9.5/10. What a way to start the season! I liked the general themes that this episode dabbled in. BoJack's struggle between doing something "challenging" but be unappreciated and quickly forgotten or something that would help him be remembered, but which feels like a lie since it's not really him, provides the episode with a strong thematic backbone. That gives color to BoJack strains to get through all these mindless interviews, to talk the talk that will get him an award that will validate him, but at the same time, he wants to defend his crappy TGIF sitcom that feels like more of a reflection of his soul (if for no other reason than because his soul is kind of crass, and because it was something he did with his best friend who saw the best in him), and it's also why he can't enjoy the ride because he's still questioning himself after what happened in New Mexico. That is, frankly, what I felt was missing from this show at times in prior seasons, something that powerfully explored BoJack's psyche while giving into the complexity of it and not just going for one-to-one, "bad experience A caused poor life result B" storytelling
And despite all that heavy, complicated thematic and psychological stuff, it was a damn hilarious episode! The conference call in particular was a great way of bouncing everyone off of one another and showing off the show's comic sensibilities. Todd getting lost, Midnight Cowboy-style in a hotel was slight but so so funny. And the other comic elements of the episode from Mr. Peanutbutter hijacking his accountant away from his son to come up with terrible, Todd-like ideas for shows, to Princess Carolyn managing the agency while multitasking, to the sendups of award season banter, were all superb. Overall, this episode hit the right mix of introducing the conflicts and emotional stakes of the new season, checking in with all of the characters, and making some hilarious jokes in the process. This episode definitely bodes well for season 3.
8.6/10. I really enjoyed all the moving parts in this one, and it ended up moving like clockwork. I especially appreciated the bookends of the episode, which ever so briefly turned the foils (Rabbitowitz and Vanessa Gecko) into the protagonists. I'm a sucker for those kind of perspective-flipping gags, and having the bad guys fix marriages, reveal that one of our heroes were lying, and land their client a big role to save their agency, and have them treat it like a victory for justice and right (which...maybe it is?) was a nice twist.
But I particularly enjoyed the back and forth as BoJack juggled projects, from the blockbuster Pegasus project that would up his profile as a movie star, to the Jellybean Girl project with Kelsey that would allow him to do challenging work, to "Eathan Around* (a nice riff on Fuller House) which would allow him to help out something approaching a friend. It's a nice way to dramatize the different paths in front of BoJack, not to mention his inability to handle these things on his own or with any grace or dignity, and that makes it all the more interesting and devastating when it all goes up in flames.
I also enjoyed the B-Story of Mr. PB and Dianne visiting Mr. PB's brother on Labrador Island. Weird Al is always a get, and the "twisted spleen" as terminal illness conceit was really interesting, especially with Dianne picking up the hints and Mr. PB not wanting to have to face something difficult. They've also been setting up a lot in terms of Dianne with respect to children this season, and I wonder if it leads to her and Mr. PB having to adopt his nephews and Dianne not being okay with that.
Overall, a tightly-written, tightly-paced episode that had laughs and creativity out the wazoo.
[7.4/10] So here’s the big problem. BoJack is a show that revels in building things up just to tear them down. Sure, it has people making slow but steady progress, Todd in particular, but it’s also a show that relishes in gut punches. That makes you (or at least me) brace for them, and gives them less impact. Things were going too well for Princess Carolyn -- that means things had to predictably fall apart, and the parade of horribles that happen to her just starts to feel inevitable and almost indulgent in how things pile up.
It also doesn’t help that the shocking twist of the conceit is basically a repeat of something How I Met Your Mother pulled not that long ago. I still really enjoy the frame story, which has plenty of great riffs on “the future” and storytelling machinery that brings the comedy in an otherwise harrowing plot. And Amy Sedaris delivers her last lines about “what I do when I’m feeling down” so well. But again, the way this all felt telegraphed weakens the force of what could otherwise be a knife-twisting moment.
Still, Princess Carolyn losing her biggest client, her baby, her boyfriend, and even the sense of place and history that came from the necklace her mother gave her is genuinely harrowing. Her reasons for pushing Ralph away feel simultaneously a bit unfair but also understandable. It’s a scene that feels very real, even if it starts with a wild array of dentist clowns.
Overall, it’s a creative episode, but one whose misery seems too preordained to land as well as it needs to.
[8.7/10] I loved the structure of this one. The way it fit the BoJack/Hollyhock story, the Governor’s race, the Princess Carolyn plot, and Todd’s dentist clowns into one intersecting timescape was absolutely wonderful, giving everything a sense of flow while also allowing the show to develop some momentum from jumping between stories.
For one thing, I really enjoyed the way the show used the “one week later/one week earlier” bit to drive home how fickle the electorate is. The hoopla over Woodchuck’s new hands, the origin of those hands, and Biel’s anti-avocado position driving the fortunes of the election and the media’s coverage of it is great satire of the 2016 election that nevertheless works well as broader satire of political races and news coverage generally. It also drops more nice hints at bumps in the road between Diane and Mr. PB, with Biel’s “magic eye” story providing a metaphor for why Diane might want to stick it out while waiting for something magical to click between the two of them.
Todd’s story was mainly just for laughs, but they were great laughs. His interactions with the representative of the Better Business Bureau had the dependable comedy from a square interacting with a goofball, and his group’s escapades to put on a show and get Princess Carolyn in position were zany fun.
Princess Carolyn’s story was good stuff too. I like the idea that she’s despondent and slipping after all that’s happened to her, but that the serendipity of receiving a script titled “Philbert” strikes a chord and gives her a reason to get out of bed and try to produce it. Her interactions with Turtletaub are a hoot as always, and I’m interested by the moral ambiguity of her forging BoJack’s signature to make it happen.
But the peak of the episode comes in its bookends, which center on BoJack’s relationship with Hollyhock. I’d naturally assumed that Hollyhock had passed out from starving herself due to BoJack’s blob comment, but it’s a good fake out. The show earns it’s angst from BoJack who reveals how much he knows and cares about his daughter in his efforts to see her in the hospital. His interactions with her eight dads strike the right balance of comedy and tragedy, and you really feel for BoJack in how he’s losing something that enriched his life and which he was on the road to being deserving of for once.
And man, the reveal that his mom was secretly dosing Hollyhock’s coffee with amphetamines is a doozy. It wraps up BoJack’s parental issues in both directions nicely, and makes for an absolute dagger when he bundles her up and gets ready to drop her off at the worst nursing home he can find. It’s the cherry on top of all his past resentments, and that’s what makes her recognizing him at the very end such a splash of cold water. Right when he’s at his emotional low point, she finally figures out who he is and he has to confront his anger and his desire to be seen by her at the same time. It’s a hell of a note to go out on.
Overall, it’s an episode with a creative interlacing of stories, each of which hit, and in the case of the last one, packs a wallop. Superb stuff.
[6.4/10] The Good Place is getting a little too simplistic and didactic for my tastes here. The premise of the A-story is a good one -- Michael is an immortal being and so has never had to really consider morality because he’s never truly had to face the concept of death. So when he is facing the real prospect of “retirement,” at Chidi’s urging, he has a breakdown. That leads to some great comic acting from Ted Danson as his face practically melts with anguish and he curls up into a ball on Eleanor’s lap. It’s a heady thing to play for comic notes, but it works.
Buy then the show gets really broad and obvious about it. Having Michael shift from “existential crisis” to “mid-life crisis” is a clever enough twist, but the episode goes really cheesy with the humor, and it doesn’t land. At the same time, the flashbacks with Eleanor learning about death from her crappy mom have some decent laughs in them, but their message is too blunt. Eleanor considers how damaging ignoring your bad feelings about death is given the source, and then delivers an aesop to Michael about it. It’s too neat and too easy.
The B-story is solid, until the end. I like the idea that Tahani knows she’s intended to be “tortured” by having her great party be upstaged by one the demons are throwing, but that the realization that she still can’t beat them in party planning nevertheless bothers her. It’s an interesting opportunity for Tahani to have some self-reflection, and Jason offering her some comfort and support in his typically dim-witted way is sweet.
But man, having them sleep together feels like such a standard sitcom move. Not every instance of someone being nice to a member of the opposite sex needs to lead to romance. And it comes off like the show needing something for Tahani and Jason to do while bigger plot stuff is going on in the rest of the show. I’m not a fan of that choice, to state the obvious, though maybe I’m just salty because I was oddly compelled by last season’s Jason/Janet pairing.
Overall, one of the more standard-to-cornball episodes of the show thus far.
[8.3/10] The Good Place is definitely playing to those in its audience with philosophy backgrounds. The titular trolley problem isn’t exactly a deep cut in moral philosophy, but seeing it not only dramatized literally, but remixed and rematched with our thought problem twists and series callbacks was wonderful. That alone would make this outing an enjoyable one -- seeing the normally abstract, removed sort of moral quandaries philosophers use to illustrate points made real in Road Runner-style splendor.
But as the show does when it’s firing on all cylinders, it doesn’t just use this idea for the humor and mayhem -- it uses it to make a point about the characters’ relationships and the broader narrative of the series. “The Trolley Problem” is more concerned about the connection between Michael and Chidi, and the wedges between them that may make it hard for them to find common ground.
I absolutely love the reveal that Michael was falling back into old habits and torturing Chidi. The question at play here is a compelling one -- can this moral instruction really change Michael, or is he stuck in his view of humanity and the actions that reflect that view. The episode muddles the conflict between Chidi and Michael a bit, but also takes it seriously, having Chidi reject Michael’s (hilarious) bribes and demand a sincere expression of contrition in order to repair their relationship and be able to move forward. It’s a deft balancing act between the creativity allowed by the world’s expansive sandbox, the silliness that defines the show’s humor, and the sincere character work that anchors it all.
The B-story, with Tahani and Jason getting psychotherapy from Janet, is nice enough, but not quite on the same level. It attempts to wring some emotional heft from Tahani being embarrassed to be seen cavorting romantically with Jason, but it falls into some clichés and Jason’s idiocy-as-profundity routine easily. On the other hand, the development that Janet is exceeding her programming and weird things are happening is an intriguing and amusing one, and her chipper roboticism has stealthily made her a dark horse for my favorite character on the show.
Overall, a great episode that has humor, inventiveness, and good character material in the A-story, and a couple of interesting Janet-related developments in the B-story.
[8.4/10] A real winner. I am a sucker for bottle episodes, particularly ones that use the opportunity to dig into character and really allow for some creative writing and performances. Despite a few flashbacks and some CGI trickery, this is a mostly-contained half hour that lets the strengths of the performers and the writers’ room shine through.
There’s two great arcs here. The first centers on Janet herself, and the realization that her malfunctions are due to her sublimated feelings for Jason emerging every time she claims to be happy about something involving him and Tahani. It’s not much of a revelation given what we saw last week, but it’s still realized nicely.
The process of Michael troubleshooting Janet leads to all sorts of creative sequences showing off the show’s high concept chops. But I also enjoy the idea that (a.) Janet isn’t even aware of why she has these feelings about Jason and has to come to terms with them in her own, A.I. sort of way, and (b.) that she’s willing to die, again in her own detached way, if it means protecting Jason.
It’s a great showcase for D’Arcy Carden, who plays up Janet’s traditional chipper dialtone demeanor, while also finding room for subtle bits of emotion that show the ways she’s becoming a little more human.
It’s also a great showcase for Ted Danson. Michael comes to terms with the fact (mostly through flashback) that despite everything, he views Janet as a friend. She helped him solve his biggest problems and has been there for him, whether from affection or programmed duty, from the beginning, and he can’t bear to let her go. It’s a nice bit of parallelism in Michael becoming just a little more human as well.
“Janet and Michael” is the type of episode that could provide challenging in the wrong hands, but on The Good Place, it gives the audience a heap of creative comedy and character development without being able to rely on traditional TV storytelling beats or changes in scenery. Kudos to all.
(Plus hey, it's Dennis Feinstein as Janet's new manufactured boyfriend!)
I totally lost it when I saw Michael doing Ted Danson's Cheers routine! Such a lovely (and obvious) Easter egg.
I felt this episode dragged things a little bit, it most certainly shifted the tone of the series, putting comedy in the back seat and letting moral consequences of actions lead the way. Like this episode's plot, the episode itself felt a bit experimental. I am not at all happy with the results, but it's still a good episode, nonetheless, despite it being my least favourite of the season. After last week's superb episode, this one seemed like a filler for season 3 to kick in. Or maybe I just miss the whole gang together. Regardless, the ending surely was interesting enough to keep us wanting to know where they're taking us, now. They're all alive, no more "Good Place" or "Bad Place" for a while, so has this now become a regular sitcom with ethical elements thrown into it? Ah! I'm certain that will not be the case, because this show knows how to sweep the rug from under our feet every time we're standing firmly on it. Yeah, I'm probably not good with metaphors. Anyway, I can barely wait to get reunited with these poor afterlife test subjects for season 3!
6.8/10. This is a really difficult one to grade, because the first few minutes are great, and the last few minutes are great, but everything in the middle is to forgettable-to-bad. We've done the "Robin isn't girly" beats before, and there was nothing particularly new or interesting about it here, let alone anything that justified turning it into a crisis. And while it's nice to see that the show didn't entirely forget Robin's sister, Lily being so upset by it didn't make sense. At the same time, we've pretty much already squeezed all the juice out of The Wedding Bride that we were going to, and the meta-humor of it didn't really keep up in this rehash. It's a lot of broad jokes without any real grounding in character or sharply-honed humor to keep things flowing.
But there's something to the idea that the wedding isn't just a big day for Barney and Robin, but that due to major upcoming life changes, it's something like a last great hurrah for the whole group. And that ties nicely into the best part of the episode -- the frame story of Ted and The Mother in 2024, realizing that they've already told each other all their best stories, which features both Radnor and Miloti doing tremendous work selling the two of them as having the rhythms of an "old married couple" and a certain melancholy wistfulness that pervades their interactions. There's some major hints dropped here, but I like the themes explored here, both that The Mother is worried that Ted is going to live in his stories and needs to be able to go on in his life (a lesson The Mother herself learned) and that those stories, even the dumb ones, can be a welcome respite from the harshness of certain truths. Throw in an unexpected appearance from Robin's mother to tie up that story (and hey fellow Simpsons fans, it's Tracey Ulman!), and you have an opening sequence and a closing sequence that knock my socks off, but a whole lot of junk in the middle. A peculiar episode on that account, to say the least.
[7.7/10] It seems like every season, BoJack does an issue episode, where more than telling a story to advance the plot really, the show focuses more on a specific cultural issue and filters it through its characters. Ideas of when men who’ve been exposed for bad acts in public can/should make their comebacks, and notions of male feminism seem particularly in BoJack’s wheelhouse, so the exploration of those things largely works here.
My issue is that the show gets a little over the top and didactic with it. BoJack tends to be much better on subtlety when it comes to its characters’ emotional lives than its messages, but there’s still some solid laughs and commentary to be had here. The back and forth with ersatz Mel Gibson and BoJack making the rounds to do apology tours, collect plaudits for good but easy opinions, and lob various bombs at one another is an entertaining spine for the episode. I particularly enjoyed BoJack obliviously reveling in the attention and praise, which feels both like a good jab and true to his character.
The episode is strongest, though, when it’s channeling all of this through Diane. While Diane can often be one of the show’s more blatant mouthpieces in these issue episodes, it also does a good job of digging into her frustrations of having her ideas stifled when espoused by her but lauded when championed by others. There’s also a lot of interesting ways in which her words are twisted or used by others on both sides of the argument. And the fact that she gets hired to help out on Philbert to make the show less sexist, only to realize that she’s a prop is another of the show’s well done “everything isn’t magically solved at the end of the half hour” resolutions to a complicated topic.
With all that heavy stuff, I appreciate that we get a comic relief B-plot where Mr. PB and Todd team up to try to help Mr. PB seem tough. The two of them trying to concoct scenarios for Mr. PB to show how serious and scary he can be, while continually running into people finding him genial and affable in escalating ways is a great continuing gag. Plus, that pairing is always gold.
But what I find most interesting about “BoJack the Feminist” is how it plays the same idea for laughs (and biting social commentary) that it eventually plays for the seriousness of it. There’s a loonyness to how the Mel Gibson expy continually does terrible things and makes his way back to the spotlight, and a lot of satire about how easy it is for men to pretend they’ve changed and get chance after chance after chance without ever showing any real growth or understanding, with a not-so-subtle suggestion that we, as a society, shouldn’t be nearly so willing to accept or forgive such transgressions.
And yet, in the very same episode, it shows BoJack rising through his performative feminism and reaching a genuine epiphany -- that like Diane said, he is helping to normalize a certain view and treatment of women through his work, even if it doesn't glamorize it. And better yet, he takes concrete steps to try to correct for it, acknowledging Diane’s contributions to that realization and inviting her onto the show to try to fix it.
But then, Diane is confronted with Ana Spanakopita’s tape of BoJack’s confession about what happened with Penny. You have the sudden realization that yeah, however much we’re invested in BoJack and want to see him get better and improve his life, he’s done some pretty terrible shit. That cuts both ways -- both to broaden the audience’s perspective and make us think twice about how much forgiveness and success we ought to want for BoJack, but also making us think twice about how to treat public figures who do genuinely have demons they’re running from and have made concerted efforts to change.
For however blunt “BoJack the Feminist” seems for much of its runtime, it acknowledges the complexities of the issue it’s tackling in startling, personal fashion in its final frame, in a way that speaks to both story and character, which makes it noteworthy even among the series’ similar episodes.
Set aside the last few minutes of the finale for a moment. That last little reveal changes the shape of the episode, and the series, in significant and meaningful ways that make it easy to let it overshadow the rest of the episode. But stop and think about everything that happens here before the scene where he finally meets The Mother.
Because it is, at best, a mixed bag, long before we see the blue french horn again.
I understand the urge to give the audience some idea of what happens to the gang between 2014 and 2030. The problem is that covering a decade and a half in one big episode makes every story feel rushed and underdeveloped. One of the great things about HIMYM is how it used the past and the future to inform the present. Jumping back and forth between a prior conversation and a current one could be the crux of a joke, as could Future Ted's knowing commentary on some boneheaded mistake or unexpected development that was coming down the pipe. But those time jumps weren't just fodder for comedy, as the show did a great job of creating dramatic irony and emotional stakes by showing what lie ahead or the path that led us here. But by compressing fifteen years worth of life developments into an hour, nothing has time to really breathe or feel like it has the temporal scope the show is shooting for.
After all, there's a great story to be told about the gang drifting apart over the years. Another one of the series's best features is the way it combines the exaggerated goofiness of its comedic sensibilities with real, relatable aspects of being in your twenties and thirties. Well, one of the things that hits you once you start to move past that stage of your life is the way that friends, even good friends, can slowly drift apart, not through neglect or anger or hurt feelings, but just because you're suddenly at different places in your life. That's an idea worth exploring.
The problem is that the rush of years in "Last Forever" makes this process feel like something sudden instead of gradual. Sure, we see the chyron at the bottom of the screen showing that we've jumped ahead a year or two, and there's a boatload of semi-clunky expositional dialogue in the episode to let the viewer know where everyone is in their lives and what they're up to, but when all those developments take place over the course of just a few minutes and just a few scenes, it can't help but seem very fast.
One of the best choices HIMYM's creators made in the final season was to parcel out little scenes of the gang's future throughout, giving us a glimpse of what the future held without trying to pack it all into one big episode like this. Sprinkling those flashforwards in did a nice job at making the group's future feel as well-populated as its present and its past. Obviously there were limitations on how much they could do this in prior episodes given the reveals in store for Barney and Robin and Ted, but the method the show chose to relay the gang's future almost inevitably leaves it feeling too quick, too underdeveloped, and too unsatisfying, even apart from the directions the individual stories go.
Those plot developments, however, are another albatross around the finale's neck. The first and most obvious problem comes from Barney and Robin's divorce. Again, there's a legitimate story to be told of two people who care deeply for one another, but don't work as a couple, but it's a difficult story to tell in five minutes, especially when you've spent huge chunks the past season and a half trying to convince the audience that they make sense together. As someone who's been a Barney and Robin skeptic from the beginning, it's entirely plausible to me that the two of them could mean well and have real feelings for one another, but still end up divorced due to some basic incompatibilities. But the reason for their split feels thin here.
There's nothing we know about Barney that suggests globetrotting would be something he's so against. And while there's hints of bigger issues between the two of them, like not getting to see one another or not being on the same page about their respective plans and projects, we never really get to see these problems develop. We're just told about them, and expected to accept that as enough to break them up one episode removed their wedding. Is that result plausible enough based on what we know about Barney and Robin? Sure, but it's just presented to us, rather than developed before our eyes, and since we don't see their path from pledging to spend the rest of their lives together to getting divorced, that end point feels like it happens by fiat rather than something the show earned.
Barney's reversion afterward is just as unsatisfying. Again, there's a believable story about Barney having worked so hard to become a better person, in part to woo Robin, and reverting to his old tricks as a retreat and defense mechanism when his marriage falls apart. But because of the rapidity with which the finale goes from Point A to Point B, it doesn't feel like the natural result of a difficult event; it feels like throwing nine years of character development down the drain in less than a minute. There's a disparity between how much time the show spent building Barney up as more than just an cartoonish hound dog and how much time it spends showing him reverting to his old persona. That cannot help but feel jarring.
What kills me is that I love where they take Barney in "Last Forever." There's something beautiful about the idea that what really changes him isn't some conquest or accomplishment or even a great romance; it's becoming a father. For Barney, "The One" isn't a woman he'll meet some day; it's his daughter, and Neil Patrick Harris delivers a tremendous performance in the scene where he repeats his Ted-like plea, this time to his baby girl. It's a wonderful scene, but the path the episode takes to get there still comes off as a shortcut that has to ignore seasons of character development in order to make it work.
The finale isn't all bad though. While the story of the gang drifting apart is too quick, the scene where they all reunite for Ted's wedding is legitimately touching and full of the good will and warm feelings that the show's been able to generate during its run. Ted and Tracy (I can use her name now!) continue to be adorable together, and the twist that romantic Ted made it five years and two kids into his relationship before he actually married The Mother is a small but effective way to show how much the substance of finding The One was more important to him than the formality of it (even if he was planning on a European castle). It's one of those lived-in details that speaks to his character.
Beyond that, the actual meeting of The Mother is very well done, and it really had to be. Sure, there's a few meetcute cliches involved, but the easy rapport between Ted and Tracy soars once again and nearly saves the entire finale. After all, this was the moment the "Last Forever" had to nail, and it did. Ted and Tracy's conversation weaves in enough of the yellow umbrella mythos for everything to click, and Joshua Radnor and Cristin Miloti both sell the subtle realization that this is something special. For an episode that had to make good on the promise of its title, that meeting went about as well as any fan of the show might have hoped for.
And if the series had ended there, everyone might have gone home happy. Sure, the other problems with the rushed and shortcut-filled finale might have rankled a bit (particularly the way it undoes the wedding we'd just witnessed), but making that moment feel as big and as meaningful as it needed to after all that build up is no small feat, and that alone would have bought Bays & Thomas a hell of a lot of slack.
Frankly, the series could have still gotten away with Tracy dying shortly thereafter, another controversial choice in the finale. There's something tragic but beautiful about the audience watching Ted seek out the woman of his dreams for nine years and then realizing that he only gets to be with her for the same amount of time, while still cherishing and being thankful for the time the two of them had, for that connection and love that was wonderful and worth it no matter how all too brief it may have been. There's a touching theme about the fragility of things in that story, but also about the joy that comes from finding the person you love, that stays with you even after they're gone. It's sad, but it's sweet, in the best HIMYM way.
And then there's Robin.
The decision to pair up Ted and Robin in the last moments of the finale is as tone-deaf and tin-eared an ending as you're likely to find in a major television program, and the reasons abound. The most obvious is that the show devoted so much time to the idea of Ted getting over Robin, and had any number of episodes (the most recent being the execrable "Sunrise") where Ted seemed to have achieved that, to have moved on in his life. Folks like me may try to handwave it, and the show can call back to the premiere of Season 7 where Ted and Robin can declare that all you need for love is chemistry and timing, but at base, Ted and Robin getting together feels like it contradicts so much about the two characters' relationship with one another over the years. So much of the final third of the show involved going over the same beats between Ted and Robin over and over again, of having each move past the other, and coming back to them in the final, despite how iconic that blue french horn has become for the show, just feels like another poorly-established cheat or retcon that isn't in sync with where the show went since that finale was crafted in Season 2.
What's worse is that that ending transforms the story Ted's been telling from a heartwarming if irreverent yarn about the path that led to him meeting the love of his life, to a smokescreen to gain his kids' approval for dating an old flame after their mother's death. Look, to some degree you have to accept the conceit of the show for what it is and not take it too seriously. In real life, no two kids would sit through such a long story, and no father should tell his children about all the women he slept with before he met their mom. But taken in broad strokes, How I Met Your Mother is a story about how all the events in Ted's life, big and small, good and bad, planned or unexpected, went into making him the person who was ready to find Tracy and capable of being with her.
Future Ted himself put it best in "Right Place, Right Time." He tells his kids "There's a lot of little reasons why the big things in our lives happen." He explains that what seemed like chaos was bringing him inexorably toward the best person and the best thing to ever happen to him, that there were "all these little parts of the machine constantly working, making sure that you end up exactly where you're supposed to be, exactly when you're supposed to be there." And he tells them at the time, he didn't know "where all those little things were leading [him] and how grateful [he]'d be to get there."
That, to my mind, is the theme to take from this great, if tainted show. Sure, it's unrealistic that anyone would go on that many tangents in telling the story of their great romance, but the point is that each of these moments, each of these people, were crucial in who he was and who he became when he met Tracy, and that they were as important as that fateful meeting was. Yes, it's a long story, and it has many many detours, but it's the story of all the twists and turns and bumps in the road that brought Ted into the arms of his soulmate, and that smooths over the rougher edges of the show's premise.
Instead, the twist that it's all supposed to be about Ted having the hots for Robin turns that lovely story into a long-winded attempts by a middle-aged man to convince his kids that he should date their aunt That seems much more crass. There's still meaning to be wrung from it, meaning that finds parallels with Tracy and her dead boyfriend Max and the idea that you can have more than one meaningful relationship in your life. But it doesn't add up with what the show had really done to that point. The past nine seasons were no more about Robin than they were about Barney or Marshall or Lily. They no more feel like a way to suggest that Aunt Robin's good dating material than they do that Ted should spend more time with Uncle Barney. As great as that blue french horn was the first time, it had meaning because it represented something we knew was going to end, but which still had beauty and value despite that. This last time we see it, it's represents the opposite, that something beautiful has ended, and the value it had is cast aside in favor of a relationship the series spent years disclaiming. That is deeply, deeply unsatisfying.
Take away those final few scenes, concocted in a different era of the series, and you have a flawed but still potent finale, that delivers on the show's biggest promise and gives the gang one last "big moment" together. But add them back in, and you have an ending to the series that not only runs counter to so much of what the show developed over the course of its run, its final season in particular, but which, moreover, cheapens the story the audience had been invested in for the past nine years. It's almost impressive how a couple of truly terrible moments can do such retroactive damage to such a longrunning show , but here we are, with a sour taste in our mouth from such an ill-conceived finish.
Future Ted was right, a little moment can have a big impacts, and the one at the end of the series is a doozy in that regard. But maybe, just maybe, when we tell our own stories about How I Met Your Mother, we can do what Ted should have done many times -- just leave that part out. There's something wonderful to be gleaned from the ending to this fun, optimistic, heartfelt, and occasionally very rocky series, but it requires us to do what we always do when looking back on things: focus on the good stuff, make our peace with the bad stuff, and remember it at its best.
[7.0/10] This is another kind of weird episode that I don’t really know what to do with, since it’s a lot of scattered bits that are all sort of built around, but not really connected, the one big conversation that anchors the episode.
But the bits are largely enjoyable! I liked, though didn’t love, the whole “being there” shtick where Henry Fondle is made the CEO of whattimeisit.com. The cold open reveal of Character Actress Margo Martindale was an absolute treat. The continued prestige drama satire of Flip’s speeches and description of his show was fun. I didn’t really like PC having to unravel the copyright dispute with the joke popsicle guys, but it was inoffensive.
And I really liked the continuing subtle growth of Mr. Peanutbutter! He is slowly but surely growing up, and you can see it in how he’s trying to be a good actor, and a little hurt that Pickles wasn’t into his show. The idea that he’s outgrowing someone for once is an interesting one, and I appreciate the development of one of the show’s most plain comic relief characters, even if it seems to be headed for a reunion with Diane that I’m lukewarm on.
But it really all comes down to BoJack and Diane. Their confrontation is well done, if a little over the top, and does a solid job at exploring what seems to be the main theme of this season -- whether someone can or should be able to be okay with and move past the bad things they’ve done. For her part, Diane feels like an enabler, and the reception to Philbert acts as a wake up call when she’s worried about people, BoJack in particular, seeing the vulnerability she introduces as something that excuses an “open wound” of a character doing awful things.
There’s a lot of meta-ness there, as BoJack Horseman grapples with whether it’s done too much to excuse its own protagonist. But it also doubles down on that at the same time, having BoJack admit how much pain he’s experienced, how much pain he’s tried to run from, and how being told that he could be okay is a balm, something that helps him to be better.
But that only works if he wants to keep improving. Diane is right. BoJack is still a mess, even before he downs his pill bottles and mixes it with booze (and tramples on Gina’s long-awaited chance to be in the spotlight). It’s good that he’s come this far, but also not enough, and doesn't excuse the bad things he’s done in the past.
That’s the push and pull of this season. We see BoJack making some legitimate progress, doing nice things for people, even if it’s in a very BoJack sort of way. But he’s also still the author of some pain and misery. How much he should be permitted to get past that an earn our sympathies, and how much he deserves the guilt that haunts him is a very tough question to answer, one that “Head in the Clouds” doesn't try to answer, just confront.
So BoJack and Diane have it out, both are hurt and vulnerable in the aftermath since each’s emptional well-being is, regrettably, at least somewhat tied to the other, and they both do stupid things. BoJack mixes pain medication and alcohol and jumps into things with his would be girlfriend for comfort and relief, and Diane invites her ex-husband is. Neither choice seems poised for good to come out it, especially heading into the penultimate episode of the season, where the most harrowing and heavy crap tends to rain down in this series.
But hey, time to get ready for the fun once more, I suppose. Go go sad horse show!
Sometimes it's hard to remember that our real lives are distinct and separate from our online lives. Take it from some guy who enjoys his "likes" and hits from writing reviews more than he'd sometimes care to admit, it's all too easy to become consumed in our online presence to the point that we forget about our lives away from screens, away from the things that give us meaning and insight and the inspiration to post anything to social media.
Which is why I think I'm okay with the tack "Skank Hunt" takes. (Now that's not sentence I ever expected to write.) Look, online bullying driving people to suicide is a legitimate issue, and even if it's not widespread, making it the source of fun admittedly makes me a little uneasy. And yet, I think it's in service of that point, that kids and adults alike treat their online personas as their entire being, and that we as a culture and a society overinflate the importance of the digital part of our lives. The grave, faux-solemnity with which South Park treats the idea of someone quitting Twitter is not, in my estimation, an attempt to make fun of people driven to suicide (though it's certainly meant to be envelope pushing as the show always is), but rather an attempt to make fun of how big a deal we make over something as slight as social media in the first place, to where quitting Twitter or Facebook or god help us, Trakt, can be treated as such a cataclysmic event.
This is as good a time to mention that one of the ways South Park achieves this is in "Skank Hunt" is with some unexpectedly good design work, music, and cinematography. Even in it's construction paper cut out days, the show had a certain visual experimentalist quality to it. But in "Skank Hunt," the show goes a step further to drive home the faux-magnitude of what's taking place, whether it's the pan up to the sky as a little girl drops her phone into the river, or the leering shadow of Gerald as he wages war against a Scandavian olympic athlete, or the slow shots of what looks like a massacre as the South Park Elementary girls deliver break up letter after break up letter to the boys. This episode did a great job of using the "camera" of this still semi-crudely animated show to help convey mood and heighten the feeling of these scenes.
Throw in a ridiculous sequence sent to a Boston tune that subs Gerald's typing for tickling the ivories, a similarly goofy sequence of Gerald celebrating his notoriety to the silly strains of "Steal My Sunshine," and the swelling music that back the break up sequence, and you have a show that's using more than just its superb writing and bent premises to make its impact.
But the story and themes are still the core of Skank Hunt. The seriousness with which everyone treats a classmate quitting Twitter leads to the interesting point about the outsized importance we place on social media, but also does a nice job of driving the story, from leading the boys to kill Cartman...'s online presence, in a series of scenes the show mostly plays straight to hilarious effect. The story between Mr. Mackey and Scott Malkinson (who we haven't seen in forever) is South Park's humor at its darkest. Well, maybe not its darkest (see: Scott Tenerman), but still, only a show like this one could wring the humor in a beleaguered guidance counselor growing tired of comforting his "suicidal" student and wishing that he would (more or less) just off himself already. It's hard to call it well-observed exactly, but there's the germ of humanity in the scene to someone becoming strained even with one of the most noble duties there is, in classic exaggerated South Park fashion.
And then there's Gerald himself, who in a Heisenberg-esque twist, is enjoying his double life as a troll too much to avoid dropping hints to his wife and son. There's commentary in his role in the episode as well, with once again, everyone in South Park, from the children to adults, treating something as ridiculous as an anonymous person on the internet spewing profanity and photoshopping lewd images with such seriousness. That seriousness seems particularly interesting in contrast to how Gerald is just doing it to "stir the pot," because he thinks it's funny. There's a disparity between how the rest of the world responds to this, and Gerald's less than grandiose reasons for it. It's clear that he's just doing this for the fun of it, and also for the notoreity of it, and that by taking trolling so seriously, the people of South Park are actually just enabling and encouraging him.
There's more to unpack here, from the idea of collective guilt and collective punishment, to the continued presence of the member berries, to the promise of more storylines in the future stemming from Cartman's wrongful "death," and Gerald's attempt to troll the untrollable. But on the whole, "Skank Hunt" is an episode about how easy it is to treat our online lives with the utmost importance, and treat anything that impugnes them like a horrid, deplorable attack on our very being, when neither our silly online posts, nor the dumb screeds that they may engender in response, deserve that level of attention, importance, or concern.
What a strong start of this new season! The tone is set, Toby will need to understand that siblings bonds are way stronger than the one they love, and Randall trying to recreate his adoption surely makes me love Beth a bit more. Also good for Kate to finally realize it's her talent and not her looks, although I can truly relate to her thinking it's always about the looks since most of the times it is. That ending with the amazing version of One had me in tears again, I am truly happy that Jack probably dies from a fire and not from drunk driving I seriously would've hated that, although there is still a chance that he was drunk when the fire happened. Also kudo's to the writers for a Gremlins reference lol... It's funny that the big 3 is as old as I am (only i wont be 37 till november), so i can truly relate to some problems they have. Also I hope it will be a long time before we actually see the death of Jack cause when that happens it will probably be over for his storyline and I truly love Milo so I hope we won't see it soon!
PSA - Explanation of what the two ladies on the phone are talking about in this episode:
[9.0/10] Welcome back to Neptune! I am glad to report that Rob Thomas, Kristen Bell, and the rest of the cast and crew haven’t missed a beat since we left them. If anything, this re-pilot episode feels more like the classic Veronica Mars than the 2014 film did.
We’re back to the outstanding (and winkingly modernized) banter, back to the great father/daughter dynamic, back to the haves vs. have nots, back to dealing with the treatment of young women, back to an intriguing mystery to motivate the season. In brief, I was shocked at how true to form this thing feels, as though there were no time at all, rather than a decade-plus gap, between seasons 3 and 4. This is Veronica Mars, back in all its wondrous glory.
But a few things are different though, and they’re all good things (or at least promising things)! Most importantly, we have a new cast of characters involved in a mystery, from a douchebag law bro and his friends, to a nerdy crew trying to get by on Spring Break, to a young party girl and her coterie, to the brother of a congressman, to a middle class hotelier and his daughter, to a harried pizza guy played by none other than Patton Oswalt! While I’m sure that some familiar face will be involved in the bombing incident somehow (most likely Dick Casablancas’s dad), it’s nice to see a new set of whodunnit candidates that feel new and yet of a piece with the show’s milieu.
We also have the involvement of some kind of cartel boss, with scenes in Mexico that feel like something straight out of Breaking Bad. It’s new and different territory for Veronica Mars, and I’m curious to see how it intersects with Mars investigations.
Speaking of which, the show has advanced Veronica and Logan and Keith and even Wallace to create new challenges and storylines which all feel unique and, again, promising in the early going. Wallace’s part isn’t really a storyline, but it’s still nice to see him with a wife and a kid and the irony with which Veronica calls him an 09er. Keith’s possible alzheimers is an interesting hook for someone who makes a living on their wits, and has the potential to show Veronica having to confront what happens when a parent starts to slow down, which is fruitful territory.
And, of course, for you LoVe-rs out there, we get some good Veronica/Logan material. The prospect of the two of them making a life together over the past five years, one that Logan wants to make permanent, but which Veronica is wary of given their respective families’ marital histories, is a strong one out of the gate. It gives both of them someplace to go without an arbitrary break-up and get back together, and roots the challenge in something true to the characters’ pasts without regressing them to their teenage selves.
All the while you have interesting spectres and echos of things from the series’ past. You have money troubles versus justice creeping in as a theme, as Veronica winces at who she’s working for in the cold open, while Keith is taking jobs for nice shopkeeps who may not be able to pay the going rate, as both think about the future of their P.I. firm. You have a rough and tumble bartender who goes after assaulting dudebros and challenges the uptight well-heeled entrenched interests much like Veronica herself did. And in the show’s most fun sequence, you have Cliff sashaying through the hospital, handing out business cards, and rustling up business for our heroes.
The laughs are there. The character dynamics are there. The mystery is there. The class-consciousness is there. The black velvet heart of it all is there. In short, Veronica Mars is back. There’s still seven episodes for the show to go off the rails from here, but the hardest thing for a revival is to make the proceedings feel like they once did, to recreate the alchemy that made a show so memorable and worth bringing back in the first place. At least in its first episode, season 4 of Veronica Mars has that down.
[8.6/10] This one was a little more disjointed than some of the prior episodes, but man, the ending. I like the fake out here. Veronica does some legit detective work with the help of Maddie (aka Veronica Jr.). Keith nails down the lead and feeds it to the cops. The cops use it to arrest the bomber. Badda bing badda boom. I’m not saying it’s totally plausible that this season would wrap up its mystery in episode 3, but you can envision Veronica Mars having the bombing be a minor red herring, or accidental entree into some sort of bigger mystery.
The episode actually sells it pretty well too! Fresh off of Patton Oswalt’s character bringing up how Keith had trouble with the Lily Kane murder, and got kicked out of the sheriff’s office for evidence tampering is a nice reminder of past issues with the Mars family being overzealous. Keith himself brings up that Veronica doesn't have more than a hunch to go on that there’s something bigger here, and that they’re known to “tilt at windmills.” You buy it, or at least the threat that this is building a sandcastle out of nothing.
But then, in a moment of calm, when we’re expecting nothing but more silly Dick Casablancas antics, the second bomb goes off. I don’t normally like voiceover in shows, but Veronica’s sarcastic asides and noir-esque monologues always work for me, especially here. The desire to be wrong, to want everything to be okay, only to realize that your instincts are unfortunately right, speaks well of Veronica’s detective bona fides, but poorly of her future safety and mental health. There’s a soft pain to that moment, which is well-directed, as everyone runs away from the blast, the danger, but Veronica can’t help marching into it, time and time again.
But hey, to lighten the mood, “PLAY NO SCRUBS!!!” As indulgent as some of Ryan Hansen’s schtick gets here, it’s nice to just see Veronica and her crew having a bit of fun and being silly at Comrade Quack’s. Again, one of the things that made this show great in its day was despite the dark subject matter, it always had a lighter side, and beyond the show’s classic exchanges, it’s nice to see it still vindicating that side of things.
It’s also nice to see the show following up on Keith Mars’s mobility and memory issues. Clyde getting him into a concierge doctor, and the medical wonderland that follows, is a nice indication of the show’s exploration of classism that’s still in play. It’s also a way for Clyde to ingratiate himself to the people most likely to be investigating his boss and associate.
I’m into what seems to be the larger mystery, namely some kind of conspiracy among the people who were at the prison in Chino: Big Dick, Clyde, Perry Walsh (the bomber), and the guy from the bakery who set the rat at Hu’s grocery, to run some “undesirables” out of town. (That’s also coupled with Veronica’s mugger, who she suspects of being in league with them, being the guy who took dumps in the Sea Sprite ice machines.) Now why do they want to do this? Maybe it’s a real estate scam with Big Dick, or some prison racket through Clyde. Whatever it is, I’m anxious to find out.
I’m less enamored with the continued amount of time devoted to the Congressman Maloof storyline. Him getting kidnapped and beaten by the rednecks, and then kidnapped and threatened with murder by the cartel members feels like things are starting to get far fatched and a little convoluted even for Veronica Mars. But maybe I’m just less excited by the non-Mars parts of the show.
That said, I continue to get a big kick out of the dynamic between the two goons, whose matter of factness and ways of ribbing one another get a big laugh out of me. Plus, we have a Weevil sighting! I was wondering when he was going to get involved!
Otherwise, we have the continued training of Maddie, and reflections on the anger of losing someone close to you at that age, which feels like a nice way to reflect on where the show started. The Patton Oswalt Murder club is less adept at wringing comedy out of that, and feels like the show trying to be meta in a too cute fashion, but it’s brief and light enough to be forgivable.
Overall, this is another winning outing from the revival season, with dramatic twists, some fun moments, and a hell of a beat to go out on.
[7.6/10] Holy cow, there’s a lot to unpack here. This was the most disjointed of the episodes so far, with a slew of former guest stars returning in a somewhat haphazard fashion, and fewer throughlines to unite everything.
So let’s cover those guest stars! We have the two culprits from season 3 playing the Hannibal Lecter game with Veronica in season 3. We have Max (Mac’s old boyfriend) as the owner of the dispensary on the boardwalk. And we even have the triumphant return of Vinny Van Lowe, in all of Ken Marino’s usual glory, as a separate P.I. hired by Mrs. Maloof to track down the family ring. It’s a minor thrill to see these people again, but everything is so glancing that it feels like more of a case of “hey, remember that guy!?” than naturally adding them to the story. (Though meethinks we haven’t seen the last of Vinny.)
Heck, I was even a little come-see come-saw about the return of Leo, and he was my favorite of Veronica’s love interests back in the show’s original run. I don’t know what it is, but the dynamic between him and Veronica isn't as easy or natural as it was back in the day, and the two of them talking about their romantic lives on a stake out feels pretty contrived. He’s still a welcome presence, and I like that he’s an FBI agent assigned to the bomber case because of local ties, but right now he feels more like a device than a character. (Though my favorite part of the episode was his awkward interactions with Logan, and Logan ensuing query of whether Piz was hiding in the back somewhere.)
Oddly enough, the best pairing in this episode was between Keith and Clyde. There’s something endearing about the two old guys trading war stories together, even if the show seems to want you to think that Clyde is playing Keith to some extent. It also gives Veronica a chance to be clever when she uncovers what’s in Clyde’s bag from the hardware store.
Oh, and I almost forgot the return of Weevil! I like the fact that he got to save Veronica’s behind here, showing his continued loyalty, but also remaining sort of a tweener on the good/bad divide, since he’s fallen into chop shops and working with local “hoodlums.” He gets the line of the episode when Veronica chastises him for these things, “It must be nice to have choices,” which sums up the show’s complicated take on racial and class divides, letting its protagonist be self-righteous but also flawed and, at times, myopic about where she sits in the social order.
I have to admit that I’m a little tired of The Murderheads. I do like that Maddie goes to them because she doesn't know where to turn after overhearing the Mars family’s theory, and that the Murderheads, in turn, blow up the Mars family’s spot by broadcasting the hypotheses Veronica and Keith are still running to ground in an explosive town council meeting. Still, the comedy stuff with that crowd has gotten a little too broad for my tastes.
But the mystery stuff is coming together at least. We’re getting more pieces falling into place for the whole “real estate plot from Big Dick” theory, with shell companies buying up boardwalk businesses. That said, it’s way too early for an answer to the central mystery to be that clear and that right this early. So my new theory is that the owner of Comrade Quacks is behind the bombings, meaning to teach the assulting douches of Neptune a lesson, given who’s ended up dead so far.
I’ll admit that I’m a little worn out by the Congressman Maloof story, which feels a little more exaggerated than the rest. (Give or take a neck bomb.) Him being faked out and presumably extorted by the cartel guys is a little much, and the same goes for the hillbillies being found in the desert. I like that they’re bringing the cartel folks closer to Veronica’s orbit, but until then, it just feels like a distraction.
Oh, and I almost forgot that Dick is pretty damn funny in this one! Him landing in a Lifetime X-mas movie in Romania about a woman who falls in love with two mannequins is the kind of comedic specificity that I get a big kick out of.
Overall, this one was not as strong or cohesive as some of the past episodes of this season, but there’s still good stuff to enjoy along the way.
[8.0/10] There’s two things I really liked in this one. The first is the conceit of Ketih and Veronica testing their theories that the other’s new best friend is the culprit behind the conspiracy/bombing. The second is the collection of emotional confrontations Veronica has with three of the major figures in her life (or at least what used to be the major figures in her life).
On the first part, I like how Veronica starts bonding with Nicole, and Keith starts bonding with Clyde, while at the same time having to test out one another’s theories. Veronica and Nicole playacting at Wallace’s party, getting high in the bathroom, and then staging an impromptu glass bottle firing range is a lot of fun. But it also lets us know that Nicole is understandably still scarred by her own sexual assault in a way that would give her motive to take out the various assaulting douchebags in her clubs, and that she has the familial construction/demolition know-how to get it done.
At the same time, there’s something adorable about the old man bromance between Keith and Clyde. Plus, it gives Keith the opportunity to nab some photos of a text conversation between Clyde and Big Dick which suggests they’re out of the loop on the bomber...unless it’s a feint from the seemingly genre-savvy Clyde.
The reveal that Nicole’s already sold Comrade Quacks, and that Clyde (or someone) left a dead duck in Patton Oswalt’s bed complicates the motives and possibilities even more. I like the show building up both theories, and having Keith be the voice of caution, noting that they’ve had crazy conspiracy theories before. Still, the very fact that the show’s clearly articulated both of these theories by episode 5 suggests that neither of them is accurate, and that instead it’s some third option no one’s considering (presumably involving the Mexican cartel we’ve spent so much time with).
But apart from the fun mystery angles, I like the scenes we get with Veronica and some of the people closest to her or, in the case of Weevil, who used to be. One of my favorite things about the Veronica/Weevil relationship from the original show is that the two would talk truth to each other, and it’s nice to see that continue with them as adults. Weevil asking for Veronica to lay off one of his young lieutenants, only for it to turn in a spilling of guts and recriminations between the two of them is a welcome development.
You can tell there’s genuine bad blood and hurt feelings between the two of them now that their friendship has soured, with low blows on both their parts. And Kristen Bell does great work with Veronica initially putting up the tough front after Weevil declares that there’s no more good will between them, until he leaves and then in one expression, she show’s Veronica’s hurt at that realization.
The scene between Keith and Veronica is even better. For one thing, I appreciate that the lead-up is Veronica sensing something is up and basically drumming it out of Cliff. When she and her dad sit down and have an actual conversation about it, it’s one of the more heartwarming, mature bits in the whole series, and a sign of the snarky dynamic but genuine love between them that very likely makes them the best father/daughter duo on television.
And the scene with Veronica and Logan is the cherry on top. There’s some recency bias for me here, but it’s hard for me not to see the LoVe relationship in this season as a strange echo of the Jennings’ relationship from The Americans, a volatile connection between two damaged people who nonetheless care about one another deeply. You can sense Logan being hurt and worn out behind is staid exterior, and Veronica struggling with him not just getting with the program. You can see Logan worrying that he’s an unfortunate anchor to Veronica living the life she wants, and Veronica’s equal and opposite reaffirmation that he means so much to her.
The exchange between them about “What would you do if your dad and I weren’t here?” “I would stick my head in the oven because the two most important people in my life wouldn’t be there” is, again, one of the most charged and heartbreaking of the whole show. It is, again, mature real stuff that the show is doing, and it finds a solid emotional throughline through it all.
Overall, this episode does a really nice job of advancing both the mysteries and the personal relationship sides of the season in entertaining and, at times, poignant fashion.
[7.7/10] I’m not sure Veronica Mars has ever given us this big a chunk of the mystery answered this early before. Having us get to hear that Big Dick was, in fact, at least partly responsible for the Sea Sprite bombing, for the reasons Veronica suspected, is an interesting reveal. The same goes for Clyde being against it, and Big Dick thinking that Clyde got rid of Perry Walsh for him. Obviously, there’s going to be more to the story, because this show wouldn’t give up the ghost in episode 6, but still. It’s intriguing to get that piece of it so early, and Keith’s mini-interrogation is well-done to boot.
It’s also a heart-pumping moment to go out on, with Congressman Maloof getting shot by one of his hillbilly antagonists. It’s a cool moment to get Clarence Wiedman back in the picture, however briefly, and something dramatic to make bingers want to immediately click on the next episode (which I managed to avoid for the time being).
I also appreciated that Logan got to be a part of the mystery-solving team. Him using his military intelligence connections to track down Congressman Maloof’s hacker, is an amusing bit, especially when he regifts his buddy a milkshake giftcard for the privilege. But him using some conman skills to get the white supremicist teenager to admit to it is a nice touch that shows his wits.
It also brings the collision course between Veronica and the cartel goons ever closer. The show’s done enough to build up Alonzo to make him an interesting foil, with enough ties between their worlds to make the inevitable confrontation have intrigue. At the same time, I like that we’re getting more Weevil here (though I have to admit that his performance is a little shaky here). That said, I still like the writing, where Veronica and Weevil are upset with one another for essentially the same thing -- that each had a certain chance to escape this life and both of them turned it down. It retreads some of the same ground from the last episode, but it’s still good.
It’s also nice to see Keith and Veronica doing some good ol’ fashioned con work when they’re scoping out Alvarado’s hotel room. Keith faking a heart attack, and Veronica being identified by Weevil’s sister because she thought it might be real is a nice touch to be sure.
I also liked the Veronica/Logan stuff here, which is to say, poor poor Logan. The show is doing a nice job of showing how its protagonist is flawed here, with her turning down his multiple requests that she join him in therapy, and being kind of standoffish until he’s on another mission. It’s sad, because you can see how hard Logan is trying to be healthy, and how much he cares about her (see also: his farewell voicemail), and how much Veronica is only interested in maintaining the status quo. It all makes me afraid that the show is going to kill off Logan, since it’d be a very noir-ish thing to do that would shake Veronica’s world and make all of their interactions much more poignant.
Regardless, I’m not crazy about the show playing things coy and flirty between her and Leo, if only because the love triangle thing always bugs me, but I do like that he bugged/tricked her for once by leaving out the old case files! The sequence with her and Leo partying with Nicole was well done, even if it portends unhappy things.
And last but not least, I’m intrigued at the prospect of Maddie being Veronica’s roommate for the time being. It seems like there’s more to Maddie’s involvement in this whole thing than we realize (maybe even to the point that she’s the culprit, who knows!), and even if she’s just playing Veronica Jr., I like the dynamic.
Overall, an episode that has some pretty dramatic reveals in terms of the mysteries, and some pretty striking developments on the personal front as well.
[8.0/10] I keep using superlatives for this season, and I want to resist the temptation, but here we are anyway. Was the gunfight with Alonzo the most tension-filled Veronica Mars sequence ever? (I feel I should admit here that I found both Aaron Echolls’s and Beaver’s late episode supervillainy to be more cheesy than scary.) Veronica counting her bullets instantly adds to the suspense. Her breaking her “cuss” rule is an odd but effective way to signify the seriousness of the situation. And Keith rummaging through his car and trying to reload while the bad guys advance is a nail-biting moment if I’ve ever seen one.
Plus, the whole thing gives us an unexpected Big Damn Heroes moment for Weevil! That’s twice that he gets to play hero this season, and I like the nod of recognition and loyalty between him and Veronica, that cuts through their past conversations and bad blood.
Otherwise, the big news is obviously Veronica accepting Logan’s proposal, which I like the destination and reasoning of, if not every step along the way. The show tries a little too hard to fake us out with Leo, including by making Leo more of a douchebag than he was in years past to accomplish it. There’s no reason he can’t have gotten a little jerkier since we last saw him, but his intense flirting when he knows that Veronica has a boyfriend feels at least out of step with what we knew of him previously, and his little apology at the end feels like a fig leaf to try to get the audience to like him again after the show no longer needs for him to be “the other man.” And by the same token, Veronica’s erotic dream feels a little explotative as a “hey, we’re not on network television anymore” moment!
But I do like where they end up and Veronica’s reasoning, even if it takes some voiceover to convey it. The notion that post-dream, she felt relief for not hurting Logan rather than a new yearning for Leo, and that in her near-death experience, Logan’s all she could think about, works for change of heart. It’s the type of thing that could put what really matters into focus, even if it doesn't exactly wipe away the ways in which she was not being the best or most sensitive partner to Logan.
The one thing I didn’t really care for her was the obvious red herring with Patton Oswalt. Maybe it’s just the rules of T.V., where you’re sure that they’re not going to reveal the second bomber in the penultimate episode, and it seems unlikely that they’ll make the comic relief character the villain, and despite some good dramatic turns in Big Fan and Young Adult you can’t really see Oswalt as a killer. To that end, it felt like the show was spinning its wheels by focusing on him, and I didn’t really buy Keith and Veronica thinking that he’s the culprit either (though their interactions with the chief of police were amusing.)
(As an aside, was that Matt Damon on the phone as the head of the FBI? I couldn’t place the voice, but it sounded familiar.)
Thankfully, Oswalt’s interactions with Cliff were good for a laugh, and the bomber’s limerick gives us a nice ticking clock to motivate things in the final episode. Heading into the finale, my current theory is that Mama Maloof is behind it all, hoping to eliminate an unsavory prospective daughter-in-law and help propel her other son to the Senate, but hey, that’s at least my fourth theory here, so take it with a grain of salt.
The other part of this episode that I really liked was Keith’s confession to himself that he should get out of the game. You knew something bad was in the offing when the “Previously On” repeated his “what if I do something that gets us hurt” line. The actor does a great job at communicating the way that Keith hates himself over this, over the possibility that he might have gotten his daughter hurt or killed, and the hardship of having to accept that he may not be up to his chosen profession anymore. It’s really good, powerful stuff.
At the same time, I enjoyed the scenes focused on Clyde here too, including his one with Keith. It’s nice to see their mutual admiration society breaking down over the bombings, with Clyde still playing it cool. And the fact that Big Dick may have outlived his usefulness in Clyde’s eyes after going back on their deal, to the point that Clyde throws Big Dick to the wolves (aka the cartel goons), is an intriguing development.
But theirs is not the only bromance (er, friendship) to break down in this one. I like Veronica’s choice to come clean to Nicole about bugging her office. There’s this sense of nobility and honesty you don’t always see in Veronica, which makes it a good way to signify what this friendship means to her. In the same way, that makes it all the more impactful when Nicole tells her to get the hell out.
Overall, this was a very momentous episode that kept me on the edge of my seat in the suspenseful parts, and feeling for the characters in the series of one-on-one interactions that changed or reshaped any number of relationships here. On to the finale!
[7.3/10] Well, that was bold. I have to give the show that much.
Let’s start with the big mystery reveal. I suppose I have a bit of egg on my face after my last write-up when I railed about how Penn couldn’t be the real bomber. The show gives him a good bit of motive and opportunity. We see him having been harassed and disrespected by all the Spring Breakers, which gives him reason to hate them and want them gone. And his interest in true crime gives him the understanding of how these investigations proceed to be able to (a.) potentially get away with it (b.) feed the investigators what they need and (c.) understand how the explosives work, something he’s been working up to.
You can also see how the whole Murderheads thing makes him love the spotlight, idolizing killers, until the two combine and he realizes the best way to hang onto the spotlight is to become one of the murderers he so admires.
But I don’t know, at some point it just requires too much contrivance to really make complete sense to me, less from motivation and more from action. Can you really picture Patton Oswalt lugging the body of his “friend” Don or getting the neck bomb on that kid? And at the same time, for his plan to work, he had to be able to play Veronica and Keith to a degree that feels impossible, requiring them to pick him up at just the right time so he could leave his bag in their car, and lead them to Don, and all this other stuff that just seems kind of implausible.
Beyond Penn turning into a Bond villain and delivering monologues to Veronica at the end (which you can at least attribute to him watching true crime shows and aiming for their same sense of grandiosity), beyond the sort of visceral implausibility of Penn managing to stage all these crimes, it just requires too much to go right for him for everything to work out the way it did.
Granted, I think of the 7 major mysteries the show has done at this point, I think I only found one of them fully satisfying, so there’s a fair argument that this sort of thing is just the show’s M.O. and a decade and a half after the series’s debut, you’re either on board with it or you’re not. I like Veronica Mars for the great humor and dialogue, the strongly-written character relationships, and the fun and twists of the mystery along the way, regardless of whether the answers make complete sense.
But man, those character relationships take some pretty big blows here! I admire the show’s boldness in killing Logan right when he and Veronica are at peak happiness. This show was often compared to Buffy the Vampire Slayer in its early days, and that’s a very Buffy move. The ethos for this show has always been that in Neptune, where everything is rigged, even when you win, you lose. To have Veronica solve the mystery, marry the love of her life, and get a clean bill of health for her dad, only to see the bomber take one last pound of flesh, and to have the corporate and gentrifying interests take over the beach anyway, feels true to what the show is and has been.
I’ll admit, though, that I don’t really like the fake out with it seeming like Logan was going to bail on the wedding. I understand needing to have some stakes in these moments, but it just came off cheesy to me, as did the whole “last recorded voicemail” shtick. Still, as a BSG fan, it’s always a thrill to see Mary McDonnel pop up, and I appreciate that the silver lining to all of this is Veronica accepting that she needed to deal with some shit and going to therapy.
I also neglected to mention that however contrived the situation is, I really like the scene at the heretofore unmentioned Kane High School commemoration. For one thing, it’s just fun to see Veronica show up and crash another Kane event (almost literally). But there’s legitimate tension when Veronica has to watch Keith stand there and try to convince Penn to confess and defuse the bomb before they’re both blown up. Say what you will about how the show crafts its mysteries, but it knows how to pull off a suspenseful scene.
Otherwise, I like where things land for the most part. I appreciate the reveal that Maddie is the one who stole the ring (Vinnie was right!), which establishes her rough-around-the-edges bona fides that makes her fit to fill Veronica’s shoes at Mars Investigations. I like that in the end, Keith still can’t abide what Clyde did, despite how endearing their bromance is, and I like that Clyde ends up with his girlfriend and his car dealership, underscoring the anti-”evil never prospers” message of the show. And I like that maybe, just maybe, Veronica is genuinely ready to move on from Neptune, to go see what else is out there, now that the best life she was living there has been ripped away from her.
Overall, I’m not entirely satisfied with the answer to the big mystery, but otherwise I really liked this season. It definitely had the tone and sensibility of the show right. It had some good personal developments with the main characters, and brought in a slew of interesting new fresh faces. And it made some bold moves here, that challenge our hero, and live up to the show’s perspective rather than sanding it down. Good, bad, and otherwise, this season was still very much the Veronica Mars that I remembered, and that’s a good thing.
[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.
[8.5/10] You could be forgiven for asking, “Hey, isn’t there some guy named Saul in this show?” for most of the runtime of “Sabrosito.” It’s an episode that turns over most of the proceedings to the happenings in the orbit of Gustavo Fring, with enough of a narrative side dish for Mike and Jimmy to remind you that they are main characters in the series.
But I’m not complaining. Giancarlo Esposito has a presence that can hold your attention like few other actors can. The details we see here -- the cold war brewing at Don Eladio’s compound, the affronts between Gus and Hector, the declaration of resolve from Fring himself, add so much shading to what we already know about the grudges and rivalries within the cartel from Breaking Bad. In a way the rest of Better Call Saul hasn’t really, “Sabrosito” serves as a direct prequel to the events that Walter White would eventually get tangled up in, and by using Gus as a conduit for that, the show practically guarantees a compelling episode.
And, as usual, there is some connective tissue between the seemingly disparate, constituent parts of the episode. Gus’s story is ultimately about standing up to bullies, standing up to intimidation, standing up to the people who believe that you deserve less. It’s about pushing back against those who do not respect you, who believe that your new ways don’t measure up to their old ones, and who believe you need to kowtow to their wishes.
But so is Jimmy’s. Sure, an ornery older brother trying to drum you out of the legal profession is not exactly the same thing as a rival drug dealer using his standing in the cartel to lean on you, but “Sabrosito” draws a line between Chuck and Hector. Both of them are old timers, long entrenched in the systems in which they operate, ready to use their connections, their standing, the power and network they have amassed in their time, to stamp out the people who challenge their hegemony.
For Hector, that means preventing the upstart Gus from infringing on his territory. The opening of the episode in Don Eladio’s pool not only puts Breaking Bad fans on alert for little pink bears, but it calls to mind both Gus’s partner being killed at the edge of that pool, and Don Eladio himself meeting his end there. It’s an interesting shot that immediately makes the setting of the scene laden with meaning before a single word is spoken.
Don Eladio, gregarious shit-stirrer that he is, makes Hector feel the lesser man next to the bigger stack of crisp, clean bills Gus sends Don Eladio’s way, and the Los Pollos Hermanos shirt Don Eladio puts on only adds insult to injury. So Hector goes to throw his weight around with Gus, in the best way he knows how - by messing with him at his restaurant.
It’s unexpectedly tense for a scene set at a fast food chicken restaurant. Still, Hector knows the best way to violate the sanctity of Gus’s domain, to twist Gus where it will bother him the most. He wanders around the meticulously kept restaurant violating every norm of cleanliness and decorum imaginable. He intimidates customers; he smokes; he wanders in the back and carves gunk off his shoe. The message is clear -- I am in charge here, and even if there’s a greater authority than myself to consider, you’ll accede to my wishes.
That’s the message Chuck sends as well. There is the same air of tension as the McGill brothers, and their legal representatives, file in to accept the A.D.A.’s deal. Chuck, true to form, leans on his brother about every niggling detail, from the wording in Jimmy’s confession to the cost of the destroyed cassette tape. And from the minute Ms. Hay converses with Chuck about his condition, it’s clear that this is far from a neutral proceeding, removing any doubt that she is, knowingly or not, taking Chuck’s side on this. The peak is when she requires Jimmy to not only sign his confession and make restitution, but to apologize to his brother.
This is where Gus and Jimmy stand in the same position. Both are clearly on edge, facing the men who want to squeeze them out. But each maintains their composure, not rising to the bait meant to throw them off balance, letting their tormentors believe that they have won this battle. Gus, stoic as he is, simply makes velvety threats and stands there dignified and unmoved. Jimmy, a little more heart on his sleeve, turns his supposed apology into a recrimination, albeit one subtle enough to pass muster with the A.D.A.
But neither of them is beaten. Through Kim’s clever phonebooking and Jimmy’s use of Mike’s combined conman/handyman skills, the pair not only have a plan to thwart Chuck from getting Jimmy disbarred, but they have evidence and the benefit of Mike casing the joint to go on. Gus, for his part, stays resolute, but clearly is unspooling a big plan in his own mind. When he speaks to his frightened employees, he speaks off a refusal to bend, to allow the old guard to flex its muscles and have the newcomers cower in fear. He resolves to stand his ground, and the people who work for him applaud him for it.
And poor Mike may be a big part of that big plan. His is the most understated story in the episode, but it’s also, in its way, the most poignant. Mike is a taciturn individual by nature, which calls upon Jonathan Banks to fill in the blank spaces of dialogue with his world-weary expressions. With his granddaughter Kaylee nestled in his arm, there is a hint of wistfulness, of regret in his eyes, enough for his daughter-in-law to pick up on it. These are the loved ones for whom he committed those terrible deeds for, for whom he got other innocent people killed. Better Call Saul plays its cards close to the vest, but Banks’s performance gives the sense of the moral calculus of those acts weighing on Mike in that moment.
When sitting down with Jimmy at the diner, Mike remarks that it was nice to fix something for once. When we see him later in the episode, he’s reading Handyman Magazine. Mike is good at what he does -- the way he manages to nonchalantly shoo Chuck away with his power tools shows that -- but there’s also a sense that he’s weary of this. Keeping his daughter-in-law and granddaughter in that nice neighborhood, with the good schools and safe havens, costs real money, and Mike’s most marketable skill, the one that brings those brown paper bags full of dollar bills, isn’t a pleasant one. Maybe, Mike just wishes he could rest -- build things instead of tear them down.
One of the best qualities of Better Call Saul is the way it uses its status as a prequel as an advantage rather than a difficulty. The tension between Gus and Hector in “Sabrosito” is heightened because we know there is enough bad blood between the two of them in the future that Hector sacrifice his own life so long as he can take out Fring at the same time. Jimmy’s tet-a-tet with Chuck has added intrigue because it seems as though Chuck has his brother dead to rights, and yet we know that Jimmy will continue practicing law, by hook or by crook, leading the audience to wonder how he’ll wriggle out of this one.
But it also creates a sense of tragedy, of star-crossed destiny for characters like Mike. It isn’t a bully who compels him, and it’s hard to imagine someone being able to intimidate him into doing anything. And yet, he is no less pulled by forces beyond his control -- the need to care for his family, the need to make up for the death of his son that he feels responsible for -- that we know will keep from the life of a contented handyman.
The encounter between Mike and Gus at the end of the episode, where Mike agrees, in his typically cagey way, to work for Gus, is in part a momentous one, because it serves as a milestone for a partnership that will pay dividends for each of them. At the same time, it’s a recommitment to a line of work that will ultimately grind away at Mike, that will lead to his death, that will jeopardize those stacks of dollar bills he has stashed away for his granddaughter.
It’s hard to say it will lead him to ruin. Mike is not a young man and he enjoys close to a decade of being able to care for his family. But for at least a moment in “Sabrosito”, it seems that at a time when Gus and Jimmy are desperate and resolute to stay in the game, Mike wants out. And we know, however much he may want that, the ability to while away his time fixing doors instead of dusting cartel goons, he’s fated to keep at this until, one day, it kills him.
After the incident with the Witness, plus Eve's intellect and curiosity (she tracks murders and has come up with the theory of a female assassin being the culprit of these murders, even going as far as being impressed by her) has lead her to a secret investigation of the assassin and who she works for. It's Eve's dreamjob handed to her on a platter.... now what will be the price of this dream job?
Special shoutout to the Villanelle (assassin) wardrobe. Her clothes are great! She pushes for high fashion, expression and playing with aesthetics... but no matter what she looks amazing (whether everyday casual or party ready). Her pink dress with the black combat boots is ICONIC.
In her therapy session we learn to important things: Villanelle has an important history with someone names Anna, somebody that she is clearly emotionally connected to. And that her handler is he r only constant emotional connection. These two pieces feel like important part of the game that will be played against Villanelle.
With each new kill, we see how ruthless and smart Villanelle is. And it's so much fun to watch her. Her cleverness, to see her playful and in awe in the face of the death she deals.
I love Villanelle's excitment and pride in having an investigation set up just to find her... but what I love more is her shock when she learns that the pretty woman from the hospital who she had her speechless and brain malfunctioning and was very much into is the one leading the investigation. This is the kind of twist that throw our leads into chaos, that throw them off their game and that's when things get interesting, when they have to deal with being pushed, and Villanelle having the hots for the lead invetigator will force Villanelle many places, even places she never expected to go emotionally.... and I can't wait to watch it all unfold with the our two wonderful, talented and amazing leads.
Only two episodes in and this show has given us so much. It feels more like 4 episodes, and it's all due to the no filler attitude of the writing and that every shot has a purpose.
[7.7/10] There’s a sense in “Off Brand” that many of the major figures of Better Call Saul haven’t really been doing what they’d like to be doing. Demands of family, money, and sometimes the two intertwined have kept the likes of Jimmy, Chuck, Mike, and Nacho are, at times, reluctant or bitter or scarred by the work they’ve been doing over the past few seasons. But for each of them, there is something pushing them, almost against their will, to move closer to something that might be better for their souls.
For Jimmy, that means a break from the law. At heart, Jimmy is a showman, a people-pleaser, albeit one who’s happy to use those skills to feather his nest where possible. That gives him an avenue in the law, but his references to having to go “Karloff” in his commercial for...commercials, or the dangers of stripes on screen suggest that he’s as thrilled by the art of his presentation as he is in any con.
He showed the same inclination in his meticulously-produced commercial for Davis & Main and his first big “Gimme Jimmy” ad. And the first glimpse we see of Cinnabon Gene is of a man whose world is black and white, where the only hint of color are the flashes of his famous “Better Call Saul” clips that first drew Jesse and Walt to him. As corny as it is to see Jimmy in the hat and beard and vest (and it must be said that Better Call Saul gets the lo-fi look of local ads down perfectly) there’s the sense that Jimmy is in his element when he’s on camera, and that it may be the closest thing to honest work that could sustain him.
After all, there is a sense that Jimmy became a lawyer out of a combination of admiration for his brother as a template for success and in a bid to earn his respect and perhaps even love. There’s ways in which his showmanship makes him a good fit, but as his stint at Davis & Main shows, also things that make him a liability. It does seem to pain Jimmy a bit to have to inform all of his clients of his twelve-month suspension (in another of this show’s tightly-edited and hilarious montages), and we know it won’t last, but maybe he would be happier as a commercial director and/or star than as an officer of the court. The suspension is not ideal, but it may just push Jimmy into something fulfilling after being so directed by his relationship with his brother.
As despondent as Chuck may seem having effectively lost his contest with his brother, the result seems to spur him as well. While the fallout from “Chicanery” clearly left him shaken, seeming even suicidal at times, a visit from Howard seems to snap him out of his funk. Howard, a talented advocate in his own right, appeals to Chuck’s vanity and his sense of serving the calling of the law above prosaic personal concerns.
In the shadow of those lofty ideal, Chuck begins to test the limits of his exposed psychosomatic “allergy.” He gives himself exposure therapy, gripping a battery in his hand with subtext that he’s pushing himself to move past it. And he even goes so far as to call a doctor, presumably to ask for help, to push him beyond his illness, whether he believes it to be physical or mental. As much as Chuck looks at his brother with disdain, in many ways Jimmy has been coddling him, indulging his electromagnetism “allergy” self-diagnosis rather than forcing him to confront the deeper-rooted issues that have caused it and deal with it. Oddly enough, it may be Jimmy’s final act with Chuck (if his statement to Rebecca is to be believed) that spurs his brother to get the help he needs.
Mike needs some help too. It’s not in the same way as Chuck exactly, but as he sits in that support group while his daughter-in-law recounts the difficulties of raising a daughter without her father, we know that Mike too has unresolved issues from his son’s death, issues that this sort of group might help him with.
But, like Jimmy, he’s also been pulled into a world by financial necessity and familial issues that it may do him better to be without. When his daughter-in-law asks him to help pour concrete for a neighborhood playground (possibly the one at which he’ll later be arrested) it’s the kind of labor, the kind of building something, that Mike appeared to covet in the last episode, with Gus luring him back into the world of drugs and brutality. There’s always something that feels a little less than above board about Mike’s daughter-in-law’s requests of him, a sense that she (consciously or unconsciously) uses Mike’s guilt over his son’s death to persuade him to do things for her and her daughter, but here, it may be the same sort of push that let’s him do a little of what he’d really like to be doing, like the kind Jimmy received.
And then there’s Nacho, who’s also pushed into actions he wouldn’t seem to pick without some amount of prodding. But unlike the three other men who get their share of focus in this episode, Nacho seems like he’s being pushed into something that will hurt him, that isn’t a step toward recovery or betterment and fulfillment, but something to drive him deeper into a place that isn’t comfortable.
When he’s counting dollars at the beginning of the episode, he’s apt to let the underling who’s a little light off with a warning. But all it takes is one belittling comment from Hector, who’s seemingly barely paying attention, for Nacho to drag the goon back in and brutalize him in the kitchen. When he’s upholstering in his father’s shop, a slip with the needle reflects the image of blood in his eyes, and suggests a man who is, at least in part, still carrying his grisly actions with him from that day.
But Hector prompts that sort of viciousness, that effort to take out what you need from whomever you need it from. Hector sends him to test the limits of Gus’s patience by taking six bricks from the Pollos Hermanos delivery rather than five. Push your advantage -- that’s the lesson Nacho is constantly learning from his would-be boss.
(As an aside, I don’t know that we really needed to see Gus surveying the industrial laundry facility which will eventually house Walter’s lab and conferring with Lydia. BCS has been good about not laying the Breaking Bad nods on too thick or shoehorning them in, but this felt like too much with little purpose beyond saying “Hey, remember how this becomes significant in the other series?”)
And yet, Nacho may take that lesson and turn it against the man who’s teaching it to him. Hector’s insistence on using Nacho’s dad’s shop as a front provokes real resistance in the young man. We’ve already seen Nacho’s willingness to throw his associates under the bus because they pose a threat in terms of stability or understanding. When Nacho places his foot on one of Hector’s pills, after a coughing fit prompted by Tuco earning himself some more time in jail, there’s the hint that he may have something to do with what finally fells Hector. Better Call Saul uses the the inevitability of Hector’s downfall to, ironically enough, create mystery, where Mike, Gus, and Nacho all have reasons to try to take him down.
That’s the risk of all these big events prodding our protagonists to try things that they’d otherwise been shoving to the side. We know that Jimmy’s filmmaking career is temporary, and that Mike’s handyman excursion is fleeting. These individuals will be pulled back into this world and this life despite their efforts, self-directed or not, that keep them away from it. The mixing of those worlds, the humble work at the car shop and the drug enforcer duties for Hector, may also collide for Nacho, in a way that pulls him back into that muck, into using that brutality Hector instills, without any need for further provocation.
This episode is so interesting... it's a bit of a turning point for Eve. Before her chase of Villanelle was about curiosity, a challenge and a chance to prove her smarts. But with Bill getting caught in the crossfire of the chase, the investagation has change into vengence and justice for Eve. Now Villanelle has all of Eve's attention, just not the way she probably wants.On a side note: I liked Bill, gonna miss him.
Interesting interaction between Villanelle and Konstantine, it starts with him reprimanding Villanelle for playing with the targets and killing Bill, who was off limits. Since Villanelle can't follow orders, her next mission will be with a team; The chat quickly turns on Konstantine; while he thought he was the one in power, she just pulled out a card he wasn't expecting. A threat to his daughter. Villanelle shows him just a glimpse of the games she can play. He better not forget who the master chess player is. He threatens her, she will threaten right back and make it count.
I love meeting the new "team" Villanelle. The look of awe when Villanelle sees the other woman, there is definitely history between them and Im sure it's very juicy cause it leads to the other girl attacking her, like there are novels of unwritten history between them. And to add to the tension, their target is a "member of the british intelligence"... And Villanelle has a look on her face "please don't let it be my member of the british intelligence". Shit.;This next mission is going to be so much fun.
And so far my favorite moment of the series is when Eve receives her stolen luggage filled with amazing clothes and a bottle of perfume name "Villanelle", with a quick note of "Sorry Baby"... it's so personal, romantic and slightly unnerving cause it speaks to so much: Villanelle knows where Eve lives, that she has been following her and a note of romantic interest sending her clothes that are gifts you'd give to a lover or significant other. And Eve knows all of this.... and it scares her for it could mean for the future.
And we found our mole... Eve's former boss who she can't stand cause he's a douche. Which is the same target as Villanelle's team. Sounds about right.
This show's writing just keeps on giving. Every meeting, every glance, every hidden word has a payoff. The other assassin is Villanelle's ex. Oh, and Villanelle's real name is Oksana. And Oksana has amazing game cause she just got her ex to kill the 3rd assassin/ex's new lover. All of this while on the hunt for their targer. Like I said, so much freaking game. And two seconds later, Villanelle runs over the poor smitten girl, who should have know better really. This is the stuff i expect from great writing and great dark humour. You don't see it coming, but when It arrives, it wouldn't have worked any other way.
Fav moment: "Are you running or crying?" Both.
[8.8/10] One of the great things about The Sopranos was the way it would show a character meeting someone or having a moment that changed their emotional state, planted some idea or bit of perspective in their head, that they would then carry throughout the rest of the episode, often taking it out on people entirely divorced from that inciting incident. It was part of the show’s deft emotional calculus, where it could capture the way thoughts and feelings flit around in the background, popping up in surprising ways or at unexpected times.
As much as the aptly titled “Expenses” is devoted to the financial corner Jimmy finds himself in, it’s also devoted to that same idea, the notion that one interaction, one exchange with another person can reframe the way you feel about something or someone, in a way that lingers and cannot be easily erased.
It starts with another of Better Call Saul’s cold opens, that again succeeds in displaying visual virtuosity -- in the motley crew of individual framed against a blank wall and the cars and trucks rushing overhead -- but in the way it serves the message being communicated -- that here, Jimmy is just another guy and he’s hindered from doing what he does best by all this noise.
That’s the overarching theme to Jimmy’s portion of the episode. The now Saul Goodman is used to being able to use his powers of persuasion, his winning attitude and ability to feel out any situation to bend things to his advantage. For all Jimmy’s faults, there’s always been a cleverness to it, and a way with people, that have kept him from the harshest of consequences in any jam he’s in.
But now he finds himself embroiled in circumstances where all his winning ways can’t extricate him from the financial difficulties he finds himself in. It begins with the Community Service Supervisor docking him all but a half hour of the four hours he worked picking up garbage because he was using his phone to answer calls for Saul Goodman productions. He tries to negotiate, to rally his fellow garbage-pickers to his side, to appeal the the man’s sympathies, but all he gets in return is “we could make it zero.”
That’s the response Jimmy gets throughout the episode, as the thought of his remonstrations falling on deaf ears continues to wear on him. At a time when his dire monetary straights require the best of his salesmanship abilities, the desperation and unavoidable strictures of him circumstances seem to hobble him. His attempts to upsell his commercial-shooting services on the phone lead to hang up. His effort to try to upgrade a paying customer to a bigger package gets him nowhere. And in his desperation, he actually allows a couple of savvy business owners (played by the Sklar Brothers of the underrated show Cheap Seats) to hold him over a barrel and get him to work for free.
Jimmy is used to having power, It may not be the sort of positions of privilege that the Chucks and Howards of the world enjoy, but he’s accustomed to being able to use his silver tongue to give him an advantage in any random situation in which he needs it. But from that first moment with the Community Service Supervisor, he feels stymied, closed in, powerless. It’s natural, then, that he takes that out on others where he can, repeating those words, “we could make it zero” to a Chinese food delivery boy who looks askance on him for a low tip. Each indignity seems to snowball from that first one, until Jimmy is at his wits end and blowing off his steam at delivery boys and random marks in bars for whom his scorn is misdirected, intended for causes of his frustrations that are out of his reach.
Mike finds himself with solace, rather than frustration, when he meets Anita, a woman who attends church with Stacey. When Anita initially offers to help Mike build the playground he promised to assist with in the last episode, he brushes her off, with hints that it’s due to a certain strain of sexism. But Anita won’t take no for an answer, something Mike clearly admires, as he acquiesces and she proves herself a capable aide in the effort.
Mike’s respect and interest in her only grows when he learns at their support group that she lost her husband, who was also a man in uniform (albeit a navy man, rather than a cop). The show seems to be setting up Anita as a love interest, which is an interesting, though mildly concern direction to go with the character. But what’s particularly notable is how his interactions with Anita -- where she tells him that her husband was lost while hiking with the body never being recovered -- effect a change of heart in him.
When Nacho leans on Daniel, of “Squat Cobbler” fame, to get him some heart pills that he can use to poison Hector, Daniel seeks out Mike’s protection once more, explaining the scheme (or at least as much of it as he knows). Mike initially wants no part of it, brushing Daniel off and washing his hands of it.
But something about his conversation with Anita changes his mind. Maybe it’s the idea that her husband, somebody who left and never came back, reminds Mike of the innocent person whose death he indirectly caused when he knocked over one of Hector’s trucks. There’s hints that Mike has been trying to buy his soul back, from what happened with Matty and with the cartel, when he donates all the materials for the church playground. His agreement to be Daniel’s muscle seems unlikely to be out of a particular care for that dolt’s well-being, but Nacho may be a different story.
Nacho isn’t exactly pure of heart, but Mike does take a certain paternal tone with him -- here and in episodes past. It was Nacho’s presence that gave him pause in “Klick”, and Mike’s smart enough to read into what Daniel’s telling him, figure out what Nacho’s planning, and feel the need to warn him to cover his tracks and protect himself. “Expenses” stays a bit cagey about what exactly’s pulling Mike here, but it’s clear that the small emotional reminder from Anita is enough to move him to do something different.
Kim might be moved to do something different as well, though in a far less pleasant manner. When Paige from Mesa Verde compliments Kim on how she and Jimmy won at Jimmy’s disciplinary hearing, deriding Chuck all the while, the persistent guilt bubbling within Kim rises to the surface. In going over some numbers with Paige later, Kim is unexpectedly short with Paige, immediately realizing the slip and apologizing. Without ever saying as much, Kim admits that she’s bothered by being complimented on what happened with Chuck, telling Paige that as far as she’s concerned, all she and Jimmy did was tear down a sick man. It’s a small part of a larger conversation, but it brings out something that’s been bothering Kim, that manifests itself in a sideways fashion.
Still, once that thought has reared its ugly head, it’s hard to tamp it back down. When Jimmy and Kim are together at a bar, sizing up potential marks as they did in “Switch” as Jimmy is trying to get his mojo back, Kim starts to seem just the slightest bit aghast. Jimmy speaks with a malevolence about taking down certain marks, going to elaborate extremes (frankly sounding like Chuck) in his imagined schemes against certain unkind gentleman in the establishment.
There was a mutual allure between Jimmy and Kim when they first tried to pull this sort of con off in “Switch.” Kim seemed impressed by Jimmy’s ability to persuade and flim-flam and Jimmy was enthralled by a partner who could also be an effective partner in crime. But that one moment with Paige, the glee at a mentally ill man’s downfall, fostered a nagging impulse within her, one that seems to make her question whether the man she’s thrown in her lot with is a decent person in a bad situation or whether he is the scorpion atop the frog.
Jimmy seems to embrace the latter label in the episode’s closing scene. His efforts to get a refund on the malpractice insurance he’ll no longer need are the last bit of insult to injury. Not only can he not received a refund, he’s told, but when he returns to practice, his rates will go up 150%. The one minor life raft in the midst of his stormy financial sea turns out to be the promise of an anchor.
It’s then that Jimmy starts crying, and just as I did for his brother in “Sunk Costs,” I almost believed him. “Expenses” does a superb job at showing how far Jimmy is being stretched, how much he’s willing to break his own rules and grasp at whatever straws he can to get the money he needs to keep going. This could be the final one, the thing that breaks the emotional defenses of the normally unshakeable Jimmy McGill.
In truth, it could still be that. Jimmy is not above mixing truth with fiction to serve his ends. But whether they’re real or fake, he uses those tears to subtly cue the malpractice insurance adjuster, who also insures Chuck, to the disciplinary hearing transcripts that expose his brother as a sick man. It’s a way that, even in what seems like his lowest point, Jimmy can regain some joy, some pleasure, in sticking it to his brother once again. While Kim is coping with guilt over what she rationalized as a necessary action, Jimmy is twisting the knife.
And why wouldn’t he? From the start of “Expenses,” Jimmy finds himself stymied and rebuked in everything he tries to do, whether it’s get full credit for his community service or get a refund on his insurance premiums. He sees Chuck as the person who put him in this situation, and the one thing he can still do, even if he’s caged and neutered in every other respect, is stick it to his brother. Jimmy is still powerless for much of the episode, unable to deploy his persuasion in the way he’s used to for his own personal gain, but he can still use it for Chuck’s personal loss, and for now, that’s enough, something the devilish smile on his face as he leaves the office reveals.
Often times it’s the little moments that move us, that create some niggling thought in our brains that festers or flourishes into something more. For Mike, it’s a reminder and a call to action. For Kim, it’s a warning, a lingering concern about the individual she’s tied her life to. And for Jimmy, it’s a nagging impulse, a prickling thought, that he can only stamp out by running up the score on his brother, to prove to himself that he still can.
[8.6/10] The opening of “Slip” is a little more direct than episodes of Better Call Saul tend to be, as it fills in some gaps Jimmy’s backstory and perspective. When pressed by Marco about Jimmy’s parents’ shop, about how they worked hard and everyone liked them, Jimmy admits it’s true, but questions the value of it. He declares that it got them nowhere, and characterizes his own dad as a sucker.
Jimmy’s philosophy becomes a little clearer, snapping into place with the flashback to his youth. His dad was someone who refused to bend the rules, who wouldn’t take even so much as a valuable coin for himself, who wouldn’t sell cigarettes to the kids from the local religious school to make ends meet, and in Jimmy’s eyes, that got him nothing. It’s a little too tidy and pat, but Jimmy sums it up nicely -- Papa McGill wasn’t willing to “do what he had to do,” and Jimmy definitely is.
That’s the thrust of “Slip,” which is as much an ensemble piece as any episode of Better Call Saul so far. Jimmy, Mike, Chuck, Kim, and Nacho are willing to go the extra mile, to do the difficult thing, not because they want to, but because they believe it needs to be done. It’s what unites those disparate individuals and their different challenges here. Each of them strains a little more, goes a little farther, in the name of biting the bullet and doing what needs doing.
For Jimmy, that means going back to his old ways. What’s interesting is that Jimmy tries to be good here. He tries to build on the success of his first ad with the owners of the music shop, and all they do is try to squeeze him. Granted, it’s Jimmy, so he’s probably inflating costs a bit, but still, the episode sets them up as jerks, and Jimmy as at the end of the rope. So hey lays out a drumstick, asks them one more time if they’re committed to not paying him what they originally agreed to, and then he intentionally takes a painful looking spill in their store to get leverage. Look out, Slippin’ Jimmy is back.
He also returns to his huckstering to get back at this community service supervisor and make a little scratch in the process. His big show of a potential lawsuit and deal with a fellow worker grow a little farfetched in terms of persuading the grumpy supervisor who eventually gives in, but the purpose of these scenes is clear. Jimmy tried doing things his parents’ way, the good way, and the only thing it got him was an empty bank account. Now, he’s back to taking the (literally) painful, less-than-savory steps that ensure he has enough money to hold up his end of the bargain with Kim.
But Kim’s willing to go the extra mile too. When Jimmy offers her the money, she obliquely hints at the idea that he might need time to regroup, that she’s willing to carry the load for the two of them for a little while. It’s not entirely clear whether she’s worried he’ll return to conning people full time and wants to alleviate the financial incentives to do so, or she’s simply concerned that whatever his assurances, unreliable Jimmy may not be able to come up with his end on a monthly basis without his legal practice. Either way, she takes on a new client, one where she already seems pretty slammed, to make sure that they’ll be able to make ends meet, with or without Jimmy’s contributions.
The Mesa Verde head honcho refers that client to her at a lunch meeting, where she just so happens to run into Howard. Howard, ever the politician, is plastically cordial, but Kim, unlike her beau, still has pangs of guilt and offers him a refund on the law school tuition he put up for her. Howard, letting the scales fall for the first time in a while, reveals that he too is working overtime, having to reassure scores of clients after the incident with Chuck gets out. Kim’s willing to take the (figuratively) painful step of handing over $14,000 dollars to assuage her conscience, and Howard is out there hustling to preserve his firm’s good name after his partner’s public breakdown.
But some good seems to have come out of it. Chuck is back with his doctor and (self-)reportedly making great progress. He may be overestimating himself a little bit, but he’s pushing through his exposure therapy and accepting that his illness is a mental not physical one. When Dr. Cruz warns him about taking it easy and not setting his expectations too high, he remains optimistic, anxious to get better.
In a tremendous sequence, without a word of exposition, “Slip” suggests that Chuck might overexert himself in this effort. He’s using the coping techniques the doctor suggested for him when standing in front of the blaring fluorescent lights of the grocery story. He lists the colors and objects he sees, taking his focus away from the pain. Director Adam Bernstein uses the tools in his toolbox to underscore the severity of what walking through the freezer case does to Chuck, the zooms, the noise, the vertigo of it all. It seems like Chuck has pushed himself too far, that he’s about to suffer another attack
But when we see Chuck later, he has the groceries and is no worse for wear. These things are difficult for him, painful for him, but he is ready and willing to push, to take that damn step, in the same of what he wants to achieve.
The same is true of Mike, who is clearly still haunted by Anita’s story from the prior episode of her husband dying in the woods without anyone ever finding the body. He digs and digs in the New Mexico desert, metal-detector in hand, until he finds where the unfortunate Good Samaritan was buried by the cartel. He calls it in anonymously, presumably in the hopes of ensuring that another family won’t have to go through the uncertainty that Anita did.
But he’s worried about leaving his own family in a state of uncertainty too. He still has his cash from his various extra-curricular activities, but he’s worried about how he could get it to his family should something happen to him. So he goes to Gus Fring, in the hopes Gus can help him launder it. It’s a scene that shows the two men’s growing mutual respect. The meaningful handshake that closes the episode (along with Gus turning down Mike’s offer of 20% to launder it) signifies the ways that their values are the same. They are both smart, decent men who get mixed up in indecent things, and they’re willing to do what it takes to make that work.
That just leaves Nacho, who has what is possibly the most difficult task of all. What I love about this series of scenes is the way they show how meticulous, how careful, how deliberate Nacho is about all of his. There is nobility in Nacho wanting to protect his father from Hector, but he is not in any way reckless about it.
Instead, he does the legwork, he takes the extra steps that will make his operation successful. He is delicate and careful as he grinds the poison into dust and fills the lookalike pills under a magnifying glass. He practices, over and over again, the act of palming the pill bottle and depositing it into a coat pocket, so that when the moment comes, it will be second nature. And he even goes so far as to climb onto the top of the restaurant that serves as Hector’s headquarters the night before, messing up the air conditioner so that Hector will have a reason to take off his jacket.
The subsequent scene where he actually makes the switch is masterful. “Slip” holds the tension of each step in the process: from the would-be fake bill, to the probing of the wrong pocket, to the pill switcheroo, to that grand moment of truth where Nacho has to make the move he rehearsed so many times and land the pill bottle into Hector’s jacket without him realizing. It’s a great outing for Michael Mando, who conveys the way that Nacho is trying to exhibit a practiced, casual calm, but inside is anxious beyond words. His deep exhale and clenched fingers in the back after it’s all done says everything.
Each of the tasks taken up by the main characters in this episode -- planting poison pills, finding a dead body, braving the height of your illness, taking on extra work, and even breaking your own back -- require something extra, more sacrifice, more pain, more difficulty. But when something important is at stake -- your livelihood, your well-being, or your family -- the major figures of Better Call Saul are the type of people who face that head on and take whatever measures the situation requires, even if that means drastically different things for each of them. Those steps are painful, tense, and even dangerous, but for better or ill, Jimmy McGill and the people in his orbit, are the people who do what they need to do.
[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.