly balks at Jimmy giving them the money when he doesn’t have to. But they don’t necessarily deserve sympathy. They ruined people's lives, stole from parishioners and pensioners, and have the gall to complain that they deserve their old lives back. She goes scorched earth with her righteous fury in a way Jimmy hesitates to, but her targets aren’t wrong exactly, at least for now.
The situation between Gus and Mike is different. They are navigating a situation that may or may not be more complicated, but certainly has the potential to be more deadly. One of the great treats of the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe is watching the chess games played by various adversaries, with life and death stakes.
Fring’s men carefully stage and tamper with Nacho’s home to tip Don Bolsa off as to his location. (And the difference between Mike’s meticulous approach and Bolsa’s goons ransacking the place is striking.) Nacho sniffs out that someone is spying on him and finds a way to sneak out and gain just enough of an upper hand to escape the heat by the skin of his teeth. Gus himself has a faux-condolence meeting with Hector to keep up appearances, one brokered by Don Bolsa, and realizes with his Machiavellian intellect that Hector’s own conciliatory tone means Lalo’s still alive.
The whole thing shakes the normally unshakable mob boss. All of his best laid plans, all of his intricate designs to eliminate the Salamancas who are standing in his way, have run aground on two surprisingly resourceful men: Lalo and Nacho. He needs to kill the latter so that neither Lalo nor Don Eladio’s organization has any evidence that Gus was behind it all, even if it means holding Nacho’s father as a hostage to get him to come in from the cold.
Things don’t blow up in Gus’ face like this. His whole empire, his precision machine, could come crashing down thanks to the self-preserving machinations of one mole. Gus is, under normal circumstances, unspeakably steady. But here he inadvertently knocks a glass off the table which then shatters on the floor. For a regular person, it would be nothing. For someone as controlled as Gus, it’s practically a neon sign that he’s completely rattled, maybe even desperate, maybe willing to do something he might regret.
Mike Ehrmantraut, however, is there to hold the line. He stands at the other end of a gun -- pointed, loaded, and cocked -- willing to speak truth to power. Mike knows there’s another way. He doesn’t want to get an innocent man like Nacho’s father involved in this deadly game, pocketing the fake I.D. Nacho procured for his dad and stored in his safe so that the cartel doesn’t get any ideas. He doesn’t want a loyal kid like Nacho, a stand-in for his own son, to be the collateral damage in a game between bigger forces. He knows there’s another way, even if he was complicit in the scheme to tip off Nacho’s location to the Salamancas, and he has a place where he draws the line.
That tip leads to one of the most thrilling set pieces in Better Call Saul history. There’s a steady build to Nacho’s time holing up in a crappy motel. We feel his cabin fever and Rear Window-esque paranoia when waiting out his supposed ride out of here. We sense the heat in the room, the aura of being watched from afar, the panic that each shadow cast upon his window could mean death. Before “Carrot and Stick” goes to a full blown fire, it lets the ominous mood smolder long enough to put the audience in Nacho’s shoes.
Then, he has his fears confirmed and spots eyes watching him from across the way. His confrontation with the man hired to spy on him is an incredible, tense scene. Nacho is frightened, but smart, taking the right precautions, asking the right questions, and performing a natural experiment when he doesn’t get answers he can trust. His move to call his handler in Fring’s organization, highlight himself as a flight risk, and then see his watcher’s phone light up is a clever way to identify who’s stalking him and, more to the point, who he can no longer trust. There too, the tension ratchets up, but it’s taut and restrained.So when it finds release, in a bombastic shoot-out featuring The Cousins, there’s this combined sense of terror and catharsis. Nacho gets just enough lead time to give himself a fighting chance, despite the bullet flying like angry hornets through the desert sky. His frantic hotwiring attempts, his gunfight with one unlucky mook, his Matrix-esque vehicular standoff with the twins, all keep the heart pumping and the mood desperate. It’s rare that Better Call Saul goes for straight action, but it pulls it off as well as any show on television.
It also pulls off characters thinking, those quiet spaces and well-constructed shots that let you know exactly what they’re mulling even when they don’t say a word, as well as any other series. Nacho never vocalizes that he suspects his handlers have turned on him, but you can see the way he turns over the possibilities in his mind with nothing to do but consider them. Kim never says that she doesn't trust Jimmy to close the deal with the Kettlemans if he refuses to try the hard way, she just pauses for a moment when he says the carrot will work for them, and then adds an innocuous “I’ll come with.” Gus never expresses how worried he is about all of this mess, he just looks off, letting the audience fill the gap. And he’s match cut with Clifford Main, who never says he’s beginning to buy the story about Howard’s drug use, but whose ten thousand yard stare out the window after denying the accusations from the Kettlemans says it all.
These moments are a godsend in a world of television that feels compelled to explicate every moment, thought, and feeling a character has. This is one of the flashier, more combastic episode of Better Call Saul there is, and even there, it’s filled to the brim with that subtlety, that silence, where the viewer can practically feel what each player is thinking, but it never has to be said.
Some of that speaks to the excellent restraint shown by the show time and again. Some of it speaks to the extraordinary performances across the board. But some of it speaks to how well-established so many of these characters are, to where we know how they’ll respond to a situation, can follow their line of thinking, without the show needing to explain anything.
You can tell because it applies even to the show’s tertiary characters. In its final season, Better Call Saul is bookending a few things. We see Craig and Betsy Kettleman for the first time in a long time, but their dynamic, the mix of meek and menacing in response to Saul and Kim, makes it feel like they never left in terms of how fleshed out and vivid they seem. We get the return of Erin, who’s so distinctive that she can only get a handful of lines and still come off like a presence. And with a few simple phrases and looks and bits of basic kindness, Clifford Main can seem like the most decent person in entire Breaking Bad universe.
But this isn’t a universe where decency tends to prevail. There are two people ready to do whatever may be necessary to win the day here. Kim Wexler is ready to turn the Kettlemans’ red white and blue trailer and inflatable Statue of Liberty that sparks something in Saul into a smoking crater if they won’t play ball. Gus Fring is ready to threaten Manuel Varga to get to his son, whom he plans to eliminate as soon as he can get his hands on him. No quarter is given, no mercy shown, with so much on the line.
What stands between them and their figuratively or literally bloody ends are two unlikely moral guardians. Jimmy and Mike have done awful things. They have, directly and indirectly, killed people. They’ve bloodied their hands. They’ve put their loved ones at risk. And nevertheless, they’ll try to make things right however they can despite their respective partners’ hunger for blood. Things have gone topsy turvy when these two criminals are the voices of compassion and mercy.
It comes with the implicit suggestion that things might have gone too far. Normally sure-footed, self-possessed, meticulous people like Kim and Gus may be pressing, taking steps beyond even where boundary pushers like Saul and Mike dare to tread. Amid all of this back and forth, at the final moment of the episode, lurks is an agent of disruption, ready to sew these two halves of the show together in vengeful terms, and maybe force a confrontation between the two conflicting philosophies that divide men and women on both sides of such severe acts.
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@andrewbloom I agree on your Kim and Jimmy paragraph. Especially your reasoning on the morality concept:'they're both right'. What I find somewhat sad for Jimmy, is that he realizes more often now that he (groomed and) unleashed the true 'beast' in Kim. And feels regret for creating that 'Frankenstein monster' to his image, but with seemlessly more ruthlessness than ever could imagine. This is clearly not what he hoped for. Golden moments in this serie.
They sure turned this season around! Holy sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!
But if he was so powerful, why the hell did he grow up and remain working at that facility? Did I miss something? Was it because daddy modded him with a chip so he could run pirated games on him? Wait, what?
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@misnomer My take on it was that Brenner still needed his genetic material to help produce more telekinetic wunderkinds, so he installed an inhibitor chip on the kid and basically raised him as prisoner.
I have just one major problem with this... are we supposed to ignore the episode where Eleven found her buddies from Hawkins lab in the city from the second season?
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only one buddy (eight) and she managed to escape before these events. 001 even said as much in one of the previous episodes ("do you remember that woman who came to see you?... when 8 was still here")
The handmaiden's tale is a positive story compared to this horrible shit. I'm done.
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@gonzopersona how can anyone not find this compelling?!
