Glenn Greening

[9.0/10] It’s just supposed to be business. You come in. You sign the forms. You check the boxes. You pay the fine. You don’t get sentimental. There are practical reasons to do this thing, reasons that, coincidentally, involve your continued safety and freedom.

But then you look at the person standing across from you, a person whose joy or pain matters to you, and suddenly you can’t pretend that this is all just a ministerial act, just a necessary concession to the gods of bureaucracy or the legal system. Instead, it becomes something meaningful, something personal, that has an emotional import and connection that makes it more than just business as usual.

So yeah, Kim and Jimmy are married now. After fans reeled from last week’s cliffhanger, it turns out their union isn’t a last desperate act of mutual self-immolation or an impulse borne of bad family lessons. It’s a means of protection, so that if Kim is implicated in Jimmy’s lies once again, she can never be compelled to testify against him as her husband.

And yet, my favorite moment in an episode not short on great moments comes when the two of them face one another in some dingy courtroom, enduring the world’s least romantic wedding ceremony and, against all odds, they’re both moved by it. It’s an outstanding piece of acting from Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn, who hardly say a word in the scene, but whose faces and subtle changes in expression let slip that however much these two people themselves this wedding is a practicality, it is actually a fleeting moment of romantic transcendence for two people who, whatever their problems, do genuinely love one another.

It sets the tone for “JMM”, an episode where people try to keep things professional, detached, and calm, until it’s contrasted with something much more personal, much more piercing, that wins out.

That’s certainly true for Kim. The episode doesn't spare us the aftermath at Mesa Verde in the wreckage of Saul’s stunt last week. “JMM” involves Kim and Rich low-key groveling before a miffed Kevin Wachtell, all but ready to fire their firm. The partners do the respectful, deferential thing, evincing the sort of demeanor that’s expected between lawyers and their clients, and take responsibility for the failures that led to Wachtell and his company getting fleeced for hundreds of thousands of dollars by Saul. And all it gets them is a dismissive, perturbed kiss off from Kevin, along with the admonition that Kim can do better than her shady beau.

But after walking out the door, Kim decides that she won’t take that lying down. She barges her way back in and is frank with Kevin, about how she really feels, in a way her deferential act wasn’t. She tells him that time and again they advised him against every step that led down this path, and he rejected their advice and barged ahead. It’s not entirely true (or at least omits how much fuel Kim threw on the fire), but she challenges Kevin, approaches him candidly and directly and, most important of all, personally. He respects that and, with a terse but telling response that he’ll see her on Thursday, lets her know that she’s keeping the business.

That directness matters. It builds on a frankness, a realness, that Kevin respects in Kim far more than all the fancy degrees and smarty pants advisors he low-key loathes given his faux-blue collar roots. Truth and honesty gets to him in a way that the usual routine in this situation doesn't and wouldn’t.

There’s a similar contrast between the professional and the personal in Gus’s part of the episode. His first appearance in “JMM” is in a bland boardroom meeting, where fast food CEOs are golf clapping over quarterly percentage increases and plastically delighting over the unprecedented advent of spicy curly fries (which, in fairness, do look pretty tasty).

But the tenor of the conversation changes when we see Gus, Lydia (!), and Peter Schuler behind closed doors. Breaking Bad fans will remember Herr Schuler as the Madrigal exec who had an...unfortunate reaction to the DEA’s investigation. “JMM” plants the seeds for that fatalistic response to external pressure. Schuler is deep in the muck on this, helping to fund Gus’s operation and far enough into it to know and worry about the threat posed by Lalo and the cartel. He’s panicked over auditors, desperate not to get caught, and ready to throw in the towel.

That is, until Gus makes it personal. I don’t want to speculate too deeply about the friendship that Gus and Schuler share, but there’s a familiarity and intimacy to their interactions back at the hotel. Gus persuades his benefactor to stay in the fight by holding him by the arm, looking him (and by extension, the audience) in the eye, and calling back to a shared history together. It’s that gesture, that remembrance, that keeps Schuler mollified enough to give Gus a little more rope, a little more time, far removed from the practiced smiles of the boardroom.

It’s personal for his mole too. Nacho ends up helping Gus burn down one of his own restaurants, under orders from an imprisoned Lalo, to keep the pressure on for the Salamancas and to keep up appearances for Fring. It is, as always, a cool and cathartic sequence on this show, and Gus’s chicken slide grease explosion (which he cooly walks away from, naturally), is a visual highlight.

But for Nacho, however cool this may be, it is something he does not out of loyalty or anger or a sense of rivalry, but because it’s just his job. It’s the necessary evil to protect the thing he actually cares about -- his father. In his meeting with Mike, he tells his new handler that he wants out, that he wants to whisk his dad away somewhere that the cartel can’t get him, because the separation from his “career” and his family is getting thinner by the second.

At the same time, Mike is finding peace on that front. If it weren’t for Kim and Jimmy’s strange but endearing wedding, Mike’s interludes with his granddaughter and daughter-in-law would be the sweetest thing in the episode. He reads to his son’s little girl. He reminisces with Stacey about his boy’s elementary school age antics. And he tells her that he’s better, that he’s accepted what his professional situation is and doesn't want to fight it anymore. More than anyone in the show, Mike is able to find equilibrium by accepting the “hand he’s dealt” in his job, and enjoying the private, personal things that job (hopefully) exists far away and apart from.
He does, however, still have a job to do, and right now that means getting Lalo out of prison so that Gus can force him south of the border where it’s harder for Lalo to call the shots. (And hey, if it gives Gus a chance to take the guy out, all the better). That leads to Mike crossing paths with Saul for the first time in a long time, feeding Saul the dirt (which Mike himself created), to get Lalo out on bail and back to Mexico.

Jimmy is genuinely conflicted about it. As ready, willing, and able as he’s been to represent the, shall we say, less than reputable members of the community, becoming a “friend of the cartel” is a horse of a different color. He says as much to Kim in a heartening moment of honesty and candor between them. He thinks about the money, “ranch in Montana” money, but when she asks him if it’s what he wants, he says no. It’s about the thrill of the chase, and about making a life for and with the people he cares about with Jimmy, not necessarily the size of the bankroll. Money’s a means to an end, not an end unto itself for him.

Still, Mike shows up on his doorstep, notes a mysterious benefactor, and between that and the intimidation of a scary crime lord telling him it’s better to be in front of the judge than the cartel, he does what’s expected of him as a zealous advocate and professional. He uses the info that the prosecution’s star witness was coached by “some P.I.” to cast the judge’s ire on the state, and deploys a phony wife and family to show ties to the community. It works! Despite facing a murder charge, Lalo receives a bond and can afford it despite a hefty price tag.

But something’s eating at Jimmy through all of this. In contrast to the fake fiance and moppets he scares up to sway the judge, Jimmy looks across the aisle at the real family of the victim. He sees a poor kid’s mother crying in the courtroom, where he’s helping a cold blooded killer evade justice. Even when it’s done, he peaks at them from around a corner, with his reflection on the marble helping to represent the duality of him in this moment.

It’s too neat and clean to divide this man into Jimmy McGill and Saul Goodman. There’s elements of each in the other. But there’s always been a side of the man whose born initials are “JMM” that wants to win at any cost, and a side of him that genuinely cares for people and can feel their pain. There are so many exit ramps in Jimmy’s life, so many places where he could have changed directions and not become the shyster we met in Breaking Bad, and this moment, where the palpable, deeply personal pain felt by this poor family cuts through his typical mercenary craftiness is one of them.

But it’s not to be. Howard Hamlin intervenes, revokes his job offer, and calls Jimmy out for his recent antics with bowling balls and prostitutes and other schemes to mess with Howard’s life. To say that Saul reacts poorly is an understatement. He lashes out at Howard, accusing him of killing Chuck, declaring that a job at HHM is beneath him, loudly and publicly promoting himself as a god, whose stature and grandiosity are so great as to make Howard’s piddling little offer to him infinitesimal.

That’s the thing about Jimmy. He didn’t become a lawyer because of a supposed deep respect and admiration for the law like Chuck. He didn’t do it as a way out and a way forward like Kim. His reasons were always personal. He wanted to impress his brother. He wanted to make Chuck proud. His business life and his private wants were always mixed and matched.

Only here, that motivation has changed. There’s still good in Jimmy, the impulse to gaze at the mournful expressions of a victim’s loved ones and have it give him pause over whether he’s doing the right thing. But the polarity of the personal has changed for him. He’s no longer just in the legal business to earn Chuck’s respect or make a living or fund his dreams with Kim. Now he wants revenge, to show Chuck’s ghost, and every living manifestation of the people and institutions and norms that have made him feel “less than” and looked down upon his whole life that he’s better, and more important, bigger than everyone who once thought less of him.

For Jimmy it always starts out as business, as a transactional thing he does without real consideration. Then, time and again, he has that moment of pause, that moment of restraint, when he thinks about the emotional impact of his choices. But then, inevitably, his personal grievances, his perceived slights, the personal baggage he’s carried for so long, shoves him back toward being Saul Goodman. No deep look into someone’s eyes can change that, however much we might want it to.

What I love about Better Call Saul are the little things, the subtle touches that communicate something powerful about who a character is or what's going through their minds in a clear, but artful way. When Jimmy returns to his nail salon beginnings and goes to record his voicemail, he starts off with his faux-British secretary routine. Then he stops, and tries it again in his regular speaking voice, not as James M. McGill Esquire, but as Jimmy McGill, attorney at law. It's a small distinction, but a big difference.

It is, on the one hand, a concession to Kim's way of thinking, and a sign that she's gotten through to him, if only a little bit. When she turns down his offer for partnership a second time, he's clearly hurt, but takes it as well as can be expected. He cares about what Kim thinks of him, and the fact that his "colorful" ways were enough to scare her off may not be enough to make him straighten up and fly right, but it's enough to make him forego a little piece of the trickery that rubs her the wrong way. Davis & Main was too much and too fast for Jimmy. He was never meant to be that guy, as much as he wanted to for Kim. But he can be a better version of the Jimmy we know and love.

On the other hand, it's also a small reject of Chuck and an affirmation of himself. The pretensions of having a fancy secretary, of Jimmy's strange conception of sophistication manifested in a stuffy, mildly foppish voicemail, is a strange reflection of how he sees his brother, or what being a fancy pants attorney means. By moving away from that, he's turning away from chasing his brother's shadow. That doesn't mean he's going to immediately revert to being a con artist again. But he's going to be bombastic. He's going to be rough around the edges. As the name he uses on the answering machine suggests, he's just going to be himself.

Kim has a small but meaningful moment of her own. After a successful interview with Rick Schweikart and his fellow partners, Kim says goodbye and thank you to her potential employers, and accidentally calls Rick "Howard." It's a Freudian slip, but also a sign of how Jimmy's caution that it would be a lateral move for her, that Howard Hamlin and Rick Schweikart are interchangeable, has gotten through to her as well.

In that interview, Kim explains that she left her hometown because she wanted something more, and she's starting to realize that even if that doesn't mean coloring outside the lines like Jimmy does, she's too much of a free spirit as well, too much the kind of person who's not satisfied to be another cog in one nigh-identical machine or another, that she once again wants to bet on herself.

It's little moments like these, that say so much while saying so little, that make me frustrated with scenes like the cold open. That opening flashback takes us back in time to Jimmy's childhood, while we watch his father get taken advantage of by a grifter who tells Jimmy that there are wolves and sharks and he has to decide which one he's going to be, prompting Jimmy to take his (presumably) first few purloined dollars out of the till. After all, if Papa McGill is going to be bilked anyway, it may as well go to his family.

It's not an entirely bad scene. It lines up with Chuck's description of his father, and small touches like young Jimmy pretending to sweep or hiding the Playboy behind Boy's Life or refusing to give the grifter his cartons of cigarettes before getting the money show Jimmy's savvy even at a young age. But the whole thing feels a little too perfect--not unlike the flashbacks in BoJack Horseman--when it comes to accounting for the current psychological state of Jimmy McGill. His father is a little too trusting, even for a rube; the grifter is a little too slick, especially with the corny advice he gives to Jimmy; and Jimmy himself takes the lesson to heart a little too quickly. I like what BCS was trying to do, but overall, it was a little too tidy and too blunt to work as well as it needed to.

In truth, the "Inflatable" montage that juxtaposes a loudly-dressed, obnoxious adult Jimmy and a wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man who is just as flamboyant, is not particularly subtle in what it communicates either. By damn it all, the sequence is just too much fun for me to care. The De Palma-esque split screens that put Jimmy's fruit-smashing, turd-laying, bagpipe-playing antics side-by-side with a frantic, improvisational balloon creature dancing in the wind like a rainbow-colored dervish is a deliriously funny scene and speaks to how the younger McGill brother hopes to escape with his bonus intact by doubling down on his unique individuality.

And yet, when Clifford Main gives Jimmy what he wants and fires him for being a jackass instead of for cause, there's remorse on Jimmy's part. He isn't lying when he says it was a bad fit, and there's something very true and very unfortunate when Clifford asks Jimmy how they mistreated him or didn't do everything they could to put him in a good position. Cliff took a chance on Jimmy, and the fact that the arrangement was doomed from the beginning isn't his fault. Jimmy knows that, and it may not be enough to get him to sacrifice his bonus, but it's enough for him to offer to pay them back for the fancy new desk, to tell Clifford that he thinks he's still a good guy, and most importantly, to feel at least the slightest twinge of guilt about it.

Jimmy isn't the only one with regrets however. In another one of those little touches, Mike never has to say that he's disgusted to consider the fact that a sleazeball like Jimmy approves of how he handled the Tuco situation, or that he feels conflicted and even a bit concerned with what paying for his daughter-in-law's emotional blackmail will make him have to do. The fact that he finds the comparison to Jimmy unflattering, that he thinks Jimmy's approval is an insult rather than the compliment it's intended as, comes through in the way he doesn't want the pair to share an elevator, or accept Jimmy's legal services as a gift. By the same token, all it takes is a look from Mike to convey the moral calculus he's doing in his head as Stacey picks out her dreamhouse.

And all it takes is a look from Jimmy to know how he feels about Kim's proposal that the two of them share an office, but remain separate. The scene features a wonderful shot of Jimmy stuck in the frame between the two pieces of the business card that Kim tore in half. He wants the two of them to be together, to be a single unit, personally and professionally. Kim's alternative isn't a rejection, but it is, as Mike would say, a half-measure.

In the world of Breaking Bad, half-measures are often deadly, ways of both making things worse in exchange for a temporary reprieve and delaying the inevitable. On the generally less lethal Better Call Saul, the effects are not unlikely to be nearly so extreme, but the character of the results have the potential to be just the same.

There's something that brings Jimmy and Kim together, a zest for life, for self-determination, for truth to themselves that they share. But there's differences that keep them apart: Kim's professionalism, Jimmy's shadier side, and the part of each of them that says the only reason to do this is to do it their own way. It's a little difference--being separate attorneys in the same offices rather than partners, being separate people who spend time with one another rather than being "together"--but for Jimmy, even if he gives it the old college try, it's a world of difference.

[8.0/10] Two devices, each meant to record, to track, to create leverage over another person, are at the forefront. Each, in their own roundabout way, needs its batteries replaced, and in both instances, that necessity leads to the monitoring party being exposed. It continues to amaze me how two stories that seemingly have nothing to do with one another can maintain such close but unshowy thematic ties.

By which I mean, Better Call Saul is back! That simple parallelism is a reminder as to how great this show is at setting up the little things that have much bigger echoes. The two plots in this episode – one about the fallout from Jimmy revealing his malfeasance to Chuck, and the other hinging on Mike trying to figure out how a mysterious stranger realized he was headed out to the desert to do some business – take things slow, letting us see the incremental progress of each story thread. But it’s immediately clear in each of them how these developments are building to a bigger reckoning.

The former story centers on the lifeblood of the series – the relationship between Jimmy and Chuck. After Jimmy has seemingly resolved the issue with Chuck retiring from HHM, and helps his brother start taking down the aluminum foil, a chance discovery of an old book rescends into a mutual bit of reminiscing. Chuck talks about how he used to read to Jimmy; Jimmy compliments his brother’s memory for recalling details like the shade of his nightlight, and for a split second, the two are brothers again.

But then, Jimmy mentions a young neighbor, and Chuck’s expression changes, and without underscoring it, there’s the perfect hint that some Slippin’ Jimmy incident from the past is back at the forefront of Chuck’s mind. He stops the trip down memory lane, and tells Jimmy that he has not forgiven him and, moreover, that Jimmy will pay for what he’s done. When describing the events to Kim later, Jimmy is lost in frustration, telling her that for ten minutes Chuck didn’t hate him, and Jimmy had forgotten what that was like.

It’s heartbreaking in its way. The events of “Klick” demonstrated that as much as Jimmy resents Chuck sometimes, he still loves his brother, and is willing to subordinate his own interests when his brother truly needs him. While Chuck is undeniably petty, we’ve also seen that to some degree, he’s earned his brother’s mistrust, but there’s still something sad about the way the two siblings are seemingly fated to tear one another down, as Chuck promises to do right to his brother’s face.

I’ve been lousy about predictions on this show, but I’ll venture a guess as to how he means to do it. When Hamlin hears Chuck’s surreptitiously recorded tape, he asks what possible use the tape could have, given the questionable legality or utility of the tape in any court of law or professional setting. It’s potentially not a coincidence that in the preceding scene, we see a glimpse of discord between Jimmy and Kim, one spurred on by her continued distaste for the very act of stepping outside the bounds of ethical behavior that committed by Jimmy to benefit her.

We only get short scenes of Kim in “Mabel,” but they’re meaningful, conveying the discomfort she feels from capitalizing on Jimmy’s misdeeds. She blanches when her contract from Mesa Verde trashes Chuck for his incompetence. She stays up late into the night agonizing over every punctuation mark in her filing, desperate not only to earn this (somewhat) ill-gotten windfall, but to prove that she will not make the same sort of mistake, that she deserves this despite how it came to her. It’s not hard to imagine Chuck being able to drive a wedge in the already fraught relationship between Jimmy and Kim, to make his brother pay by trying to take away one of the few people in his life that Jimmy truly cares about. The irony, of course, is that Chuck is one of those few people.

People care about Mike Ehrmantraut too, though perhaps not in the way he might prefer. As I discussed in the context of BCS’s network sibling, The Walking Dead, there’s something impressive about a show being able to tell a complete story nigh-wordlessly. Mike is, characteristically, a man of few words, and his Season 3 debut doesn’t depart from that, but communicates the confusion, desperation, insight, and turnabout of Mike’s adventures with a tracking device expertly despite that limitation.

It is still such a thrill to see Mike work. One of Better Call Saul’s best qualities is the way it takes time out to show its characters thinking, working out problems, without ever belaboring the point. In fact, Mike’s tinkering with the duplicate tracker he manages to get his hands on (via the shady veterinarian we met previously) is, mid-process, a bit too opaque, to where it’s clear he’s onto something, but it’s not clear what. And yet, the moment an unnamed goon shows up to Mike’s house to replace the battery and Mike’s little radar lights up, it’s clear where his ingenuity has led him.

But more than that bit of excitement at everything coming to fruition, it’s just as enjoyable watching Mike chew on this problem and slowly but surely piece everything together. Like its predecessor, Better Call Saul sets up these miniature mysteries, requiring its characters to use their wits and their determination to solve them. The promotion for the new season strongly suggests where Mike’s clever use of the tracker will lead him, but the way he reaches that point is just as compelling.

It is not, however, the only instance in the episode where such a device meant to give the user an edge over their would-be prey backfires. Of all the great moments in “Mabel,” the best may be the one where Ernesto goes to replace the batteries in Chuck’s tape recorder, inadvertently hears the recording of Jimmy, and is immediately dressed down and quietly threatened by Chuck.

I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to wax rhapsodic about how interesting a foil Chuck is in this show, but what’s telling is how quickly Chuck segues from pure anger to a quick cover up and CYA maneuver centered on misdirected notions of legal confidentiality, to not so subtle threats directed at poor, innocent Ernesto should he volunteer the information he overheard. Better Call Saul repeatedly plays up the cruel irony of how Chuck looks down upon Jimmy for his unethical ways, but is not above bending the rules, or at least mischaracterizing, when it suits his needs, most frequently in order to stifle his brother.

Jimmy clearly feels the brunt of that from his brother. When confronted by the young captain who calls him out for lying to get his eight-second clip of the B-29 bomber for his commercial, Jimmy clearly projects his frustrations with Chuck onto the young man who, like his brother, seems concerned with Jimmy’s less than upstanding tactics. Jimmy, as is his talent, manages to misdirect and in a strikingly similar fashion, threaten the man to keep his lie under wraps, but the pain of the brothers’ relationship lingers with each of them.

Better Call Saul is cagey about whether the McGill brothers will ever be able to overcome that. We know that Jimmy becomes Saul. We know that Chuck isn’t around, or at least remains unseen by the time of Breaking Bad. There’s little hint that they will be able to forgive one another and reconcile, or if the show believes that sort of thing is even possible.

If anything, BCS seems skeptical that a tiger can ever really change its stripes. In the episode’s opening, we see Jimmy as Cinnabon Gene, making every effort to keep a low profile and continue living his life as a schnook. But despite strenuous efforts, he cannot resist yelling to a young shoplifter that he should say nothing and get a lawyer. That part of Jimmy will seemingly always be with him. Chuck recognizes that, but fails to see that the same manipulative bent lies within him as well, and the devices meant to expose his brother, unwittingly exposes him as cut from the same cloth.

[9.0/10] One of my biggest complaints about the early seasons of BoJack is that its psychology was too simple. It would try to draw a direct line from point A event in BoJack’s past to point B problem in BoJack’s present to try to account for some bit of bad behavior or mental pathology, when the truth is that most of our problems’ causes or more complicated than that.

How encouraging it is, then, to witness the evolution of this show’s take on that sort of cause and effect about what ails BoJack, to an episode like “A Horse Walks into Rehab”, which not only resists oversimplification when trying to account for alcoholism, but which weaves a tapestry of events that led him to this point into a larger frame story about trying to get clean and remember why you’re doing it.

The four vignettes we see to set the stage for the origins of BoJack’s drinking go back in time, tracing each event and unpacking them to make his present state seem more like an accumulation of sad moments and bad reinforcement than some straightforward explanation. He was too nervous to pull off a big scene on his show until an assistant gave him a little extra “juice,” and he’s suddenly pursuing the supermodel he was too nervous to convincingly kiss moments ago. He’s awkward at a party as a teenager, but then one beer later, he’s not only the life of the party, but being cruel to people who were kind to him.

He walks in on his dad cheating on his mom, and has what’s manipulatively framed as a father/son bonding experienced turned into a way for his dad to use guilt and a form of abuse to keep BoJack from spilling the beans. And another sad family celebration of a broken home leaves a tiny BoJack imitating his parents and trying to get that warm feeling of home any way he can. None is the sum total of why BoJack tries to numb himself with substances. Instead, each are a piece of the puzzle.

But we also get to see the endpoint of that, something we’re reminded of in the opening flashback to the night of Sara Lynn’s death, the moment when BoJack hit rock bottom. What’s so striking isn’t just that gut punch to start the show’s final season, but also the way his guilt and resolve not to repeat those mistakes is conveyed visually.

Those cuts to key moments in BoJack’s development as a drinker end with dissolves, the acid realizations boring back into his conscious thoughts. The opening montage starts as a humorous sequence of BoJack not really trying at rehab, only to see Sara Lynn’s picture on the clerk’s selfie wall, and be reminded of why he’s doing this, redoubling his efforts to take this seriously. And when he looks at the bottle he sneaks in, or other hints of his temptation and addiction, he sees the stars of the planetarium, a psychological reminder of what this vice has cost him, and the people unlucky enough to endure it with him.

Despite all that, “A Horse Walks into a Rehab” is a thoroughly funny episode! It finds a deft way to check in on the rest of the cast in a quick but funny ways, that delivers one of the show’s trademark wordplay parades and an amusing interlude about Diane’s phone number of all things. The layered swerves of BoJack and fellow rehab-mate Jameson dealing with their issues inside her dad’s giant movie memorabilia room is a real treat. (“The glass from The Graduate!” had me in stitches.) And even small bits like the idea of a gritty, Zack Snyder-helmed Mario reboot or the title card “Two Jamesons later” are eminently laugh-worthy.

Still, what keeps the episode from feeling indulgent is the story it tells in the present to connect with the past. BoJack’s efforts to keep Jameson from relapsing is a nice echo of his relationship with Sara Lynn, one where he’s working out his own demons but trying to keep the past from repeating. That’s a nice way to dramatize both his guilt and his growth, while letting the difficulties of getting better be channeled and shared by another personality who can act as a foil rather than giving BoJack the whole of the spotlight.

The reveal that Jameson is not merely some BoJack-like young adult with neglectful parents and slim chances to grow up healthy, but rather someone with a supportive dad who’s made some hard life choices, helps drive that home, for BoJack and the audience. It’s a story that portends a season-long theme of taking responsibility for your actions, even when they’re shaped by events and decisions that, if not fully forced on you, were also not fully in control. It’s that difficult line -- between responsibility and an understanding of other forces at work, that makes recovery so hard, and this exploration of it so compelling.

It’s the kind of complex, multi-causal storytelling that is a far cry from the simplicity the show started with. What led BoJack here is not just bad parents or a bottle. What might save him from is not just the memory of Sara Lynn. It’s also the decisions that he made, the people that he’s hurt, the number of friends and confidantes who still gather in his wake, and the possibilities he sees for something better on the other side.

What made BoJack horseman an alcoholic, what makes him the person he is today, is a cocktail of past and present, of kindness and cruelty, of regret and resolve. As BoJack Horseman embarks on its final season, it doesn't shy away from the layers of that, which BoJack starts to finally peel away here, however painful that may be. The person who shows up on the other end may not be the healthy person BoJack aspires to be -- there’s still an acid tongue that comes out when BoJack’s told to stop deflecting -- but with that understanding from him, and from the series, that the road to get here wasn’t simple or easy and that the road to recovery won’t be either, he and the show that bears his name may close things out as a more mature, understanding, complex creature than either began as.

[8.5/10] How would you build paradise? It’s something that seems more complicated than a sitcom can handle, but as I’ve said before, The Good Place isn’t an ordinary sitcom. The great thing about “Patty” is how it gives our heroes a taste of the thing they’ve been working toward for so long, shows us how it could actually be miserable, and then gives us a most unexpected solution to the problem that ties in with past events. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a masterstroke, but it’s definitely a pretty impressive feat for a show grappling with what it would really mean to live in paradise for eternity.

It’s also damn funny! I think The Good Place is the only show on television that can make me laugh with references to professional wrestling (that bedpan is a big deal) and references to classical philosophy (Chidi’s “neoplatonic” line was a hoot) in the same episode. The glassy-eyed denizens of paradise, blankly asking for things or describing their mundane lives was amusing. And the little details of The (real) Good Place were very funny. (I particularly liked the candies that allow you to perfectly understand Twin Peaks.) Throw in the joyful mishmash of our heroes’ favorite things in the party, and you have a real comic winner on your hands.

The episode keeps the comedy flowing while still tackling its thorny problem. It starts off letting our heroes enjoy some richly deserved rewards and fun after all they’ve been through. Chidi’s nerdy excitement at meeting “Patty”, Michael getting sworn in by The Good Place council, and Jason getting to go go-karting with monkeys are all fun bits.

But then the show slowly but surely lets you know something is off. Tahani’s conversation with one flat affect paradise-dweller is disconcerting. Janet’s interactions with another Good Janet (and low key disdain for the other Janet) are a worrying sign. And when Patty herself warns Chidi of the dangers of this place, things kick into another gear.

(As an aside, Lisa Kudrow is a nice get for Patty, and her ability to convey the “joy zombie” vibe while also convincingly discussing “word piles” is outstanding.)

It’s a bold stroke to suggest that eternal happiness would eventually becoming numbing. The idea that you can do anything, so eventually you do everything, and become bored and lifeless is another interesting, sort of existentialist take on Heaven. I really like the idea that the problem is infinity -- that eternal life makes it seem like you have nothing but time to fill, and that over time, that sense wears you down.

So it’s a strange but fitting solution that Eleanor comes up with -- you give people the freedom to die. The show dances around it nicely, but it ties back to the idea that the prospect of an end helps give existence meaning and purpose. Sure, it happens a little fast that everyone in The Good Place feels better, but it’s another bold idea, one that ably solves the problem the episode set up.

I don’t know. At the end of the day, I just like how much this show is saying something about morality and life and existence. I don’t always agree with every point or laugh at every joke or buy every argument. But it’s using the sitcom form to comment on grand, eternal questions and conundrums in a way that is usually funny, sometimes oversimplified, but also usually a bit profound too. “Patty” is a great example of that, where the show uses humor and its wild premise to make a big statement about what elements are necessary to make human beings truly happy and fulfilled. The joy, and the enemy, is time.

Another good episode, but I must admit that I was kinda disappointed by it as a season finale. It ended well, but the episode felt a bit off. It felt as though every single character just had a sudden change of heart, as though we had missed an entire episode of development. Obviously we knew certain characters were headed a certain way, but they just seemed to suddenly jump from say 60% of the way that they progressed through the last 7 episodes, to 100% just in this one. It felt kinda weird how Homelander just suddenly showed up and got Ryan too - it came out of nowhere. It was still a good episode, but I thought it felt a bit rushed.

Also kinda disappointed that we're kinda just back where we started at the beginning of the season, with no real way to take down Homelander. I was expecting Soldier Boy to take Homelander's powers and then we'd get to see a new side to Homelander next season since he'd be weak and dealing with having no powers. Instead, it seems we're going to get a lot of focus on Ryan and Homelander together - which I do like. I had also thought that maybe all of The Boys would end up with powers by the end of the season, but that didn't happen either (not that that's a bad thing).

Anyway, I thought this was a good episode, but an ever so slightly disappointing end to a fantastic season of TV. Can't wait for season 4.

From the beginning, that coffee mug has been a symbol of the way that Jimmy doesn't really fit in his new circumstances. "Bali Ha'i" doubles down on that symbolic motif throughout the episode, to show the several ways that the nascent Saul Goodman is a square peg who does not quite belong in the hole he's trying to fit into.

It's clear in the episode's creative and enjoyable cold open, which features Jimmy fighting insomnia in his generic corporate apartment. He takes those odd wicker balls that seem to be the default decoration for an upper class setting and turns them into fun and games, whether it be an impromptu hallway soccer game or a spate of trick shot basketball. He turns on the television and finds that Davis & Main has decided to adopt his idea to use commercials in order to reach more potential Sandpiper clients, but went with a bland white text with voiceover production in lieu of his attention-grabbing spot. Eventually, he returns to his hovel in the back of the old salon, clears out enough room for his fold out couch, and is finally able to get to sleep.

The broader implications are straightforward. Try as he might, a man as colorful as Jimmy doesn't fit into the antiseptic world he's stepped into, with the generic living space, the anodyne commercial, and the slick corporate car that doesn't quite accommodate his oversized novelty coffee mug. So when, at the end of the episode, he pulls out a tire iron and bashes in the cupholder until there's enough space, it's not just a scene of day-to-day frustration, it's a quiet act of rebellion that speaks to the way in which Jimmy is growing ever-weary of the space he inhabits.

But the episode's focus is on the way that the same weariness and frustration extends to Kim, who is out of the basement, but not out of the doghouse at HHM. The episode features scenes showing how both Kim and Jimmy are feeling boxed in, cornered, and unfulfilled by their current circumstances. Jimmy is cataloguing clients in a tedious session where the meticulous Erin is triple checking his every word. Kim is trying to do the very simple act of going to lunch, while Hamlin sends an envoy of his own to keep her at her desk during the lunch hour with only the promise of ordered-in lunch from "that fancy new salad place" to placate her.

Interestingly enough, Kim, unlike Jimmy, is offered an attractive out. After Kim is left to argue a losing motion in court, Schweikart her opposing counsel, compliments her for going down swinging and takes her out to lunch. There, he offers her a golden ticket: a partner-track position, a clean slate in terms of her student debt, and the benefits of being hand-picked by the partner with his name on the door. But more than that, Schweikart's best point comes when he tells her an old war story and explains that he left his old firm because he felt like the folks in charge there didn't have his back. (Incidentally, the Pacino-like Dennis Boutsikaris does a lot with a little in that brief scene and his performance helps to cement the attractiveness of what Schweikart is offering.) It's particularly salient at a time when Kim is questioning whether she has a future at HHM given the frosty reception she continues to receive from Hamlin.

It's clear that Kim feels a certain loyalty to HHM that she is loath to give up on. She tells Schweikart that she's been there for a decade, that they brought her up from the mailroom, and that they put her through law school. But Schweikart responds by noting that they're making her pay them back, that it's not kindness or generosity on their part, but sheer self-interest -- they not only didn't give her a "gift" by sending her to law school and putting her to work, but they're taking advantage of her by not using her to her full potential and sending her on fool's errands like arguing that motion.

The accusation has all the more force when, in an excellent scene, Hamlin is stone cold to Kim as they walk to meet the Mesa Verde clients, and then mechanically turns on the charm a few steps before they walk into the room. Not only does Kim have reason to doubt that Hamlin, and the firm he oversees, truly have her back, but she has reason to doubt he ever did, or at least sees that with an ability to shift his demeanor and put on whatever mask suits him at the moment, she can't trust that she'll ever really know where she stands with him.

As much as last week's "Rebecca" was a showcase for Rhea Seahorn as Kim, this week's episode gives her all the more opportunities to convey her character's emotions in subtle ways: the way her eyes light up for split second when Schweikert encourages her to imagine what she could at a firm that acknowledged her talents and abilities, the look of longing she takes on when sitting at the bar and looks at Schweikert's business card, the gradual smile that spreads across her face as she listens to Jimmy's voicemail, the clear conflicted stare she offers Jimmy when he asks her about the job offer. It's a virtuoso performance that does a good job of selling the thoughts Kim is turning over in her mind without ever requiring her to say them out loud.

"Bali H'ai" brings these two individuals, each feeling the desire to buck against the tides meant to hold them in place, reunite to blow off steam by conning another rube at the same bar. The rub of that sequence comes later, when in the morning after setting, Kim admits she has little interest in cashing the mark's $10,000 check, she just wants to keep it as a trophy, as a symbol of what both she and Jimmy are capable of when they're not constrained by the strictures and authority figures that keep them in their gilded cages. Jimmy is trying to convince himself as much as Kim when he tells her that he took the Davis & Main job because it's what he wanted, not because of her, and Kim is trying to figure out what she really wants and where her talents are best used. There's a greater strength to Kim that suggests she'll find her path, even as the more temperamental, if charming Jimmy McGill (whose answering machine song was adorable) seems more and more poised to trade in the good life for the much scrappier one in which he's much more comfortable, whether he means to or not.

Mike also finds himself backed into a corner in this episode, locked into a world he's been trying to get away from. After what was supposed to be a one-off transaction with Nacho, Mike finds himself embroiled in a dispute with the Salamanca family that requires him to continue to dabble in a criminal world he never wanted to return to in the first place.

There's something undeniably compelling about Mike as the reluctant badass. When he stands up to Arturo (Hector Salamanca's henchman) without intimidation, when he slips carbon paper under his newly purchased doormat in anticipation of another attempt to rattle him, when he uses his incredible sense of anticipation and misdirection to neutralize his would-be assailants, it's exciting and culminates in one of those trademark sequences that keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. But when Mike's hand trembles after he methodically cleans off the gun he used to pistol whip the intruders, much the same way it did while he sat at the bar and waited for Matty's killers in "Five-O", it's clear that he wants no part of this.

But the appearance of Hector's twin nephews (a thrilling moment for Breaking Bad fans) forces Mike's hand. In my review of "Gloves Off" I wrote about the ways in which Mike has common ground with Batman. "Bali Ha'i", on the other hand, puts the grizzled grump in the unexpected company of Superman, the "big blue boyscout" who occasionally teams up with his counterpart from Gotham. The challenge for writing Superman stories is how to create stakes and tension for a character who is impervious to nearly every threat. Similarly, when a character is as uber-capable as Mike has been depicted in Better Call Saul, it can be difficult to make it seem like anything is a genuine threat to them. And yet, the answer in each case is to show that no matter how strong the character at the center of your story is, the people close to them, the ones they're trying to protect, may be quite vulnerable. The striking image of The Cousins gazing at Kaylee from the distance, and the sharp change in Mike's demeanor says everything about how to put pressure on someone as calm and collected as Mr. Ehrmantraut.

But the end game in the episode is telling. In a wonderfully tense scene, Mike stands up to Hector even as he's acquiescing. And when Nacho comes to his house to make the delivery of Mike's ransom money, Mike offers him half. Even though Mike himself has gone through quite a bit, he has a code and principles, and the fact that he didn't do the job he hired to do means that Nacho is entitled to some of his investment back.

Sure, it's partly just good business, but that sense of honor is also a part of Mike that he cannot turn off, even in the "no honor among thieves" setting he finds himself in, in the same way that Jimmy cannot escape the colorful conman side of who he is, and Kim cannot ignore the conflicting parts of her that value loyalty but also the thrill of that con and the idea of living up to her potential. "Bali Ha'i" finds three of the major characters in Better Call Saul each being walled in through circumstances beyond their control, and explores the way that who these individuals are at their cores is something they cannot ignore or squelch, even when that part of them is clawing at the walls.

[8.3/10] I still don’t know what to make of our black and white flash-forwards to Cinnabon Gene. I’m always apt to take The Wire’s approach to introductions like these, where they’re meant as microcosms of the season’s themes. But the problem with that approach is that we’ve already seen that from Jimmy.

Our cold open sees Cinnabon Gene panicking, worrying that he’s in too deep trouble to recover and looking for a way out, only to decide to take matters into his own hands. That was his trajectory last season and before, recovering from his disciplinary suspension and crafting scheme after scheme to topple Chuck and reclaim his place on the mountain.

But what strikes me about our glimpse of Cinnabon Gene in “Magic Man” is how hard he’s working not to be identified as Saul Goodman. He waits it out in the diner. He stays holed up in his home listening to the police blotter to make sure no one’s coming after him. He seems willing to kill, or at least color outside the lines, to keep this random cab driver from Albuquerque from outing him as the once and future Saul.

And yet, when we see him in the past (present?) as Jimmy McGill, we see how hard he is working, how much effort he’s putting into making himself into Saul Goodman. No one knows for sure where those black and white segments are going or what they mean, but there’s a contrast at play. Cinnabon Gene is doing everything he can to run away from the life and persona of Saul Goodman, and Jimmy McGill is doing everything he can to establish it.

Unfortunately that may come at the expense of his relationship with Kim Wexler. Look, I’ve been unhappily predicting the death or departure of Kim Wexler for multiple seasons now, so take this all with a grain of salt. Better Call Saul is a slow-burn show, and the rare seeming dissolutions between Jimmy and Kim have all settled into detente.

Still, however much she may sublimate it, Kim is clearly still taken aback at how ready Jimmy is to throw away his brother’s name after his speech in the season 4 finale. She’s clearly not enamored with him tossing aside his elder law practice and embracing his mercenary efforts to represent abject criminals using unsavory methods. It feels, as it has for some time, like this is headed for a breaking point, but for now Kim just makes gentle comments and winces when she sees Jimmy’s plan and doesn't want to interfere despite her disapproval.

That’s the subtle theme to “Magic Man” -- partners with different styles who are each, in their own way, trying to make it work despite cracks forming at the seams. That’s certainly true for Nacho and Lalo. The former still finds himself being the subtler, more subdued businessman who is content to keep a good thing going, while the latest Salamanca boss to show up shares his relatives’ more impulsive and violent natures.

There’s tension there, and “Magic Man'' only teases at how the differences in their approaches -- to scouts complaining of a stepped on package, to the operations of their safe house, to relations with Fring -- might create fissures later. But the simple methods of how the two deal with people seem to suggest there’s problem along the way.

That’s magnified by the hint that Nacho might be tipping Gus off as to what his boss is thinking. Nacho and Eduardo don’t have the only strained partnership here. Lalo sniffs out the fact that Gus is giving him inferior product and is suspicious of the construction problem that “Michael” and Werner were involved in.

Despite that, “the chicken man” has perfect excuses ready-made. He blames inferior drugs on Werner absconding with the originals and Gus replacing them with the local supply. He blames Werner’s run and Michael’s chase on internal theft. He credits the construction plans to a “chicken cooler.” It’s the perfect set of alibis, ones that even the preternaturally prepared Mr. Fring probably wouldn’t have been able to foresee without a little help from inside the Salamanca organization.

That’s what makes Nacho’s position so interesting, despite the fact that he’s only officially a small part of this episode. He is, once again, potential caught between two very dangerous men. Lalo is not like Tuco or even Hector. He seems smarter, knowing when the product is substandard, piecing things together, and choosing to mistrust Gustavo rather than hate him. He seems like a worthier adversary to Fring and a greater threat to Nacho than his introduction last season suggested.

But all’s not well in Gustavo’s organization either. While Fring may have staved off the threat of the Salamancas vis-a-vis Werner, Mike is still smarting from it. This is Better Call Saul, so it’s dramatized nicely and subtly. As Mike is sending the remaining members of Werner’s crew on their way, replete with different destinations and means of transportation, he gets little bits of the business from Werner’s guys.

When one of them tells Mike that Wenrer’s death had to happen, because he was “soft,” Mike knocks him over with a right hand that punctures the already awkward air of the moment. It’s easy to think that Mike, having just told these guys to keep their mouths shut about what happened in perpetuity, is punishing his charge for already breaking that code. But when another of his men simply tells Mike that Werner “was worth fifty of you,” he lets it slide.

It’s a moment of discretion that reveals that Mike’s beef wasn’t with the first unfortunate recipient of a knuckle sandwich opening his yap. It was that he badmouthed Werner. Mike is a professional. He does what needs to be done. But Werner was his friend, and he’ll brook one of his guys standing up for their deceased boss, even if it breaks the vow of silence, but he won’t stand for one of them spitting on his grave like that.

It’s also enough to spark a temporary divorce between Mike and Gus. Breaking Bad fans know that this split won’t last forever. But however professional Mike is, it’s interesting to see him stand on principle once again here. He knows how to keep his own mouth shut and keep the heat off. Despite that, he’s still sore from what Gus ordered him to do. He scoffs at Werner’s widow receiving “compensation.” And he’s angry enough at what he had to do to his friend that he’s willing to forego getting “paid to do nothing” while Gus waits for Lalo’s departure before restarting construction.

It’s the kind of principled stand that Jimmy seems almost wholly unwilling to make at this point. Instead, free of the burden of being “Chuck’s lousy little brother” he has the freedom to indulge in his showiest, most colorful shtick. Look, there’s something still a bit tragic at seeing Jimmy continue down this path toward criminality and a lucrative lowest common denominator life. But there’s also an absolute thrill to seeing him work his titular magic.

For one thing, his business plan is legitimately clever. It’s neat to see him parlaying his dangerous phone business into the start of his criminal practice. Plying those contacts, understanding the need of that crowd for legal representation, is a smart move. At the same time, it’s fun to see the montage where he pitches his services to an array of motley customers. It’s a treat to see his old film crew pop into the courtroom and put his old colleague on the spot in a dose of guerilla marketing. There’s surely more/worse to come, but Saul Goodman has been taken off the leash, and it’s entertaining, if nothing else, to see him barking at full volume.

But it seems to portend bad things with Kim. It’s not lost on the show the couple are, more or less, in the same business at this point. She is helping the indigent and those who need a second chance pro bono, while he’s representing anyone with a pulse and rap sheet. But they’re operating in the same courtrooms, fighting the same DAs, and surely, likely to conflict in meaningful ways down the line.

The first, and gentlest of those conflicts comes when Kim tries to convince one of her clients to take a plea. She tries her way, the honest method, the frank method, and gets nowhere. Jimmy offers one of his usual schemes -- pretending to be a DA who’s pulling the deal for new evidence -- and Kim rejects it. After he pushes harder, she rejects it more curtly, and yet another of cracks in the foundation emerge for the couple who could be partners at home but not at the office.

At the end of the day, though, Kim goes for it. She does it without Jimmy’s help, but she uses his plan, and sure enough, her client listens to reason (or fear) and goes along with what she believes is the right thing for it. Afterward, though, she walks into the stairwell and looks like she’s going to be sick, like it hurts doing this in a way that it doesn't, and hasn’t, for Jimmy, another burr in the saddle for another pair in a partnership that’s having trouble.

That’s the problem though -- Jimmy’s methods work. They’ve always worked, and as long as he strived to rise above them, to put his hustle to good use, to harness his powers for good, now Jimmy is formally going by Saul, and intends to unleash that beast. It’s a thrill to see him in action, but also a touch sad, because we know where that path leads.

It leads, among other places, to a man willing to do whatever he can to shed that name. It leads to a sad middle aged schlub slinging cinnamon buns to mall patrons. It leads to guy who has to quake in his boots that the cops could be around any corner, and that some loudmouth in a tracksuit could be an old ghost coming back to haunt him. “Magic Man” gives us both ends of the Saul Goodman spectrum here, the before and the after. And neither portends great things for the man trying desperately to get your call, and the man who resolutely ends his own call for help.

(As an aside, rest in peace Robert Forster. It’s nice to see him make one last(?) appearance in the Breaking Bad-verse after his great turn in El Camino.)

[8.5/10] Well hell, they got me good on the twists here. I suspected that the ostensibly helpful orderly had his own agenda, and that when he talked about Number One he might have been talking about himself. But there’s a whole mess of things that I did not guess, including:

1. That he is definitely the first member of Brenner’s program; 2. That he was the one who committed the massacre we saw in the first episode of the season, not Eleven; 3. That he was Victor Creel’s son 4. That he caused all of the terrible things that happened to the Creel family when he was a boy, not Vecna as we know him now; 5. That he became Vecna more or less when Eleven sent him to the Upside Down using her powers; and 6. That he is heavily implied to be Eleven’s biological father or a clone of him or something along those lines, given his ominous statements about Brenner starting a “program” after taking him in.

That's a lot! It’s effectively making One the show’s Big Bad, give or take Brenner himself. And I gotta say, kudos to the casting directors and Jamie Campbell Bower. He leans into the utter creepiness of One a la Cillian Murphy or Daniel DeHaan. You by him as a sympathetic and troubled yet evil and menacing figure, which is a hard line to walk, and it sells some of the mishmash of cliches that the character represents and succeeds despite.

To the point, One is an odd mix of Agent Smith from The Matrix (“Humanity is a strange kind of pest”), Magneto from X-Men (“We’re superior to them”), Darth Vader from The Empire Strikes Back (“Join me and think of what we could accomplish”), and even Emperor Palpatine from Revenge of the Sith (“Oh no, right after my villainous invitation to powerful young soul, lightning turned me into a scarred ghoulish figure!”). HIs monologue is a touch hammy, and feels pulled from a mix of these other sources, but the superb performance and intensity of the scenes makes it work.

Say what you will about Stranger Things as it reaches its mid-season break, but they can still put together a damn good set piece when they want to. The stand-off between Eleven and One is terrifying. The raw intensity of the two having a force battle a la the one she had with one of her telekinetic bullies in the prior episode, the sheer horror of the way One drags her around as she claws at the floor and hangs in the air, and the rousing but still unnerving way she turns the power back on him and disintegrates him into another dimension is jaw-dropping and riveting.

At a thematic level, I like One as the antithesis of Eleven, her dark reflection and ultimate nemesis. The show implies that he’s been repeatedly abused by his parents, which lends to his dim view of humanity and the way he powers his abilities with sadness and anger. He was not born a monster, but made that way, and it tainted his perspective and his approach to generating his unique talents.

Eleven is the opposite. Time and again, we’ve seen her power through difficult situations not by resorting to pain, but instead, like Max, by reflecting on the people she loves and who care deeply for her as well. It’s telling that when Eleven tries to summon strength from recalling her mother being ripped away from her, or the death and destruction she witnesses as a consequence of her removing One’s inhibitor, it’s not enough to defeat him. But when she recalls her mother’s love, the act of creation and instant bond and affection, it summons a power that One has no ability to withstand.

For all this season has been teasing that Eleven needs to return to negative emotions to regain her powers, I love the subversion that, at the end of the day, it’s the remembrance of that love which not only spurred her to victory on that fateful day many years earlier, but which restores her power now. I still find Brenner to be a morally questionable figure. The show’s treatment of him still makes me a little queasy. And I still feel uncomfortable about Owens’ willingness to throw in with him, even if he thinks it’s necessary to save the world. But all of this ethically dubious “training” lands in a strong place thematically, vindicating Eleven’s bonds with the people who love her as the source of her power, and pointing to the lack of such care and affection as the thing that unfortunately doomed poor Henry Creel.

I don’t know that every part of it adds up logistically. It feels like it conflicts with some other things we knew about the Upside Down, and the attempt to bring together the cosmology of the Demogorgon, the Mindflayer, and Vecna into one consistent effort plays more than a little clunky. But ultimately, it works at an intuitive level, which is good enough for me.

Plus hey, there’s a lot of Star Wars and Harry Potter here, which isn’t terribly surprising given some of the references in the show to this point. (The former, not the latter, obviously.) One is basically tempting Eleven to turn to the darkside, to use negative emotions to spur her use of The Force. The offer to join together is very Vader and Luke, or even Kylo Ren and Rey. And the contrast between a child born of love and one born without it is very Harry and Voldemort. On balance, it makes me think that Eleven will ultimately try to save One in some way, to redeem him, but I suppose we’ll have to wait and see in July when the last two episodes of the season come out.

All-in-all, I haven’t loved the Eleven storyline thus far, but this takes into a pretty shocking yet compelling place, about where her flashback adventures fit into the larger story of Stranger Things, and about how who she is informs what she can do in a way her foe absolutely cannot despite all his own malevolence and power.

Oh yeah, and other stuff happens in the episode too! Who knew?

I still don’t like the Russian rescue business, but at least they went somewhere with it. It remains insane that they were able to bluff their way into a secret Russian prison, bring a weapon inside without getting frisked or bothered over it, and hold a warden hostage to get most, if not all, of what they want. This plan makes no sense, but hey, Murray’s Yuri impression is gold, so it’s got that going for it.

And yet, Hopper and the crooked guard’s fight with the demogorgon is reasonably cool. The CGI for the demogorgon was off here, as it didn’t move or react properly. The design remains terrifying though, which does a lot of the work. Plus the Duffer Bros. and the fight choreographers do a good job of adding tension to the scene by having Hopper struggle to light his spear torch at first, and then force them to improvise when getting behind the super-thick doors before the flame runs out. It’s a well-constructed set piece, even if I’m pretty much done with this storyline.

To the point, Hopper and Joyce embracing after so long apart and so much each has been through in the interim should be a moving moment. I felt nothing. I can’t say that Stranger Things didn’t earn the moment. It showed each character going through a hell of a lot to reach it and reflecting on what each means to the other. But the whole thing has been so wildly implausible and tonally different from the rest of the show, coupled with a bit of character assassination last season, that it ultimately holds no emotional weight for me. At least we’re hopefully done with it for a while, though they still have to figure out how to get back to America, which is another layer of implausibility to overcome.

The two teams of junior detectives working back in Hawkins/the Upside Down is a treat as well. There’s parts that I still don’t like. I continue to not understand why they’re leaning so hard back into Steve/Nancy as a couple, but I’ve said my piece on that. The Upside Down looks pretty bad here much of the time, with the actors conspicuously pasted onto green screen backgrounds that breaks immersion. Dustin turns into an exposition machine at one point, which serves to set up the Vecna reveal more than anything happening in his corner of the story. And as clever as some of the solutions are, there’s occasionally some shortcuts taken to avoid the inevitable trial and error of communicating across dimensions that feel convenient, albeit within the realm of acceptable willing suspension of disbelief.

But there’s a lot I really like here. The dynamic of both quartets works really clicks. As lukewarm as I am on Nancy and Steve as a couple, Eddie having a heart-to-heart with Steve about how he’s an unexpectedly decent guy and that Nancy would clearly go to hell for him is the best sales pitch for it so far. Robin’s hyperfixation on the risk of rabies after Steve’s bite is also an on-point bit of fun characterization. On the other side, I’m glad they added Erica back into the mix as the younger kids try to bridge the gap between worlds and keep their stories straight.

I most appreciate the crew figuring out to go to Eddie’s trailer in order to rescue their friends. It pays off the crack in the ceiling the show’s been teasing for a while now, and there’s a crude logic to the sense that every kill from Vecna creates a breach between their worlds. The rope climbing escapade makes for a neat visual to boot.

God help me, I also enjoy the twist of Vecna going after Nancy given her guilt over what happened to Barb. We don’t really have much setup for it -- no headaches or other visions -- but maybe Vecna’s powers are stronger within the Upside Down. More than anything, I dig how it plays on the character’s history in a meaningful way. Much as Max felt guilt over what happened with Billy, Nancy feels the same about the best friend who died while she was too busy having fun to notice. Bringing the two together like that, in a way that plays on Vecna’s M.O. and a prior psychological hang-up for Nancy, is a surprise, but in a good way, finding points of harmony between past storylines and current ones in a way that works.

Overall, “volume 1” of Stranger Things’ fourth season has been a disappointment. So many of the plot threads this year have come off like wheel-spinning, table-setting, and throat-clearing. Some of the core strengths of the show remain, mostly in its characters, but you can feel the show’s creative team spinning out at times. And yet, the high points, when they pay all of that build off, are quite high. Between Max overcoming vecna at the midpoint, and the triumphs and revelations in this mid-season finale, the show can still soar when it brings everything to a climax and puts its cards on the table. I hope we see more of that in the last two episodes of the season.

Very very good finale. I really enjoyed Lyra and Asriel's scenes together. He is a fascinating character with so many sides to him. It's obvious that he cares about Lyra, but his mission takes precedence over everything, even his daughter or his morals - we could see he took no pleasure in sacrificing Roger, but he didn't hesitate to do it because he feels he has a duty to free all of humanity from enslavement. Having read the books, I obviously knew the tragic ending was coming, but it still hit me really hard. Roger was a sweet cinnamon roll and he deserved better. His death was absolutely devastating, maybe even more than in the book, since Lyra got SO CLOSE to him that she could hold his hand. My poor babies :( And on Will's side of things, he's finally found the opening! I have to say, I love the foreshadowing with the cat that showed him the way. Now that we're onto The Subtle Knife, things are gonna get crazy. Can't wait.

As a long-time fan of the books, I find a whole lot to like about this series. The casting is for the most part excellent, especially Ruth Wilson, who was born to play Marisa Coulter, and James McAvoy, who brings a lot of nuance and depth to Lord Asriel. I was so looking forward to finally seeing them interact and their chemistry is amazing. I would really love to see a miniseries centered around these two when they first met and everything that happened leading up to Lyra's birth. Dafne Keen somehow manages to look like both of her on-screen parents (I genuinely applaud the casting director) and I think she's done a good job with her portrayal of Lyra. Her acting can be a bit hit-and-miss at times, but when she's on, she's pretty amazing. I also like the actors who portray Lord Boreal and Will. And speaking of Will, I don't mind the fact that the series decided to introduce him in season 1. I actually like it because I remember how jarring it was for me when he popped up out of nowhere in the second book. I was annoyed because it felt like he was interrupting Lyra's story. The show has done a good job of making us care about him just as much as we care about Lyra, telling us right out of the gate that this story has two protagonists from parallel worlds whose fates are intertwined and who will inevitably meet at some point. Very good choice on the showrunners' part. The visuals and cinematography are beautiful, the music is excellent (the opening credits slay me every time) and it's for the most part a very faithful adaptation of the source material.

Not everything is perfect, though. The biggest problem I have with the series is that it severely undermines the relationship between humans and daemons. There is literally nothing stronger in Lyra's world than that bond. Seeing someone without a daemon is so viscerally terrifying that it's like seeing someone without a head. Yet in the series we constantly see people without daemons. Yes, yes budgetary restrictions and all that, but you know what? Maybe that's a controversial opinion, but if you don't have enough money to accurately represent one of the key world-building features of the story, then perhaps you shouldn't be adapting said story in the first place. Can't believe I'm saying this, but even the movie, which is terrible in many ways, managed to portray it better, at least between Lyra and Pan. I don't think I'll ever forgive the show for the way Lyra just ignored Pan after they were almost separated at Bolvangar and ran towards Marisa instead of immediately grabbing her freaking soul, her dearest companion, from that cage. Like I said, even in the movie Lyra would cuddle Pan whenever something dangerous happened. Meanwhile on the show I can count on one hand how many times Lyra touched her daemon over the course of 8 episodes. Again, I understand that they have budgetary restrictions, but Lyra and Pan's relationship is probably the most important dynamic in the books and it just doesn't feel that way in the series. Another thing I don't like - and I realize that in the grand scheme of things it's really not that important - is that they changed Kaisa from a goose to a gyrfalcon. I know they did it because a talking goose looked bad and cartoonish and they felt they couldn't make it work, but we've seen many characters with raptor daemons (Ma Costa and Tony, for example). Kaisa being a goose was unusual, unique, and changing that fundamentally changes who Serafina is as a person. To me, daemons are probably one of the greatest concepts ever invented in literature. They're endlessly fascinating. So the way they're treated on the show is just bitterly disappointing.

Okay, deep breath, rant over.

Still looking forward to season 2. And in the meantime, if anyone is interested in daemons as much as I am, I recommend this quiz: https://app.ex.co/stories/laurenb90/what-is-your-daemon. This is not a self promo or anything (as if I could ever make something this in-depth), but I think it's pretty cool and the results can be pretty damn accurate. This quiz gives you one of the 34 possible animal groups. In the description of that group, there is a link to a second quiz that gives you a specific species or breed within that group. Have fun.

(Mine is an opossum. And I love him.)

• The siblings are back at their bullshits. Logan was right. They are not serious person. Everything about this episode felt so manic, really drove home how incompetent the kids are at running the company.

• Was anyone else convinced that the clip of Logan calling his children idiots would somehow find itself playing in front of the entire investors meeting?

• Kendall gave me major We Work Adam Neumann CEO vibes. Overpriced real estate trying to pass off as tech.

• Playing 'bitey' in the middle of a party is insane. Interactions between Tom and Shiv this season is so well written. The chemistry is :fire:. I like how they both are being totally, brutally honest about who they are with each other. Tom admitting his love for money and power was so fascinating to finally see. Getting divorced is exactly what that couple needed.

• -“I need you to believe that I am as good as my dad. Can you do that?” - “Say it or believe it?” - Ouch. The interaction with Gerri and the director both really showed Roman can't handle pressure at all. And the moment where Roman just wants to hear his dad insult him again is sad.

• Does Mattsson really respect Shiv as an ally or is he fucking around with the siblings the way Logan did?

• Karl’s moment with Kendall right before he went out on stage was jaw dropping.

• Best quote of the episode, “How am I supposed to follow this? He just promised them eternal life.”

[9.8/10] One of the ways you can tell that a show is great, not just good, is when it’s engrossing even when there’s not anything particularly exciting or notable happening. It’s easy to be engaged, even giddy, about Better Call Saul in the midst of McGill-on-McGill courtroom combat, in the middle of another of Jimmy’s capers, as Mike Ehrmantraut is springing another one of his traps, or when another little Breaking Bad easter egg pops up. But the mark of a great show is that it can be just as transfixing, just as mesmerizing, to watch Chuck have dinner with his ex-wife, the moment laden with hopes and expectations, with little more happening than a conversation between old friends.

Better yet, that flashback to a time when Jimmy and Chuck were using their scheming in concert and not against one another isn’t simply a flight of fancy to contrast their later antagonism, or a simple pleasing vignette of the early point of Chuck’s condition. It’s a character study, a set of scenes that never comes says anything outright about Chuck McGill, but tells us so much about who he is, how he reacts to obstacles and difficulties, and quietly sets up the bigger fireworks to come.

It shows that Chuck is a prideful man. That’s not much of a revelation, but what’s striking about the flashback are the lengths that he goes to hide his condition from his ex-wife, Rebecca. He concocts a story about a mixup with the electric company (poetically enough, involving transposed letters on an address), and tries to keep it all under wraps.

When Rebecca uses a cell phone that causes his “acute allergy to electromagnetism” to flare up (featuring superb camera work and sound design to convey his perception of it), he throws it out of her hands. But when called to account for his behavior, he doesn’t come clean about why he did it. Tellingly, he not only comes up with an excuse, he not only turns the blame onto Rebecca herself rather than accept it for be honest, but he frames it in terms of propriety, in terms of what’s “right,” in terms of a decorum that he sees himself as adhering to and chastises others for not meeting his standard. It is a defense mechanism, a self-preservation method, one that in that moment and in the future, causes him to mask his frustrations in grandiose notions of propriety and principles rather than face his own failings and prejudices.

But most importantly, even when Rebecca is effectively storming out, an act that would thwart the elaborate lengths he went to under the clear purpose of winning her back, he keeps Jimmy from telling her the truth. Even though Chuck seemed on the cusp of making a breakthrough with a woman he clearly still had feelings for, he could not bear to be thought of as sick; he could not bear to be though of a lesser; he could not bear to be thought of as crazy. Jimmy McGill knows that, and though he clearly takes no pleasure in it, it’s how he takes his brother down.

In just five minutes, Better Call Saul gives its audience a snootful of character detail and foreshadowing that establishes and reestablishes every hint and bit of shading to make the series’ peak drama at the end of the episode that much more understandable and meaningful. It’s a sign of this show’s virtuosity, and the way it understands tension, character, and storytelling like no other show on television.

And that’s just the first five minutes! “Chicanery” goes full courtroom drama in a way that BCS, despite being one of the best legal shows to grace our television screens, hasn’t really done before. The show sets it up nigh-perfectly, laying out witness testimony, objections, and grants of “leeway” that make sense in context while also providing enough wiggle room for the major characters to be a little more theatrical that would be typical for a disciplinary proceeding.

That extends to the episode’s supporting characters as well. Kim Wexler, who is Better Call Saul’s secret weapon, is not only sharp and decisive in the courtroom, but amid all the intra-McGill squabbling, gets a big win. Rather than relishing in her success, Kim distinguishes herself from both McGill brothers by coming clean to the representatives from Mesa Verde about all this ugliness, only to have the head of the bank brush it off and call her the best outside counsel he’s ever had. It’s subtle but important way that Kim and Jimmy fully win here, and that the blowback from Chuck’s machinations do not sink the client and the work that Kim has put so much effort into.

It also extends to Howard, who, while frequently a cipher on this show, continues to offer some of the most pragmatic and complex approaches to these situations of anyone. He is clearly on Chuck’s side, and clearly interested in preserving the good name of his firm. But he is also firmly honest on the stand, complimentary about Jimmy when he doesn’t have to be, frank about how his rise and fall within HHM, and cognizant of Chuck’s limitations and liabilities in a way that Chuck himself simply isn’t.

What ensues is an incredible chess match, a battle of wits and wills, between Jimmy and Chuck. Chuck carefully rehearses his testimony, again careful to couch his attack on his brother as not coming from a place of affront or weakness in himself, but to an abstract, platonic ideal -- the law. Chuck is out to show that he does not hate his brother; he cares for him, wants what’s best for him, but also wants what’s best for the legal professional he claims to hold so dear.

“Chicanery” subtly undercuts the sincerity of Chuck’s words not just by their rehearsed nature, but in the selection of detail that precedes them. He professes to love the law because it guarantees equal treatment to everyone under the same rules and regulations, and yet he is driven to these proceedings in a jaguar, pulls up to the courthouse in the presence of reserved parking cones, and saunters in as the concerned god on high, blameless for his own misfortunes and ready to direct judgment at those he sees as at fault.

But Jimmy is ready, as always, with a plan of his own, one that is not completely above board. His official goal is to not to dispute that it’s his voice on the tape or that it was tampered with, but that he said what he said because he was concerned for his brother’s wellbeing and more importantly, his sanity. In that, he hopes to convince the disciplinary committee that he did not undertake the elaborate, “baroque” scheme to disrupt his brother’s dealings with Mesa Verde that Chuck alleges, but that he gave into Chuck’s paranoid fantasy so as to prevent his brother from slipping further.

And like the best of Jimmy’s lies, it works because there is a grain of truth to it. We know that Chuck isn’t wrong that even if there was no hard evidence of it, Jimmy unleashed an elaborate ploy to trip up Chuck. But we also know that Jimmy means it when he says he would say anything to make his brother feel better, to prevent Chuck from slipping back into his aluminum foil-lined nightmare. Jimmy may have been admitting what really happened rather than telling Chuck “whatever he wanted to hear,” but coming from Slippin’ Jimmy, that is the truest sign that he genuinely would have said anything, even the god’s honest, to make his brother feel better.

That’s also what makes it so tragic, so impressive but sad, that Jimmy will now do anything to show that his brother is insane. Better Call Saul is tremendous at muddying the moral waters in complex, unassuming ways, but Jimmy’s plan to provoke Chuck may be the apotheosis of an act that is clever, resourceful, full of Jimmy’s trademark showmanship, understandable, and yet also more than a bit diabolical. It’s easy to root for Jimmy, particularly in the shadow of his brother’s superciliousness, but it’s one more case of Jimmy covering up one dirty trick with yet another.

While Jimmy normally revels in that sort of gamesmanship, in the razzle dazzle that makes him as effective as lawyer as he was a conman, he seems to take no joy in it. He reveals that he had Mike take those photographs of Chuck’s apartment to lure Rebecca back, something that he knew would put his brother off balance. But when he stands by the vending machines (which create a subtle buffer to prevent Chuck from confronting him about it) he does not have a wisp of glee at his plan coming to fruition, just the hurt resignation that it’s come to this.

Jimmy, however, is not done. In his final act meant to prove to the disciplinary board that his brother is unbalanced and thus untrustworthy, he resorts to some of the titular “chicanery.” He employs Huell(!) to slip a cell phone battery in Chuck’s pocket, and what follows is one of the best scenes in the show’s history.

It involves a back and forth between Jimmy and Chuck. Jimmy seems to pulling every rabbit out of his hat that he can come up with to expose his brother as a nut. He shows pictures from inside Chuck’s house. He gestures to Rebecca in the audience and even garnishes an emotional apology from Chuck to her. He plays “commit and contradict” with Chuck about his alleged illness, trying to establish for the disciplinary committee that Chuck’s issues are psychosomatic, and getting his brother to affirm that he is not feeling electromagnetic waves from anywhere in particular in the room.

It’s then that Jimmy takes out his cell phone, presumably expecting a reaction from Chuck to prove that his brother would respond to it on sight. Instead, Chuck, appearing wise to Jimmy’s machinations, determines that the phone is without is battery, and it seems, for a moment, like Jimmy’s stunt has been foiled, more fodder for Chuck to demonstrate that his brother is a two-bit huckster, not a lawyer. Instead, Jimmy plays the magician, revealing the final element of his trick -- the battery that Huell slipped into Chuck’s breast pocket.

That is what sets Chuck off, as he pulls the battery out like it’s radioactive and tosses it on the floor. He goes into a deranged rant that ought to earn Michael McKean an Emmy. He howls about his brother’s irresponsibleness, about how Jimmy’s billboard stunt had to be staged, about how defecating in a sunroof, about slights going back to childhood. The camera zooms in slowly on Chuck as he digs himself deeper and deeper, each word making this crusade seem more like the childish vendetta from a mentally-disturbed man against the imagined slights from his little brother than a high-minded mission to uphold the law. As more and more of his angry, pontificating face fills the frame, he stops, and the ensuing shot of the disciplinary board’s reaction says it all.

Jimmy has done it. In front of the state bar, in front of their partners, in front of the women they love, Jimmy exposes his brother as a mentally ill person ranting and raving, not the dignified legal lion he tried so hard to present himself as, in the courtroom and in that dinner with Rebecca way back when. The episode cuts to a far shot of Chuck, seeming so small, so defeated in the frame, as the buzz of the exit sign looms large next to him. This is his Waterloo, the terrible culmination of two brothers’ issues with one another, laid bare in a court of law for all the world to see.

Chuck, more than Hector or Howard or the cartel, is the villain of Better Call Saul. That makes it easy to hope that Jimmy overcomes him. But in that final moment, Jimmy again mixes fact with fiction. His brother is telling the truth. As paranoid as it sounds, as childish as it is to hold onto certain grudges and resentments, Chuck is correct in all of his assessments. And yet, as the opening scene tells us, he is a prideful individual, unwilling to admit to his illness, to his difficulties, as anything that would make him seem the lesser or not in control. That is his downfall, the fatal flaw that not only keeps him from carrying out his plan, but from what we see in this episode, which costs him the love of both his wife and his brother. That is unspeakably sad -- the story of an individual, even a villain, coming so close, and losing everything worth having in the end, when the worst of him is put on display.

I've seen some gripes that people like Better Call Saul, but that sometimes it feels like it's two different shows hot-glued together. It's true that there's a particular storyline focused on Jimmy's trials and travails with Kim and his brother, and another with Mike getting mixed up with Salamancas. While the leads of each story bump into one another from time to time, there's not a strong plot-based connection between the two of them.

Despite that, in episodes like "Nailed," there's a strong thematic connection between the two of them. In the episode, both Jimmy and MIke have pulled a con of some kind, in the hopes of protecting someone else but in a way that benefits them. Jimmy's adventures at the copy center in "Fifi" led to Kim winning Mesa Verde back, and Mike's road obstacle is intended to draw the cops' attention to Hector and keep him too otherwise occupied to threaten his family, but also leads to Mike pocketing a nice quarter-mil. And each has the added bonus of this windfall coming at the expense of someone they have beef with. For Jimmy, it's a chance to get back at his brother, and for Mike, it's a chance for him to stick it to Hector after causing him such a headache.

And both Mike and Jimmy are pros, so they know how to cover their tracks. Jimmy is meticulous about transposing the address (as Chuck points out, he was never lazy), and removes the evidence of his forgery while Chuck is out of the house. Mike, meanwhile, wears a ski mark, blindfolds the Salamana associate he's ripping off, and makes sure he's neither seen nor heard.

But despite the fact that each of them is absolutely careful not to leave behind any corroborating or identifying evidence, each gets figured out because of who they are, because people who know them know what their M.O. is, and even if there's nothing that ties them to these crimes that would necessarily hold up in court, each incident has the trademark of the man who incited it. Chuck knows that this is what his brother does, that this is who he is, and that lets him piece together what happened. For that matter, Kim knows Jimmy too well to buy Jimmy's pleas of ignorance either. He is a huckster, and the story Chuck tells is perfectly in line with Jimmy's usual methods and motives. By the same token, even though Mike doesn't leave a trace on the road to Mexico, Nacho is able to figure out that it was him who hit the ice cream truck, because only a guy like Mike would have the stones to pull off a heist like that, but would expend such effort to avoid taking life.

And then each of them suffers an incredible setback due to the law of unintended consequences. One of the most striking parts of "Nailed" is how, for once in his life, it seems like Mike is happy. The reliable grump uses his newfound wealth to buy a round for the entire bar, and more notably, he actually smiles in the process! He flirts with the waitress at the diner, and he actually laughs! It's not a sour sarcastic laugh; it's a laugh of incredulity, of relief, that maybe things are going to work out, that maybe he can finally put all of the stress and strain he'd had to deal with since the events we witnessed in "Five-O" behind him.

Then he gets that phone call from Nacho, and as always seems to be the case in Better Call Saul and its predecessor, there's some contingency, some way that the cookie crumbled, that didn't work out just right. A good Samaritan helped the driver that Mike hogtied, and not only did it throw a monkey-wrench in his plans to take Hector off the chessboard, but that good Samaritan was shot and killed for their trouble.

Mike's moral code exposed him to Nacho, and their exchange reveals that for all the effort he went to not to have to kill anyone, not to cause anyone any harm that he could avoid, his choices still led directly to someone being killed, and because he tried to avoid killing a crazy drug lord, or that crazy drug lord's much more calculating uncle, he let a completely innocent life perish. The look on his face when he hears that news shows that it wiped away whatever joy he possessed in the rest of the episode. It's replaced with an expression of utter loss, of failure, of the best laid plans leading to the one thing he was trying to avoid.

And Jimmy has the same experience, albeit in a much different way. Jimmy seems legitimately happy when he and Kim are just palling around, painting their new office and enjoying that joking rapport that makes them feel right for one another. While his feigned surprise is not particularly convincing, there's also genuine glee when he hears that Kim got Mesa Verde back. But there's two things he doesn't count on, and each of them comes back to bite him in a particular way.

The first is that Kim figures out what happened, or at least buys that even if Chuck doesn't have the whole story, or doesn't have things 100% correct, that he's right that Jimmy tampered with Chuck's work in such a way so as to benefit her. After how clear Kim made it that she wasn't comfortable with Jimmy's methods, that she wanted to do things her own way, sink or swim, she understandably feels betrayed, even if she's not yet ready to break things off with Jimmy, let alone give up her client or expose him to the risk of being disbarred or going to jail. Despite that, the scene of the two of them in bed together, and the palpable coldness between them, feels like a mirror image of Chuck and his wife sitting in bed, similarly disconnected, in the cold open to "Rebecca." Chuck's wife isn't in the picture anymore, and we do not yet know why, but that visual rhyme, and Kim's demeanor, suggests that she may not be in Jimmy's life for much longer either.

But there's a more severe unintended consequence for Jimmy as well. Jimmy loves his brother. He hates him a little bit, but he loves him. He doesn't want to hurt Chuck; he just wants to take him down a peg, to stop him from keeping Kim from what she's owed the same way that Chuck did to him. But Jimmy's actions go further than that. They torture Chuck. He begins to suffer under the electric hum of the banking commission's offices once the alleged "discrepancy" is exposed. The blistering buzz of the florescent lights at the copy shop start to take their toll on him. Chuck's clearly at the end of his rope. He's right, but feels like the world is gas-lighting him. And he's right. All at once, it's too much for Chuck, and he cracks his head on the table and crumples to the ground. Once again, Jimmy has plied his trade as best he knows how, never meaning any real harm, but someone he cares about ends up getting seriously hurt in the process. Let's hope that Chuck fares better than Marco did.

In truth, there's a great deal of coincidence and convenience at play in "Nailed." How is it that Kim gets the call to come pick up the Mesa Verde boxes from Chuck's so soon after she wins Mesa Verde back? Chalk it up to narrative convenience. Why would she bring Jimmy along to what is already likely to be a delicate situation? Maybe she knows he's there to gloat and doesn't want to deny him, but figures he'll be on his best behavior. How is it that Chuck not only realizes that Jimmy sabotaged him, but is able to almost preternaturally piece together exactly how he did it? Welll, Chuck's a smart guy, and the show tries to handwave it by having him bring up Jimmy's fake I.D. scam in high school.

So how does Kim obliquely bring up that Jimmy needs to cover his tracks just in time for Chuck to show up to the copy shop when Ernesto just happens to be there? How is it that he just so happens to have the copy shop empty except for him and the clerk with enough time for him to lay out his bribe and his story? How is it that he has the nigh-perfect vantage point to see and understand all that's going on in the shop once Chuck rolls in? Beats me.

The episode, the acting, the direction, the dialogue, the plotting, the themes, and the show are all just too damn good to care. From the wry-edged sweetness between Jimmy and Kim as they're setting up their new apartment, to the perfectly-constructed and tension-filled hit by Mike in the desert, to the hilarious scene where Jimmy talks his way into filming on a school playground, to the frenetically shot and edited final scene where Chuck loses it, to the blistering, incredible moment where Jimmy, Kim, and Chuck are laying it out on the table for one another, there is simply too much greatness in too many modes from this show to be especially bothered by any bit of narrative convenience.

That last scene in particular is an all-timer. In "Pimento," the penultimate episode of Season 1, Jimmy confronted his brother in that same room, with a similar inflammatory atmosphere and tone to their hashing things out. Here, once again only a single episode away from the finale, the show doubles down on that concept. The tables are turned -- this time it's Chuck exposing the double cross, and for that matter, "Nailed" throws Kim into the mix, both to have the other major presence in Jimmy's life represented and exposed to this, but also to stand out as the person who sees each of these misguided men for what they are.

The anger, the betrayal, the pride, the sense of pleading in Chuck's voice as he lays this all out is remarkable. He has been betrayed by the brother whom she had just thanked for looking after him despite their issues with one another. And he has Kim there not just for the boxes, but because he wants to tell her not to make the same mistake he did, of trusting Jimmy. He knows that Jimmy did it for her, but that Jimmy will eventually do the same thing to her--betray her trust, if not twist the knife in quite the same fashion--because he can't help himself. He wants to Kim to see Jimmy clearly, without the lens of affection that's blinded him and which he thinks is blinding her.

But unbeknownst to Chuck, and for that matter the audience, Kim already knows. It's hard to tell at what moment in that scene that Kim believes what Chuck is telling her. Maybe it's Jimmy's less-than-convincing denial. Maybe it's Chuck's declaration that his brother did it for love. Maybe it's just her piecing it together in the space between the accusations and the pleas of innocence. Rhea Seehorn and Kim Wexler play it close to the vest, not letting the viewer be sure what she thinks or what she understands until the moment when her frustration erupts and she punches Jimmy's arm in the car.

Before that though, she offers the frankest, truest, and saddest assessment of the McGill boys that the show has allowed us to witness. The show commits to the feint when it has Kim pushing back at Chuck and telling him that one typo by lantern light is far more likely than Chuck's accurate but paranoid-sounding account of what happens. But then she speaks the absolute truth. Chuck made Jimmy, or at least pushed him this direction. As I've said before, Jimmy idolizes his brother, and if Chuck had returned that affection, returned that trust, just a little bit, who knows where Jimmy's talents might have been put to use.

Thus far, Better Call Saul has seemed to posit that there is something essential about Jimmy that cannot avoid taking the occasional shortcut, that cannot completely suppress his conman ways. But he toiled in the mailroom long enough to make something of himself. He dredged up the Sandpiper case not through pure dishonest trickery, but by using his resourcefulness for good. Maybe Chuck will always see his brother with a law license as a chimp with a machine gun, but with a little guidance, a little help, maybe he could at least be aiming it in the right direction.

That doesn't absolve Jimmy, and neither does Kim. She's right to be sorry for both of them, that each has made awful choices to hurt the other and, meaning to or not, her. For Jimmy, those choices led him to potentially losing the woman he loves, and have left his brother in need of an ambulance. For Mike, those choices have left him with blood on his hands once more. Jimmy and Mike never cross paths, not even for a moment in "Nailed," but by the end of the episode, they're in the exact same place.

Decent over all. Part 1 was too much build-up for what Part 2 delivers.

The things I thought were good:

• The new settings, and a creative plot. I liked the dissociative plot twist. I think it was well executed.

• I liked how in the end Joe was chasing himself rather than a girl. I loved how unhinged it got.

The things I thought were not good:

• I think part of the reason this season fell flat is because we didn’t have any truly great side characters. They were not written well. Most of the side characters did not add much to the plot at all. Take them out the show completely and we haven’t lost much in my opinion. They all seem like cartoon characters. There is not even the slightest depth to them and I have no interest in the relationships they form with Joe.

• I can't really connect to Nadias storyline. Everything she did in P2 was SUCH a horrible decision. What was up with Maryanne not letting Nadia call the cops? It makes no since at all, their reasoning was beyond dumb, it’s just lazy writing.

• Another disappointing character arc was the lady with the camera. She was just Phoebe's stalker? I was hyped to see if she was the one who was finally going to expose him. Or if she was connected to Beck somehow.

• Kate is my least favorite love interest of Joe. There is zero chemistry between her and Jo. Zero.

• I just don't understand why Joe becomes obsessed with Rhys in the first place. It seems so unlike his past obsessions. Had they written this season more tightly, we wouldn't have to wan explanation.

• My suspension of disbelief has been broken many times this season, especially things leading to the ending. Joe just murdered Nadia’s boyfriend in broad daylight in London and they're just chatting next to a dead body for how long.

• It feels like this season the plot armor is even more noticeable than in the last ones - reasoning of Nadia and Marienne for not calling the cops was really weird, all because they wanted Joe to get away with it without facing the police. The PI just handing Joe a new life wasn't explained. He killed Kate's dad incredibly easily for how rich and smart he's supposed to be. He even survived jumping from the bridge.

• Joe has really managed to find not one, but two women who wholly accept him for all his stalking and murdering. And conveniently they both came from very wealthy families who are happy to cover up all of his crimes.

I have a feeling season 5 is gonna be the last. The fact that Joe it now at his absolute worst makes me think they’re preparing for his downfall. Plus it would be fitting for the last season to take place in NYC since that’s where it all started.

[9.2/10] Every season, BoJack Horseman does at least one format-bending, stylized, impressionistic episode. And almost every season it blows me away. I don’t know if this tops “Free Churro” or “Fish Out of Water”, but it at least sits comfortably with them, an allegory for the act of death, the process of letting go and reckoning with your life and its end.

There is something very Sopranos about this, not only the implied demise of our main character, but also in the dream space he occupies, one where the ghosts of his past return to haunt him. This isn’t quite “The Test Dream”, but it fits into that same liminal mode that David Chase’s show (and again, also Mad Men) would go to when they wanted to make their points in a roundabout way.

It is a frightening, beautiful, challenging episode of television. It is frightening because it treats the act of death as a horror movie, where a big pile of sentient black tar goes after you, where the bystanders melt into avian husks, where there’s nothing on the other side. It is beautiful because it conveys the act of leaving this mortal coil as one of art, where true to BoJack’s psyche, each of these deceased people in his life goes out putting on a show, plying their trade in one form or another, until the time is right.

And it’s a challenging episode because it asks us what the value of life and the value of death are. It asks whether there is “good damage” that means something or if that’s just a way to treat being happy as something selfish. It asks if valorizing sacrifice makes us less fulfilled in our lives. It asks if the best parts of our lives justify the worst parts. It asks if the choices we make in life add up to something in the finally tally of our days and nights. It asks if it’s worth it to care, if there’s any sort of reward or self-justification for putting so much effort into our projects and plans.

And it asks whether it’s all worth it, what the best way to live and the best way to die are. It doesn't answer these questions. It only presents contrasting views spoken over a dinner table, one where old wounds are reopened and the faces of death BoJack’s scene and heard and internalized play out his own internal dilemma as he waits on death’s door.

It does all of this with words and tones and images that catch the eye and pierce the heart. The way that the episode presents these debates works because each of these characters feel fully-formed and represent different perspectives. Each captures both a contrasting view of what the best life is, while also reflecting the people that BoJack has known and mourned, in one way or another, in his past. That gives their conflicting points weight, sheathed in the personas of the losses that have shaped his life.

It accomplishes its heights in the shows that each puts on. Sarah Lynn sings a haunting rendition of “Just Keep Dancing”. Her song suggests a guilt still dripping from BoJack’s soul, from bringing her into this business and teaching her that continuing to perform is the only way, until it killed her. Corduroy, not one of the more poignant deaths in the series, dies doing an acrobatic rope trick, one that befits his method of death.
BoJack’s father performs a poem, one where we understand in greater depth not only his suicide, but his wish that he could take it back, that his mid-air clarity was doomed by the choice he made seconds before. And yet, before he takes the stage, he tells BoJack that it didn’t matter, that he wished he’d cared less, and that he put up walls because he didn’t want BoJack or his wife to know how much he did care. Maybe that’s just what BoJack wants or needs to hear right now, or maybe it’s the confession of a man more complicated than BoJack quite understood until he became a xerox of a xerox of him.

BoJack’s mother performs the routine we heard about in “Free Churro” accompanied by the uncle whose death helped spin her life out of control. Her ribbon dance has a haunting quality to it, with moves that seem impossible, accompaniment that floats in the air, and a contrast between the hard part and the easy part that leaves her long alabaster prop irrevocably stained with the mark of black death.

And then there’s Kazzaz, the master of ceremonies, there to rundown BoJack’s life: what he did, what he didn’t do, who he was, and who he wasn’t. When it’s all over, the goop takes him too, killing him slowly in contrast to his compatriots, eating away parts of his body like the cancer did, until the drip-drip-drip finally ends. Each has a performance, and each leaves through that door to oblivion in a way that’s befitting.

The show captures the dream logic of all of this wonderfully. Without a wisp of transition, Sarah Lynn goes from being the little girl BoJack met on the set of his show, to the adult performer who succeeded later in life, to the drugged out starlet who died sitting next to him. The man who represents his father has Butterscotch’s voice, but Secretariat's body, nicely representing the way that BoJack conflated his real life dad with the one he imagined filling that space as he sat in front of the television screen. And Beatrice goes from being the younger, vibrant woman BoJack once knew, to the sick old woman he left in a home.

This isn’t a show that’s typically particularly well-designed or animated. There’s creative material in the visual presentation for sure, but normally the actual animation is fairly basic. But here, BoJack Horseman’s production team really challenges themselves. The flooding of the black gloop, the impossible geography of the home where BoJack meets his dead friends and family, the perspective changes as he runs through it and ends up back where he started, all have an immediacy and shifting perspective that the show doesn't always go for.

But the most haunting image is the glimpses we get of BoJack in the pool, an image that connects to the show’s intro, and hints at what’s really going on here. There is a boldness to all of this, not only killing off your main character, but doing so in a way that breaks with the formal limits of your series, that confronts him with the death he’s been a party to, and presents his brain seeing and doing what it needs to in order to make peace with that.

It ends on a note of nihilism, on the possibility that none of this mattered, that there’s nothing he could do to stop it, and that the best and only thing to do now is die. But when he does, he wants to be on the phone with Diane, he wants to know how he’s doing. BoJack is dying, but even in that, he cuts against the nihilism. If none of it matters anyway, even if it all ends anyway, he wants to die caring, caring about someone he loves, someone he wants to be happy and whose joys make him happy, whether he’ll be around to see it or not.

Wednesday is entertaining casual watching, but not something I'm likely to re-watch. Maybe my hopes were too high with all the big names involved. I was expecting an Addams Family show with a lot of Tim Burton influence but we got a CW teenage drama with Addams Family characters and barely any Burton influence. Jenna Ortega is carrying that show because it is mediocre. It would have been better as a movie. It's very much a Netflix generic show, nothing spectacular. There are definitely good parts to it, but cannot be compared to the classics.

1. As I said, Jenna Ortega is note perfect as Wednesday. She captured the essence of what the character was all about. However, I found her a bit too "the new girl who's not like the other girls in those YA movies/shows", which annoyed me a lot. A school full of 'outcasts' and everyone but Wednesday acts like your regular high schooler she looks down at. And it feels like the writing started to slip on the second half because Wednesday just going around accusing people made her seem kind of dumb.

2. Catherine Zeta Jones and Luis Guzman have zero chemistry, and I'm sorry but Luis Guzmán just does not have charm as Gomez. The family, minus Wednesday, is miscast to be fair. Pugsley was there as decoration. Morticia is uninteresting. Genuinely shocking how little effort was put in for the supporting characters vs Wednesday, I have to imagine it was the script and direction. The male characters are especially bland, I got so tired of the back and forth with Xavier and Tyler. It felt like almost all the relationships between characters were told to us and not shown to us. Everything had to happen for the plot but it effected character's development.

3. A lot of the dialogue lands so flat, "Why do u look so pale?", "Wednesday always looks half dead" - like I get what they're trying to do but it's so on the nose, it doesn't seem organic.

All in all, Wednesday was OK for light watching but I wouldn't set up your expectations too high, it definitely gets better as the show goes on which is a good sign but it doesn't feel so much like an 'Addams' show, and it lacks the screwball charm of the originals. The Addams family as an ensemble unapologetically juxtaposed against normal society seems to work better than yet another gothy, supernatural high school drama. I just feel the need to say that for those who may have been looking for something darker in tone.

[9.3/10] People in Better Call Saul are always making plans. It’s one the things that makes this show and its predecessor so engrossing. In between the committed character work and gorgeous desert styling, there’s intertwining schemes that merge together or crash into one another until our heroes and villains are left to pick up the pieces.

“Wexler v. Goodman” gives us this sort of clash of the uber-prepared titans in spades. As the title promises, it gives us Kim’s plan being superseded, against her will, by Saul’s plan. It gives us Lalo’s surprisingly solid plot to sic the DEA on Gus Fring jostled by Lalo suddenly having to deal with Mike’s equal and opposite machinations to get him in trouble with the law over his actions in last season’s finale. And at the same time, it gives us a glimpse into how the personalities of those involved play into things.

Kim’s plan reflects who she is. After coming so close to playing dirty with Kevin and Mesa Verde to secure a win for Mr. Acker, she pulls back and wants to fix everything, even if it means self-sacrifice. After Rich called her out for last week’s skullduggery, she’s had second thoughts. Now, she wants to reach a settlement with Mr. Acker whatever his number is, and pay for any surplus above what Mesa Verde’s willing to cover out of her own pocket. To boot, she apologizes to Rich (for the yelling, not for the scheming), and figures out a way to make that right too.

It’s the classic Kim Wexler play. Come close to complete and total amoral gamesmanship to win, only to have her conscience or fear of getting caught flare up and use those same planning skills to restore the status quo. As the cold open shows, in the end, Kim does the safe thing, the right thing, even if it puts extra strain and burden on her.

She’s just partnered with the wrong guy. Jimmy enjoys the hunt as much as the prize. Sure, he likes to win, something that Kim calls him out for in their closing blow-up. But often it has less to do with his instrumental goal and more the joy he derives from using his gift for grift to come out on top.

That’s the point of his plan to use a pair of sex workers to embarrass Howard Hamlin in public (in front of Clifford Main, no less). Sure, part of Jimmy’s routine is exacting revenge on Howard because it’s not otherwise possible to inflict it on Chuck. But part of it is just a reminder that Saul can’t let a good idea go to waste, even if that idea would hurt people, even if it would mean tricking someone he loves. The scheming itself is too much fun, the rush of victory too great, and the hubris that tells him there’s no scrape Saul Goodman can’t con his way out of (or into), is too inescapable.

So is the well-plotted wrath of Mike Ehrmantraut. Apart from the moral complexities of Kim’s scheme running aground on Jimmy’s, part of the fun and excitement of Better Call Saul is simply the chance to see people do what they do best. Most of Mike’s portion of “Wexler v. Goodman” sees him simply tightening the noose around Lalo, through his knowledges of what strings to pull to bring law enforcement into his adversary’s business.
The one exception to that is his brief conversation with Nacho, who’s framed in a beautiful shot in the lead-up to his meeting with Gus. That sequence establishes a few plot basics. Mike was persuaded by Gus’s speech last week and is in Fring’s employ once more. Nacho answers to Mike now in this double agent game. And Lalo is stepping up his plans to chip away at Gus’s work and business until Don Eladio and company decide he’s not worth the trouble, necessitating Mike’s counterattack.

But it also features the one non-scheme-related moment in that part of the episode. Nacho challenges Mike on the man he’s working for. Mike challenges him back on Mike’s warning about the muck Nacho was stepping into. And yet, despite his characteristically gruff demeanor about the whole thing, he expresses sympathy for Nacho in his grumbly Mike way with just a look and three words: “then we’ll talk.” We know Mike’s fate. We don’t yet know Nacho. But if there’s anyone with the resourcefulness to get Nacho out of the life he was warned off from, it’s the man who gave him that warning.

We see that loud and clear as Mike springs his trap on Lalo. It’s a queasy thrill to see him posing as a private investigator representing the family of the clerk Lalo killed, coaxing a witness into feeding the police another salient detail. It’s fun to see him dress down a low-level rookie at the precinct to get him to unwittingly deliver the report that connects the dots of Lalo’s hit and run for the investigating officers. It’s a joy to see him use a jury-rigged police radio to sic the cops on Lalo once the proper charges and evidence have been properly baited for the investigators. The whole thing is a symphony of scheming.

One of the frustrating things about Lalo’s introduction is that his “leap through the ceiling, kill a civilian, and crash a car” felt weirdly sloppy for this show’s antagonists to get away with. One of the pleasant surprises of this season is Lalo’s thoughtfulness, his attention to Gus’s moves and his sharp plan to put pressure on Fring’s operations. And one of the more satisfying developments on that front is to see Mike bind those two together, bringing Lalo to task for his earlier sloppiness to help short-circuit the Salamanca boss du jour’s bigger, smarter scheme.

Oddly enough, that’s essentially what Jimmy does to Kim in their half of the episode. Kim has a plan. Jimmy thinks he has a better one. So he doesn't care that Kim is waving the white flag, that she doesn't want to unleash their secret weapon on Kevin, or that she doesn't want to put herself at risk with her job or her most important client. More accurately, he cares, but only enough to think he can overcome all these impediments to deliver the outcome he wants and, thinks is what’s best for Kim.

The most revealing and fun part of the episode comes when he lays out his idea for a series of ads to his usual camera crew. The mini-J.J. Abrams shoots him down, telling him it can’t be done in the way that Jimmy wants in the time that he wants it. But Saul Goodman won’t be deterred, even if he has to come up with his own spray-painted green screen, micro-manage every step of the production, and corral a host of community theater actors into a nail salon. No matter what other people say, when Jimmy is in his element, he wants to do things his way, and damn the consequences.

So when it comes time to agree to the settlement that Kim and Jimmy pre-arranged, Jimmy calls an audible, entirely unbeknownst to Kim. Instead of the $45,000 he and Kim agreed on as a settlement figure, Saul shocks the room with a demand for four million dollars. He kicks Kevin Wachtell in the teeth with a disc full of ads that slander Kevin’s father (played by Bob Odenkirk’s former Mr. Show compatriot Jay Johnston!). And he goes nuclear in the exact way that Kim didn’t want before and doesn't want in the moment -- trying to leverage the discovery that the Mesa Verde logo infringes on the copyright to a famous photo taken by an indigenous photographer.

The ploy infuriates Kim. It spurs incredulity and outbursts in the room. But it gets Kevin to deal. He agrees to move the call center, pay Mr. Acker and the photographer, and even make public apologies to each. What’s more, it (theoretically) helps protect Kim, because her reactions of resistance and frustration and anger in the face of Saul’s ploy are genuine, giving her the perfect emotional alibi for Rich’s suspicion that she and Jimmy are in cahoots.

In theory, everybody wins. Kim gets her way and a piece of her soul back with Mr. Acker getting to stay in his house and take the money. An indigenous photographer will receive proper credit and compensation for having her art co-opted by a commercial cowboy. Kim is above suspicion from Rich or anyone else. Kevin is out some cash and a little dignity, but he still gets his call center and an end to this insanity.

But Kim knows Jimmy well enough to know that he didn’t do it for any of that. He did it because he likes to win. He did because he knows he’s good at grifting and likes to ply his trade, his art, wherever he can. And she knows that he doesn't care if he has Kim’s consent to do it. All of these plans and schemes and plots on Better Call Saul are an absolute joyride for the audience, but when Jimmy involves people he cares about in them, people get hurt, and Kim’s seen that close enough second hand to be ready to be done with it.

We see in the flashback to her refusal to get into the car with her drunken mom that Kim knows how to recognize trouble, to recognize someone who knows how to sidestep blame, paper over misdeeds, and try to talk a person they care about into making a bad decision. That flashback suggests that part of Kim’s affections for Jimmy may come from seeing some of her mom in him. But it also tells us that she knows well enough not to get into a car with someone who could make a crazy swerve halfway down the road.

Or does she? The crazy cliffhanger that “Wexler v. Goodman” leaves us with is Kim’s suggestion that she and Jimmy should either break up or...get married. It’s a strange suggestion, one that nevertheless comports with Saul’s statement in Breaking Bad that he’s twice divorced. There’s the sense of Kim as a moth to the flame, occasionally flying just far away from Jimmy to break orbit, or come just close enough to being burned to flutter away, only to keep coming back to his heat.

It’s the opposite of a plan. It’s an impulse, a reaction, a reflex that could bind her to someone, however temporarily, who thinks he can come up with a roadmap out of any jam he gets himself, or her into. Hopefully this one won’t leave Kim, once again, walking home alone and carrying all that weight by herself.

[9.8/10] It seems like every season, there’s one episode of BoJack Horseman that just floors me, and this may be the best of them all. More than BoJack’s dream sequence in S1, more than his unforgivable act at the end of S2, more than the even the harrowing end for Sarah Lynn in S3, “Time’s Arrow” is a creative, tightly-written, absolutely devastating episode of television that is the crown jewel of Season 4 and possibly the series.

The inventiveness of the structure alone sets the episode apart. It feels of a piece with the likes of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind for finding outside the box ways to communicate the idea of dementia and the brain purging and combining and reconstructing dreams and memories into one barely-comprehensible stew. The way that the episode jumps back and forth through time is a superb way to convey the way this story is jumbled up and hard to keep a foothold on for Beatrice.

And that doesn’t even take into account the other amazing visual ways the show communicates the difficulty and incoherence or what Beatrice is experiencing. The way random people lack features or have scratched out faces, the way her mother is depicted only in silhouette with the outline of that scar, the way the images stop and start or blur together at emotional moments all serve to enhance and deepen the experience.

What’s even more impressive is how “Time’s Arrow” tells a story that begins in Beatrice’s youth and ends in the present day, without ever feeling rushed or full of shortcuts. Every event matters, each is a piece of the whole, from a childhood run-in with scarlet fever to her coming out party to an argument about the maid, that convincingly accounts for how the joyful, smart young girl we meet in the Sugarman home turns into the bitter husk of a woman BoJack is putting in a home. It’s an origin story for Beatrice, and a convincing one, but also one of the parental trauma that has filtered its way down from BoJack’s grandparents all the way down to poor Hollyhock.

And my god, the psychological depth of this one! I rag on the show a decent amount for writing its pop psychology on the screen, but holy cow, the layers and layers of dysfunction and reaction and cause and effect here are just staggering. The impact of Beatrice’s father’s cajoling and her mother’s lobotomy on her development as a woman in a society that tried to force her into a role she didn’t want or necessarily fit is striking in where its tendrils reach throughout her development. The idea of rebelling against that, and the way BoJack’s dad fits into that part of her life is incredible. And the story of growing resentment over the years from a couple who once loved each other, or at least imagined they did and then found the reality different than the fantasy is striking and sad.

But that all pales in comparison in how it all of these events come together to explain Beatrice’s fraught, to say the least, relationship to motherhood and children. The climax of the episode, which intersperses scenes of the purging that happens when Beatrice contracts scarlet fever as a child, her giving birth to BoJack, and her helping her husband’s mistress give birth all add up to this complex, harrowing view of what being a mom, what having a child, amounts to in Beatrice’s eyes.

The baby doll that burns in the fire in her childhood room is an end of innocence, a gripping image that ties into Beatrice’s mother’s grief over Crackerjack’s demise and whether and how it’s acceptable to react to such a trauma. The birth of BoJack, for Beatrice, stands as the event that ruined her life. BoJack is forced to absorb the resentments that stem from Beatrice’s pregnancy being the thing that effectively (and societally) forced her to marry BoJack’s father, sending her into a loveless marriage and a life she doesn’t want all because of one night of rebellion she now bitterly regrets. For her, BoJack is an emblem of the life she never got to lead, and he unfairly suffers her abuses because of it, just like Beatrice suffered her own parents’ abuses.

Then there’s the jaw-dropping revelation that Hollyhock is not BoJack’s daughter, but rather, his sister. As telegraphed as Princess Carolyn’s life falling apart felt, this one caught me completely off-guard and it’s a startling, but powerful revelation that fits everything we know so well and yet completely changes the game. It provides the third prong of this pitchfork, the one where Beatrice is forced to help Henrietta, the woman who slept with her husband, avoid the mistake that she herself made, and in the process, tear a baby away from a mother who desperately wants to hold it. It is the culmination of so many inherited and passed down traumas and abuses, the kindness and cruelty unleashed on so many the same way it was unleashed on her, painted in a harrowing phantasmagoria of events through Beatrice’s life.

And yet, in the end, even though BoJack doesn’t know or understand these things, he cannot simply condemn his mother to suffer even if he’s understandably incapable of making peace with her. Such a horrifying series of images and events ends with an act of kindness. BoJack doesn’t understand the cycle of abuse that his mom is as much a part of as he is, but he has enough decency, enough kindness in him to leave Beatrice wrapped in a happy memory.

Like she asked his father to do, like she asked her six-year-old son to do, BoJack tells her a story. It’s a story of a warm, familiar place, of a loving family, of the simple pleasures of home and youth that began to evaporate the moment her brother didn’t return from the war. It’s BoJack’s strongest, possibly final, gift to his mother, to save her from the hellscape of her own mind and return her to that place of peace and tranquility.

More than ever, we understand the forces that conspired to make BoJack the damaged person he is today. It’s just the latest psychological casualty in a war that’s been unwittingly waged by different people across decades. But for such a difficult episode to watch and confront, it ends on a note of hope, that even with all that’s happened, BoJack has the spark of that young, happy girl who sat in her room and read stories, and gives his mother a small piece of kindness to carry with her. There stands BoJack, an individual often failing but at least trying to be better, and out there is Hollyhock, a sweet young woman, who represent the idea that maybe, just as this cycle was built up bit-by-bit, so too may it be dismantled, until that underlying sweetness is all that’s left.

[7.5/10] I wondered to myself, what was the point of those Breaking Bad flashbacks. Sure, it's cool to see Walt and Jesse and the RV and even the flat bottom flask again. But I was ready to write off the trip back to Saul's first meeting with the meth-dealers in season 2 of Breaking Bad as simple fan service.

It took the scene with Mike for me to get it. The point, at least on my read, is a theme that Better Call Saul has hit time and again -- Saul can't leave well enough alone. He won't listen to Mike that this chemistry teacher is a rank amateur who's going to end up with a dark result. And Gene won't listen to Jeff or his friend who warn that it's a bad idea to darken the doorstep of another poor man stricken with cancer.

We know how things end for Saul in Breaking Bad. The choice to throw in with Walter White rather than be satisfied with his rewarding, if not exactly classy law practice ultimately ruins him, and takes away everything he'd achieved in the years before and after the events of this series. The choice to cast aside any moral hesitation and callously rob a dying man of his finances, to push the bounds of the pragmatic given how long it takes between when they dosed the guy and when Gene tries to complete the deed, will almost certainly lead to a similarly bad end.

Yes, it's neat to flashback and see some of the old faces from Breaking Bad again. It's cool to learn that Huell made it out and see Francesca get one last payday. But the takeaway is simple. Saul lost everything. He has no more fortune or empire. The cops are still after him. His former allies are either dead or have moved on. And even Kim, who asked about him, seems to want nothing to do with him anymore, via a tantalizingly opaque phone call between her and Gene.

So left with no other options, Gene makes the same choice that Slippin' Jimmy did over and over again. He goes back to running scams. He can't leave well enough alone. He does it without any joy, because he's not doing this out of pleasure. He's doing it out of desperation, addition, sadness, and loneliness. He is scraping the last bit of thrill from the bottom of the jar, and if his star-crossed visit to Walter White is any indication, it's likely to be the last step in his sad, pitiable, but always avoidable fall from grace.

EDIT: Here's my usual, more fulsome review for anyone who's interested -- https://thespool.net/reviews/tv/tv-recap-better-call-saul-season-6-episode-11/

[8.4/10] We live in the finite. Everyone reading this has a limited amount of time on this plane of existence. Maybe you believe there’s an eternal paradise waiting on the other end. Maybe you believe in reincarnation. Maybe you believe that we’re simply waves whose essence is returned to the fabric of the universe. Whatever you believe, almost all of us can agree that whatever we have here, our fragile world and fragile bodies, are not built to last.

That is both terrifying and maddening: terrifying because, like Janet, none of us truly knows what’s on the other side, and maddening because there is so much to do and see and experience even in this finite world, and given how few bearimies we have on this mortal coil, most of us will only have the chance to sample a tiny fraction of it.

So The Good Place gives us a fantasy. It’s not a traditional one, of endless bliss or perpetual pleasure or unbridled success. Instead, it imagines an afterlife where there’s time enough to become unquestionably fulfilled, to accomplish all that we could ever want, to step into the bounds of the next life or the next phase of existence or even oblivion at peace. The finale to Michael Schur’s last show, Parks and Recreation, felt like a dose of wish fulfillment, but with this ending, The Good Place blows it out of the water.

Each of our heroes receives the ultimate send-off. By definition, nearly all of them have found ultimate satisfaction, a sense of peacefulness in their existence that makes them okay to leave it, having connected with their loved ones, improved themselves, and accomplished all that they wanted to. If “One Last Ride” seemed to give the denizens of Pawnee everything they’d ever wanted, “Whenever You’re Ready” makes that approach to a series finale nigh-literal for the residents of The Good Place.

And yet, there’s a sense of melancholy to it all, if only because every person who emerges from paradise at peace and ready to leave, has to say goodbye to people who love them. Most folks take it in stride, with little more than an “oh dip” or an “aw shoot”, but there’s still something sad about people who leave loved ones behind, and whom the audience has come to know and love, bidding what is, for all intents and purposes, a final farewell.

But The Good Place finds ways to make that transcendent joy for each of our heroes feel real. Jason...completes a perfect game of Madden (controlling Blake Bortles, no less). He gets loving send-offs from his father and best friend. He enjoys one last routine with his dance crew. He inadvertently lives the life of a monk while trying to find the necklace he made for Janet. It is the combination of the idiotic, the sweet, and the unexpectedly profound, which has characterized Jason.

Tahani learns every skill she dreamed of mastering (including learning wood-working from Ron Swanson and/or Nick Offerman!). She connects with her sister and develops a loving relationship with her parents. And when it’s time to go, she realizes she has more worlds left to conquer and becomes an architect, a fitting destination for someone who was always so good at designing and creating events for the people she cares about. Hers is one of the few stories that continues, and it fits her.

Chidi doesn't have the same sort of list of boxes checked that leads him to the realization that he has nothing more to do. Sure, he’s read all of the difficult books out there and seemingly refined the new afterlife system (with help from the council) to where it’s running smoothly, almost on automatic. But his realization is more from a state of being happy with where everything is, with what he’s experienced.

He has dinner with his best friend and Eleanor’s best friends and has so many times. He’s spent endless blissful days with the love of his (after)life staring at the sunset. His mom kissed Eleanor and left lipstick on her cheek, which Eleanor’s mom wiped off. I love that. I love that it’s something more ineffable for Chidi, a sense of the world in balance from all the bonds he’s forged rather than a list of things he’s done. And I love that he felt that readiness to move on for a long time, but didn’t for Eleanor’s sake.

Look, we’re at the end of the series, and I’m still not 100% on board with Eleanor/Chidi, which is a flaw. But I want to like it. I like the idea of it. And I especially like the idea of someone being at peace, but sacrificing the need to take the next step for the sake of someone they love. The saddest part of this episode is Eleanor doing everything she can to show Chidi that there’s more to do, only to accept that the moral rule in this situation says that her equal and opposite love means letting him go. Chidi’s departure is hard, but his gifts to Eleanor are warm, and almost justify this half-formed love story that’s driven so much of the show.

Unfortunately, no matter how much peace he finds, Michael cannot walk through the door that leads to whatever comes next. So instead, he gets the thing he always wanted -- to become human, or as Eleanor puts it, a real boy. Ted Danson plays the giddiness of this to the hilt, his excitement at doing simple human things, the symbolism of him learning to play a guitar on earth, on taking pleasure in all the mundane annoyances and simple fun and things we meat-sacks take for granted. Each day of humanity is a new discovery for Michael, and there’s something invigorating about that, something heightened by his own delight at not knowing what happens next in the most human of ways.

The one character who gets the least indication of a next step is Janet. We learn that she is Dr. Manhattan, experiencing all of time at once. We see her accept Jason’s passing, hug our departing protagonists, and take steps to make herself just a touch more human to make her time with Jason a little more right. But hers is a story of persistence, of continued growth, in a way that we don’t really have for anyone else.

Along the way, the show checks in with scads of minor characters to wrap things up. We see the other test subjects having made it into The Good Place (or still being tested). We see Doug Forcett deciding to party hard now that he’s in Heaven. We see Shawn secretly enjoy the new status quo, and Vicky go deep into her new role, and The Judge...get into podcasts! As much as this show tries to get the big things right for all of its major characters, it also takes time to wrap up the little things and try not to leave any loose threads from four seasons of drop-ins across the various planes of existence.

That just leaves Eleanor. She takes the longest of any of the soul squad to be ready. She tries, becoming okay with Chidi’s absence. She overcomes her fear of being alone. But most importantly, she does what she’s come to do best -- help people better herself. There’s self-recognition in the way her final great act, the thing that makes her okay with leaving this plane and entering another, is seeing herself in Mindy St. Clair and trying to save her. The story of The Good Place is one of both self-improvement and the drive to help others do the same. Saving Mindy, caring about her, allows Eleanor to do both in one fell swoop.

So she too walks through the door, beautifully rendered as the bend between two trees in a bucolic setting. Her essence scatters through the universe, with one little brilliant speck of her wave, crashing back into Michael’s hands, reminding him of his dear friend, and inspiring him to pass on that love and sincerity back into the world. It is, as trite as it sounds, both an end and a beginning, something circular that returns the good deeds our protagonists have done, the good people they have become, into some type of cycle that helps make the rest of this place a little better.

Moments end. Lives end. T.V. shows end. The Good Place has its cake and eats it too, returning to and twisting key moments like Michael welcoming Eleanor to the afterlife, while cutting an irrevocable path from here through the crash of the wave. It embraces the way that the finite gives our existence a certain type of meaning, whether we have a million bearimies to experience the joys and wonders of the universe, or less than a hundred years to see and do and feel whatever we can. And it sends Team Cockroach home happy, wherever and whatever their new “home” may be.

In that, The Good Place is a marvel, not just because it told a story of ever-changing afterlife shenanigans, not just because it tried to tackle the crux of moral philosophy through an off-the-wall network sitcom, but because it ended a successful show, after only four seasons, by sending each of them into another phase of existence and made it meaningful. There’s a million things to do with our limited time on this planet, but watching The Good Place was an uplifting, amusing, challenging, and above all worthwhile use of those dwindling minutes, even if we’ll never have as many as Eleanor or Chidi, Michael or Tahani, Janet or Jason, or any of the other souls lucky enough to be able to choose how much eternity is enough.

That was such an incredibly sad but perfect and correct ending.

• I don't understand people who didn't like the ending because their favorite character didn't win. After 4 seasons with these despicable characters did anyone expect the Roy kids to unite and defeat the bad guy with the power of love and friendship? It was never going to end that way.

• The three siblings just could never get over their egos. They all proved, through the 4 seasons, that they’re basically useless and the only reason they were ever in the discussion to be CEO is because Logan was their father. They'd rather destroy everything than have only one of the trio take the upper hand. Shiv just could not let her brother have a win, even if it meant her losing as well. Perfectly summed up their whole family dynamic and the show as a whole.

• The siblings are so entitled and self-absorbed they never saw Tom coming. They’ve never had to work for a damn thing. I don't like Tom, but it makes sense for someone like Tom, who worked his way from the ground up and earned himself the position he was in.

• The scene with the siblings making that awful smoothie and them watching their dad reveal yet another side of himself was so nice among the insanity that came in between.

• That penultimate shot with Shiv and Tom in the car was phenomenal. Complete shift in the power dynamic. After marrying him specifically because she thought he was weak enough to keep holding power over.

• Kendall not winning every season. That’s rough.

• Willa revamping Logan's apartment with a cow print couch.

• In the end Conor was the only one to have any kind of a relationship with Logan, the other kids are never shown having moments with him like he did at the recorded dinner.

• Greg translating the Swedish in real time is the smartest thing he’s ever done. Four seasons and I cannot for the life of me understand why he would put up with that. His uncle offered him $250mil to get away from the firm.

• But the biggest thing for me coming out of this episode is Kendall’s son isn’t really his. It really came out of nowhere and seemed more like a fact than a rumor the way everyone reacted to it.

All in all, Succession stuck to the show’s core till the end. In a way it’s a predictable ending but because it’s television and we expect some twist where a cool character comes out on top we don’t expect the expected. The outcome is pretty much what you’d expect from all the characters knowing their faults

I am incredibly grateful to Game of Thrones for this adventure I have found myself sucked into for some years now. I am grateful for all the emotions it brought me since day one, bitter and sweet alike. I am grateful for all the laughs, all the tears, all the jokes and gags, every single bit of it, I really am grateful and appreciative of it all. It's been just... wonderful.

That said, I am feeling robbed and betrayed right about now. This ending is arguably one of the worst series finales in the history of television and trust me I realize how bold of a statement that is. The terrible violations the characters have suffered this season, the lack of proper resolution to many of the plots and narratives developed over seasons worth of buildup, the seeking of shock value at the expense of quality writing... that and much much more solidified this as an absolute disappointment of a finale, as opposed to the marvel wrap it could've given this cultural phenomenon.

This episode does have its positives, as always the score, acting and cinematography are perfectly performed but I just do not think it's nearly enough to compensate for how lackluster the writing has been, as much as I wish they did. Oh well, sad as it may be, I'll just hold on to the good stuff and hope that GRRM's book, once finished, will tackle the ending in a more coherent, more respectful and more meaningful way. It's been real y'all...

P.S: I'll leave this here lest some people jump me again. This comment is a representation of my own personal opinion, I am entitled to one just as all of you are. If you enjoyed this season and felt this finale delivered what you were looking for then more power to you mate, but that doesn't nullify my opinion nor does it make yours any valid. If you want to discuss or challenge my views, I'd be more than happy to engage you on that basis but if all you have to offer are petty remarks then please keep them to yourself.

[7.5/10] Definitely a classic. I love the humor in this one about how things are so different in the future, from the running gags about people pronouncing things as “ex-mas” and “axe”, to the Professor’s unnecessary nudity, to the crazy but hilarious concept of a killer robot santa claus being on the loose every year. There’s also just the silly, isolated nonsense that Futurama does well, from Hermes’s extended repetition of “Xmas” to the silliness of Fry gradually falling from a big digital clock, to the third act’s riff on a classic O. Henry tale. (And the little swerve with Leela’s axe and the Xmas tree is great!)

But the main story of the episode is good too. I really like how the first two acts are about Fry and Leela each feeling lonely around the holidays, with the two of them finding solace in each other in ways that are still cynical but sweet in that trademark Futurama way, only for the third act to go whole hog into the Santa-bot attack. It plays with holiday tropes while giving them a wry, dystopian bent that really works.

And I also enjoyed the B-story, which is basically just Bender engaging in some of his usual deceit and debauchery, except with a yuletide sheen. Him being a jerk at a soup kitchen or to orphan “Tinny Tim” should be too dark, but it’s just so over the top that it loops back around to being silly.

Overall, a great Xmas outing for the show, with a lot of funny gags and a solid story to support them that plays on traditional holiday themes in an amusing way.

[7.0/10 on a post-classic Simpsons scale] I appreciate the central observation of this one -- the irony that a show devoted to evoking the sense of niceness resulting in a culture of nastiness behind the scenes. But for an episode that’s satirizing Ellen’s fall from grace, it’s surprisingly gloves on about everything.

Krusty is genuinely decent for once, and leaves not because his toxicity is exposed but because he gets a better gig. Nobody’s really called to account for being a jerk, with it written off as a systemic problem rather than a personal one. Normally, I love that sort of thing (hello fellow fans of The Wire!), but it seems odd, coming from people who make TV especially, to absolve the individuals involved from creating that toxic environment and just chalking it up to an inevitable outgrowth of having to come up with ideas and produce television on a weekly basis. The closest we get is Lindsey Nagle, who acts like a jerk to the assistants and deliberately keeps Marge on shifting ground, but even there, the deal feels a little miscalibrated.

The episode also can’t figure out what to do with the rest of the cast during this semi-out-of-character interlude. The bit at the pet store is a yawn. After last week’s episode, the metahumor of Bart not minding Krusty’s format change because he has seven-hundred classic episodes to stream doesn’t have the same punch. And the intervention based humor was tired.

Still, despite those challenges, I appreciate this one as a character story for Marge. Her starting out brimming with ideas and exuding actual nice to her coworkers, only to crumple under the pressure of the job and turning out creatively tapped and as mean as the others before pulling back from the brink is a good arc. I don’t really watch daytime T.V., but the jabs at their soft pleasures landed well enough. And there’s even some solid animation here, from Krusty’s dances to Marge’s nightmare sequence.

All-in-all, this feels like an episode that could have been better with a few more passes, since it touches on some interesting ideas and bits, but can’t quite pull them off to perfection, but still has strong concepts at its core.

Played the game couple of times and before playing the game I never thought a story could be so well told like it was in this game. The story was never about the virus, infected etc. For me that was just a backdrop for the character study that was happening in this story. Father dealing with the grief of losing a daughter, being shell of a human being and just surviving for 20 years, not allowing anyone close to his heart until Ellie comes along.

This adaptation, even though spot on the environment, sound design, character clothing etc, is completely missing in that emotional character study department. I don't mind if the show runners along with Neil are changing the story, adding the backstory, moving in different directions etc as long as they give us that same emotional expressions of characters and bring that connection between characters and the audience to the small screens in form of this TV show. These first two episodes completely missed the mark in that department. Ellie, despite being a scared, smart and respectful 14 year old girl in the game, turned into a "always answering questions with smart ass comments", completely disrespectful 14 year old girl in the show. There are tons of other examples about Ellie, Joel and Tess I could write and mention here but I really don't have the energy.

Even though very well done first two episodes from the production point, it completely missed the mark in my view to present these characters and their struggles from the game to TV screens and get the new comers to the story to feel what players felt when playing the game.

I lost count of how many times groups of people with guns happened upon other groups of people with guns in this episode. The episode did feature the return of Daniel, which is a plus, except that a major plot point last season was that he was suffering from dementia, and now in this episode, he's just back as the leader of a group of parents, fresh as a daisy? The writers seemingly tried to explain away his miraculous recover from dementia by having him drink yerba mate for "focus." Seriously?? Call every neurologist in the the country! Fear the Walking Dead has come up with a simple cure for Alzheimer's! :facepalm: The big reveal about PADRE was super lame and underwhelming. Otherwise, the writing in this episode is dreadful and often nonsensical, and the acting is uninspired. At one point, Crane is really worried when his father leaves some binoculars behind. I mean, he's way more worried than anyone on planet earth should ever be about binoculars. So he runs off to find his father and give him the binoculars. His sister asks why he has to take the binoculars to his father, and he says, "Because how will he see what's coming without them?" Dreadful.

It's almost as if everyone involved knows this shit sucks, and they're just trying to get to the finish line at this point.

[7.6/10] Hey! An actually good first season episode of the show! Full disclosure, I’m probably overrating this one a bit because it’s the first episode of the series that really felt like even a nascent version of what Parks and Rec would become.

You have Leslie being well-meaning and sympathetic. Her desire to break into the “boys club,” the outsized importance she places on this, and her endearing awkwardness trying to make it work is all quite sweet and well done. (Heck, even Mark seems kind of charming here with the way he’s nice to her.) On the other end of the spectrum, Leslie being so repentant and scrupulous about breaking into that gift basket is pure Knope, especially in her series of videotaped apologies to the people she let down. Classic stuff.

Plus, we get our first great Ron-Leslie moment. Ron standing up for Leslie in her hearing with the City Manager is a great moment, that fits Ron’s libertarian sensibilities and shows the first bit of recognition for Leslie’s better qualities. And her stressing over a letter in her file, with Mark telling her it’s the thing that makes her a member of the “club,” is the perfect button.

We even get a B-plot of Andy trying to clean the house (and himself) for Ann, where he seems like the well-meaning goofball P&R fans know and love rather than the more jerky layabout he started off as.

Overall, it’s nice to dive back into the first season and actually come up with an episode like this where you see the seeds for what Parks and Rec would grow into rather than something that feels like an alien adaptation of a show you really like.

I don't know how to feel. Mixed feelings on the finale for me. Not great, not terrible. Was it perfect? No. Am I completely satisfied? No. Are there many loose ends that I will never understand? Absolutely. Can you ever please your whole audience? No.

• Dorothy got her closure and was finally able to grieve. Her knowing that Leanne brought Jericho back for almost a year helped the sting of finally waking up. So yes, the “reborn” doll technically helped. Leanne got her closure as well. She got the mother figure that she had long yearned for. Dorothy and Sean get a fresh start. They no longer have to live in the house where they experienced so much trauma. Also, Dorothy seems to have fully recovered from her broken back, she was barely able to walk 2 episodes ago, now she's running up and down stairs.

• Kind of felt the Leanne and Dorothy changes of heart were too quick from previous episodes. Leeanne's "redemption" wasn't earned - her character development was all over the place this season. She went from being lowkey evil to straight up psycho in the span of one episode. Then after a single stiff conversation with Dorothy she’s willing to sacrifice herself.

• I’m glad that they didn’t kill Julien and acknowledged that Leanne brought him back to life. Julian honestly getting the biggest twist? Julian getting the final frame of the show. Julian getting the final line of the show. I didn't see the twist with the cop and Julian coming though, and it definitely leaves a spinoff open.

• That being said, I am disappointed that there were no answers to any of the lingering questions throughout the series such as time inconsistencies, the green window, the history of the house, how Dorothy's mother died, etc. Some of these details set the tone for the show but I was hoping that they would play a more essential role in the final episode.

All in all, I was never expecting a huge twist and always thought what we saw was what we were getting at the end. Also, I didn’t need to dig deep and analyze windows. Is the ending really good? It was fine. And honestly I didn’t expect much. Some have over-analyzed every scene thinking everything has a special meaning. And when it doesn’t fit their expectations they get upset and sat it wasn’t worth it, went on too long, etc. But one thing is for sure though - the show went on for too long. Servant really needed to be a limited series

[8.2/10] There is no show on television that threads the needle between symbolism and literalism better than Better Call Saul. Part of the show’s success, and that of its predecessor, stem from the fact that it works equally well as an exciting story as it does a commentary on human nature and what relationships with bad or shady people do to us. No character represents that idea better in “Fall” than Kim Wexler.

The scene with her out on the Texas-New Mexico border to interface with her new client works well as foreshadowing, and as a sign that Kim is trying to take on too much by herself and coming close to suffering for it. When her car gets stuck in the dirt, she has so much going on, another tight deadline to meet to try to make up for Jimmy’s possible shortfall, that she tries to take care of it all herself. She find a nearby board, heaves and pushes on the car until it budges, and panics when it starts heading toward a nearby oil derrick. Only by racing into the driver’s seat and slamming on the breaks at the last minute does she avoid a grisly wreck.

It functions as a sign that Kim is juggling too many balls, that she’s letting small but important details slip, with her car as a particular conduit for this idea, in a way that could come back to bite her.

But it also functions as a larger metaphor for what Kim’s going through with Jimmy. She has a problem of being stuck in the muck herself -- with the threat of Chuck’s machinations to get his brother disbarred and Jimmy’s ensuing suspension putting pressure on her to carry the firm. So Kim does what she always does -- she pushes and pushes and pushes until she can get things moving again. Little does she realize that in all that pushing, she may be headed for disaster, and it’s only her frantic heroics that allow her narrowly avoid it. Sooner or later, those heroics will come up short, sooner or later, trying to expend all of her efforts to keep Jimmy out of that muck will backfire on her. It’s only so long that she can go to such lengths and avoid that crash.

Everyone’s hustling hard to avoid a crash in “Fall,” though most of the plots of the episode involve financial decisions rather than ones involving dirt and chrome. That includes Mike who, in a brief scene, does his due diligence with Lydia to make sure he’s putting his name down with the right people, but it also includes Jimmy, who is pushing hard to speed up the timing of his payment from the Sandpiper case.

To that end, he finds roundabout ways of putting pressure on Irene, the named plaintiff, in settling the case so that he gets his percentage of the common fund. That means, plying her with cookies to take a look at the latest letters advising her as to the status of the case. It means giving her a free pair of walking shoes to make her look like a big spender. And it means going so far as to rig a bingo game to make it look like fortune keeps smiling upon her at the expense of all her friends and erstwhile well-wishers.

Many of these sequences are funny. It’s amusing to see Jimmy decked out in full mall-walker gear as he puts in plan into motion. There’s something undeniably entertaining about Jimmy being ensconsced in a spirited session of chair yoga when turning Irene’s friends against her. And it’s enjoyably silly hearing him play “let’s you and him fight” while playing innocent in the Sandpiper lobby. There is a prosaic quality to Jimmy’s treachery here, and his million dollar payday requiring him to hobnob with a pack of old ladies creates a certain amount of inherent farce.

But it also brings a cruelty, a cavalier and callous quality to the story. Jimmy is not entirely without scruples – there is a moment of hesitation, a momentary wince, when he sets the rigged bingo balls into the chamber – but in the end he’s willing to turn poor, innocent Irene into an outcast, to leave her crying in a back room from the ostracism, to get what he wants. That’s who Jimmy is. When he’s in a tight spot, it doesn’t matter that this is someone who is kind to him, who trusts him, who was his key to getting the Sandpiper case in the first place – he wants what he wants and he’ll do what he needs to do to get it, regardless of how dishonest, crafty, or cruel he has to be to do it.

The same, appropriately enough, is true for Chuck in “Fall.” When the malpractice insurance providers show up and declare that they’ll double the premiums on every lawyer in the firm so long as Chuck is in practice there. Chuck vows to see them in court, and Howard, initially kindly and then more forcefully, suggests that Chuck ought to retire. Howard tells his partner that there’s a place for him at the local law school, and less gently, that he no longer trusts Chuck’s judgment.

It’s easy to see Howard as just as mercenary as anyone here (including Jimmy, whom Howard accuses of being like Golem as he tries to move a settlement along), but he’s not wrong. Chuck seems to legitimately be a great legal mind, and he genuinely appears to be getting better, but he has his vendettas, his blindspots, his irregularities that, understandable or not, have made him a liability to the firm he helped create. It’s hard to accuse Howard of any sort of altruism in this, but he’s been supportive of Chuck, stood by him, and it’s not unreasonable for him to reflect and say that Chuck is doing more harm than good to the company that bears his name.

But Chuck doesn’t care about that. He doesn’t care about outrageous premiums or putting his firm’s good name on the line as part of a byzantine plan to catch his brother in the act, or even about destroying his firm by trying to cash out his share. He puts on a show for Howard, one that sees him having turned the lights on and used an electric mixer to try to puff himself up in front of a friend-turned-adversary, to show Howard that he is not the crazy man who ranted and raved on the stand but a sharp thinker making great strides who can either be a vital asset or a one-man poison pill depending on which side Howard chooses.

That’s the thing about Chuck, and his brother for that matter. They are willing to destroy, or threaten to destroy, the lives and livelihoods of the people around them to achieve their own goals, and damn the consequences. (Those consequences may, providently enough, make Howard more likely to want to settle the Sandpiper case in order to have some liquidity and cash on hand.) Even the people close to them, who have helped them and looked out for them, are not immune from suffering in their wake.

That catches up with Kim in the end. She can’t celebrate with a miffed Jimmy when he brings in a fancy bottle of booze in honor of his scheme to prompt a settlement working, because she has to do much to do to try to cover his behind. There’s been hints that her efforts to do it all herself rather than deal with her lingering concerns about Jimmy were going to hurt. There’s the five-minute naps in the car before meetings at Mesa Verde. There’s the near-miss out at the oil derrick. There’s other instances where simply being proximate to all this mess has put Kim in harm’s way.

As always, the show shoots it beautifully. There’s something quietly ominous about the silence in the car after Kim rehearses her speech. The scenery outside the window starts to fade away. Suddenly, in a blink, the accident hits. She moans in pain as she pulls herself from the wreckage. Her carefully-crafted binders blow away in the wind. Smoke billows into the austere New Mexico landscape as she surveys the tumble of metal and legal documents before her. This is, despite all her efforts, despite all her attempts to carry everything on her own back, something unavoidable.

That’s the rub of “Fall” and of Better Call Saul. Except when facing one another, the McGill brothers almost always get what they want. They know how to work the system, to tilt things in their favor, to intimidate or challenge or call the bluff of whomever is standing in their way. And because of that, they rarely suffer.

But the people around them do. The people who care about them, who try to help them, who do anything to tarnish their pride or their patience end up worse for being in the unfortunate orbit of these two men, just as Nacho’s father is worse for his son’s association with the Salamancas. It’s never Jimmy or Chuck who has to face the consequences, has to stomach the hardships of their failings or difficulties -- it’s the poor old lady made a pariah so that Jimmy can have a payday, it’s the man who stood by Chuck until it threatened to destroy his firm, and it’s the smart, decent woman who became Jimmy’s confidante, accomplice, and caretaker, straining to keep the two of them from ruin, and finding herself asleep at the wheel, surrounded by crushed chrome and the detritus of her meticulous work.

There is no escaping the McGill brothers. There is no fixing them or correcting them or saving them. There is only the doomed efforts that emerge in their wake, that inevitably end in a crash.

This episode was insane, so much happened! I can't believe it's the 8th episode, and finally something happened this season. The focus of season 3 being more on the company, not on the family is a minus for me because we know the Roys can’t lose the company, otherwise the show would be over.

Best episode of this season. I don't even know where to begin:

• The Roman/Gerri/Logan fiasco - the looks on Roman’s face when he realized what had happened. Kieran killed it with his facial expressions.

• "Happiest Man/Bullet Proof Candidate" - How Connor proposed to Willa at his siblings' mother's wedding, and then pretending Willa accepted the marriage proposal. So much cringe.

• "I may not love you, but I do love you" - The real tea is that Shiv meant every single word she said to Tom during their ‘dirty talking'.

• "Your father never saw anything he loved that he didn’t wanna kick it just to see if it would still come back." - Shiv and her mom scene was amazing. So much hatred and hurt being shown.

• The Kendall/Logan dinner scene! Logan used his grandson as a royal taste tester, he's truly a monster.

• Shiv trying to get both Roman and Geri out the way by weaponizing the harassment against Gerri is a next level snake move. She is the most awful girlboss feminist ever.

• I'm not interested in any Greg storyline. It seems to me the writers don't know what to do with him so they just put him in this random dull side plot that nobody cares about.

• Why do people think Kendall died? As if the show would go there and lose one of their stars. That's actually my biggest problem with season 3 - the show just seems afraid to walk through any of the doors it opens. It doesn't want to disappoint fans with the direction it takes, do anything interesting, or follow through.

I can't believe we only have 1 episodes left and everyone is basically still on the sides we started out at. This season was promoted like there would be a split in the group, a war, like characters would be stabbing each other in the back, but nobody ended up joining Kendall, they're really turning him into a caricature this season, he has been taking Ls for the past like 7 episodes. Season 3 is definitely not nearly as good as season 2, what is basically a perfect season of television.