I almost hate how shockingly great this show is. It came out in the middle of 2020. Without question the worst year in modern American history.
We don’t deserve this. Our entire nation has been fighting tooth and claw, treating each other horribly and constantly sinking deeper and deeper into new depths of malice, contempt, distrust, paranoia, anxiety, and insanity.
Besides! Since when did Apple TV+ become a streaming platform capable of making artistic gems like Ted Lasso, huh? What’s that? They made “The Morning Show” which came out two years ago and was also kind of a big deal – and most people still haven’t seen it or even heard about it?
Well, I’ll give you that...I did watch ”The Morning Show” and it was genuinely excellent. Okay, so what? (This is what I assume you’re thinking as you read this btw). So what if Apple TV+ made ONE great season of dramatic television? Ted Lasso looks just like a 1 season long expansion of the exact same joke made in 2013 when NBC aired a few of those funny 4-6 minute SNL-like promotional videos in which this show’s protagonist & exact premise was played out. How is that supposed to work over 10 episodes?
Well, that’s what you’re going to find out, because I’ll be damned if I’m going to spoil ANYTHING about this much-needed work of genius. Ted Lasso isn’t trying to just make you laugh, (but you will laugh quite a bit). It throws some haymakers that you won’t be ready for. While Ted Lasso the character might look like he’s just another comedic punching bag that plays into the uncultured American stereotype, you will learn early & often just what this guy is really about. The way he can’t help but try to have as much fun as possible while still respecting the more serious aspects of life is beyond gratifying to experience.
When ill-tempered characters aren’t in the mood for his vibe & try to shut him down, you will be amazed at how layered Ted Lasso’s character really is.
A common theme is communication – or the inability lots of people have to actually say what they mean in for a generation that has spent the last few decades mostly interacting via text message, social media, or email – and Ted Lasso gets an extraordinary amount of mileage from this one idea alone. To spoil any more would be to deny someone the utter privilege it is to see this for the first time yourself.
Cheers.
Sometimes it's hard to remember that our real lives are distinct and separate from our online lives. Take it from some guy who enjoys his "likes" and hits from writing reviews more than he'd sometimes care to admit, it's all too easy to become consumed in our online presence to the point that we forget about our lives away from screens, away from the things that give us meaning and insight and the inspiration to post anything to social media.
Which is why I think I'm okay with the tack "Skank Hunt" takes. (Now that's not sentence I ever expected to write.) Look, online bullying driving people to suicide is a legitimate issue, and even if it's not widespread, making it the source of fun admittedly makes me a little uneasy. And yet, I think it's in service of that point, that kids and adults alike treat their online personas as their entire being, and that we as a culture and a society overinflate the importance of the digital part of our lives. The grave, faux-solemnity with which South Park treats the idea of someone quitting Twitter is not, in my estimation, an attempt to make fun of people driven to suicide (though it's certainly meant to be envelope pushing as the show always is), but rather an attempt to make fun of how big a deal we make over something as slight as social media in the first place, to where quitting Twitter or Facebook or god help us, Trakt, can be treated as such a cataclysmic event.
This is as good a time to mention that one of the ways South Park achieves this is in "Skank Hunt" is with some unexpectedly good design work, music, and cinematography. Even in it's construction paper cut out days, the show had a certain visual experimentalist quality to it. But in "Skank Hunt," the show goes a step further to drive home the faux-magnitude of what's taking place, whether it's the pan up to the sky as a little girl drops her phone into the river, or the leering shadow of Gerald as he wages war against a Scandavian olympic athlete, or the slow shots of what looks like a massacre as the South Park Elementary girls deliver break up letter after break up letter to the boys. This episode did a great job of using the "camera" of this still semi-crudely animated show to help convey mood and heighten the feeling of these scenes.
Throw in a ridiculous sequence sent to a Boston tune that subs Gerald's typing for tickling the ivories, a similarly goofy sequence of Gerald celebrating his notoriety to the silly strains of "Steal My Sunshine," and the swelling music that back the break up sequence, and you have a show that's using more than just its superb writing and bent premises to make its impact.
But the story and themes are still the core of Skank Hunt. The seriousness with which everyone treats a classmate quitting Twitter leads to the interesting point about the outsized importance we place on social media, but also does a nice job of driving the story, from leading the boys to kill Cartman...'s online presence, in a series of scenes the show mostly plays straight to hilarious effect. The story between Mr. Mackey and Scott Malkinson (who we haven't seen in forever) is South Park's humor at its darkest. Well, maybe not its darkest (see: Scott Tenerman), but still, only a show like this one could wring the humor in a beleaguered guidance counselor growing tired of comforting his "suicidal" student and wishing that he would (more or less) just off himself already. It's hard to call it well-observed exactly, but there's the germ of humanity in the scene to someone becoming strained even with one of the most noble duties there is, in classic exaggerated South Park fashion.
And then there's Gerald himself, who in a Heisenberg-esque twist, is enjoying his double life as a troll too much to avoid dropping hints to his wife and son. There's commentary in his role in the episode as well, with once again, everyone in South Park, from the children to adults, treating something as ridiculous as an anonymous person on the internet spewing profanity and photoshopping lewd images with such seriousness. That seriousness seems particularly interesting in contrast to how Gerald is just doing it to "stir the pot," because he thinks it's funny. There's a disparity between how the rest of the world responds to this, and Gerald's less than grandiose reasons for it. It's clear that he's just doing this for the fun of it, and also for the notoreity of it, and that by taking trolling so seriously, the people of South Park are actually just enabling and encouraging him.
There's more to unpack here, from the idea of collective guilt and collective punishment, to the continued presence of the member berries, to the promise of more storylines in the future stemming from Cartman's wrongful "death," and Gerald's attempt to troll the untrollable. But on the whole, "Skank Hunt" is an episode about how easy it is to treat our online lives with the utmost importance, and treat anything that impugnes them like a horrid, deplorable attack on our very being, when neither our silly online posts, nor the dumb screeds that they may engender in response, deserve that level of attention, importance, or concern.
[7.7/10] I’ll say this for The Good Place. I like that they’re basically running through all the love triangle permutations now rather than dragging them out unnecessarily. I’ll admit, I don’t exactly buy the possibility of Fake Eleanor and Chidi together, or Fake Eleanor being in love with Chidi, but I do buy it as a spur of the moment feeling that, with some reflection, she realizes isn’t real. (I’m less sold on the idea that Tahani and Chidi aren’t soulmates, because that seems like a better possibility.)
Still, I’ll say this for that part of the story -- it leads to the best thing in the episode, namely Fake Eleanor and Tahani hanging out together. The two characters have a fun dynamic, and watching them check out a BBC sitcom or put in hair extensions or snark at Jason and Janet’s wedding is a treat.
Heck, I even liked the Jason and Janet shtick. There’s something about someone who’s a complete dolt “falling in love” with someone who’s barely sentient but nevertheless nice to him that is weird but oddly sweet. The pair’s vows, entrance music, and little dance together are all absolutely charming even if it’s a semi-bizarre bit.
The only part of the episode that didn’t really work for me is Chidi’s indecision. I like the approach, showing Chidi’s paralyzed by choice, but it’s done in such a cartoony, over the top way that it’s hard to be too invested in his growth over the course of the episode. That said, his best friend knowing him well enough to do a “fake wedding day” test, and Chidi literally being killed by his indecision is a decent bit.
Overall, lots of laughs and good energy to this one, particularly the funny and endearing Tahani/Fake Eleanor portions and the strange Jason/Janet stuff.
[7.4/10] I miss the approach -- popularized by The Wire and practiced by shows as distinct from it as BoJack Horseman -- of having the penultimate episode of the season be where the major fireworks go off. It gives you a chance to recover and collect yourself, as a show and an audience, in the actual season finale. And it helps avoid the sense in the lead-up to the end that you’re getting more setup than payoff until the show pulls the trigger on its biggest events of the season.
That’s the problem with “Wiedersehen”, a perfectly good but not outstanding episode of Better Call Saul. It’s not as though nothing happens in the show this week. Lalo Salamanca starts making overtures and feints toward Gus. Werner makes a daring escape from the workmen’s facility. And Jimmy not only faces a denial of his reinstatement, but in his rage and disbelief, manages to sabotage his relationship with Kim that had otherwise seemed on the mend. But all of this feels more like setting the table for the resolution of the finale than anything complete.
Now maybe everything falls into places in this year’s finale and in hindsight, “Wiedersehen” ends up looking like a brilliant prelude. And maybe, when you load up the second-to-last episode of the season with the big happenings of the season, you just make your third-to-last episode the setup episode instead. But it’s hard not to feel like this episode amounts to one big question (or, perhaps, three subsidiary questions) that Better Call Saul only intends to answer next week.
That’s the job of television in some ways. For as daring and stylistically audacious as Better Call Saul and its predecessor series can be, they’re also both sound in terms of the fundamentals and attuned to the core rhythms of television. The show still knows how to end on a cliffhanger, on a tease, on something to leave your jaw on the floor and make you desperate to tune in again next week to see how things resolve.
Rest assured, I’ll be there next week, there to find out whether tension between Gus and the Salamancas reaches the next level, whether Mike is forced to make a hard choice after his ostensible friend flies the coop, whether Jimmy can rescue his legal career or relationship or sense of self. But “Wiedersehen” left me wishing we could just head on to those parts of the story, not just because those teases are so tantalizing, but because this week’s proceedings feel incomplete and even a little insubstantial without the other half of what’s set up here.
That’s especially true for the Nacho/Lalo/Gus portion of the show. Lalo is still a new character, introduced more than three-quarters of the way into the season. ‘Wiedersehen” makes good on the promising setup we’ve seen since early in season 4 -- where Nacho is trapped between the exacting demands of Gus’s well-oiled machine and the unpredictable, trigger-happy Salamancas.
But there’s more promise than proof in this episode. Sure, the conversation between the poised but firm Gus and the loose, freewheeling Lalo is tense and portentous. The prospect of Lalo nosing around Gus’s meth-distribution site portends significant moments for all involved in the episode to come. For now though, this feels like the beginning of the story, the introduction, rather than the culmination, or even a turning point, in the story between Gus and Nacho that Better Call Saul has been toying with this year.
(Don’t get me started on Lalo giving Hector his infamous bell, replete with painful backstory. Maybe I’m still just smarting from the fan service excesses of Solo: A Star Wars Story, but by god, not every iconic snippet or feature or accessory of a character needs an origin story. Sometimes, people just get a bell, or a pair of dice, or something practical to help them communicate, and you don’t need some writerly monologue to deliver weak exposition on how a character came into possession of whatever the object du jour is.)
The same’s true for Werner’s great escape. There’s meat on the bone in that portion of the episode, both in terms of character and scene construction. Rainer Bock absolutely sells Werner’s desperation, his simmering distress at having to remain separated from his wife, his crumbling efforts to hold it together and put a good face on things and do his job. And he also sells Werner’s cleverness, the Walter White-esque ingenuity of a middle aged nerd to find ways to be a spanner in the works for an otherwise well-oiled machine. His ability to find weak spots in the facility, and disguise camera flashes as energy surges, frames him as resourceful and desperate man, and the show manages to communicate that almost solely through the images of the aftermath of his escape.
Series co-creator Vince Gilligan’s also on board to direct this one, which means more than the franchise’s cinematographic trademarks like a shot from inside the hole drilled for the dynamite. It means extended, slow burn, tactile sequences where Werner goes very Hurt Locker in trying to check for faulty wiring. As there often is in the show, there’s a foreboding energy as this gentle man is in a tight spot. His hyperventilation, strains to hold it together, and careful efforts to fix the problem are all stretched out expertly through Gilligan’s camera’s journey through the darkness.
Maybe that’s enough action for one episode, especially one that’s leading in to a presumably eventful finale. But it also can’t help but seem like the show is saving the real excitement -- the inevitable dilemma between Mike’s understanding of and affection for Werner and the duties of his job -- until next week.
But you can make the argument that we get the majorest of major happenings on the Jimmy/Kim side of the episode this week. (Though I suspect I might feel differently after the season finale.) “Wiedersehen” opens up with Jimmy and Kim pulling off another brilliant scheme. It turns out that Kim demuring on Kevin’s request to change the Mesa Verde designs in Lubbock wasn’t a sign of her regular work seeming dull in comparison to her con artist thrills, but rather a prelude to her combining the two to pull off a miracle for her client using a less than savory method.
The entire sequence of her and Jimmy -- posing as a crutch-hopping single mom with a deadbeat brother -- earning the trust and sympathy of the Lubbock clerk and pulling the ol’ switcheroo on the plans is another enjoyable outing for the pair. It plays in the space this show has long lived in -- between wanting to pass judgment on these people for fraud and manipulation, but having so much fun watching them work. But a good con doesn't fix what’s eating Jimmy, his renewed and once-again rejected efforts to have Kim be his partner in law, not just his partner in crime.
That comes to a head when, after a trademark Jimmy McGill performance in front of the review board, his request for reinstatement is rejected. He gives all the right answers to the questions, quotes Supreme Court decisions, includes letters of recommendation, talks about what the law means to him. But he never mentions Chuck, the ghost who’s been haunting this season of Better Call Saul and proves a hindrance to Jimmy’s life even from beyond the grave.
Despite some complicated things going on under the surface, Jimmy has tried to separate himself from Chuck, to move past things, and so he expresses no remorse for what happened with his brother, what effect it had on Chuck’s life, anything specific to the man who used to be the most significant presence in Jimmy’s life. So of course he doesn't mention his brother at his hearing, and it’s what eventually dooms him.
It’s too much for Jimmy to bear. He acts out in a way we’ve rarely seen before. He feels the frustration of a year’s worth of (comparatively) good behavior down the drain, with another year in the offing. He experiences the despondency of expectations being punctured. And worst of all, he takes it out on Kim.
It’s a point I’ve probably beaten into the ground by this point, but Kim has stepped into the role that Chuck used to play for Jimmy. There’s loads of complicated consequences of that, but one of the biggest is that Jimmy projects his insecurities and his anger toward his brother onto her. He lashes out at her for seeing him as insincere, for seeing him as a “low life”, for thinking he’s not good enough to share an office with, charges he might as well be leveling at his dead brother.
Kim, to her credit, pushes back, pointing out how many times she’s been there for Jimmy, how often she looks out for him, takes care of him, drops everything to clean up his messes. There is this one pinnacle dream that Jimmy uses as the yardstick to measure whether he’s loved, overlooking all the other ways in which he has an incredibly good thing going that he sure as hell shouldn’t mess up in fit of pique after a bad disciplinary hearing.
But that’s what happens. I’m done trying to predict whether or not the Kim/Jimmy relationship will end, but after a brief dead cat bounce, there’s enough acrimony that Jimmy starts packing up his stuff. Issues that have been bubbling under the surface for both people in this couple breach here, and it’s hard to know whether things can be put back together.
The title “Wiedersehen” -- a German word meaning “meet again” or “reunion” -- suggests there’s more to come, another chance for Kim to help Jimmy become a lawyer again, through an appeal or a hail mary or whatever new scheme the duo can come up with. But damage has been done. That much is undeniable.
Even then, it feels like there’s more to the story. Season 4 of Better Call Saul has been superb as ever, but also interstitial. After the incredible build that gave us the McGill bowl and Chuck’s death in season 3, the show has been in reaction mode. It gives us the rocky road of Jimmy’s recovery, Kim reckoning with what she’s been a part of, Nacho falling into a tug of war between Gus and the Salamancas, and Mike starting his work with Gus in earnest. The former two are post scripts to stories, and the latter two seem like the beginnings of new ones. It remains to be seen whether the series will give us any resolution at all in its season finale or, like “Wiedersehen”, is waiting for something greater to come.
[7.5/10] There is a lot going on in this nearly eighty minute bloat-fest of a reintroduction, so let’s start with the major sequence that show what Stranger Things does best.
The first is the opening flashback to Eleven’s massacre. I’m glad that Netflix included a content warning given recent events, because seeing an authority figure, even a tainted one, wander around a facility seeing dead children hit pretty hard. I’m usually able to emotionally separate fiction from reality when it comes to death and violence on screen, but in light of the real life images and stories we’ve been subjected to from Uvalde, Texas, it affected me more than I had expected.
All that said, it’s a very well done sequence. The surprise reveal of Brenner, the warm interactions between him and Ten, the utter chaos that slowly engulfs them, and the bloody, terrifying young Eleven staring back at him all sets a tone as the series kicks off its fourth season. Eleven is kind of a cinnamon bun, a mistreated child who deserves to have a normal life and be surrounded by people who love her. But she can also be dangerous, and that's wroth remembering too.
Hers is my favorite storyline in this overstuffed season premiere. It feels so sad and true to life to have a bright but socially awkward kid excited for school and the prospect of what the day could bring, only to have stuck up kids needle her, bad grades staunch her enthusiasm, and cruel bullies disrespect the things that she holds dear. Watching the dastardly queen bee make fun of Eleven when she talks about Hopper as her hero, or worse yet, wreck the diorama that Eleven made to honor him, makes your blood boil. You feel terrible for Eleven when she’s distraught from so much going wrong, but you also bear righteous anger on her behalf. You want her to give that callous popular girl a taste of her own medicine.
Yet, after that opening sequence, it’s low-key disturbing when Eleven reaches out with a raging fury, only to recall that she no longer has her powers. The mean girl deserves a little karmic recompense, but not to die. After seeing what Eleven did in a furor a mere seven years ago, it’s frightening to think what she could do if truly upset now.
It still might not be as scary as the closing horror sequence, when another popular girl, Chrissy, is tormented in her dreams and eventually raised and broken by some malevolent force. The Nightmare on Elm Street influences are hard to miss, but well-deployed. The show knows how to build suspense, with Chrissy’s horrifying insecurities about her weight turned into ominous moments that presage something more powerful reaching a claw into her psyche. The contrast between a seemingly nice young woman wanting to do anything to block out the sense that she’s losing her mind, before a skinless humanoid monsters ravages mind and body, makes for a disturbing conclusion to the episode.
The other half of that equation, though, is the biggest new character -- Eddie, a D&D enthusiast who plays guitar, sells drugs, and has been held back in high school for multiple years. I don’t know quite what to make of Eddie just yet. His big speech about the normies being afraid of D&D is pretty cheesy, but in other scenes, the character is charming and authentic, revealing a charismatic and recognizable type beneath all the countercultural bluster. He could easily fall into some standard tropes, but I’m curious to see where Stranger Things intends to go with him.
The third, and most impressive big sequence, is the intercutt between Lucas’ championship basketball game, and the climax to a D&D campaign hard-fought by Mike, Dustin, and Lucas’ little sister, Erica. The juxtaposition works to heighten both dicey “match-ups”, shows how one can be just as exciting as the other to the right crowd, and highlights the way in which Lucas and his friends are on different paths now. The shot-selection, scoring, and editing are all outstanding, and it’s the signature sequence of the episode.
I like the Lucas story well enough apart from it. We’ve gone a lot of places with the original kids already. Pointing him toward an attempt to break out of the Freaks and Geeks set, and instead position himself to get in with the popular kids to avoid bullying and ridicule, is a natural move for any dork who dreamed of being cool. It’s relatable and sad, as he asks his pals “as a friend” to try to move the culmination of their campaign, and instead sees empty seats where his compadres should be for his big game, and eventually watches them celebrate a successful bit of monster-slayage rather than his improbable game-winning heroics.
The Mike/Dustin/Erica business is solid too. We don’t get nearly as much in the way of character from them, but they build up the comedy this week. The montage of them reaching out to scads of people to sub for Lucas features the best humor in “The Hellfire Club”. And the choice to enlist Erica, replete with an American flag as a cape, no less, is inspired. Her routine works wonderfully in a D&D setting.
The rest of the storylines we see here vary from “solid” to “intriguing”, but don’t get enough oxygen to really confirm anything one way or another. I’m glad they’re following up on how Max’s life and attitude have changed after going through something as difficult as watching her stepbrother die. Again, the execution is a little generic, but it’s a rich vein worth exploring that makes what she went through in season 3 feel more meaningful.
I still love Steve and Robin as a pair, especially now that they have all their cards on the table. Robin working through the very real dangers of her crush on a fellow bandmate, that make it harder to muster up the courage to express your feelings even more than it normally is as a teenager, is all kinds of endearing and sympathetic. Her back-and-forth with Steve about the kind of people who pause Fast Times at Ridgemont High and being yourself is the right blend of sweet and funny. Again, we only gets wisps here, and Steve’s more comic relief than a character with a storyline, but I’m not necessarily complaining since he’s so good in that mode.
On the other hand, the other two points of his old love triangle remain dull. I’ve never given a damn about Nancy and Jonathan, and that hasn’t changed. Making pointing toward a potential break-up could be interesting, especially with Nancy pointed toward an ambitious school newspaper editor position and a future at a fancy college while Jonathan is pointed toward pot and scholastic rejection. But the characters, their relationship, and their new friends are all dull or, again, pretty standard archetypes. Another nerd character and a dimestore pothead foil for each of them does nothing for me.
Joyce and Murray fare a little better. We already have very good reason to suspect Hopper is back anyway, but Joyce muddling through an encyclopedia sales job while getting cryptic messages in the mail creates an immediate problem to solve. Her calls with Murray have a humorous bent to them, and the clue that Hopper’s alive is perfectly fine as a way to move that story along.
And that pretty much covers it. Even in an hour and twenty minutes, Stranger THings has to cover a lot of ground to reintroduce as much as it does here. Will Byers is pretty much an afterthought. We get one glancing interaction between Dustin and his girlfriend. There’s a new lead basketball player who’s surely fodder for a big kill later in the season. And, of course, there’s some new kind of Upside Down creature tormenting our heroes. With so many plots, only a handful of moments or characters truly have the chance to stand-out, and it tends to come with that trio of excellent sequences that remind you of the cinematic capabilities this crew has, even as the narrative feels jumbled from the jump.
[7.5/10] Actions have consequences. That may be the abiding theme that stretches across Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad. You make one small decision, and it pushes you in a certain direction. Then you make another and are pushed a little further. Then another, and another, and another. And before you know it, you’re a long way from where you started, finding yourself looking over your shoulder, worried about what’s lurking in your wake.
Gus decided to take out his business rival. Now he’s wearing bulletproof vests and ankle holsters in his own home and constantly monitoring his neighborhood for fear that vengeance will come. Saul decided to become a “friend of the cartel.” Now he’s got every scruffy-looking hump in New Mexico seeking to retain the legal services of “Salamanca’s guy.” And Kim decided to stay with Jimmy, to tolerate and even enable his coloring outside the lines. Now she’s living in fear of one drug lord while the goons of another are following her.
It’s one of the things I love most about Better Call Saul. (Not people being watched and pursued by drug-runners.) The mark of good storytelling is people making choices that stem from who and what they are, and then navigating the ripples and reactions of those choices. Everything has a cost. Everything has trade-offs. Every decision made means opening some doors and closing other. There may be no show on television more acutely aware of that fact than this one.
That gives “Hit and Run”, a calmer and more sedate episode after the grand events of last week, a bit of thematic oomph even when the show’s at slack tide. There’s comparatively few dramatic events in this installment. Nobody dies. Nobody has a white-knuckle confrontation. Nobody faces down mortal threats or serious peril. Everyone just stews in the messes they’ve made, or are still making, over the last handful of episodes.
Gus is properly paranoid. He divined from Hector’s reaction that Lalo lives. So despite seeming to have settled the most immediate threat with Nacho’s demise, he’s constantly worried that his rival will return with lethal impulses. He has Mike stretching his team thin, working guys for eighteen hour days, setting up an elaborate neighborhood farce to provide cover for his surveillance operation, and fretting over a car that follows his for a mere three blocks.
It took some finagling, but Fring seemed to pull off his big scheme. He arranged for the death of the only young man who would spill his scheme, and his enemy is presumed dead. But he can’t rest easy. The audience knows his fears are justified. But to his crew, it feels like chasing ghosts. Even the meticulous Gus isn’t able to buy himself any peace, with an equally cunning, if less subtle foe still potentially on the board.
Jimmy’s consequences aren’t quite so dire (at least not that he realizes). His interactions with Lalo result in a far more mundane consequence -- nobody at the courthouse wants anything to do with him. The security guard makes him run his belt and shoes through the scanner. His once-friendly clerk gives him the cold shoulder. The prosecutor he traded horses and snacks with thinks he’s gone too far. Whatever temporary advantages dealing with Lalo provided, they’ve left him ostracized by an ecosystem that he used to flit through with a hummingbird’s effortless grace.
Frankly, it’s a touch unbelievable. Maybe everyone in that courthouse draws a line between representing the occasional lowlife and pushing the limits to do so versus advocating for a killer and drug lord, but it’s awfully quick and seemingly coordinated. And yet, I don’t mind the convenience because it succinctly conveys the bridges Saul burns as he sidles up to the cartel.
He’s building new ones though. Doing business with Lalo didn’t just net him a duffle bag full of cash to fund his and Kim’s escapades. It gave him a reputation with, shall we say, a certain type of person who both admires Lalo Salamanca and might have the type of legal troubles that require a man of the...caliber to help a drug lord skip out on a murder rap.
It’s amusing to see Jimmy once again managing clients over the protests of his nail salon-owning landlord. Watching Bob Odenkirk ply his comedy chops once more, shuffling potential clients with his glad-handing, slick ways is a hoot as always. But at the same time, we can see the life of Saul Goodman starting to take shape, and the life of Jimmy McGill steadily slipping away.
It’s a life that includes running scams in his spare time. The most high-octane part of the episode comes as soon as the intro wraps up, as Kim and Jimmy complete the next step of their scheme to convince Clifford Main that Howard Hamlin is unreliable.
The ploy to steal Howard’s car and make it seem like he’s erratic and consorting with sex workers, conveniently within the eyeline of Clifford, is a thrill. The sheer absurdity of seeing Jimmy in his Howard-esque getup for the first time since the first season delights. The way Kim’s lunch with Clifford and Jimmy’s grand theft auto slows coalesce until the point of their seemingly disparate actions emerges is expertly crafted. And the mere involvement of Wendy, a familiar face from Breaking Bad, as their accomplice, makes the bit that much more of a sop to the fans.
The peak, though, comes when it always does -- when things start to go awry. Jimmy’s effort to return Howard’s car runs into a snag. Some inconsiderate jerk removed the traffic cone Jimmy left to save the spot and parked there. Watching Saul improvise -- heaving a parking sign out of the ground and moving it to make his questionable alternate car placement plausible -- adds joy and extra competence to the clockwork scheme. And the comic timing of the sign falling down mere seconds after Howard pulls out is perfect and uproarious.
But there’s a moment of pause there too. Each of the plays we’ve seen so far have skirted on the edge of discovery and disaster. Jimmy had to strip to his skivvies to avoid detection in the premiere. Huell had to rush the locksmith before a devoted valet went back for the keys. Saul had to scramble like mad to pull the car “borrowing” off without detection here.
Our protagonist and his allies are getting lucky. More to the point, they’re pushing their luck, with riskier and riskier plays that come closer and closer to blowing up in their faces. Better Call Saul likes to zig when we expect it to zag, but more in more, it seems like they’re skirting catastrophe, moments if not seconds away from everything blowing up in their faces.
Maybe that's why Kim feels uneasy about all this. She’s thinks she’s doing the right thing, as the diversionary lunch with Clifford turns into a genuine funding possibility for her pro bono efforts. But as Jimmy suggests, there’s a disbelief that, as Jesse Pinkman might put, they keep getting away with it. When you’re on a run of good luck, the sense that it could run out, that there’s some karmic comeuppance or at least reversion to the mean awaiting, puts a psychic weight on you.
That weight helps prompt Kim to spy the men following her (with an assist from Wendy, naturally). It gives her the gumption to walk up to them and call them on it. And it gives her the sterner stuff to earn a visit from none other than Mike Ehrmantraut for catching on.
Let’s be real, after five seasons, it’s a thrill to see two of the show’s major characters sharing a scene for the first time. The two could just talk about the weather, and it would still have the electricity Kim and Mike sitting across from one another after orbiting each other for so long. It doesn’t hurt that Kim’s sharp enough to deduce that Mike was the man with Saul in the desert, or that Mike intuits the steel behind Kim’s eyes that makes her steady and strong enough to deal with his frankness about why she’s being followed. That scene too is a bit of a sop to the fans, but a welcome one.
And it serves a purpose. Mike effectively tells Kim that they are not out of the woods, that Lalo Salamanca might still be on the loose, that he might be coming to them for answers, and that if he does, it might put them on the radar of a rival drug lord. Whether it’s Mike’s men or Lalo’s pursuit or the authorities, she’s now caught in the web of greater, potentially deadly forces.
It shakes her, as it would anyone. She can handle it, even if it leaves her uneasy about what might be around the next corner. But she doesn’t think Jimmy can. Especially when he’s reveling in what the association with Lalo netted him, she can’t burst his bubble, frighten him with the possibility of a side effect from a past decision coming back in a bad way.
He will though. Lalo is the Sword of Damocles hanging over this season. Gus isn’t wrong to be paranoid. Kim isn’t wrong to be frightened. Jimmy might be vulnerable in his blissful ignorance. Sometime, someplace, Lalo will emerge from his desert hideaways and strike, even if his path and target remain obscured.
But the choices these people made led them here. They may not have intended this outcome, but no one is here by accident. The choice to orchestrate a hit on your counterpart, the choice to stop representing run-of-the-mill defendants and help out a true bad guy, the choice not to tell your spouse about the danger that might be coming for them, have all had consequences. And while this moment is calm, the rules of Better Call Saul dictate that, sooner or later, the chickens will come home to roost.
[8.8/10] Better Call Saul has never been closer to Breaking Bad. That’s not just because the episode opens with this show’s first glimpse of Jimmy as the Saul Goodman we met on the prior show, in the midst of his fleeing from justice. It’s just because Gus Fring seems to nail down the plans for the facility that will one day be Walter White’s laboratory. It’s not just because Jimmy visits The Dog House, the fast food restaurant and hangout where Jesse Pinkman sold meth.
It’s because this is an episode about people who are outstanding at what they do, who have near unrivaled skills, and what direction that takes them in. That was the larger story of Breaking Bad, a story about a man who had an undeniable talent, and who could not set it aside when the recognition and lucre came with a side of human misery, and who didn’t know when to walk away until it was too late. It’s a show that lived on the conflicted thrills of watching someone so skilled ply their craft, and earned its emotional resonance from both the uncertainty and foreboding sense of where it would lead him.
“Quite a Ride” positions Jimmy in the same way, as someone who has a gift for persuasion, the ability to make an anthill sound like Mount Everest, and a lack of scruples that mean he doesn't mind skirting the law if it suits him. The difference is that Walt was running from a life he resented, whereas Jimmy seems to be running from his own grief.
There’s a version of Jimmy that could maybe have been happy, at least temporarily, working at the mobile phone store in a semi-normal way. Sure, his efforts to convince a passing customer that he can evade the taxman by buying these phones that are allegedly selling like hotcakes isn’t exactly on the up-and-up, but it’s a pretty straight job by Jimmy’s standards.
But it’s not enough, at least not when he has a moment of quiet, a moment to let his grief catch up with him. Sitting on the couch, watching Dr. Zhivago, Jimmy starts to tear up, as the pain of the events with his brother seem to flood back in a way he’s been able to keep at bay. So Jimmy turns to his drug of choice, his favorite distraction, and the thing that makes him feel better than anything else -- a nice, lucrative hoodwink.
He buys a heap of burner phones from his own store, and ventures to The Dog House to unload them to whatever criminal element is around to purchase them, in another one of the show’s sterling montages. There’s a sense in these scenes that Jimmy is both at the top of his game, but also wants to be punished for it. He doesn't know when to leave well enough alone, and seems to be pulled between the part of himself that wants to see exactly how far his talents will take him, and the part that wants to push him into something so bad that it’ll be the wake up call that snaps him out of this.
That wake up call comes. It doesn't happen when Jimmy wanders into a crowd of bikers who are enough to scare away the rest of the riff raff. It happens when the three young hoods who turned him down earlier in the night rough him up and take his spoils from the evening. He returns home, worse for wear, and after a sweet scene of Kim tending to his wounds, he agrees to go to the shrink she recommended.
He seems to realize that this isn’t healthy, and enough is enough. Just the image of Kim standing across from him, a symbol of his conscience and the better life he can have, is enough to spur him to be better and not let another night like this happen again.
Kim, however, is running as well. Instead of grief, she’s running from guilt, and instead of devolving further into a life of questionable morality, she’s hurtling herself headlong into an effort to regain her ethical moorings. That means working as a public defender in her spare time, going toe-to-toe with the same local prosecutor that Jimmy himself used to joust with. But unlike Jimmy, Kim isn’t just using subterfuge and bombast to get criminals off. She’s using prosecutorial screw-ups to hold the other side accountable, telling the young man she works out a deal for to get his life right or she won’t be there to bail him out, and goes above and beyond to help a young woman too scared to show up to court do what she needs to do.
This is all wildly successful, because Kim is damn good at what she does. She knows how to put the prosecution through their paces; she knows how to read a young screw-up the riot act in the hopes that he won’t be back here, and she knows how to be sympathetic but forceful with her clients who need both a helping hand and a little push.
The problem is that it means Kim is shirking her responsibilities elsewhere, specifically with Mesa Verde. She blows off a call from Paige, her contact at the bank, so that she can see things through with her pro bono client. It’s the negative image of Jimmy’s choices in this episode -- a decision that’s foolish and a little self-destructive, but noble, and one Kim promises never to make again. Both Kim and Jimmy are trying to regain their souls, but in very different ways, and for very different reasons, even if both use their god-given skills to great effect in the process.
Mike is employing his expert skills as well. The top of the line, undetectable meth lab that Gus is putting together is part of his grand plan, and so he needs people he can rely on. That’s why he brings in Mike to scout the architects for his place. For one thing, Mike’s shown -- through his escapades at Madrigal -- that he knows how to cover every detail to make sure that their illicit dealings aren’t found out or shut down -- something the show again conveys with a great visual sequence involving point of view shots from under a hood and communicating the passage of time through quick cut changes in sound and lighting in the back of a rocky van.
But he also knows people, like we saw last week, and he can tell when someone is blowing smoke at him and when someone’s being straight. That’s why Gus trusts him, and why Mike sends the boastful guy who claims he can build the lab in six months packing. And it’s why when Werner Ziegler, the nauseous German architect who tells his would-be employer straight up that the job is not impossible, but that it will be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Mike and Gus are birds of a feather, they’re frank, thorough, and careful, and it means when taking on a project of this size, they want people who’ll treat it the same way.
We know, though, that no matter how cautious Mike and Gus are, how close they come to bringing this long-brewing plan to fruition, that it all ends in ruin. No matter how well you plan, how good you are at what you do, there are unpredictable elements that can disrupt everything. For Gus Fring, that unpredictable element is Walter White, but for Jimmy McGill, it’s Howard Hamlin.
After his incident with the burners and the muggers, Jimmy seems on the straight and narrow again. But then, during a trip to the courthouse to check in as part of his suspension, he runs into Howard in the bathroom, who looks worse for wear. This typically ever-composed individual is out of sorts, looking disheveled, complaining about insomnia, and stressing over a case that he admits isn’t particularly significant. It’s clear -- to both Jimmy and the audience -- that Chuck’s death has gotten to Howard, that’s Kim’s speech landed, that the very thought is torturing him. It’s enough for Jimmy to offer some kindness, recommending the same shrink that Kim passed on to him.
It’s then that the worm turns. Howard tells Jimmy that he’s already seeing a therapist twice a week. It’s startling admission to Jimmy, one that changes his path yet again. Howard has all the advantages Jimmy doesn't -- his wealth, his position, and his father’s name. He has lived as traditionally successful a life as someone like Jimmy could imagine, the kind of life Jimmy was once trying to emulate.
But Howard is haunted by the same grief Jimmy is, and he’s no better for all the more that he has. Howard’s visible unmooring in the wake of the same loss sends a message to Jimmy -- that following the right path, doing what’s expected of you, doing things the normal way, don’t get you where Jimmy wants to go, and don’t seem to make you better either. So when he speaks to the D.A. about his plans after reinstatement, he speaks of wanting to go bigger, go better. His refuge from grief is his refuge from everything -- to follow his talents to their apex until it either makes his dreams come true or leads to his end.
“Quite a Ride” suggests the former rather than the latter. We know the heights that Jimmy will hit: the Saul Goodman billboards and commercials running 24/7, the suitcase full of money, the cheesy but lucrative law office he maintains. But we also know his fall, his paranoid, button-down life as Cinnabon Gene, that requires him to be demure and inconspicuous, the greatest punishment there is for someone like Jimmy.
And maybe “Quite a Ride” suggests and end even beyond there. After Jimmy is laid out by the thugs who rob him, he lays on the ground in pain as the camera pulls back skyward. It’s the same shot Breaking Bad used in Walt’s final moments. It’s a visual echo and a portent, one that seems to preview what a myopic quest to make use of your own greatest talent, regardless of the ethical or practical consequences for you and the people you love, gets you. We know where that sort of quest ended for Walt, and as he veers ever nearer to going full Saul, Jimmy gets a taste of that too.
Better Call Saul has never been closer to Breaking Bad, and that’s bad news for Jimmy McGill.
[7.6/10] Chuck McGill once described his brother with a law degree as the equivalent of “a chimp with a machine gun.” That conjures a particular image -- one of recklessness and harm via a device far beyond the comprehension or abilities of its user. As Lalo (Tony Dalton) showed us in the tunnel, you don’t need to have perfect aim or a good line of sight to do some serious damage with that sort of tool at your disposal.
But I never bought that line of thinking. Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) was born to color outside the lines, but the early seasons of Better Call Saul convinced me that with the right guidance, the right supervision, the right singing cricket on his shoulder, he could have used his powers for good. The early stages of the Sandpiper case seemed to suggest that, where his con artist ways could be used to benefit a defrauded group of senior citizens (and, admittedly, feather his own nest in the process). Given the bad blood between the McGill brothers, that wasn’t meant to be, and we’ve seen Jimmy’s soul gradually darken over the course of five seasons instead.
Maybe it’s still possible, though, in the guise of a professional pantsuit and a curled ponytail in lieu of a loud blazer and billboard-ready wink. Those same early seasons slowly came to suggest that Kim was an equally formidable con artist as Jimmy, just one whose conscience held her back from the worst of his indulgence.
What if she had the right target though -- a smug man who’s “in love with himself” and treated Kim (Rhea Seehorn) poorly on multiple occasions? What if she had a just cause -- enough money to fund a pro bono practice that could give the indigent the type of representation that only the wealthy can typically afford? And what if there would be no harm to forcing the result -- a Sandpiper settlement that may come in a few dollars shorter than expected, but would give the octogenarian beneficiaries their money now, when they can still use it.
For seasons now, fans and critics like me have posited Kim as the last thing keeping Jimmy McGill from becoming Saul Goodman. What if we were wrong? What if the tie to Kim that seemed to be the last thing holding Jimmy back from descending irrevocably into his “Better Call Saul” guise was, in actuality, the tie that saw Jimmy inadvertently dragging Kim down into that darkness with him.
Jimmy himself certainly seems to think so. Maybe it’s the lingering PTSD or the warning from Mike (Jonathan Banks) in “Bagman” that Jimmy had put Kim into the line of fire. Whatever the cause, Jimmy seems ready to extricate himself from this relationship, not because he loves Kim any less, but because he’s realizing that he might be bad for her. The catch is that, until the end, Jimmy understandably believes the threat is coming from the cartel, and his other probable crossed lines, that might put this poor woman whose only sin is her loyalty to him in more danger.
And why wouldn’t he? The cartel half of “Something Unforgivable” posits the ongoing web of bad blood and conflicting business interests among Lalo, Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), Juan Bolsa (Javier Grajeda), and Don Eladio (Steven Bauer) as something volatile and quick to turn deadly. The confrontation between Lalo and those sent to assassinate him takes out old men, it takes out women, it takes out foot soldiers so young they’re practically kids. It’s reasonable to be afraid of what could become collateral damage next.
Granted, it seems like nothing in this world could stop Lalo from coming at his enemies and evading any attempts to neutralize him. The character has been a more than welcome presence in season 5, and Dalton has brought a mix of mirth and menace to the role not seen since Mark Hamill’s take on the Joker. But his escape from a host of assassins who are, on Fring’s account, the best at what they do, starts to make him feel superhuman in the way his ceiling-leap last season did.
Lalo has proven himself to be exceedingly smart, prepared, and aware of what kind of business he’s in. So it’s not crazy to think he could be ready for something like this. Still, his single-handedly taking out a squad of killers with machine guns despite starting with little more than a hot pan full of oil starts to strain credulity and weakens the one bit of real fireworks the episode has to offer.
That said, the danger puts a target on Nacho’s (Michael Mando) back. He, more than anyone, has been caught in that web for a long time now. Mike once again wants to give him a reprieve, get him out of there before something bad happens. But as Gus surveys the burned wreckage of one his restaurants, his tone and tenor say this is a man who’s invested too much in Nacho Varga to spare him at a time when he may be rising up in Don Eladio’s empire and the pecking order of Gus’s rivals.
That leaves Nacho having to play both sides whilst higher up the food chain. When Lalo coaches him up for winning the top spot in the Salamanca crew from Don Eladio, saying that the business needs someone “steady” right now, you can see him mulling the possibilities. At the same time, you can see how he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Failing to earn that spot may leave him much more expendable to both the Salamancas and to Gus. But gaining it just raises the stakes in his double-agent routine, making his tenuous position between two murderous crime bosses that much more precarious.
The attack on Lalo’s compound, which Nacho conspicuously managed to escape from, puts him in Lalo’s crosshairs. With all the dramatics of the last two episodes, “Something Unforgivable” is more of a denouement for this season, and a setup for the next one, that a heart-pumping hour of television in and of itself. As setup though, Lalo’s “I thought he was dead” revenge quest is an exciting one, that puts literally every other major character on the show in danger.
Lalo’s smart enough to suspect that Nacho had something to do with the attempt on his life. His disdain for Gus is well-documented. He has unfinished business with Mike after sparks flew in last season’s finale. He already thinks Saul might have sold him out given last week’s thrilling stand off. And Kim is officially on the cartel’s radar, after not only identifying herself to Lalo in “Bagman”, but telling him off to his face in the next episode. As Better Call Saul puts its pieces into place for its final season, it’s left each of its major players in potentially mortal danger.
The only character of significance who’s managed to avoid that sword of Damocles is Howard Hamlin. But he may be staring down the barrel of the only thing scarier than an enraged Lalo -- Kim Wexler with a righteous cause and a lack of scruples.
All this time we thought we were watching the slow descent of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, worried that he would drag Kim down with him. Maybe he has, only not in the way any of us were expecting. Just as the firefight on the Salamanca compound seems to be setting up a series of confrontations in season 6 more than it’s closing out the cartel story in season 5, Kim’s choices here seem to be setting up the final, major job that she and her newly-christened husband will pull in the show’s final batch of episodes.
Her plan to trick or coax or outright fabricate Howard committing some unforgivable crime would bring the show full circle. It would set Kim and Jimmy against the show’s fake out villain from its first season. It would give Kim revenge on the man who took his beefs against Jimmy and generally frustrations out on her despite all her good, hard work. It would wrap up the Sandpiper case that drove so much of Jimmy’s actions in the early going. Better Call Saul is rarely so neat or tidy, but the climax of the schemes the husband and wife adorably toss around under the covers would create a bookend for the show as it makes its final lap.
But it would also darken Kim’s soul to an extent few expected or would wish. That includes Jimmy, who seems aghast that his partner is serious about this. We’ve seen Kim cross lines before, from pulling simple cons for fun, to trying more complex schemes to help her practice, to her complicity in Jimmy’s efforts against his brother, to her transgressions on behalf of Mr. Acker in the shadow of Mesa Verde’s call center.
It’s easy to see those as the road to hell paved with good intentions, one greased, however intentionally or inadvertently, by Saul’s bad influence on her. Kim herself, however, rejects this hypothesis when it’s offered by Howard. She insists, as she should, that she’s someone who makes her own choices. We’re all a product of the people we interact with, the people we spend our lives with. But Kim has felt a fire and a thrill from her opportunities to color outside the lines just as Jimmy has, and maybe the only mistake was in thinking that she would hold onto her conscience in the shadow of his worst transgressions rather than finding her own path in the darkness.
Perhaps, instead, she will become what Jimmy seemed poised to become, but through familial grievances and his perceived universe of slights, was doomed to fall short of -- a champion who does bad things for good ends. Season 5 of Better Call Saul is where Saul Goodman, the amoral advocate we would come to know on Breaking Bad, was born and started to flourish. But it may also be the birth of a new Kim Wexler, a fallen angel ready to slay the wicked in the name of the good, as the devil on her shoulder starts to wonder, and regret, what he’s done.
After the incident with the Witness, plus Eve's intellect and curiosity (she tracks murders and has come up with the theory of a female assassin being the culprit of these murders, even going as far as being impressed by her) has lead her to a secret investigation of the assassin and who she works for. It's Eve's dreamjob handed to her on a platter.... now what will be the price of this dream job?
Special shoutout to the Villanelle (assassin) wardrobe. Her clothes are great! She pushes for high fashion, expression and playing with aesthetics... but no matter what she looks amazing (whether everyday casual or party ready). Her pink dress with the black combat boots is ICONIC.
In her therapy session we learn to important things: Villanelle has an important history with someone names Anna, somebody that she is clearly emotionally connected to. And that her handler is he r only constant emotional connection. These two pieces feel like important part of the game that will be played against Villanelle.
With each new kill, we see how ruthless and smart Villanelle is. And it's so much fun to watch her. Her cleverness, to see her playful and in awe in the face of the death she deals.
I love Villanelle's excitment and pride in having an investigation set up just to find her... but what I love more is her shock when she learns that the pretty woman from the hospital who she had her speechless and brain malfunctioning and was very much into is the one leading the investigation. This is the kind of twist that throw our leads into chaos, that throw them off their game and that's when things get interesting, when they have to deal with being pushed, and Villanelle having the hots for the lead invetigator will force Villanelle many places, even places she never expected to go emotionally.... and I can't wait to watch it all unfold with the our two wonderful, talented and amazing leads.
Only two episodes in and this show has given us so much. It feels more like 4 episodes, and it's all due to the no filler attitude of the writing and that every shot has a purpose.
This episode is so interesting... it's a bit of a turning point for Eve. Before her chase of Villanelle was about curiosity, a challenge and a chance to prove her smarts. But with Bill getting caught in the crossfire of the chase, the investagation has change into vengence and justice for Eve. Now Villanelle has all of Eve's attention, just not the way she probably wants.On a side note: I liked Bill, gonna miss him.
Interesting interaction between Villanelle and Konstantine, it starts with him reprimanding Villanelle for playing with the targets and killing Bill, who was off limits. Since Villanelle can't follow orders, her next mission will be with a team; The chat quickly turns on Konstantine; while he thought he was the one in power, she just pulled out a card he wasn't expecting. A threat to his daughter. Villanelle shows him just a glimpse of the games she can play. He better not forget who the master chess player is. He threatens her, she will threaten right back and make it count.
I love meeting the new "team" Villanelle. The look of awe when Villanelle sees the other woman, there is definitely history between them and Im sure it's very juicy cause it leads to the other girl attacking her, like there are novels of unwritten history between them. And to add to the tension, their target is a "member of the british intelligence"... And Villanelle has a look on her face "please don't let it be my member of the british intelligence". Shit.;This next mission is going to be so much fun.
And so far my favorite moment of the series is when Eve receives her stolen luggage filled with amazing clothes and a bottle of perfume name "Villanelle", with a quick note of "Sorry Baby"... it's so personal, romantic and slightly unnerving cause it speaks to so much: Villanelle knows where Eve lives, that she has been following her and a note of romantic interest sending her clothes that are gifts you'd give to a lover or significant other. And Eve knows all of this.... and it scares her for it could mean for the future.
And we found our mole... Eve's former boss who she can't stand cause he's a douche. Which is the same target as Villanelle's team. Sounds about right.
This show's writing just keeps on giving. Every meeting, every glance, every hidden word has a payoff. The other assassin is Villanelle's ex. Oh, and Villanelle's real name is Oksana. And Oksana has amazing game cause she just got her ex to kill the 3rd assassin/ex's new lover. All of this while on the hunt for their targer. Like I said, so much freaking game. And two seconds later, Villanelle runs over the poor smitten girl, who should have know better really. This is the stuff i expect from great writing and great dark humour. You don't see it coming, but when It arrives, it wouldn't have worked any other way.
Fav moment: "Are you running or crying?" Both.
Superb episode. I forgot how layered the jokes are and how many little grace notes to various gags there are. Zapp is at his Zapp-iest here, but the real story is about Fry, Leela, and Bender and there's enough of an emotional core to make us care, without hitting us over the head, or crowding out the buffet of humor that this episode provides. Lots of laughs all around, and even a small showcase for Kif!
EDIT 12/29/2017: I'd probably revise this down to an 8.2/10 or so, but it's still a great episode. It spends just enough time digging into the relationship between Fry/Bender and Leela, and even grazes insightful notions of hard-working, if unpopular leaders being shoved aside for flaxen-haired boasters who promise big things, but in the end, are only looking out for themselves, see enemies everywhere, and leave things headed for disaster that feel all the more salient today.
Still, apart from that heavier stuff, the laughs are there, and the way it gives us another chance to see Zapp at his bravado-filled, incompetent best is outstanding. It's another episode that's more fun after having watched the original Star Trek and seeing just how much Kirk/Shatner is baked into the character.
Overall, a fun episode with a solid observational thoughline for its characters and their interactions at its core.
[7.4/10] Tons of fun. There’s not much to this one -- it’s pretty much a gag-fest -- but the gags are fun and Halloween-y, which makes it a-ok in my book!
There is the story about Bender getting “bitten” by a werecar and turning into one himself, and the episode paces the story nicely. But that really just makes a nice spine for the show to riff on a lot of old horror tropes and enjoy some amusing Halloween/car-based wordplay. The animation on Bender’s transformation is well done, and the attack set pieces are exaggerated but enjoyable.
There’s also the hint of an emotional storyline, with Fry being hurt that were-Bender went after Leela rather than him, despite the fortune teller bot saying that he’d go after his dearest friend. The absurdity of Fry later being overjoyed that his best friend is trying to kill him is the kind of lunacy I enjoy from this show.
But overall, this is just a Bender-focused episode that leans heavy on the laughs. Everything from the Robo-Hungarian villagers, to Zoidberg’s Mary Kay selection, to Calculon’s recounting of the origin of the Satan car is quite funny. Overall, this is a nice, spooky and irreverent outing for the show.
It took seven episodes for there to be an episode this good in this season, but it happened. I'm satisfied. Part of me thinks the finale won't be as good, and that's fine; because of how good this one was. If this episode wasn't as good as it was, and the finale ends up being decent enough but nothing more, I probably would end up having a slight problem with it. But not anymore.
The ending of this episode was excellent. The final minute or so was easily the best part, and it was so good that it elevated the entire episode for me; which is the reason that I've given it a rating of eight out of ten, whereas I've only given a six or seven to all of the previous episodes.
And I'm curious as to what the hell happened. I thought it was Stormfront that blew Susan's head up in the premiere, yet that doesn't seem to be the case. If it were, that would mean she's the one who did it to all those people at the end. And I don't think it was. Homelander certainly looked a little surprised. I'll admit, we didn't get a good look at her reaction, though, so I guess it still could end up being her. But I don't think it is.
It's possible that she was the one who did it to Susan and that she's not the one responsible this time. But I have a feeling that whoever is responsible for the incident at the end of the episode is also responsible for what happened to Susan, which I now think isn't Stormfront. My immediate thought was poison and that it was somehow administered to a select few that would end up being in that place.
Another theory of mine is a miniature device implanted in the head of someone that blows up via a remote trigger. That would make sense with Jonah and Shockwave, but they weren't the only ones whose heads blew up. And, needless to say, the theory wouldn't make sense with everyone else whose heads blew up.
But I just thought of something that makes so much more sense; Compound V. Lamplighter, in the previous episode, mentioned three things that could happen with Compound V. You get powers, you become a freak, or you explode. I think Stan was able to get it into the systems of most of the people that were going to be in the courtroom. I don't know how, but that's my theory.
This episode began abruptly, like the previous episode, and that threw me off a little bit, which took me a little while to get back into the swing of things. The ending was the highlight of it, no doubt. There were other moments that I liked, too. Other than that, most of this episode wasn't that captivating. I didn't care about most of it. But the ending was so good that it made the entire episode worthwhile. I'll be fine with it if the finale is a bit underwhelming because of it. Honestly, it's about time that I've finished watching this season. It's been alright. I'm mildly interested to see how it'll end.
[4.8/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] What was that? I like The Simpsons. I like When Harry Met Sally. But mashing them up like this, with such an indifferent, unfunny hand, is the pits.
My biggest gripe is that for a relationship I’m already semi-invested in thanks to the talents of the show in its golden era, I never really rooted for Lisa and Nelson in this one. The show has them just announce their feelings in hamfisted, writerly ways rather than acting like real people with one another. It’s not clear what they really offer to one another emotionally. There’s a few signs that Nelson really listens to Lisa, but they’re few and far between, and for the most part, they seem like a poor match for one another. The ending just riffs son the closing lines from When Harry Met Sally and calls it a day, without ever really earning their reconciliation all those years later.
And the decoy boyfriends/girlfriends are terrible. Rot is barely a character, and grown-up Hubert Wong is a dumb caricature of both Steve Jobs specifically and bad boyfriends in general.
None of this is helped by the fact that the episode is simply devoid of ugh. With a Futurama writer like Ryan Koh as the credited writer, you’d think more of the future-y gags would land. But cheap bits involving drones and plug-in brains are all dead on arrival. Don’t get me started on the terrible narration gags with Homer. With so many episodes being showrun by Matt Selman, having another Al Jean-run episode in the middle of the run is whatever you’d call the opposite of a breath of fresh air.
The only parts I liked were the dream sequence-type interlude with Lisa and Nelson in their mental space date, which is the closest the episode comes to justifying their emotional connection and the most artistic part of the episode, plus the weird but amusing interlude with Abe Lincoln and Ronaadd Reagan as a couple.
Overall, this is easily one of the real lowlights of the season so far, and a poor squandering of a bond between Lisa and Nelson that diehards have found endearing for (gulp) decades now.
Well, I enjoyed focus on the characters while it lasted. On one hand it would be interesting to see Rick struggle in unknown territory with portals. On the other, broken portal gun was a nice framing device forcing writers to tread new ground for awhile.
As the whole, if audience is so divided, than creators should make a choice and stick with it. Pointing fingers at some fans as excuse for not doing with the show what they supposedly want in fear of low ratings is kinda silly. In my opinion, if they stick with the original formula they would miss out on alot of potential for the show, but it would also make it more consistent.
Rick and Morty have interesting concept that only they can do, but the show rarely hits those high highs of emotional or memorable episodes, not just moments in them. For example Futurama had plenty and it was way more old formula. It's probably to late to do deep cut into characters on the level of Bojack anyway. Bojack could be easily put among the best tv shows of all times, but it started as drama and a character study in ridiculous setting and Rick is well past the point of those development. It's unique, but not outstanding.
I totally lost it when I saw Michael doing Ted Danson's Cheers routine! Such a lovely (and obvious) Easter egg.
I felt this episode dragged things a little bit, it most certainly shifted the tone of the series, putting comedy in the back seat and letting moral consequences of actions lead the way. Like this episode's plot, the episode itself felt a bit experimental. I am not at all happy with the results, but it's still a good episode, nonetheless, despite it being my least favourite of the season. After last week's superb episode, this one seemed like a filler for season 3 to kick in. Or maybe I just miss the whole gang together. Regardless, the ending surely was interesting enough to keep us wanting to know where they're taking us, now. They're all alive, no more "Good Place" or "Bad Place" for a while, so has this now become a regular sitcom with ethical elements thrown into it? Ah! I'm certain that will not be the case, because this show knows how to sweep the rug from under our feet every time we're standing firmly on it. Yeah, I'm probably not good with metaphors. Anyway, I can barely wait to get reunited with these poor afterlife test subjects for season 3!
[7.1/10] A bit milder of an episode, but still has its moments. I like Derek getting a little focus, and the show building out his relationship with Bean. There’s something compelling about him being lonely given his pressures and isolation and general unsuitedness to be heir to the throne juxtaposed with Bean being subject to the usual gender essentialism and sense of being usurped in her own family. Sure, it’s a little corny that at the end of the day, she proves how much she cares about Derek by risking her life to save him from a monster, but it’s also a little sweet (and the show nicely adds in that trademark Groening dose of cynicism to take the edge off).
I was less enamored with Zog’s “I wish I had gout” B-story. Luci helping people make bad decisions is always a good tack on this show, but the jokes from Zog eating terrible organ foods didn’t have much mileage in them (beyond rampant grossness, which isn't really my thing) and, aside from the Duke of Twinkletown getting attacked by the octopus, didn’t really go anywhere.
But while Derek’s story underwhelmed a bit, his boyish playing and slapstick with Elfo was cute. Really, the only major weakspot in this one was the giant squid, who seemed like a pretty random obstacle whose presence felt contrived. Even there, I got a kick out of the party barge captain coming back for some humor of the mundane amid the fantastical.
Overall, this is a middle-of-the-road episode at best, but one that’s mostly inoffensive, and has a good premise in terms of the main character relationship it explores.
It would have been such a bitter-sweet episode had it not been for the ending when Claire is kidnapped. At last something positive happened on Outlander when Bree and Roger discovered that Jemmy can travel through time. It was sad that Bree had to leave her parents possibly never to see them again, but as Bree and Roger had been worried that Jemmy might not be able to travel, it was a positive event which is really rare on Outlander, something to be valued. All the goodbyes were quite moving, I was not a fan of Lizzie but Brianna's farewell with her was kinda touching. Lord John and Bree are great together, John can always make her smile. It is a pity Bree will never meet her half-brother William. The last scene with Bree, Roger and Jemmy really emphasises their love in their little family, after all, they have to give Claire and Jamie up so that Jemmy would have a better life in the 20th century.
I wish the episode ended with Bree's nuclear family passing through the stones, then it would have this unified, bitter-sweet atmosphere and feel to it, which was radically changed by the assault on Claire and the dramatic ending. I hope Marsali would survive as she is one of my favourite supporting characters. Though she might be badly wounded and there is no Claire to help her now.
I love how in the middle this show is! A totally in the gray area show. I love it when characters have morals but also when they can bend them when needed, the best example is when Annie was okay with letting A-train go, if this was any other show Annie would totally be like “oh but hughie we have to save him” and then A-train dies and Annie would blame Hughie til the end of times.
Also my favorite moment is the revelation that Homelander isn’t as evil as we thought (like yeah he created supe terrorists, and he let all those people on the plane die, and he’s awful but I think he didn’t rape Becca and that’s a good thing), and that Becca isn’t like a dead martyr but a woman who made a choice and it had a consequence (getting pregnant w a supe baby... WAIT THAT’S LIKE THE ONLY 100% REAL SUPE PERSON! Cause even homelander is lab made so that kid is the real deal!) and also that in the end it wasn’t a story about a man avenging his wife’s death or that homelander loved becca and that’s why stillwell hid her, cause it seemed like homelander doesn’t give a shit about Becca so it’s all about his kid! So I really enjoyed the twist, the good, the evil and the in the between!!
Stillwell was such an interesting character, and she’s gonna be missed but also I have to admit I always got distracted on her scenes cause she literally is Chelsea Handler’s twin!!! They are identical! So all I could think about was Chelsea Handler.
And the only thing I dislike about the show is that there aren’t enough episodes! There’s so much content to this that a 12-14 episodes season would be acceptable and necessary! I think there are comics? So I’m gonna check them out, but there’s still so much to explore! Like I wanna know more about the science behind the supes, who was the first supe, about that Edgar guy, and so much more!
This was a fantastic opening episode to the series, and I'm really looking forward to seeing how the Roy family tear each other apart as they pursue a higher rank in Logan's media conglomerate, Waystar Royco. Firstly, on the theme song, it was beautifully composed. The way it place shots of modern era technology to old-fashioned tech to represent the long-standing legacy of the Roy media company, how they've lasted through massive technological and cultural change in the world, was fantastic, fully exemplifying the history and dominance of the conglomerate. Also, on reflection, I enjoy the Lawrence guy, the man who Kendall (barely) was able to make a business dealing with, with it heavily favoring Lawrence in terms of stock and money. I just liked seeing Lawrence shit-talk Kendall, mocking how unqualified he is for his job, and how reliant his is (an longer can be) on his father for protection.
Regarding the show's content, it's clear a big recurring theme of the series would be the power of greed on people's behavior, particularly it's effects on family bonds, with all of the Roy family (except Connor?) wanting the CEO position after Logan retires, and willing to take others down to raise their position in the company..The characters really are all detestable people (minus Marcia and Connor for now), with how little disregard they have for other people, just concerned about gaining power and not caring about what means they use to achieve it (with Kendall even talking shit about Logan behind his back to undermine him). Watching them all basically beg Roy for a top position really makes me cringe inside, seeing how shameless the family is. Moreover, from the man paying off the rural family to not expose Roman's petty actions at the baseball game, to the housekeeper cleaning up Logan and presumably Kendall's messes, its clear another recurring idea throughout the series is that someone will always be there to clean up the Roy family's messes from the shadows, as they carry out their lives. Succession is the perfect title for this show, fully capturing how this show will explore family rivalry's tearing each other apart as the Roy siblings fight for top positions and CEO in the Waystar media company, owned by their father, Logan Roy. Regarding Logan Roy, it's clear he's the top dog of the family, with him being the founder and CEO of the Waystar media company, and extremely powerful international media conglomerate. And man, its clear Logan's used to having his way with people, with him just doing as he pleases with no regards for others feelings, the relationships he's built with others, and promises he made with others (such as when he essentially tricked Kendall into signing papers that gave Marci, Logan's wife, double voting power and expecting the other Roys to do the same). But it's clear, from the opening scene of him peeing in a closet, that he's becoming old and needs to retire soon, and with today's surprising twist ending with him getting hospitalized, its looking like he may be forced to retire a lot sooner than he hoped.
First off there's Kendall Roy, the cocky businessman who prances about as if he owns the company, and has a strong desire to impress his father, and show he's worthy of the CEO position after he retires. And he's constantly doing his best to seek Logan's approval. Although, its clear Logan doesn't think he's ready, with him completely disregarding his more amicable approach to business dealings, believing he's too "soft," and also believing he may not be mentally fit for the CEO position, referencing him spending time in rehab for drug abuse (despite this being 3 years ago). Then there's Roman Roy, the crude, arrogant man who failed in executive instruction under 30-year company veteran Frank, but still slides his way into Logan's company, seeking more power under the conglomerate. And man, how shamelessly Roman belittled and toyed with that kid, ripping up the check in his face and telling him to go back to his humble life, really cemented Roman as the worst of the bunch, as someone obsessed with flaunting his unearned power and wealth over those below him.Connor Roy seems perfectly content with his rich, effortless life, having seemingly no desire to overtake the firm and is just going on about his days. There's Shiv Roy, the woman of the family, whose dabbling in politics but still wants the top position at the conglomerate. There's her boyfriend, Tom, who desperately seeks approval from Logan, and wants his respect, but just can't seem to achieve that, with Logan constantly disregarding him and his efforts. And it's looking like Tom's going to be taking out his frustrations on Cousin Greg, someone who he sees as below him and can be messed around with. . And then there's Greg, the most sympathetic of the bunch, and cousin of the Roys, an outcast and unknown relative to the Roy family whose just lost his job at one of Waystar's amusement park and is trying to wedge his way into Logan's good side to win over his favor (and thus help for another job).
[8.0/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] What a difference a week makes! Ryan Koh wrote both this episode, a wide-ranging send-up of both The Wire and Roblox, which absolutely sings, and also the prior episode, an indifferent spoof of When Harry Met Sally that perpetually feels off key. The difference is in who showran each episode, and all I can say is Viva Matt Selman!
I’ll admit to being a sucker for The Wire parody. Skinner uttering the famous “You come at the king” line is amusing coming from such a stiff, and the tribute to the HBO show’s opening credits in The Simpsons’ closing credits is tons of fun for longtime fans of both (especially the scene where Bart uses his slingshot to ding the security camera.) But what I like most is the broader pastiche of The Wire’s themes and ideas, with a story of someone sidling up to “the life” out of a sense of dreaming big and convenience, only to fall so deep into the game that they lose themselves in it, and even turn on the one who brought them in. There’s shades of Marlo, Bodie, and others in that, and it’s a strange but effective thing to map onto Seymour and Bart.
But boy is it fun! I love the absurdity of this whole thing centering on Bart taking advantage of a glitch in a Roblox-style game to make real money. (It also has shades of Community using chicken fingers as fodder for a wide-ranging Goodfellas homage.) The idea lends itself to plenty of good humor, from Bart’s byzantine method to turn “bobux” into the real money, to the jabs at the progressive school who become Springfield Elementary’s rivals in the blox-bluffing business, to Bart not liking Roblox but preferring it to playing nothing at all. There’s an inherent silliness in treating something goofy, colorful, and generally low-stakes as the most dramatic, important, quasi-criminal thing in the world, and “Game Done Changed” mines as much humor as they can from the juxtaposition.
Despite all the absurdity at play, I like that Skinner has a goal that's driving him to sell his soul to the spiky-haired devil, just a bit. He wants to turn Springfield Elementary into a performing arts magnet school, so that he no longer has to sweat test scores or sports success, a dream that could get the funding it needs if Skinner turns a blind eye to Bart’s chicanery. It’s a little silly, but I like the musical montage, and it roots this journey in something understandable for Seymour. His becoming a monster after falling deeper and deeper into this gives him a good arc after starting with an “ends justify the means” position, and I like that after everything, it’s Bart who talks him down from going too far and doing something destructive to the progressive school.
If that weren’t enough, the B-story is great here too. Maggie learning to talk via emojis, to where she can express real thoughts to her family in the game is a neat little conceit. What I love the most though, is just how touched and thrilled Homer and Marge are to be able to hear from their youngest child. Maggie expressing that she loves her mom, and even “the donut man”, not to mention the glee it inspired in both her parents, is unbelievably sweet all around.
There’s a touch of darkness, with the family getting obsessed with the game at the expense of their real lives, which I can appreciate as a counterbalance. The story doesn’t really have an ending, more or less just stopping when it stops, which is a bit of a demerit. Nonetheless, I love the wholesomeness of it, and the show makes good use of the Roblox-esque aesthetic.
All-in-all, this is another winner under Selman’s tenure, which shows how much better the show is under his watch, even with the same writer and the same focus on spoofing a venerated pop culture property as a dud that aired just a week prior.
[7.4/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] If you’d pitched to me, “The Simpsons tackles a black man questioning his racial identity” as the premise for an episode, I’d expect it to be a car crash. The show hasn’t shown the dexterity to handle a topic that sensitive with grace and humor in years, maybe decades.
But damn if this isn’t a solid outing for the show. Focusing on Carl’s insecurities on whether or not he’s “convincingly” Black enough, and it leading to him exploring his roots, works surprisingly well as a trenchant and even funny story for the show to tell.
One of the things I like about the episodes showrun by Matt Selman is that he picks up on something from the years when Bill Oakley and Josh Weisntein ran the show. He takes time to develop the secondary and even tertiary characters to give them more life and personality. I’ve watched this show for thirty years, and I couldn't tell you much about Carl. But that's an opportunity for The Simpsons. This episode takes the chance to develop and treats him like a full-fledged, well-rounded character.
His journey is a sympathetic one. The show explores how he’s in a somewhat delicate position as a Black man who was raised by Icelanders. His desire to impress a date, contrasted with how he feels out of touch with Black culture, is a nice inner conflict to drive the action.
The sort of B-story about Homer and the rest of the barflies being uncomfortable with discussions of race but trying their best to support Carl and give him the help he needs is a nice one. There’s some good laughs here, particularly in the discussion of Marge’s book club book. And this isn’t jerkass Homer. It’s supportive friend Homer, who is much preferred.
Bringing in Skip Gates to do Finding Your Roots with Carl is a nice way to address his struggles with his identity. Gates is surprisingly game, and the show finds some good gags for him, especially the running bit about people thinking they have the same skills their ancestors do.
The third act reveal of Carl’s rodeo dad does two things. One, it helps disabuse the audience of the notion of a whitewashed wild west, which is a public good. But two, it helps give Carl a connection to his parents and a culture he can be proud of, even if it’s not the one he thought. The conclusion is a little rushed and silly, but Carl becoming comfortable with who he is, and thus comfortable with his crush, is a nice place to land.
Overall, this is the sort of topic that I would have zero faith in the show to be able to pull off in 2023. And yet here we are. It makes me appreciative of the big swings the show’s been willing to take in Selman’s episodes, both in terms of the characters put into focus and the topics they’re willing to tackle.
"What kind of person hugs and tells?"
Jimmy and Alice's conclusion was fantastic.
Jimmy’s wedding speech was terrible. He made it all about himself and barely mentioned the couple getting married. Another huge example of Jimmy being selfish: packing up all of his wife’s stuff without asking their daughter if she wanted to keep any of it. I know he ‘fixed’ this problem later by putting all the boxes in her room but he wouldn’t have had to correct that mistake if he had remembered that his daughter might have feelings.
All in all, the show is fine but not funny, it definitely is more drama to me.
[4.2/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] I very much want to give The Simpsons credit for this one. Its heart is ostensibly in the right place. At the core of “Hostile Kirk Place” are some good observations about people wanting to erase historical truths that make them uncomfortable, and the ego boost they get from feeling aggrieved and listened to. That sort of sentiment has fueled more than one hateful political and social movement, and taking aim at that perspective is a righteous cause, in line with the show’s past critiques. I even like the core observation of the B-story -- that you have people who don’t really care about the issue du jour, except to make money off of it.
But there’s a few big problems. First of all, there’s a big false equivalence here. The show rightfully wants to poke some fun at both sides of the debate, but ends up creating a false equivalence, where the parents who want to acknowledge the hard truths of history are treated as just another comical alternative viewpoint to those who want to erase it. It’s a tricky balance to strike for any show, but “Hostile Kirk Place” botches it here, which undercuts the message.
The bigger problem, though, is that this is a really ridiculous and unsatisfying way to dramatize the crazies railing against “Critical Race Theory” as a boogeyman for everything they don’t like. Milhouse’s great great grandfather building a gazebo that fell down, making his family feel bad, is a weak stalking horse for the point. The ensuing debate and jokes about “critical brace theory” are full of tepid-at-best barbs.
And good lord, the third act where Kirk turns into a fascist dictator leaves reality so far behind that it becomes hard to take any of these points seriously. The show severs its connection with the real world, to where its argument from consequences seems so overexaggerated and ridiculous that it almost plays like unintentional satire. The Simpsons has long taken real ideas to absurd lengths to highlight their essential absurdity, but this goes too far, divorcing Kirk’s status as a concerned parent so far from any real life outcome that it’s hard to care where they’re going with it.
More than anything, it’s just not funny. The best Simpsons political episodes, like “Much Apu About Nothing” and its take on immigration, do use the show’s satirical edge to poke fun at the facially goofy or hypocritical parts of the opposing view. But they manage to wring much more humor out of it. All “Hostile Kirk Place” has is a few stock observations about the discourse without much in the way of chuckles, let alone guffaws.
There’s some mild cleverness to the finish, with Kirk not wanting to recall history and thereby repeating it with another big gazebo crash. And I guess there’s setup and payoff with Homer’s big copper-based late night crap empire being the thing that sparks it, leaving him ruined too. But it’s all just so cartoony and tough to take seriously.
There’s so much hay to be made from this topic! Anti-CRT trolls are rife for satire, and you could do a lot with people trying to get rid of history they don’t like. But “Hostile Kirk Place” goes in some bizarre, not especially amusing directions when trying to do so, and it results in the rare low light under Matt Selman’s watch.
[9.5/10 on a Selman Era scale] Remember when the Simpsons felt like human beings? It seems like such a long time ago now. The show’s still had its emotional high points over the years (largely while Matt Selman was serving as substitute showrunner for Al Jean), but in large part, Homer, Marge, Bart, and Lisa stopped feeling like real people and started feeling like joke machines who existed to be bumped from zany scene to zany scene.
Despite its fantastical dreamworld setting, “A Mid-Childhood’s Night Dream” is achingly real. It is founded on real emotions: of parent worried about losing the sweet children she knows to the inexorable march of years and growing up, of kids maturing and wanting to be seen for what they are and not what they were, of the way that relationships evolve over time but in a way that doesn’t have to diminish them, of the fact that fifth grade boys definitely need to learn about deodorant.
It is beautiful. I’m a firm believer in the idea that oftentimes the abstract and the impressionsitic can do a better job of getting at truth than the literal. So I love using the dream imagery of bubbles, representing both a touching memory of domestic bliss and the sense of something precious about to pop. I love the visceral panic of Marge losing Bart’s hand in a department store, frantically trying to find him, and encountering a dismissive teenager instead. I love the use of size here, with Ms. Peyton growing immensely when warning about the end of Bart’s childhood and Marge feeling tiny as she imagines walking through her home as an empty nester.
All of these big choices communicate the feeling of what Marge is confronting in the way that's accentuated by the exaggerated and surreal imagery. It’s disorienting and in some cases distressing to see, which puts is in Marge’s shoes.
Frankly, it felt like one of the dream episodes of The Sopranos, which is high compliment! (Maybe it’s just the mutual premise of food poisoning prompting emotional epiphany and psychological hardship with your kids growing up.)
Not for nothing, it’s still funny! There is a lot of heavy stuff here, with Marge reckoning with the fact that Bart may not be her “special little guy” anymore. But there’s also a lot of cute, clever, and downright hilarious choices here. For whatever reason, my favorite jokes in the whole thing were the freeze frame gags in Marge’s file folder of yesterday’s thoughts. Absurd bits like “I have manly thumbs” and “Do I have to watch The Wire?” really tickled my funny bone for whatever reason.
But honestly, every comic element of this one clicked. Ms. Peyton’s grave seriousness about preteen B.O. hit home in an amusing way; the inner Lisa half-translating our favorite eight-year-old’s insights in Marge’s “Lucy dream” was a clever device; Homer’s various transformations were creative and fun; and all they kept finding new layers to the gags about food making Marge nauseous in a way that surprised me. The advent of a “summer sushi” stand, and the radio ad involving “warm mayonnaise” got especially absurd laughs out of me.
With all the humor, the episode never loses the heart or the truth behind what it’s doing. I love the little insights here that feel very human. The fact that Marge remembers a time when Bart was the sweet one and Lisa was a handful is a particularly nice touch, dovetailing with the theme of how kids are constantly evolving, and that's okay.
There’s some clever writing in how “bounce-a-thon” becomes the inflection point for Marge’s anxiety about those changes. Her realization that Lisa is still a mommy’s girl and so she’s desperate to be there to capture a photo of Lisa for her scrapbook smartly dramatizes the immense pressure Marge is feeling to hold onto her kids’ childhoods by any means necessary. The fact that Bart won’t do the thumbs up photo to add to her scrapbook is an equally canny choice to turn their conflict into something tangible.
It too feels real. Again, the lived in touches help drive this one home. Bart being able to express himself so maturely about why he doesn’t want to do the pose leaves Marge taken aback. Her removing a splinter from his palm makes her realize how much his hand has grown. These small signs that your son is not a little kid anymore pile up, in a way that would make any parent wistful.
And yet, what I admire most about the episode is it doesn’t resolve all of this anxiety in a place of hopelessness, or cheap gags, or even a saccharine “their childhoods will always be there” message. Instead, Marge embraces Bart doing comic picture poses over sweet ones. She laughs at the cleverness of his faux-mooning tableau. She may still mourn the little boy he isn’t, but she comes to love the young man he’s become, and there is great beauty in that, to love the evolution and change you see as someone grows into the person they’re going to be. Bart may not be her sweet and “special little guy” in the same way, but now he’s her “funny little guy”. Being validated like that means as much to Bart as it does to Marge.
In a strange way, it gives Marge what she wanted. The episode returns to hand-holding again and again as a motif. Marge remembers her little boy grasping her fingers as a sign of maternal bond. She remembers the bittersweetness of convincing him to let go to go to kindergarten. She senses his disinterest when she removes a splinter from his hand now.
It’s a potent image.You don’t have to dig too deep to understand the meaning and impact of letting go, of feeling a loss of connection, that's represented by your child not reaching for you anymore.
That's why there’s such catharsis in the final moments, when Marge earnestly likes Bart’s little gag, and he’s plainly touched by being affirmed in that way. So he does what he always did. He takes his mother’s hand and invites her into his world, into the life he has now and the person he’s becoming. I get misty-eyed just thinking about it.
That's not typical for The Simpsons in its post-classic years. And yet, under the new regime, the door has opened wider and wider to this kind of earned emotion and earnest character exploration once again. (See also: last season’s superlative “Pixelated and Afraid”.) The show had leveled out after the insanity of the Scully years, but largely stagnated, in ways that sanded down the characters. Now, they’re allowed to consistently be people again. And like Marge with her son, it is once again exciting, and heartening, to see what the show might grow into next.
6.8/10. This is a really difficult one to grade, because the first few minutes are great, and the last few minutes are great, but everything in the middle is to forgettable-to-bad. We've done the "Robin isn't girly" beats before, and there was nothing particularly new or interesting about it here, let alone anything that justified turning it into a crisis. And while it's nice to see that the show didn't entirely forget Robin's sister, Lily being so upset by it didn't make sense. At the same time, we've pretty much already squeezed all the juice out of The Wedding Bride that we were going to, and the meta-humor of it didn't really keep up in this rehash. It's a lot of broad jokes without any real grounding in character or sharply-honed humor to keep things flowing.
But there's something to the idea that the wedding isn't just a big day for Barney and Robin, but that due to major upcoming life changes, it's something like a last great hurrah for the whole group. And that ties nicely into the best part of the episode -- the frame story of Ted and The Mother in 2024, realizing that they've already told each other all their best stories, which features both Radnor and Miloti doing tremendous work selling the two of them as having the rhythms of an "old married couple" and a certain melancholy wistfulness that pervades their interactions. There's some major hints dropped here, but I like the themes explored here, both that The Mother is worried that Ted is going to live in his stories and needs to be able to go on in his life (a lesson The Mother herself learned) and that those stories, even the dumb ones, can be a welcome respite from the harshness of certain truths. Throw in an unexpected appearance from Robin's mother to tie up that story (and hey fellow Simpsons fans, it's Tracey Ulman!), and you have an opening sequence and a closing sequence that knock my socks off, but a whole lot of junk in the middle. A peculiar episode on that account, to say the least.
"The Sin" is where The Mandalorian truly elevates itself from quest-driven romp through a couple of planets to bond-stricken story; this episode effectively weaves in the context of the titular characters, establishes a meaningful relationship between co-stars (yes, Baby Yoda obviously is), and features the most stylish and exhilarating action featured thus far. It's an episode of ramifications, and the best The Mandalorian has to offer thus far.
What's so interesting is how much is portrayed from a character that can't emote, and another that can't speak; yet, it's the realization of their bond that really sells the soul of "The Sin." The episode first contextualizes the rules and mythos of the central bounty-hunter, noting their vast importance...because recognizing that some relationships are more important. It's half drama, half action, and even though those two are on opposite sides of the episode, both are done so well that they're equally entertaining.
What also elevates the action itself is the Mandalorian's fill usage of tools; it's great to see them weave together in a chaotic firefight, fully bringing about the scope of what he's capable of. It feels desperate, and even has a few surprises tucked here and there. The episode ends by wrapping up the initial arc of the series, and now begging the question: Where in the universe do you go now?
I thoroughly enjoyed "The Sin," feeling like a true look into the violence, deception, intrigue, and heart of what lies within the Star Wars universe. If I was not invested in a steel bounty hunter and little green dude by now (I was), "The Sin" sells everything one needs to become invested in the characters, and this series.
Having set the circumstances in motion in the first episode, we get to see here what Connell and Marianne’s relationship actually looks like in practice. On the one hand, there is the secretive element of it—Connell is clearly keen to avoid anyone finding out about him and Marianne, although this element is perhaps something that is lost slightly in the transition from page to screen without the benefit of his internal monologue. It’s certainly picked up loud and clear by Marianne, leading to the slight confrontation between them at the ghost house. Connell’s cowardice at school is portrayed effectively, and I found myself having less sympathy for him at this point in the show than I did in the book.
It should also be said that the show has been praised for its treatment of consent and rightly so, as depressing as it is that something that should be so perfunctory is considered unusual or groundbreaking. Both actors deserve credit for making the scene seem natural, with all of the little awkward moments you’d expect. It’s a strong episode overall and one that does some of the legwork for what we know will be a confrontation: the Debs and the end of school are looming.
[8.5/10] I am always so impressed that Futurama managed to put out one of its best episodes in only its second at bat. The show would definitely hit higher heights than this, but at the same time, you can see the seeds of what made the show great here. There’s knee-slapping humor, imaginative and outlandish scenarios, pop culture spoofs, but also the touch of heart.
That mostly comes down to Fry and Leela here. The show doesn’t overdo it, but there’s a contrast between Leela attempting to be a professional and just treat this visit to the moon as the business trip that it is and Fry, on the other hand, wanting to revel in his childlike excitement over visiting a place he always wanted to go and never thought he’d see. Much of that’s used for comedy, but it provides a character-motivated undercurrent for everything that happens. They don’t go overboard with it, thankfully, but it still gives a shape to the comedy and to the conflicts.
Then, in the final act, it allows them to do some really great but understated dramatic work. Leela rains on Fry’s parade. Fry gives in and admits he’s being foolish, only for Leela to then see the beauty of the moon through his eyes, and vindicate his youthful exuberance for something she considered a “dead rock.” It speaks to Fry’s endearing qualities, a certain innocence to him and an excitement about the possibilities of the future that put things in a different light for the people who take all this stuff for granted. He sees the moon like we do, and it adds a beauty and wonder to the zany setups of the series.
It’s also just damn funny. There’s so many quotable bits in this one, from Bender’s “with blackjack and hookers” running gag, to the whalers on the moon song, to “My mother was a saint!” The show manages to wring humor from the introduction of the secondary characters -- Hermes, Zoidberg, and Amy -- and the way they interact with the main trio. There’s even some amusing Dukes of Hazzard-style shtick, made all the more ridiculous for being centered on a “The Moon Shall Rise Again” family replete with robot daughters like The Crushinator.
You also get some brilliant Disney-spoofing humor. I’m a particular fan of the climax of the whalers on the moon, the goofy gophers, and the references to a “fungineering degree.” It’s a nice vehicle (no pun intended) to poke fun at the way Disney parks take real things and softens and commoditizes them until they’re easily consumable and smiley apart from anything real.
There’s even a tightly-written little bit about Amy’s adventures with the claw machine. The show comes up with an amusingly plausible excuse for her losing the keys to the ship, and finds some clever setups and payoffs for how her newly developed claw-machine skills make her just the person to save the main trio when the time comes. It’s funny and sharp.
Overall, this is such a winner on only the show’s second time out. It’s really impressive what they’re able to pull off this early in the show’s run.
