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[9.7/10] I’m not sure you’ll find an episode where everyone in the whole cast is used as well as they are here. You have Leslie in another minor I Love Lucy-type situation, where she gets drunk but then has to do a make-or-break interview unexpectedly. What I like about this story is that Buddy Wood is the kind of antagonist who absolutely pushes Leslie’s buttons more than Joan or Bobby or Jennifer – the kind who condescends to her and talks about Pawnee as a backwards, hopeless place. That just runs counter to everything she believes, and offends her on principle. Sean Hayes does a great job making Buddy a smug, repugnant snob, and you can see why he would bother Leslie so much.

But I also like the poetry of how she wins without even realizing it. Somebody like Leslie pays attention to the little guy; she cares about this town and fights for the people in it. And that means that, as with the police chief helping out with the Harvest Festival without compunction for her, when she’s in a jam, the citizens of Pawnee have her back. Buddy’s luggage with the embarrassing tape getting “lost” is a great resolution to the story.

You also get a great mini-arc for Ben, who is clearly wound up a bit too tight, and after that victory, gets a chance to kick back and have fun. Ann and Tom are even downright bearable and even a little fun here! Tom counting the hours that they’ve gone without breaking up is a nice running gag, as is reaction when he thinks he almost blew it. The pair have a chummy vibe together that almost makes you believe they would date for a little while, even if it’s still a stretch that it would continue this long. Still, the countdown thing says the show knows that, and wrings some humor out of it.

The other story centers on Andy passing his Women’s Studies course, and celebrating at a dinner with April, Ron, his professor, and Chris. First and foremost, Andy is just in top hilarious form here. Between the way he tries to casually talk about Susan B. Anthony being born in Adams, Massachusetts, tells his dinnermates that he’s “very proud of me and so are all of you” and tells Ron that “someone” told him to face his problems like an adult, only for him to then realize it was Ron(!), there are so many great Andy moments that could carry this B-story on its own.

But I also really like the meat of the story, which centers on April trying to setup sad sack but sensitive Chris with Andy’s women’s studies professor, continuing the arc of her empathy for him, only for the professor to instead choose laconic carnivore Ron instead. It’s a nice swerve, with good character beats for everyone.

The best part is the ending though. I love that they remembered about Ron’s Tiger Woods shirt as a minor detail. But more importantly, I do like that Ron has to hear his words back from Andy, and despite his reluctance to get involved in awkward personal stuff, he acts like an adult and tells Chris straight up. And there’s nothing more consistently amusing on this show than Ron being hugged!

There’s even a great little Donna and Jerry story! Jerry’s trance-like state when packing letters because this sort of work “makes sense to me” is so weird but so fun, as is Donna’s fascination with it. Jim O’Heir does a great job of selling Jerry’s hypnotic devotion to his task, and Retta conveys how much intrigue this holds for Donna well.

Overall, there is nothing so major that happens in this episode, or any big heartwarming moments, but it’s an episode where every character on the show is being used and used well. That is impressive in and of itself, and brings all sorts of laughs and great character moments in the process.

This will probably become more beloved than Dune for being a bigger, more action driven film. Personally I prefer the first film by a long shot, but there's a lot to like here. I loved Paul's new journey for this installment as it doesn't develop in the way you'd expect based on the ending of the first film. The themes of colonialism, false prophecies and religion reach a level of depth that cannot be found in other sci-fi/fantasy contemporaries like Lord of the Rings or Star Wars; this film certainly made me understand why this story is taken so seriously as a piece of literature. Despite the source material being so old, there's still something new and refreshing about it. You don't often see major Hollywood productions calling out religion as a manipulative force helping the people in power. On top of that this brilliantly subverts the concept of the hero's journey we've become accustomed to by everything that was in one way or another inspired by Dune. The acting is pretty great, Timothée does a great job at playing the transition Paul goes through. Despite his boyish looks I was sold on his performance as the leader of the Fremen. Rebecca Ferguson and Javier Bardem are also scene stealers. The visuals are once again mindblowing, in terms of set/costume design, cinematography and CGI this is as close to perfection as you could get to right now. The vision and scope of this movie are truly unmatched, which leads to some breathtaking sequences that I'll remember for a while (sandworm ride; the black/white arena fight; knife fight during the third act).

However, for all the praise I have for Dune: Part 2, I think Denis is being uncharacteristically sloppy with this film. First of all, Bautista and Butler feel like they're ripped from a different franchise altogether. Their over the top, cartoonish performances are more suited for something like Mad Max than the nuanced world of Dune. The bigger cracks start to appear when you look at the writing. The brief moments where the movie pokes fun at religious zealots through Javier Bardem's character, while funny, probably won't age very well. Like the first movie, it has a tendency to rely too much on exposition and handholding, a problem which might be worse here. I feel like a lot of the subtlety is lost in order to make the movie more normie proof, and that's quite annoying for a movie with artistic ambitions like this one. For example, there's this scene where Léa Seydoux seduces Austin Butler's character, and everything you need to know as a viewer is communicated through Butler's performance. Cut to the next scene, where Seydoux is all but looking at the camera saying "he's a psychopath, he's violent, he wants power, etc.". I just feel like compared to Villeneuve's precise work on Blade Runner 2049, he's consciously dumbing it down here. It's understandable and somewhat excusable for a complex story like Dune, but he occasionally takes it too far for my liking. Then there's the love story subplot between Chani and Paul, which almost entirely misses the mark for me. It feels rushed, there's no chemistry between the actors and some of the lines are painfully cheesy. Because of that, the emotional gutpunch their story eventually reaches during the third act did little for me. Finally, I'm a little dissatisfied with the use of sound. I loved the otherworldly score Zimmer came up with for the first Dune, however this film is so ridiculously bombastic and low-end heavy that it starts to feel like a parody of his work with Christopher Nolan. For the final action beat of the film Villeneuve cuts out the film's score, and it becomes all the more satisfying for it.

Overall, I recommend this film, however maybe temper those expectations if you're expecting a masterpiece. There's a lot to admire, but it's flawed.

6.5/10

I remain unconvinced that a film needs to last more than two, let alone three hours. "Killers of the Flower Moon" also was far too long for my personal liking. To be fair, though, I have to admit that I was already pretty tired when the movie started. The extremely slow pacing definitely didn't help, though. Still, there's a lot I really like about this movie. For example, it looks fantastic, has an intriguing and previously unexplored setting, and impresses with strong performances by the actors. Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and especially Lily Gladstone are all more than convincing, although the latter unfortunately disappears from the film for long stretches. De Niro's character was also a bit too one-dimensional in my opinion.

Looking at the story, I hoped for a long time that it would pick up speed, at least in the last third, when the "investigation" of all the murders starts. Unfortunately, that didn't really come true, although the pacing was at least a bit brisker at the end. Overall, it's hard for me to give a final rating, but I'm relatively certain that even in a less tired state, I wouldn't see "Killers of the Flower Moon" as Martin Scorsese's next masterpiece. However, the film is good all the same.

The premise of having the story focusing on Dracula's familiar instead of Dracula himself sounded like a great original idea. The thing is Nicolas Cage as Dracula is far more interesting than whatever they tried to do with Renfield. Whenever Dracula was on-screen I was entertained but it just becomes boring whenever Renfield is around. A great deal of the movie doesn't even focus on him either, it's mostly about the local crime family and the corrupt police department subplot. They certainly tried with the comedy and I got some What We Do in The Shadows vibes for most of the runtime but it's not nearly as funny, nor is it an interesting satire on vampires. I'm totally ok with cringe but none of the comedy really worked for me, I laughed maybe twice. It would have been forgivable if the action sequences were good at least but that's not the case. The blood is entirely ugly-looking CGI, the action has no stakes and characters with no powers (ex: Awkwafina's character) fight as if they have powers. Awkwafina plays herself, Renfield is uninteresting and the third act was so incredibly predictable and underwhelming. Nick Cage was awesome as Dracula though, I wish he was in another movie!

[7.7/10] Plenty of great stuff in this one. Anytime Leslie has a moral dilemma, particularly one as low stakes as whether to fib about whether the possum she caught is the possum, it makes for a good episode. Leslie’s struggle with whether to take the credit for nabbing “Fairway Frank” and pick up a chit from the mayor’s office in the process, or to be honest that she’s not sure if it’s really him and save a potentially innocent possum is a good one. It has great talking head segments (like the one about Leslie asking herself questions) and other fun stuff like her frantic insistence that April help.

April’s help is a nice deal too. She worries about the fact that Andy caught the possum, because Shawna Malway-Tweep suggests it might win him Anne back. Andy’s boasting and preening in front of “the press” and April’s quiet frustration makes for a nice contrast. And her and Leslie freaking out and hiding and chasing when the possum gets loose in Anne’s house makes for some great comic setpieces. (The same goes for Tom fleeing in a panic as soon as he sees the possum.)

The B-story is a good one too. Mark helping Ron get his woodshop up to code, despite Ron’s insistence that the city code shouldn’t apply to him and his libertarian leanings is another great instance of Ron bending his own principles a little bit because someone is being kind to him. His smile after running the book with the city code in it through a saw and the perturbed noise he makes when he has to then go back and try to read it are both great. It’s a nice Mark-Ron story, which we don’t get much of. (Sidenote: I didn’t expect to have this reaction on rewatch, but I’ve actually really enjoyed Mark as the straight man this season. Still love what happens next, but I wish we’d gotten to maintain at least a little of that.)

Overall, it’s a very funny episode that has great character moments for Leslie, Ron, and April, which makes it a-okay in my book.

[8.4/10] Seinfeld became famous as a “show about nothing” but the original premise of the series was a little more nuanced than that. It was meant to be about how a comedians gather material for their acts. The first episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is that idea on steroids -- a mini movie about how Midge’s life and circumstances and very being unwittingly prepare her to be an incredible stand-up comedian, having gathered years’ worth of material and a unique take on the world that makes her a natural.

But it’s also a character story. Ultimately, this pilot is a tale about how Midge did everything right to achieve the idyllic and perfect life she thought she’d wanted since she was a little girl and then had the rug pulled out from under her whole world in just one night. It’s also a story of how a woman does everything to be the perfect 1950s New York City wife and mother, organize her husband’s life, wheel and deal to make her husband’s dream come true, only to be left blamed and holding the bag when he decides it’s not what he wants.

There’s a palpable sense of unfairness to all of this. We see how much Midge hustles. We see how she shmoozes with butchers and doormen and club owners to keep everything running smoothly in her husband’s life. We see her secret (and kind of insane) beauty routine so that she can look gorgeous while also complying with social norms that it seem effortless. We see her supporting her husband’s passion and all but making it possible for him to enjoy the tiny modicum of success he has.

And then we see it go utterly unappreciated by Joel, who walks away at the first minor bump in the road, seemingly completely unaware, let alone appreciative, of all the work Midge puts in to make their life what it is. We learn that for all her efforts to be witty and beautiful and fuflill the role she thinks she ought to in order to have the life she thinks she wants, the life that’s expected of someone in her position, Joel takes up with a dumb-as-a-rock young secretary anyway.

The sense of cosmic injustice to all of this, and the 1950s systems that permit and even encourage it, is visceral, especially when Midge’s parents assume it’s her fault: for her looks or her comments or even just for “picking a weak man” despite her father’s self-justifying indecipherable signals to the contrary. This is world built to punish people like Midge, in more way than one, and with one purloined suitcase, she realizes how fragile the perfect life she’d continually worked so hard to build within that system was.

And yet, amid all of that unfairness, we also see that Midge is, well, hilarious. Writer-director Amy Sherman-Palladino gives Midge the sparkling wit and effervescence amid ping pong-ing dialogue that’s familiar to anyone who’s seen her stellar work in Gilmore Girls, her breakthrough as a creator. There’s an old chestnut that comedy = tragedy + time. The first episode of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel gives us the tragedy from which Midge’s brand of humor will emerge, but it also sets up nicely why and how she’s funny and perfect for the unforgiving world of stand-up.

She’s witty and quick with a smart remark, a quality that more than one Sherman-Palladino character can boast, but which is particularly well-suited for a personality like Midge. We see her easy way with people and ability to tweak and nudge with good humor, whether it’s a rival customer at the butcher shop or her judgmental parents (another familiar Sherman-Palladino trope). That makes her ease on stage, her ability to playfully interact with folks in the crowd like they’re old chums, seem like a natural extension of her life and manner up to that point, which isn’t an easy needle to thread.

We see hints of her originality throughout the episode, as Sherman-Palladino expertly uses Midge’s toast at her own wedding to not only efficiently and charmingly trace her life up to that point, but to show how her very original, mischief-making energy is there from the start. More than anything, this series premiere is a smart bit of writing, nicely establishing all the salient details of Midge and her ecosystem in less than an hour, and constructing the four walls of her “perfect life” just before they’re about to be knocked down, with hints of the vibrant person who’s unknowingly been trapped within them all this time.

Beyond just the trademark Gilmore Girls-esque patter that flows out of Midge like a river, the pilot shows her intuitive understanding of comedy. She gets why Bob Newhart’s rendition of the Lincoln routine is better than her husband’s imitation. She understands the need for an introduction and a way to ease the audience into the bit, coming up with a clever intro with only a few seconds of thought. She even comes up with an amusing, off-the-cuff observational routine about Joel’s hole-filled sweater that’s more laugh-worthy than anything he’s ever come up with despite it being his dream.

That’s the central irony of all this. Joel gets all the fruits of this charmed life, and the unwavering support to pursue this thing he’s clearly not very good at, only to spurn it all against the wife who’s unseen and unappreciated labor makes that life possible and who is, beneath his notice, a hundred times funnier than he’s ever been. The irony is that it’s the puncturing of that life that leads Midge to realize she’s better and more capable at this than her husband ever was.

What’s most impressive is that Sherman-Palladino sells that epiphany to the audience at the same time. Midge’s set at the Gaslighter is legitimately great. It has the right rough energy of someone who hasn’t performed stand-up before and is in the midst of a personal crisis, but who is also a complete savant at this, having unwittingly been trained from birth and bearing to do this, do it very well, and most importantly make it her own.

The thing that makes Midge a great stand-up, the thing that makes her more than just another schmuck using borrowed material, is that these unfortunate but necessary events make her be more uniquely and definitively her. That’s what Susie sees when she encourages Midge to keep going -- that there’s something distinctive about Midge that allows her to do this sort of thing better than anyone else, a talent that’s gone unfostered, a potential dream that’s never been uncovered because its exploration was always put to the side in favor of her husband’s.

Lenny Bruce’s shrug in the final scene affirms that stand-up comedy is not an easy racket, particularly for a woman in the 1950s. But that it’s also something Midge could love, that could be hers and her honest choice, in a way that nothing in her life up to this point really has been. That is invigorating, a little sad, and eventually, laugh-out-loud funny, which is more than good reason to head back to the Gaslighter for a return engagement.

It's been almost four entire seasons for this show to finally stop mucking about and actually do something. Was a lot of it entertaining along the way? Absolutely. But that doesn't change the absolute muddiness of the journey. This episode represents everything that has been good and bad with this series: there are good jokes and interesting problems that arise from the naturally derived conflict. However, it is mired within an absolutely uneven pace that frequently makes solutions come out of nowhere and many of the jokes feel like they're too "pop-culture" for their own good (the whole "finally understand Twin Peaks" thing? Really? It's not really difficult to understand).

But what makes me the most frustrated is that the vast majority of the most interesting conflict that The Good Place has brought to the table has been truncated within the past two seasons. It's baffling that we spent two seasons stuck inside the bad place waiting for the protagonists to break out when the latter two seasons will show them on the lam and then coming up with a solution, only for the penultimate episode to show them getting to the Good Place finally only to realize that they need to fix it as well. Why could the final season not be about them trying to solve the problems of the Good Place? It's so uneven that I genuinely don't understand what the writers were thinking.

However, there's something very sweet about the resolution of this episode that has a nice beat to it. I like the suggestion of finality, but I don't necessarily agree with it. Underneath everything it suggests that good people should only be around good people and when they're too bored of each other then they might as well just die. It has a nice poetic ring to it within the context of the show, but from an outsider standpoint it feels like a bit of a cop out (not to mention like a double standard. If people like this then they need to re-evaluate their distaste of the LOST ending).

I don't know. I have been overwhelmingly lukewarm on this entire series and absolutely nothing about this final season has made me want to change my mind. Although this episode had a nice emotional beat to it, that doesn't change the fact that it was rushed, unearned, and confused within the logic of the world itself. Again I ask: WHAT YEAR IS IT ON EARTH? In this episode Patty said they like to keep things current but didn't the protagonists die like like a long time ago?

Unfortunately I had the misfortune of having to slog my way through The Rise of Skywalker twice this week. It is hard to imagine a more disappointing conclusion to the saga. As someone who loved the bombastic (though familiar) take JJ brought to The Force Awakens, and the visionary imagination Rian brought to creating perhaps the most morally pure and thematically consistent Star Wars episode ever in The Last Jedi, I knew it was going to be a hard task for any director to finish this off satisfactorily.

JJ specifically is fantastic at creating new mysteries and setting up new characters, but disastrous at ending stories - whether his own or those of others. This movie is a perfect example of that. I was worried JJ would use TRoS to undo everything I loved about TLJ, but that doesn't even turn out to be the issue. Not only does he disregard TLJ, he disregards and seems to detest his own work in TFA, and has zero interest in crafting a finale to this epic nine movie saga. He doesn't just squander the potential of the prior two entries, but of the entire franchise.

There is not a single plot thread in TRoS that hasn't been lifted from a prior Star Wars movie. Character motivations change scene to scene. There are some truly spectacular emotional moments... that only contain any emotional pay-off whatsoever because of Daisy Ridley's stunning performance and John Williams's sublime score.

Given JJ's task here I tempered my expectations to the most conventional conclusion possible, and somehow this movie was still more boring than that. So many questions are answered - each and every one in the least interesting, most obvious, most predictable, most boring way possible. If you have played a video game with a quest log and fetch quests - congratulations, you will feel intimately familiar with the structure of this movie.

This movie is what we feared Disney would inflict on this beloved franchise, even though we were somehow spared it in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. It's a case study in why pandering to every fan's checklist of expectations results in a creatively bankrupt endeavour that ultimately surprises no-one, delights no-one, and satisfies no-one who has had even a passing interest in the story arc - and philosophical viewpoints - of the prior eight movies.

Given I've seen the movie twice now, as of now I'm fairly confident in saying: it's probably the worst Star Wars movie ever made, including the spin-offs and the prequels. It certainly is the one I have scored the lowest.

The only good news? I re-watched the prior movies this week and they still hold up spectacularly. JJ may have fucked up the ending, but we can still re-visit the brilliant entertainment Lucas, Kasdan, Johnson, and even Abrams himself have previously given us.

I love this franchise and I was rooting for this movie, even under the near impossible expectations placed upon it. I did not imagine that anyone could screw up the ending so massively.

Nothing makes me sadder than to write this post.

Let me start by saying that this contains spoilers, is emotionally biased and CONTAINS SPOILERS!

The first third(ish) of the movie, I thought to myself - yes, thank God, yes! They didn't screw it up. And then... things went downhill from there. And a lot of things in my opinion, went wrong. Let's take it from the top:

1. The amount of Disney is disheartening. The original feeling the old movies had; the desperation, the development of skills and character, the development of relationships, the emotional rollercoaster - it's either forced in TFA or it's not there at all. Rey might be a natural with a large count of midichlorians etc., but just like Anakin and Luke, the wielding of a lightsaber that Rey displayed at the end of the movie, is Disney talking. I know she's skilled with a staff, etc. etc., but a staff is still not a lightsaber. And not to mention the very Disney moment where she remembers the Force. Yeah, that definitely speaks for itself.

2. The characters. Like the most of you, I was exceptionally thrilled that old the oldies appeared! I loved seeing the Dynamic Duo (Chewie and Han) back on the screen! Amazing work by the two actors! The usual funny and very emotionally engaging robots were there! I loved BB-8 the same way you love a puppy. And of the new characters, my compliments to Driver's Kylo Ren - amazingly complex and well-interpreted character with an emotional depth that is fit for the franchise (but I still hate him and will NOT forgive him. Ever). And for the new characters, that's about it. Ridley's Rey was to me boring with no emotional depth and no development whatsoever. And Finn. I'm sure he'll be of some use later on, but I saw no use for him in TFA. At all. Maybe that's me reacting to the development of multiple main characters at once, but my own personal opinion on this is that instead of the focus on multiple characters and the establishment of several things at once (Kylo Ren, The First Order, Snoke, Finn, Rey, The Resistance, etc.), they should've established fewer things an more in depth. Even though I found it easy to follow the storyline, I was still occupied with too many questions at once. Who is Snoke? What is The First Order? What's Rey's parentage? What's the deal with the new stormtroopers? Too many important questions are raised so early in the movie that I didn't have the chance or time to enjoy the rest of it.

3. Another Death Star? Really? Another Empire (that looks like something taken out of Nazi Germany)? Really? Another X-wing miraculously destroying something in the last seconds? I ask only this - WHY?! The exaggeration of The First Order was... unnecessary. The many reuses of the plots from the older movies, also unnecessary. Disney had the opportunity to create their own stories in an already established universe. Why make Kylo Ren Han and Leia's son? Why in the world could they not just have let them live on to be the legends that they were and are - instead of dragging them into another story line. I've heard a lot of comments on that it was Han who bridged the old and the new, but he didn't have to be the bridge. They had so many possibilities and they chose the easiest one.

4. MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!

WARNING YOU!

LAST WARNING!

How in the world could they kill off Han Solo? Yes, I'm aware that it furthers the plot and was necessary, but killing the person who bridged the old and the new, is first of all gutsy, secondly insulting and thirdly odd. Yes, I'm very emotionally biased when it concerns this. Han died because the story had to move on. That's insulting. Kylo Ren killed him (reference to Luke and Vader anyone?) in a very not-Han-like-way-to-die. I wanted more for Han's big finale and for his character.

When all that's said though, there were some moments where I honestly enjoyed the movie. But in the end they were all overshadowed by the evil I feel has been done to the franchise.

Contains major spoilers !!!!!

Huge and utterly dissapointing. After TFA I said this movie would make or break the story. For me it broke.

Where to begin? Let´s start with my biggest problem.

After that rebel cruisers bridge was hit and Leia was thrown into space we saw her drifting in the cold empty vacuum of space. This was a powerful scene and I had tears welling up in my eyes thinking that would be a great ending for the character dying how she always lived. Fighting. I did not realise, or care, that it would have been a huge coincidence had they written this scene at that point not knowing Carrie would pass away. But as I said powerful scene. And then she opens her eyes and floated back into the ship still beeing alive. At that point I was seriously considering leaving the cinema. It´s scifi but, please, without as much as a hint of an explanation that is just awful writing. It is Disney all over it. Anyway I stayed and watched the rest but in general I was done with the movie.

There are tons of other things I didn´t like.

• way to much unnessesary and stupid humor. Most of the time it does not fit and just destroys scenes. Holding for General Hux - that might have been OK once but two or three times it just becomes goofy. And there is more of this througout the movie.

• the writing was all over the place. So much things going on that do little to nothing for the general plot and just add playtime. Like that whole thing with the codebreaker, going to the casino. Just sugarcoating CGI.

• and speaking of playtime - way too long. About five times towards the end I thought it was over. It could have ended when the reached the rebel base- no let´s add another battle. When they realised they where trapped. With Luke going out to face Kylo. At some point I would have been OK with the movie ending with the First Order defeating the rebels, everyone dying, and the franchise done with. But of course that is not happening and the movie ends.....no, just show us a kid with a broom looking at the stars and indicate he could be the hero of a future movie.

• in many ways the continuation of storylines is not satisfiying. They introduce Snoke in the first movie without an explanation who he is, where he comes from and how he got there. Would have been OK, could have done later. So now he´s dead without so much as a fight and there are questions left to be answered.

• what about Rey ? Are we really to believe her parents were some drunk and drifting scavengers that sold her for money like Ren said ? That would be very stupid because how in the universe could she master the Force in ways even the best Jedis or Sith couldn´t without as much as years of training. Another void in the storytelling.

• too many, shall I call them, homage scenes ? A lot of times I felt I had already seen this movie. The scene in the throne room f.e. Snoke = Emperor, Rey = Luke, Ben = Vader, the destruction of the rebel fleet playing in the background and the Ben killing Snoke is like Vader killing the Emperor. I know that was said about TFA as well but I feel it´s much worse here. The Battle of Hoth reviseted would be another thing where they re-did some scenes to a T. All that was left was tow cables.

Those are just some examples of the things I disliked and maybe there could be satisfactory explanation later. There is a lot more but it would take too much time to write it down. But I doubt I will go to the cinema for the next one.

To be fair there where some positives in this movie.

• I liked the scenes with Rey and Luke althought they did not really lead anywhere. But some nice insights into Lukes story after ROTJ.

• The conversations between Kylo and Rey where very interesting and I thought there was really potential to steer the story to something new and exciting. Not happening.

So overall I was not satisfied. I really like TFA, it built some expectations that where all crushed with this. As far as I am concerned I am done with this new story. I am not not very eager to find out what else the canibalise and how they try to write themselves out of this. There is nothing left.

This is my view of the movie. If you liked it I´m happy for you.

May the Force be with us. Always.

[7.7/10] I’ll say this for The Good Place. I like that they’re basically running through all the love triangle permutations now rather than dragging them out unnecessarily. I’ll admit, I don’t exactly buy the possibility of Fake Eleanor and Chidi together, or Fake Eleanor being in love with Chidi, but I do buy it as a spur of the moment feeling that, with some reflection, she realizes isn’t real. (I’m less sold on the idea that Tahani and Chidi aren’t soulmates, because that seems like a better possibility.)

Still, I’ll say this for that part of the story -- it leads to the best thing in the episode, namely Fake Eleanor and Tahani hanging out together. The two characters have a fun dynamic, and watching them check out a BBC sitcom or put in hair extensions or snark at Jason and Janet’s wedding is a treat.

Heck, I even liked the Jason and Janet shtick. There’s something about someone who’s a complete dolt “falling in love” with someone who’s barely sentient but nevertheless nice to him that is weird but oddly sweet. The pair’s vows, entrance music, and little dance together are all absolutely charming even if it’s a semi-bizarre bit.

The only part of the episode that didn’t really work for me is Chidi’s indecision. I like the approach, showing Chidi’s paralyzed by choice, but it’s done in such a cartoony, over the top way that it’s hard to be too invested in his growth over the course of the episode. That said, his best friend knowing him well enough to do a “fake wedding day” test, and Chidi literally being killed by his indecision is a decent bit.

Overall, lots of laughs and good energy to this one, particularly the funny and endearing Tahani/Fake Eleanor portions and the strange Jason/Janet stuff.

I have been watching the big bang Theory ever since it first aired. Being an IT student at the time, the uncomfortable social situations and nerdy jokes spoke to me. However, much has changed throughout the seasons, more about that later.

We start out with our four nerdy main characters. There is the recognizable fact of the three people with higher degrees (PHD holding Sheldon, Leonard and Raj) who make fun and feel themselves better than "simple" engineer Howard. There is the desperate search for love coming from both Howard and Raj, and the differentiation between the confident yet single Howard and the timid, uncertain just-as-single Raj. Sheldon is the one who has no sense of what's going on around him, and is only interested in his own world. Leonard is the humble cute guy who manages to get a date from time to time, an inspiration to Howard and Raj, although his on/off fling with Leslie gives us the impression that he isn't really that successful after all.

Then we have the obvious babe, Penny, the complete opposite of our four nerds. She makes something stir in all three of them, but follows the cliché of going out with the "wrong" men, being dumb, and ignoring their advances.

Even though these are all cliche’s, the inside jokes and the disarming clumsiness of the four guys made the first seasons well worth watching. Gradually however, as the show became more popular, the writers started to abandon what once made it so.

With the introduction of Bernadette and Amy the female characters are drastically expanded, but they don't add any real value to the show. Bernadette is the caricature of Howards mother, where as Amy is an attempt to make Sheldon look more human. At the same time, we go from a show with it's own flair to a one-in-a-dozen sitcom. The laughing tape went from being an accessory to being the main engine of the show. The characters became aware they were going to make a pun and started smiling like idiots before they said it, and laughing like people high on weed after someone made it. The longer this series continues, the more painful it becomes to watch. The lines that are supposed to be jokes are simply not funny. The acting and stereotyping are more bearable in a highschool play. And, as stated in another review made before this one, the show changes from laughing with the characters to laughing at the characters. From a nerdy show to a show about nerds.

Conclusion: if you're looking for some nerdy fun, watch the first three or four seasons. After that, it gets the same illness so many American shows suffer from, namely that it becomes a cash cow for the producers and starts a long, painfully slow, continuously prolonged process of dying a silent dead.They never seem to know when to end something great instead of going on to make it something mediocre.

I'm giving this cult classic television series another spin, starting off from the beginning (and also redoing my ratings up to now). So here we go:

The Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire is, as the title card reads, a Christmas Special, and it may seem rather strange, that a television series starts with a Christmas special. To understand this, you need to know two things:

Firstly, this wasn't actually supposed to be the first episode. The first episode produced, was S01E13, Some Enchanted Evening. However, a workprint test screening was received overall poorly, enforcing a long rework of the entire first season that took around half a year. Now, having to air in mid December, the decision was made to grab Episode 8 of that season for premiering.

Secondly, the Simpsons where already well known. It was in 1985 that comic artist Matt Groening was asked to do an animated short series for the Tracey Ullman Show, a ~30-minute long sketch comedy show, to be used as a ~1 minute long "bumper" before and after the commercial break. Groening initially wanted to use his comic series "Life in Hell" but when he learned, that he would actually loose all intellectual property rights, he came up with a plan B: The Simpsons, which - as rumor has it - was developed in 15 minutes in front of the office of producer James L. Brooks, just before pitching the idea. It wasn't the first (and in the beginning not the only) animated short that aired as advertisement bumper in the show that started in April 1987, but it was the one that got most attention and by the second season, all other cartoons were canceled and The Simpsons became the exclusive short series in that show. After the third season, that ended in May 1989, the Simpsons where spun off into a standalone half-hour series.

Taking these two facts into consideration makes it clear, how they could start off with a Christmas Special, but it also puts a lot of undeserved praise into better context. Many point out how this first episode already established so many places & figures and their characteristics right from the get-go (e.g. Skinner, Ned Flanders, Patty & Selma, Moe, Barney, Mr. Burns, Smithers, Milhouse and Grandpa, Moe's tavern, the power plant, Bart prank-calling Moe, etc.). If, however you watch them in production order, you will see, that the Simpsons started out as any other series; only Moe, Moe's Tavern and the Pranks where introduced in the original first episode. And other characters get introduced gradually over the next episodes, not all at once and some with large differences in the beginning (e.g. Milhouse being black-haired, or Smithers initially being black), so that this episode had already a rather rich background to fetch ideas from and build upon.

So ignoring this aspect, this episode has rather little to offer. The drawings are still a bit clumsy, the story not that original, there is little humor, no real sassy social remars and the dialogues rather dull. On the plus side, however, it is a heart warming story that has a nice happy end, and it manages to bring you into a Christmas spirit, even if you watch it in the summer.

Starting at 5/10 and looking at all the pros and cons, in the end, this episode is rather balanced out, leaving it at 5/10 points over all.

[8.0/10] So much more to say than this mini-review, but in brief, it’s almost shocking how much of The Simpsons is here right from the jump. This was not meant to be the first episode of the series, but it still works as such a great introduction to what the show is about.

For one thing, you have the table setting. Marge’s Xmas letter gives you the basics of the family. You have classic figures from Principal Skinner to Moe and Barney introduced right out of the gate. Homer’s combative relationship with his sisters-in-law and jealous relationship with his neighbor is firmly established. And even little character traits, like Bart’s hellraiser impulses and Lisa’s sensitive intelligence are sketched out here. Sure, our understanding of these characters will get deeper over the years, and the show will better define them, but the basics are there in a recognizable way.

At the same time, the show’s sensibility comes through so clear here. The satirical cynicism that fuels the series is firmly present, from the careful omissions or white lies in Marge’s Xmas letter, to Burns giving himself a bonus but withholding one from his employees, to Patti’s blasé “watch your cartoon” response to Lisa’s polite but legitimate grievance. That sort of wry take on how families present themselves and work and intergenerational interactions is true to Matt Groening’s Life in Hell roots.

Plus there’s the classic skewering of the institution of T.V. itself, long one of The Simpsons’s favorite targets. This episode tells you what kind of show you’re watching when Bart references everything from A Christmas Carol to The Smurfs to justify his belief that miracles happen to poor kids on Xmas, a belief that’s then shattered when he and Homer’s longshot bet, the one that could save their money woes and with them, Xmas, completely fails to pan out. Bart’s shock that T.V. lied to him is an amusing note for a show clearly trying to depart from the learning/hugging squeak clean mode of T.V. that was predominant at the time.

But this is, unexpectedly, also an episode of love and, yes, even a little hugging. This is a Homer episode, and it helps answer that eternal question of why Homer, who is consistently stupid, often selfish, and rife with poor judgment, deserves to have this loving family. Right from the gate, The Simpsons answers the question: because however ill-equipped he is to succeed, Homer continually tries to do right by the people he cares about. His efforts to preserve the joy of Xmas, and to keep his family happy during the holiday season, are ill-fated but noble, and the pathos in the poor sap from every time he deludeds himself into making him think he can pull it off is quietly heartbreaking.

Despite that, the dope wins the day. There’s something so poetic and beautiful about the dog who ruined their last chance at a big payday, who’s “pathetic and a loser”, is also the one who makes their Xmas its brightest. The kids are happy. Marge is happy because the aptly named Santa’s Little Helper is something that can share their love (and scare away prowlers). And you get a warm holiday embrace from this nascent series, tinged with the bits of cynicism that make it feel legitimate rather than cloying.

All-in-all, this is a hell of a start for the duly venerated series, one that sets up the basic premise of the show and its cast of characters, establishes the series’s sensibility right away, and better yet, tells a great story about Homer’s love for his family that would be the backbone of the series in lean years and in its golden years.

Tenet is Christopher Nolan's attempt at utilizing similar timeslip mechanics as Primer, and should not be confusing at all to anyone who has ever watched that film. In fact, the moment that we are introduced to turnstile, it should be immediately clear how the film ties its loose ends, connecting the ending with the first minutes of the film.

The interesting take is how, and I think Nolan does much better job than the film I mentioned.

The point of the film, I think, is that there is no multiple realities. The future is already set in stone. "What happened's happened" means basically the world has been like that since the movie start. “Ignorance is the Tenet team’s ammunition” only because they don’t know how or what happens in the future, they do what they do to save the world. Basically everything in this film has already happened and no one is in control.

And I think that's the beauty, and the sad deterministic view of the film. "What about free will?" the Protagonist asks very early in the film. There is none; only fate.

So unlike what others have claimed, Tenet does have a plot, albeit a deterministic one. As a film, Tenet does not trouble itself by laying out vague scientific jargons or trying to explain the time mechanics to the audience. Nolan takes a straight point, focusing on the heist/mission like he did with Inception.

Some might say that the characters are soulless, unlike Inception. I think it might be the consequence of fast-moving scenes cut/edited with high efficiency. Especially in the first half of the film; at times I had to pause the film a few times to understand what's going on. But character's relationship leaves a better impression as we get to the ending. Although I have to admit that the villain's motivation was not at all convincing/interesting; they serve more like as a background to the whole mission.

I also see Tenet as Nolan's further experiments with sound design/ambient music, after what he did with Dunkirk: in certain scenes, like the inverted car chase scene, Nolan contrasts a seemingly linear/flat cinematography with shepard tonal music that makes the scene getting more intense and pressured only through repeating the pitch (see Vox's video/article on this subject).

Tenet might not be Nolan's masterpiece, but it's a very interesting experiments that does things well and really streamlined in the timeslip/time travel genre.

[8.4/10] When I think about Jesse Pinkman’s journey over five seasons of Breaking Bad, I think of how he changed in terms of his potential and his morality. He was the layabout accessory to Walter White’s destructive brilliance, until he came into his own, as a cook and as a part of something. He was the screw-up the Schraders considered “trash,” but he turned out to have the bigger heart, to feel so much the pain he had caused to this world.

So when El Camino was announced. I wondered where else there was for him to go. After Vince Gilligan and his colleagues made a spin-off prequel about a tertiary character into one of the best shows on television, it’s worth trusting that creative team wherever they want to take us. Still, Breaking Bad ended with closure -- more for Walt than for Jesse -- but with enough of a suggestion of what’s to come to warrant wondering what a Pinkman-focused epilogue would have left to show us.

The answer is a story of recovery and escape, as Jesse tries to evade the cops, scrounge what he needs to get by, and get the hell out of dodge. It is also an opportunity for Gilligan & co. to do what they do best -- back their characters into corners and then find tense, clever, and creative ways for them to work themselves out.

But most of all it’s a story about agency, and with that, about tying off the last dangling thread of transformation for Jesse Pinkman after Breaking Bad. The purpose of the story El Camino tells in the past is to show us the ways in which Jesse has, for a very long time, had his life directed by other forces. Whether it was Walt’s scheme or Gus’s operation, or just the general listlessness with which he drifted through his existence, he was object, not subject, in his own life.

But the story the movie tells in the present is about him being rid of all those encumbrances, and even the wreckage that his life had become, and making choices for himself. It’s a story about him being without Walt, without Mike, without Gus, without his parents, without Jane or Andrea or most of the meager support system that ordered him around or used him or generally set the course for this young man.

It is also, naturally, a story about being on the run from the police. Those fans who tuned into Breaking Bad less for the cerebral interrogation of what evils (and goodness) lies within the hearts of men, and more for the heart-pumping games of cops and robbers will not walk away disappointed. Not only does El Camino check in with almost every significant figure that Jesse crossed paths with, but it delivers the sort of life-and-death puzzles and grimy tension that the original series thrived on.

Gilligan (who both wrote and directed the movie) takes time to show Jesse recovering from the PTSD of having been locked in a cage by Neo Nazi fucks for months on end, suffering from the prospect of having to kill an innocent person again, and basking in the hard-won freedom that he can finally enjoy.

But he also shows Pinkman evading the police’s efforts to use the lojack attached to the titular car (thanks to an unexpectedly brilliant plan from a kindhearted Skinny Pete!), thinking his way out of a scrape with a pair of crooks masquerading as beat cops, and bargaining his way into a ticket out of town with Saul Goodman’s “disappearer” before he sics the authorities on him.

Each of these sequences, whether in the quieter moments or the more pulse-quickening ones, is done to visual perfection. Breaking Bad fans will appreciate the standard desolate-but-beautiful desert landscapes and time lapses. But Gilligan also includes some of his usual stellar montages, where a search for hidden cash becomes a way to communicate the tactile hardship of the task. Low lights and shadows and Jesse’s face reflected in mirrors represent the way the film and its protagonist are working out his identity. And quick cuts from saccharine love songs to a captive digging a grave capture the starkness and dark humor that always permeated the show.

He also includes the characters that always made the series so engrossing, even between the big bangs. Everyone from psychopath-next-door Todd Alquist to the doctrinaire but fair “vacuum repairman” Ed Galbraith, to a meddling, nothing-better-to-do neighbor make an impression. Those figures lead to weird laughs -- whether it’s Todd crooning along to the radio with a corpse in his truck, or the nosy neighbor offering his useless assistance -- and consistently add color to this world. Aaron Paul gives his usual amazing performance as Pinkman, and manages to hold the center opposite all of these fantastic scene partners, no matter what stage of Jesse’s life he’s inhabiting at the moment.

El Camino cuts back and forth to those different points often, doing a greatest hits of Jesse’s meaningful interactions with hallowed Breaking Bad figures past and present. But the film never devolves into fanservice. While it indulges a little explicitly in the series’s “it’s really a Western” roots, it uses those flashbacks to inform the present in meaningful ways, not just to play a game of “remember when.” Jesse’s interactions with Todd in the past might prove to be the key to getting him on his feet in the present, or suggest how and why Jesse knows where to go next.

But they also speak to the gigantic step Jesse is taking through all of this. El Camino opens on Mike Ehrmantraut all but demanding that Jesse start making choices for himself rather than bending to the whims of others. It closes with Jane telling him that “going where the universe” takes you as a crock, and that he needs to make his own decision. In his awkward, Walter White way, Jesse’s partner in crime writes off his encouragement as “just making conversation” but also subtly reveals his belief that Jesse can do something special, particularly with so much of his life left ahead of him.

The Jesse Pinkman we see as this epilogue closes is one taking those lessons to heart. He makes choices here: finding his own ways out of trouble, writing his own ticket to a new life, and when he has no other choice, taking out the people who saw his suffering and did nothing. The Jesse we leave the world of Breaking Bad with is one who acts, rather than is acted upon, who chooses, rather than has choices thrust upon him, and who, unlike the man he followed through so much of the series, seizes his opportunity to have a second chance and learn from all of this.

El Camino justifies itself by adding one last capstone to Jesse’s transformations over so many episodes -- from a young man dealing with the effects of so many others, to one finally driving after his own cause.

[7.6/10] Chuck McGill once described his brother with a law degree as the equivalent of “a chimp with a machine gun.” That conjures a particular image -- one of recklessness and harm via a device far beyond the comprehension or abilities of its user. As Lalo (Tony Dalton) showed us in the tunnel, you don’t need to have perfect aim or a good line of sight to do some serious damage with that sort of tool at your disposal.

But I never bought that line of thinking. Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) was born to color outside the lines, but the early seasons of Better Call Saul convinced me that with the right guidance, the right supervision, the right singing cricket on his shoulder, he could have used his powers for good. The early stages of the Sandpiper case seemed to suggest that, where his con artist ways could be used to benefit a defrauded group of senior citizens (and, admittedly, feather his own nest in the process). Given the bad blood between the McGill brothers, that wasn’t meant to be, and we’ve seen Jimmy’s soul gradually darken over the course of five seasons instead.

Maybe it’s still possible, though, in the guise of a professional pantsuit and a curled ponytail in lieu of a loud blazer and billboard-ready wink. Those same early seasons slowly came to suggest that Kim was an equally formidable con artist as Jimmy, just one whose conscience held her back from the worst of his indulgence.

What if she had the right target though -- a smug man who’s “in love with himself” and treated Kim (Rhea Seehorn) poorly on multiple occasions? What if she had a just cause -- enough money to fund a pro bono practice that could give the indigent the type of representation that only the wealthy can typically afford? And what if there would be no harm to forcing the result -- a Sandpiper settlement that may come in a few dollars shorter than expected, but would give the octogenarian beneficiaries their money now, when they can still use it.

For seasons now, fans and critics like me have posited Kim as the last thing keeping Jimmy McGill from becoming Saul Goodman. What if we were wrong? What if the tie to Kim that seemed to be the last thing holding Jimmy back from descending irrevocably into his “Better Call Saul” guise was, in actuality, the tie that saw Jimmy inadvertently dragging Kim down into that darkness with him.

Jimmy himself certainly seems to think so. Maybe it’s the lingering PTSD or the warning from Mike (Jonathan Banks) in “Bagman” that Jimmy had put Kim into the line of fire. Whatever the cause, Jimmy seems ready to extricate himself from this relationship, not because he loves Kim any less, but because he’s realizing that he might be bad for her. The catch is that, until the end, Jimmy understandably believes the threat is coming from the cartel, and his other probable crossed lines, that might put this poor woman whose only sin is her loyalty to him in more danger.

And why wouldn’t he? The cartel half of “Something Unforgivable” posits the ongoing web of bad blood and conflicting business interests among Lalo, Gus (Giancarlo Esposito), Juan Bolsa (Javier Grajeda), and Don Eladio (Steven Bauer) as something volatile and quick to turn deadly. The confrontation between Lalo and those sent to assassinate him takes out old men, it takes out women, it takes out foot soldiers so young they’re practically kids. It’s reasonable to be afraid of what could become collateral damage next.

Granted, it seems like nothing in this world could stop Lalo from coming at his enemies and evading any attempts to neutralize him. The character has been a more than welcome presence in season 5, and Dalton has brought a mix of mirth and menace to the role not seen since Mark Hamill’s take on the Joker. But his escape from a host of assassins who are, on Fring’s account, the best at what they do, starts to make him feel superhuman in the way his ceiling-leap last season did.

Lalo has proven himself to be exceedingly smart, prepared, and aware of what kind of business he’s in. So it’s not crazy to think he could be ready for something like this. Still, his single-handedly taking out a squad of killers with machine guns despite starting with little more than a hot pan full of oil starts to strain credulity and weakens the one bit of real fireworks the episode has to offer.

That said, the danger puts a target on Nacho’s (Michael Mando) back. He, more than anyone, has been caught in that web for a long time now. Mike once again wants to give him a reprieve, get him out of there before something bad happens. But as Gus surveys the burned wreckage of one his restaurants, his tone and tenor say this is a man who’s invested too much in Nacho Varga to spare him at a time when he may be rising up in Don Eladio’s empire and the pecking order of Gus’s rivals.

That leaves Nacho having to play both sides whilst higher up the food chain. When Lalo coaches him up for winning the top spot in the Salamanca crew from Don Eladio, saying that the business needs someone “steady” right now, you can see him mulling the possibilities. At the same time, you can see how he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Failing to earn that spot may leave him much more expendable to both the Salamancas and to Gus. But gaining it just raises the stakes in his double-agent routine, making his tenuous position between two murderous crime bosses that much more precarious.

The attack on Lalo’s compound, which Nacho conspicuously managed to escape from, puts him in Lalo’s crosshairs. With all the dramatics of the last two episodes, “Something Unforgivable” is more of a denouement for this season, and a setup for the next one, that a heart-pumping hour of television in and of itself. As setup though, Lalo’s “I thought he was dead” revenge quest is an exciting one, that puts literally every other major character on the show in danger.

Lalo’s smart enough to suspect that Nacho had something to do with the attempt on his life. His disdain for Gus is well-documented. He has unfinished business with Mike after sparks flew in last season’s finale. He already thinks Saul might have sold him out given last week’s thrilling stand off. And Kim is officially on the cartel’s radar, after not only identifying herself to Lalo in “Bagman”, but telling him off to his face in the next episode. As Better Call Saul puts its pieces into place for its final season, it’s left each of its major players in potentially mortal danger.

The only character of significance who’s managed to avoid that sword of Damocles is Howard Hamlin. But he may be staring down the barrel of the only thing scarier than an enraged Lalo -- Kim Wexler with a righteous cause and a lack of scruples.

All this time we thought we were watching the slow descent of Jimmy McGill into Saul Goodman, worried that he would drag Kim down with him. Maybe he has, only not in the way any of us were expecting. Just as the firefight on the Salamanca compound seems to be setting up a series of confrontations in season 6 more than it’s closing out the cartel story in season 5, Kim’s choices here seem to be setting up the final, major job that she and her newly-christened husband will pull in the show’s final batch of episodes.

Her plan to trick or coax or outright fabricate Howard committing some unforgivable crime would bring the show full circle. It would set Kim and Jimmy against the show’s fake out villain from its first season. It would give Kim revenge on the man who took his beefs against Jimmy and generally frustrations out on her despite all her good, hard work. It would wrap up the Sandpiper case that drove so much of Jimmy’s actions in the early going. Better Call Saul is rarely so neat or tidy, but the climax of the schemes the husband and wife adorably toss around under the covers would create a bookend for the show as it makes its final lap.

But it would also darken Kim’s soul to an extent few expected or would wish. That includes Jimmy, who seems aghast that his partner is serious about this. We’ve seen Kim cross lines before, from pulling simple cons for fun, to trying more complex schemes to help her practice, to her complicity in Jimmy’s efforts against his brother, to her transgressions on behalf of Mr. Acker in the shadow of Mesa Verde’s call center.

It’s easy to see those as the road to hell paved with good intentions, one greased, however intentionally or inadvertently, by Saul’s bad influence on her. Kim herself, however, rejects this hypothesis when it’s offered by Howard. She insists, as she should, that she’s someone who makes her own choices. We’re all a product of the people we interact with, the people we spend our lives with. But Kim has felt a fire and a thrill from her opportunities to color outside the lines just as Jimmy has, and maybe the only mistake was in thinking that she would hold onto her conscience in the shadow of his worst transgressions rather than finding her own path in the darkness.

Perhaps, instead, she will become what Jimmy seemed poised to become, but through familial grievances and his perceived universe of slights, was doomed to fall short of -- a champion who does bad things for good ends. Season 5 of Better Call Saul is where Saul Goodman, the amoral advocate we would come to know on Breaking Bad, was born and started to flourish. But it may also be the birth of a new Kim Wexler, a fallen angel ready to slay the wicked in the name of the good, as the devil on her shoulder starts to wonder, and regret, what he’s done.

[8.4/10] What a masterclass in tension that final scene is. Lalo ready to kill. Jimmy having lied to someone who's already proven he'll kill a civilian. Kim seeming in continuous mortal peril. And Mike with a sniper rifle ready to end things in different terms at any moment. The scene is a brilliant one, deliberately paced with the right conclusion -- Kim saving the day by making a bold move, a move with the conviction, like she always does.

It's a great episode because it's one that centers on choices. The key comes from Mike's speech to Jimmy about the decisions that we make, and the way they set us on a certain road. Jimmy is overcoming his PTSD from last week's episode and with it comes an epihpany that maybe he's gone too far, that maybe he's in too deep and should pull back. But Mike basically tells him that it's too late. It's too late for Mike, who's made peace with his role as Gus Fring's lieutenant as the place where his choices have led him. It may be too late for Nacho, who Gus seems to suggest will either continue to serve Fring's empire or be "put down." And it's too late for Jimmy, who made so many choices before he ever officially became Saul Goodman that led him here, and which he can't suddenly turn away from.

But it's not too late for Kim. She quits her job, breaks things off with Mesa Verde, and decides to pursue a life of helping the people who really need her talents. She has the vision to see where this road is heading and the courage of her conviction to go another way. She has the temerity and the fortitude and the boldness to go toe-to-toe with a crime lord and talk him down.

In short, she is the one person in this show, and maybe in all of the Breaking Bad universe, with the willingness to see herself frankly, the self-awareness to recognize what path she's on, and the strength to decide it isn't what she wants. That is, however, a hell of a way to find that out, and one hell of an episode.

EDIT: For anyone who enjoys my longer reviews for this show, you can find mine for this episode here: https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/04/better-call-saul-kim-wexler-his-girl-friday/

[7.4/10] I miss the approach -- popularized by The Wire and practiced by shows as distinct from it as BoJack Horseman -- of having the penultimate episode of the season be where the major fireworks go off. It gives you a chance to recover and collect yourself, as a show and an audience, in the actual season finale. And it helps avoid the sense in the lead-up to the end that you’re getting more setup than payoff until the show pulls the trigger on its biggest events of the season.

That’s the problem with “Wiedersehen”, a perfectly good but not outstanding episode of Better Call Saul. It’s not as though nothing happens in the show this week. Lalo Salamanca starts making overtures and feints toward Gus. Werner makes a daring escape from the workmen’s facility. And Jimmy not only faces a denial of his reinstatement, but in his rage and disbelief, manages to sabotage his relationship with Kim that had otherwise seemed on the mend. But all of this feels more like setting the table for the resolution of the finale than anything complete.

Now maybe everything falls into places in this year’s finale and in hindsight, “Wiedersehen” ends up looking like a brilliant prelude. And maybe, when you load up the second-to-last episode of the season with the big happenings of the season, you just make your third-to-last episode the setup episode instead. But it’s hard not to feel like this episode amounts to one big question (or, perhaps, three subsidiary questions) that Better Call Saul only intends to answer next week.

That’s the job of television in some ways. For as daring and stylistically audacious as Better Call Saul and its predecessor series can be, they’re also both sound in terms of the fundamentals and attuned to the core rhythms of television. The show still knows how to end on a cliffhanger, on a tease, on something to leave your jaw on the floor and make you desperate to tune in again next week to see how things resolve.

Rest assured, I’ll be there next week, there to find out whether tension between Gus and the Salamancas reaches the next level, whether Mike is forced to make a hard choice after his ostensible friend flies the coop, whether Jimmy can rescue his legal career or relationship or sense of self. But “Wiedersehen” left me wishing we could just head on to those parts of the story, not just because those teases are so tantalizing, but because this week’s proceedings feel incomplete and even a little insubstantial without the other half of what’s set up here.

That’s especially true for the Nacho/Lalo/Gus portion of the show. Lalo is still a new character, introduced more than three-quarters of the way into the season. ‘Wiedersehen” makes good on the promising setup we’ve seen since early in season 4 -- where Nacho is trapped between the exacting demands of Gus’s well-oiled machine and the unpredictable, trigger-happy Salamancas.

But there’s more promise than proof in this episode. Sure, the conversation between the poised but firm Gus and the loose, freewheeling Lalo is tense and portentous. The prospect of Lalo nosing around Gus’s meth-distribution site portends significant moments for all involved in the episode to come. For now though, this feels like the beginning of the story, the introduction, rather than the culmination, or even a turning point, in the story between Gus and Nacho that Better Call Saul has been toying with this year.

(Don’t get me started on Lalo giving Hector his infamous bell, replete with painful backstory. Maybe I’m still just smarting from the fan service excesses of Solo: A Star Wars Story, but by god, not every iconic snippet or feature or accessory of a character needs an origin story. Sometimes, people just get a bell, or a pair of dice, or something practical to help them communicate, and you don’t need some writerly monologue to deliver weak exposition on how a character came into possession of whatever the object du jour is.)

The same’s true for Werner’s great escape. There’s meat on the bone in that portion of the episode, both in terms of character and scene construction. Rainer Bock absolutely sells Werner’s desperation, his simmering distress at having to remain separated from his wife, his crumbling efforts to hold it together and put a good face on things and do his job. And he also sells Werner’s cleverness, the Walter White-esque ingenuity of a middle aged nerd to find ways to be a spanner in the works for an otherwise well-oiled machine. His ability to find weak spots in the facility, and disguise camera flashes as energy surges, frames him as resourceful and desperate man, and the show manages to communicate that almost solely through the images of the aftermath of his escape.

Series co-creator Vince Gilligan’s also on board to direct this one, which means more than the franchise’s cinematographic trademarks like a shot from inside the hole drilled for the dynamite. It means extended, slow burn, tactile sequences where Werner goes very Hurt Locker in trying to check for faulty wiring. As there often is in the show, there’s a foreboding energy as this gentle man is in a tight spot. His hyperventilation, strains to hold it together, and careful efforts to fix the problem are all stretched out expertly through Gilligan’s camera’s journey through the darkness.

Maybe that’s enough action for one episode, especially one that’s leading in to a presumably eventful finale. But it also can’t help but seem like the show is saving the real excitement -- the inevitable dilemma between Mike’s understanding of and affection for Werner and the duties of his job -- until next week.

But you can make the argument that we get the majorest of major happenings on the Jimmy/Kim side of the episode this week. (Though I suspect I might feel differently after the season finale.) “Wiedersehen” opens up with Jimmy and Kim pulling off another brilliant scheme. It turns out that Kim demuring on Kevin’s request to change the Mesa Verde designs in Lubbock wasn’t a sign of her regular work seeming dull in comparison to her con artist thrills, but rather a prelude to her combining the two to pull off a miracle for her client using a less than savory method.

The entire sequence of her and Jimmy -- posing as a crutch-hopping single mom with a deadbeat brother -- earning the trust and sympathy of the Lubbock clerk and pulling the ol’ switcheroo on the plans is another enjoyable outing for the pair. It plays in the space this show has long lived in -- between wanting to pass judgment on these people for fraud and manipulation, but having so much fun watching them work. But a good con doesn't fix what’s eating Jimmy, his renewed and once-again rejected efforts to have Kim be his partner in law, not just his partner in crime.

That comes to a head when, after a trademark Jimmy McGill performance in front of the review board, his request for reinstatement is rejected. He gives all the right answers to the questions, quotes Supreme Court decisions, includes letters of recommendation, talks about what the law means to him. But he never mentions Chuck, the ghost who’s been haunting this season of Better Call Saul and proves a hindrance to Jimmy’s life even from beyond the grave.

Despite some complicated things going on under the surface, Jimmy has tried to separate himself from Chuck, to move past things, and so he expresses no remorse for what happened with his brother, what effect it had on Chuck’s life, anything specific to the man who used to be the most significant presence in Jimmy’s life. So of course he doesn't mention his brother at his hearing, and it’s what eventually dooms him.

It’s too much for Jimmy to bear. He acts out in a way we’ve rarely seen before. He feels the frustration of a year’s worth of (comparatively) good behavior down the drain, with another year in the offing. He experiences the despondency of expectations being punctured. And worst of all, he takes it out on Kim.

It’s a point I’ve probably beaten into the ground by this point, but Kim has stepped into the role that Chuck used to play for Jimmy. There’s loads of complicated consequences of that, but one of the biggest is that Jimmy projects his insecurities and his anger toward his brother onto her. He lashes out at her for seeing him as insincere, for seeing him as a “low life”, for thinking he’s not good enough to share an office with, charges he might as well be leveling at his dead brother.

Kim, to her credit, pushes back, pointing out how many times she’s been there for Jimmy, how often she looks out for him, takes care of him, drops everything to clean up his messes. There is this one pinnacle dream that Jimmy uses as the yardstick to measure whether he’s loved, overlooking all the other ways in which he has an incredibly good thing going that he sure as hell shouldn’t mess up in fit of pique after a bad disciplinary hearing.

But that’s what happens. I’m done trying to predict whether or not the Kim/Jimmy relationship will end, but after a brief dead cat bounce, there’s enough acrimony that Jimmy starts packing up his stuff. Issues that have been bubbling under the surface for both people in this couple breach here, and it’s hard to know whether things can be put back together.

The title “Wiedersehen” -- a German word meaning “meet again” or “reunion” -- suggests there’s more to come, another chance for Kim to help Jimmy become a lawyer again, through an appeal or a hail mary or whatever new scheme the duo can come up with. But damage has been done. That much is undeniable.

Even then, it feels like there’s more to the story. Season 4 of Better Call Saul has been superb as ever, but also interstitial. After the incredible build that gave us the McGill bowl and Chuck’s death in season 3, the show has been in reaction mode. It gives us the rocky road of Jimmy’s recovery, Kim reckoning with what she’s been a part of, Nacho falling into a tug of war between Gus and the Salamancas, and Mike starting his work with Gus in earnest. The former two are post scripts to stories, and the latter two seem like the beginnings of new ones. It remains to be seen whether the series will give us any resolution at all in its season finale or, like “Wiedersehen”, is waiting for something greater to come.

[8.5/10] Better Call Saul is a show that zigs when you expect it to zag. As a prequel series, it makes its bones as a tragedy, where the events are all the more sad, all the more pitiable, because (most of) the audience knows the opprobrious ends waiting for the show’s heroes. And yet, the series still has an impressive ability to surprise, to delight, to lead the viewer down one path and make you think you know where things are headed, only to take a sudden left turn toward something you might never have expected.

Which is to say that the last episode made it seem like Kim and Jimmy were headed for an irreconcilable split. The slow disintegration of their relationship, the frosty air between the two of them, suggested a grinding down of something that had once been beautiful and a source of strength and solace for both. “Coushatta” starts out pointing things in that direction. Even as Jimmy and Kim are prepping their scheme together, Kim is quietly unperturbed by Jimmy leaving for the night. She’s unbothered by him staying late at his office. She barely seems to notice or care that he’s gone.

It’s enough that Jimmy’s landlord even notices and, in a rare act of kindness, pours him a drink and tells him to make it right. But Jimmy himself admits that it might be too late for that. Maybe their relationship is too damaged. Maybe the people that they are, the things they want out of life, are too different for them to work over the long haul. It’s sad, but Jimmy seems to be slowly but surely accepting a tough truth.

But even if the couple aren’t on the same page personally, they’re still a formidable team when t comes to accomplishing whatever the two of them set out to do. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good scheme on Better Call Saul, and the one “Coushatta” features for Jimmy and Kim is a doozy.

The pair mount a multi-pronged attack to get Huell off the hook. It starts with Kim’s idea to send an avalanche of letters that cast Huell as a hometown hero from a small hamlet in Louisiana. It goes deeper with her “shock and awe” tactic of bombarding the prosecutor with motions and discovery and potential countersuits to try to make the case too much of a hassle to deal with. And it crests with Jimmy, ever diligent when he needs to be, using his array of drop phones and hiring his old film crew to pose as all the concerned citizens of Huell’s homeland, thereby convincing the prosecutor there’s a groundswell of grassroots support for the man.

The whole damn thing is just delightful. This has been a pretty heavy season of Better Call Saul, and rightfully so. Chuck’s death hit several people in a variety of different ways, and it’s worth exploring that. But it’s also nice to get to see our protagonists simply be good at what they do, in a way that makes you laugh. Everything from the joyous pictures of Huell on the “church website,” to the judge complaining that he must be Santa Claus with all the mail he’s getting, to Bob Odenkirk busting out his old Senator Tankerbell accent, drips with the show’s great comic chops.

Better yet, the plan works! After all the meticulous but enjoyable steps “Coushatta” shows our heroes taking, it also gives them a victory. The prosecutor is flummoxed, and Huell gets off without jail time. The episode toys with the audience a bit, letting us share Jimmy’s anxiety and anticipation as he watches Kim jaw with opposing counsel. But Better Call Saul delivers the news in the best and most unexpected way -- a kiss from Kim to Jimmy that packs all the passion and enthusiasm that’s been drained from the frame up to this point. Right at what seems like the brink of a break-up, there is that spark and joy that brought them together, even as another empty bedside suggests this may be more of a blip than a save.

But the surprises aren’t limited to the flim-flam that the team of Jimmy and Kim cooks up. Just as their frosty relationship turns suddenly warm, the friendly rapport between Mike and Werner suddenly takes a turn for the curt and business-like.

That shift proves a swerve within a swerve. “Coushetta” sets the audience up to expect that the mutual admiration society of Mike and Werner will keep on humming, while the continued bad behavior of Kai will prove the sticky wicket between the German workers Werner is supervising and this corner of Gus’s empire that Mike is overseeing.

And initially, it seems like that will be the case. Mike and Werner both skip out on the strip club-centered “R&R” that Mike’s graciously provided for the boys to blow off steam. The two men bond over brews, with Werner affectionately detailing the achievements of his architect father, Mike lamenting the useless of his, and Werner reassuring his new friend that Mike is his father’s legacy and the best thing that Papa Ehrmantraut left behind. Their moment of camaraderie is popped by Kai’s predictable misbehavior, but Mike is adept, as usual, at quelling these sort of monkeyshines, and what could be the spark that ignites the problem turns out to be an easily snuffed out cinder.

The rub, however, is that gentle, gregarious Werner turns out to be the problem. Werner, having had a few too many hefeweizen, strikes up an architectural conversation with a few locals, and has scribbled a rudimentary design of Gus’s lab on a coaster, threatening to let word of this top secret project leak. Mike whisks Werner away, and confronts him about it the next morning. There’s apologies and efforts to minimize, but the damage is done. A relationship that had grown friendly is now one of employer and potential liability (never a good position to be in under Gus Fring). But sadder yet is the sense that Mike had once again grown close to someone, had some sense of equilibrium, only to see it disturbed once more by his business.

The same holds for Nacho, whose quiet command of the Salamanca empire (over what we can assume to be months) seems poised to be disrupted by the arrival of someone who carries the family name. We don’t get much of Nacho’s story here, even after he’s been missing for a few episodes, but what we do get is potent.

We see a version of Nacho who calls late-series Jesse Pinkman to mind, another young man finding steady success in an ugly business who finds that success only hollows him out. The cold way Nacho tears out the earring of a dealer whose tithe was too late, the curt and confident air he takes on when chastising his lieutenant for not doing it fist, the desultory fashion in which he tosses product at his harem in a decked out apartment, suggest a man who, like Jesse, thought he wanted out, and only finds himself a deeper or more vital part of this machine.

Or maybe not. The arrival of another Salamanca cousin presents a problem, another unpredictable element in a machine that needs to work efficiently and expectedly in order to work. There is a spiritual deadening to the ghost of Nacho we see skulking through his home in “Coushetta”, but the appearance of a new cook in the kitchen might give him a way out, one way or another.

Not everybody wants out, though. The specter hanging over the show over the past few episodes has been the apparent impending demise of Jimmy and Kim as a couple. There’s been a growing disdain (or at least what seemed like it) from Kim for Jimmy’s less-than-above-board methods, given how they brought down Chuck, how they tore a sick man down because of a mutually petty (if longstanding) feud.

But what if Jimmy’s powers could be used for good? What if his talent for persuasion and suggestion and theatricality could be applied without hurting anyone? What if his skills could be used to help decent people have another chance?

Why, then, you could enjoy the con-artistry, the creativity, the performance and presentation. When Kim sits in an office with the head honcho of Mesa Verde, who wants her to pull another rabbit of her hat to help them get approval for a new building, she demurs. The old Kim would once have jumped at that chance, to put in the legwork, to pull off a miracle of filings and applications and zoning exemptions. But in the shadow of a multi-pronged scheme to pressure an opposing lawyer into letting her client off with the equivalent of a slap on the wrist with an aisle’s worth of supplies from M.J. Designs and a boatload of trickeration, the thicket of regulatory challenges can’t help but seem dull.

So when Kim asks to speak to Jimmy, he worries that it’s a death sentence for their relationship, but it’s really an invitation. Kim pauses a moment to consider the possibilities before she answers Kevin’s query. Later, she caresses the little souvenir of her and Jimmy’s first little scam. She leans on the wall, smoking a cigarette, the small vice that brought her and Jimmy together. And with those symbols and moments on her mind, she tells Jimmy, the man who’s afraid this is a kiss off, that she’s not mad – she wants more.

It’s the last thing you’d expect after seven episodes of growing revulsion and concern from Ms. Wexler. But there’s a charge to this “line of work,” a fulfillment from defending people who need a second chance combined with the excitement of using her boyfriend’s amusing and impressive abilities to grease the wheels of justice, that she can’t find in her otherwise straight life.

Better Call Saul is a show that gives you both the slow grinding pain of inevitability and harsh realization, but also those jolting, tantalizing, anxiety-boosting shifts that come as a shock, but not quite as a surprise. We know these characters – what Kim wants, what Mike wants, what Nacho wants – and the show never forgets that. When it’s time for a change of direction, each is recognizable in their denuded concerns, their disappointed resignation, and their dangerous hope to delve deeper into the world of tricks and treats that Jimmy McGill can’t help but conjure. We understand where most of these characters are headed, what much of their futures like it, but Better Call Saul still finds ways to surprise us.

[8.6/10] Would you want to know? Would you want the dirt on whether you’re a clone or the original, whether you’re the one who went out and had marvelous adventures or stayed at home and raised a family? Would you want to know if it was your mom? Your wife? Your daughter?

I don’t think I would. Beth clearly doesn’t. Morty and Summer don’t care. Jerry seems unperturbed. Even Rick, the supposed smartest man in the universe who has to have control over everything, didn’t want to know.

It’s the best possible answer to the somewhat unsatisfying mystery box Rick and Morty constructed at the end of season 3. Did Beth stay and look after the Smiths or did she let her dad create an undetectable substitute and go to mount the universe? The episode plays coy about it almost the whole way through in “Star Mort: The Rickturn of the Jerri”, until providing the only possible satisfying answer there could be: that it doesn’t really matter.

Maybe I’m just living in a post-The Prestige, “They’re all your hat” type of world, where it seems plain that both Terrestrial Beth and Intergalactic Beth are valid instantiations of the same person, ones who took different forks in the path, but whose lives and choices from there are equally legitimate and worthy. They are, in many ways, negative images of one another, carrying distinct but related baggage and ultimately finding common ground with one another.

It’s a clever way of saying that whatever choice Beth made would have its problems and its benefits. Intergalactic Beth seems more self-actualized, having saved the galaxy, fought for freedom, and become almost as adept an inventor and fighter as her dad. But she also shares his maladies, having likewise left her family behind, likewise felt the need to gain his approval, and likewise tried to get it by living up to his legacy as the most wanted man in the galaxy. (Something that Rick writes off, but which he’s clearly miffed at having been usurped over.)

Meanwhile, Terrestrial Beth is proud at not having fallen into that trap, and still has the gumption to stand up to her dad and to her galaxy-traveling equivalent. She defines herself by her own projects and not by following in her father’s footsteps. But as Intergalactic Beth pushes back on, it also means having to own the choice of having settled to some degree, of willfully chosen a life that she finds less-fulfilling. Both have gained something and both have lost something.

Apart from that psychological exploration, the season 4 finale is just hilarious and exciting and colorful in equal measure. First and foremost is Jerry, and I don’t know what his funniest bit is. The running gag of his only defensive response to any show of force being a firm “Hey!” had me in stitches. Him letting go of his rifle when Rick yells “everyone drop your weapons” was a big laugh. And his therapy puppetry coming full circle when he uses it to distract Bird Person with Tammy’s corpse was the funniest setup and payoff in the episode.

Speaking of which, Holy Continuity Batman! The show bust out a number of elements it had been saving for a rainy day, and does well with each of them. The return of Tammy hunting for Intergalactic Beth was a real winner, and Rick getting his revenge with an angry one-liner of “You made me go to a wedding” was a fun capper. Obviously the Beth clone thing came back in full force, alongside a return of the therapist from “Pickle Rick”. And we also got the stunning return of Bird Person (pardon me, Phoenix Person).

His return sparks one of the coolest sci-fi showdowns in the show’s history. That’s one of the underrated things about Rick and Morty. As much as the series’s strengths lie in its stellar, off-the-wall writing and series of strong performances and concepts, it’s also a surprisingly thrilling and well-animated show when it wants to be. Beyond just the neat designs of all the various aliens, the show pulls off a really imaginative science fiction, techno-battle between Rick and the robotic reconstitution of his best friend, replete with force shields, drones, and other twists in the kinetic set piece that made it a worthy bit of colorful combat for the season finale.

We also got to enjoy some great Morty and Summer material, replete with some product placement that lines up with Community’s amusing take on corporate integration. The two Smith kids fighting over the invisibility belt, learning to work together, and eventually saving the world with a particular brand of blue jeans definitely works as the self-aware comic relief in the episode. As with everything in the Harmon-verse, there’s layers upon layers of irony and meta-ness to untangle there, but the bit manages to poke fun at the necessity for character arcs and corporate sponsorship while also utilizing both as needed.

In the end, the Smith family, including both Beths, wins the day. Tammy is dead. Bird Person is neutralized. And despite things getting “a little too Star Wars”, our heroes stop the Death Star analogue from destroying Earth. Everyone helped at least a little, and everyone has the right to be fulfilled by the adventure.

So fulfilled, that is, that they don’t necessarily need Rick anymore, or at least have no interest in being beholden to him. Both Beths are self-actualized, not letting their dad lord the answer to the identity question over him, and even giving him some synchronized flinch bait to demonstrate their pushing past a whole heap of daddy issues. Summer and Morty don’t want to be drawn into Rick’s bullshit either.

That just leaves the man himself, to seek out the answer to the question and discover that he didn’t want to know anymore than they did. He’s proud of Intergalactic Beth, seeing what she’s accomplished and genuinely glad to see her. He’s also happy to have Terrestrial Beth, someone he can still be proud of and happy to work with, like we saw in the prior episode. Meeting one another didn’t destroy the original or the clone; it just made them realize that who they are matters much more than whatever hand their father had in the process.

It’s a great truth for everyone else, but a tough one for Rick, realizing that neither version of his daughter needs him anymore. He’s being surpassed, no longer venerated, by the galaxy that once moved heaven and earth to hunt him down, or by the family that once needed him to solve all their problems. Instead, they know that left unbothered , he won’t interfere, which makes him extraneous, to intergalactic war and to his family at home. All that’s left to do is sigh, alone in the garage, again.

Season 4 of Rick and Morty was an up and down affair, with a few stand out episodes or clever ideas, but also a lot of solid but not overwhelming outings that were by no means bad, but failed to match the heights of the previous season. But Harmon and Roiland saved the best for last here, going out on a real high note for the show, for Beth, Rick, Summer, and even Jerry, but on a low note for Rick himself, who’s no longer the center of the universe.

[8.8/10] Better Call Saul has never been closer to Breaking Bad. That’s not just because the episode opens with this show’s first glimpse of Jimmy as the Saul Goodman we met on the prior show, in the midst of his fleeing from justice. It’s just because Gus Fring seems to nail down the plans for the facility that will one day be Walter White’s laboratory. It’s not just because Jimmy visits The Dog House, the fast food restaurant and hangout where Jesse Pinkman sold meth.

It’s because this is an episode about people who are outstanding at what they do, who have near unrivaled skills, and what direction that takes them in. That was the larger story of Breaking Bad, a story about a man who had an undeniable talent, and who could not set it aside when the recognition and lucre came with a side of human misery, and who didn’t know when to walk away until it was too late. It’s a show that lived on the conflicted thrills of watching someone so skilled ply their craft, and earned its emotional resonance from both the uncertainty and foreboding sense of where it would lead him.

“Quite a Ride” positions Jimmy in the same way, as someone who has a gift for persuasion, the ability to make an anthill sound like Mount Everest, and a lack of scruples that mean he doesn't mind skirting the law if it suits him. The difference is that Walt was running from a life he resented, whereas Jimmy seems to be running from his own grief.

There’s a version of Jimmy that could maybe have been happy, at least temporarily, working at the mobile phone store in a semi-normal way. Sure, his efforts to convince a passing customer that he can evade the taxman by buying these phones that are allegedly selling like hotcakes isn’t exactly on the up-and-up, but it’s a pretty straight job by Jimmy’s standards.

But it’s not enough, at least not when he has a moment of quiet, a moment to let his grief catch up with him. Sitting on the couch, watching Dr. Zhivago, Jimmy starts to tear up, as the pain of the events with his brother seem to flood back in a way he’s been able to keep at bay. So Jimmy turns to his drug of choice, his favorite distraction, and the thing that makes him feel better than anything else -- a nice, lucrative hoodwink.

He buys a heap of burner phones from his own store, and ventures to The Dog House to unload them to whatever criminal element is around to purchase them, in another one of the show’s sterling montages. There’s a sense in these scenes that Jimmy is both at the top of his game, but also wants to be punished for it. He doesn't know when to leave well enough alone, and seems to be pulled between the part of himself that wants to see exactly how far his talents will take him, and the part that wants to push him into something so bad that it’ll be the wake up call that snaps him out of this.

That wake up call comes. It doesn't happen when Jimmy wanders into a crowd of bikers who are enough to scare away the rest of the riff raff. It happens when the three young hoods who turned him down earlier in the night rough him up and take his spoils from the evening. He returns home, worse for wear, and after a sweet scene of Kim tending to his wounds, he agrees to go to the shrink she recommended.
He seems to realize that this isn’t healthy, and enough is enough. Just the image of Kim standing across from him, a symbol of his conscience and the better life he can have, is enough to spur him to be better and not let another night like this happen again.

Kim, however, is running as well. Instead of grief, she’s running from guilt, and instead of devolving further into a life of questionable morality, she’s hurtling herself headlong into an effort to regain her ethical moorings. That means working as a public defender in her spare time, going toe-to-toe with the same local prosecutor that Jimmy himself used to joust with. But unlike Jimmy, Kim isn’t just using subterfuge and bombast to get criminals off. She’s using prosecutorial screw-ups to hold the other side accountable, telling the young man she works out a deal for to get his life right or she won’t be there to bail him out, and goes above and beyond to help a young woman too scared to show up to court do what she needs to do.

This is all wildly successful, because Kim is damn good at what she does. She knows how to put the prosecution through their paces; she knows how to read a young screw-up the riot act in the hopes that he won’t be back here, and she knows how to be sympathetic but forceful with her clients who need both a helping hand and a little push.

The problem is that it means Kim is shirking her responsibilities elsewhere, specifically with Mesa Verde. She blows off a call from Paige, her contact at the bank, so that she can see things through with her pro bono client. It’s the negative image of Jimmy’s choices in this episode -- a decision that’s foolish and a little self-destructive, but noble, and one Kim promises never to make again. Both Kim and Jimmy are trying to regain their souls, but in very different ways, and for very different reasons, even if both use their god-given skills to great effect in the process.

Mike is employing his expert skills as well. The top of the line, undetectable meth lab that Gus is putting together is part of his grand plan, and so he needs people he can rely on. That’s why he brings in Mike to scout the architects for his place. For one thing, Mike’s shown -- through his escapades at Madrigal -- that he knows how to cover every detail to make sure that their illicit dealings aren’t found out or shut down -- something the show again conveys with a great visual sequence involving point of view shots from under a hood and communicating the passage of time through quick cut changes in sound and lighting in the back of a rocky van.

But he also knows people, like we saw last week, and he can tell when someone is blowing smoke at him and when someone’s being straight. That’s why Gus trusts him, and why Mike sends the boastful guy who claims he can build the lab in six months packing. And it’s why when Werner Ziegler, the nauseous German architect who tells his would-be employer straight up that the job is not impossible, but that it will be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Mike and Gus are birds of a feather, they’re frank, thorough, and careful, and it means when taking on a project of this size, they want people who’ll treat it the same way.

We know, though, that no matter how cautious Mike and Gus are, how close they come to bringing this long-brewing plan to fruition, that it all ends in ruin. No matter how well you plan, how good you are at what you do, there are unpredictable elements that can disrupt everything. For Gus Fring, that unpredictable element is Walter White, but for Jimmy McGill, it’s Howard Hamlin.

After his incident with the burners and the muggers, Jimmy seems on the straight and narrow again. But then, during a trip to the courthouse to check in as part of his suspension, he runs into Howard in the bathroom, who looks worse for wear. This typically ever-composed individual is out of sorts, looking disheveled, complaining about insomnia, and stressing over a case that he admits isn’t particularly significant. It’s clear -- to both Jimmy and the audience -- that Chuck’s death has gotten to Howard, that’s Kim’s speech landed, that the very thought is torturing him. It’s enough for Jimmy to offer some kindness, recommending the same shrink that Kim passed on to him.

It’s then that the worm turns. Howard tells Jimmy that he’s already seeing a therapist twice a week. It’s startling admission to Jimmy, one that changes his path yet again. Howard has all the advantages Jimmy doesn't -- his wealth, his position, and his father’s name. He has lived as traditionally successful a life as someone like Jimmy could imagine, the kind of life Jimmy was once trying to emulate.

But Howard is haunted by the same grief Jimmy is, and he’s no better for all the more that he has. Howard’s visible unmooring in the wake of the same loss sends a message to Jimmy -- that following the right path, doing what’s expected of you, doing things the normal way, don’t get you where Jimmy wants to go, and don’t seem to make you better either. So when he speaks to the D.A. about his plans after reinstatement, he speaks of wanting to go bigger, go better. His refuge from grief is his refuge from everything -- to follow his talents to their apex until it either makes his dreams come true or leads to his end.

“Quite a Ride” suggests the former rather than the latter. We know the heights that Jimmy will hit: the Saul Goodman billboards and commercials running 24/7, the suitcase full of money, the cheesy but lucrative law office he maintains. But we also know his fall, his paranoid, button-down life as Cinnabon Gene, that requires him to be demure and inconspicuous, the greatest punishment there is for someone like Jimmy.

And maybe “Quite a Ride” suggests and end even beyond there. After Jimmy is laid out by the thugs who rob him, he lays on the ground in pain as the camera pulls back skyward. It’s the same shot Breaking Bad used in Walt’s final moments. It’s a visual echo and a portent, one that seems to preview what a myopic quest to make use of your own greatest talent, regardless of the ethical or practical consequences for you and the people you love, gets you. We know where that sort of quest ended for Walt, and as he veers ever nearer to going full Saul, Jimmy gets a taste of that too.

Better Call Saul has never been closer to Breaking Bad, and that’s bad news for Jimmy McGill.

[7.5/10] What do I come to Rick and Morty for? Surprisingly thoughtful emotional material coupled with beaucoup sci-fi weirdness and sci-fi storytelling, and “Rickmancing the Stone” had that in spades.

Most of the episode takes place in a Mad Max-style wasteland, and while that setting already feels a little passe (that’s what you get for going a year and a half between seasons), it makes for a nice launching board for each of the characters to find their own way to deal with Beth and Jerry’s divorce.

My favorite of these is Morty’s. We’ve seen that Morty has deep-seated issues he doesn’t know how to process other than with rage and violence before (most notably in the purge episode) and so a Rick-injected murderous arm with a mind of its own proves to be just what the doctor ordered. It works for character development as whomping people in the “blood dome” helps him deal with his disgust at his dad’s lack of a backbone, but it also works for comedy, with the arm gesticulating and using sign language to try to communicate. Plus the heart-to-heart between them as the arm goes on a roaring rampage of revenge gives a nicely off-kilter texture to the whole thing.

Summer’s was less my favorite, but still good. Her dealing with her current issues with her dad by shacking up with the leader of the post-apocalyptic wasteland tribe (who was, I think, voiced by Joel McHale?) had some juice to it. (Their discussion about his mustache -- particularly the “hat on a hat” bit -- was especially funny.) The fact that Rick messes them up by bringing electricity and the same workaday B.S. of the real world is a fun twist, and Summer hugging her dad and appreciating his “this is all bullshit anyway” mentality is a nice bow to tie on the whole thing.

Rick is his usual amoral but story-driving self. I love his plot to try to create android to fool Beth. There’s something amusing about him trying to retrieve Morty and Summer despite his claims that there’s “infinite versions of them” because to find replacements would be more trouble than its worth. Plus the robots are hilarious, with Robo-Morty’s protestations that he wants to be “alive” and run through a stream being particularly funny in that pitch-black science fiction way that R&M does so well.

On the whole, this was a great episode to kick off the new season (aside from our April Fools Day preview) and to have the characters (and the show) process Beth and Jerry’s divorce rather than just move on like nothing happened.

(As an aside, I assume it’s Rick who’s causing the wind to whisper to Jerry that he’s a loser and having stray dogs chew up his unemployment check? Presumably to prolong this current situation and keep him from developing the stones to go after Beth again? Neat/characteristically horrible if so.)

[8.6/10] One hell of a premiere and one hell of a surprise. It delivered what I want from a show like Rick and Morty -- crazy, imaginative, absolutely insane sci-fi experimentation and adventure, with dark introspective emotional and character material to support it. The bits of the sci-fi weirdness, from Inception-like brain journeys to transferred consciousness to battles between disparate forces in space were colorful and mind-bending the whole way through.

But what I really loved about this episode was how it asked (and maybe answered) the question I was left asking at the end of the last episode -- what motivates Rick Sanchez? Is he a hero, as Summer thinks, a demon or crazy god like Morty thinks, or somebody whose motivations are just so opaque and arbitrary that he more or less defies that sort of characterization? The episode seems to give a troubling answer, one that pulls away from the way Rick was softened over the course of S2, but it spends most of the episode teasing you in either direction, making you think he's a hero or on an opportunist or an amoral crackpot or just a complicated guy.

I'm not sure I'm any more clarified on what he wants or what kind of guy he is than I was before (and Morty clearly still has its issues), but I love the way the show leans into that complexity, even amid the crazy science fiction wonderment and disaster taking place all around.

On the whole, this was one thrill of a surprise premiere that sets the stage for the rest of the season, changes enough of the status quo to make things meaningful, and delivers another exploration of what makes Rick tick, and how that affects his grandchildren, without giving any easy answers.

A fun if not superlative episode of the show. Tiny Rick (replete with a "Steve Holt"-esque eponymous catchphrase and gesture) was a fun place to go with the character, and Real Rick only being able to express his concerns through Tiny Rick's teenage angst was an enjoyable bit. (I especially liked the "this is not a dance" dance. It's not made up. It's not made up.) I appreciated that Morty attempted to play it cool as the grandchild who'd spent more time with Rick, and acted like his sister just didn't get it, but that it was Summer who was sharp enough to connect the dots. I'm also a sucker for the fact that she used Elliott smith to bring Real Rick back to the fore, and I got a big kick out of both her insistence that Rick wear pants and hear and Morty's shock and disgust when Rick destroys "Project Phoenix." Dark but hilarious stuff.

I liked the Beth & Jerry storyline as well. A guest turn from Jim Rash and his excellent delivery is always welcome, and the recursive "how Beth & Jerry see each other" monsters were a fun twist to it all. I don't know how much gas is left on the "explore Beth & Jerry's marriage" vehicle, but this was a nice take on it.

Better Call Saul, like its forebear, is full of impressive and creative sequences. Whether it's last week's inflatable man montage, or Kim's cold-calling routine, or the breaking breadsticks that conveyed Jimmy's unease after his twin accomplices' run-in with Tuco, the show isn't shy about using the assorted tricks in its visual toolbox to propel the show forward. "Fifi" offers two, which serve fairly distinct purposes. There's the opening one-shot of the ice cream truck going through border security, which eventually cuts away to the driver stopping by the side of the road on the other side of the border and picking up a gun. It's a deceptively simple sequence, despite the technical impressiveness of the tracking-shot opening, that tells us a great deal about the clockwork being set in motion.

In just that wordless scene, we already know a great deal about this man and more importantly, what he's there to do. The fact that he so blithely takes a popsicle out of his supply tells us that the ice cream isn't the cargo that matters for making it across the border. The stop to pick up the gun tells us that he's likely to be some kind of hitman or assassin, who uses the ice cream gig as a ruse to make it to the States, do his business, and disappear back across the border once his job is finished. And the number of popsicle sticks jammed into the dirt next to the gun's hiding place tells us this is far from the first time he's pulled this sort of thing; he's capable, a repeat customers, and not a pushover despite his nondescript appearance. There's remarkable narrative economy in the information conveyed in a four-minute scene.

Though the sequences are much more straightforward thereafter, "Fifi" shows that Mike isn't a dummy. He's not naive enough to think that his deal with Hector will be enough to keep him, and more importantly, Kaylee safe, so he does his due diligence. When we see that same ice cream truck backing into Hector's warehouse, while the boss himself smokes a cigarette outside, it's clear who that driver was called in to kill. Mike isn't the type to take it lying down.

He's resourceful. There's something extraordinarily sweet about his little project with Kaylee. He speaks to her like a grandfather would; he's gentle and kinder to this innocent than the normally grumpy old man is to anyone else in this world, and it becomes evident the depth of feeling he has that would move him to go to great lengths to ensure that nothing he did could ever be allowed to lead her to harm.

The reveal that they're not making a soaker together as Mike tells Stacey, but instead a makeshift road hazard to be employed against Hector is equal parts adorable and foreboding. There's some strange ironic quality to Mike having his granddaughter help him build the device that's supposed to help provide for her protection. It's appropriate that Mike is watching His Girl Friday while he adds the nails to his drug war arts and crafts projects, because it's a story of someone who tried to get away from something they were very good at, but which was toxic to them, and found themself being pulled back into that life regardless. BCS is building to a reckoning between Mike and Hector, and I can't wait to see where it takes them.

I don't like to play the what if/prediction game with television shows and films, both because I'm wrong more often than I'm right and because it frames what happens next in terms of your expectations rather than viewing the show's developments with an open mind. But watching Mike stalk Hector can't help but make me wonder. What if it's Mike's assault that puts Hector in the state he's in when we meet him in Breaking Bad, here or in the future? And what if after the attack (whether or not it turns out to be the attack), one of the final images of the season is Mike being approached by Gus Fring who sees Mike's work against the Salamancas, offers him money and protection from the blowback, and says, "It seems we have common interests." Knowing the way Vince Gilligan's shows like to pull the rug out from under their audience, that's probably a little too neat for his style, but a man can dream.

But there's another great sequence in "Fifi" -- the one where Jimmy meticulously flips the numbers on all of Chuck's filings for Mesa Verde at a 24-hour copy shop. It's a great scene that communicates how far Jimmy will go when he sets his mind to something, and that whatever his quick fix instincts, he can also be the "Jimmy Hustle" that Hamlin characterized him as, busting his hump to bring his impromptu scheme to fruition.

That scene, however, begs the question -- who did Jimmy do it for? The natural answer is Kim. She's making a bold move going out on her own; she gives a pitch to Mesa Verde that would make Don Draper swoon, feels like she's on top of the world, and then is devastated when Chuck undermines her at the eleventh hour. Jimmy clearly cares for Kim, doesn't want to see her screwed over when she put in all the hard work and deserves to land Mesa Verde, and is willing to take the kind of steps to defend her that she won't take herself.

After all, Kim disregards his advice to play fast and loose with her resignation and contact Mesa Verde before Howard can sink his claws into them. In the scene where she gives him her resignation letter, and he returns the favor by wiping away her debts, giving her a word of encouragement and explanation, and then immediately trying to beat her to the punch on Mesa Verde, it's hard to tell whether Howard is phony and disingenuous or well-meaning but pragmatic. Given the complex characters that make up Better Call Saul and its predecessor's stock and trade, it's probably a mix of the two, with a hint of wistfulness and humanity in play when Howard reminisces about his father encouraging him to be the second "H" in "HHM." Regardless, as Kim sprints down the hallway to get a word in edgewise with her biggest client, it's clear that she's devoted to her own method, and that means doing things the right way, but working harder at it than anyone else. It's natural for Jimmy to want to try to come to the rescue when that way fails her.

But maybe he did it for Chuck, or rather, to spite Chuck. A major theme of this season has been the way that Kim has replaced Chuck as the grand motivator in Jimmy's life. It's hard to tell how much he enacts his little trick in order to help Kim or to jab Chuck in the eye after he does something Jimmy sees as unfair. In truth, Chuck is fighting the way Jimmy would. He doesn't quite have Jimmy's golden tongue, but his pitch to Mesa Verde, the misdirect, the folksy charm, the subtle sway rather than the hard sell, is pure McGill. It may not be just--Jimmy's right when he points out that Kim earned that client, twice--but it seems fair, it seems like an equal and opposite pitch, and it seems like Jimmy's style of "fair play."

Jimmy cannot abide it. He cannot sit still while his brother looks down on another individual who doesn't quite meet his standards and takes what they want, what they deserve, away from them for his own self-serving ends. Yes, Jimmy's scheme is to help Kim, but it's also to thwart Chuck, to try to prevent him from doing to Kim with Mesa Verde what he tried to do with Jimmy and Sandpiper. Chuck's warm bit of gratitude for Jimmy looking after him despite their issues, his promise that he would do the same if the roles were reversed, casts a sense of guilt over the proceedings. The moment in the boardroom was a triumph for Chuck in the same way it was the sinking of the Titanic for Kim. It's a moment with the lights on and the cell phones in the room where he still shined, and it nearly killed him, but he pulled it off. Jimmy is here to take that away from him, and even if it's because what Chuck took belongs to someone else, that big moment of progress for Chuck, that little moment of fraternal affection, muddies the waters when it comes to Jimmy's plan.

But maybe Jimmy did it for himself. There's a look in his eyes after Kim tells him that Mesa Verde fell through, and he responds that he still wants to do this. Is it disappointment? Is it frustration that Chuck threw her under the bus? Is it concern for his own financial well-being diving into this with Kim starting from scratch? The hilarious scene where Jimmy sneaks his film crew alongside a plant onto a military base to film his commercial suggests that Jimmy will always find a way to make ends meet. He may have to cut a few corners here and there to get where he wants to go, but he knows who he is and what he has to do to succeed, even on his own. Kim and her commitment to the straight and narrow may not have the same good fortune, especially with the twin titans of HHM undercutting her at every turn.

There's also a different look he gets when Kim tells him that she landed the client in the first place. Maybe it's simple skepticism. Maybe it's a reflection of how despite his outward support and congratulations, he doesn't want her to count her chickens before they've hatched. Or maybe it's jealousy. Jimmy seems the type to resent it if Kim manages to soar out of the gate while he's still rebuilding from square one. It's easy to see how Jimmy could bristle at Kim looking down on his motlier methods, start to resent it, and then bring up that she wouldn't even have Mesa Verde if he hadn't use those methods to intercede on her behalf, something that Kim would no doubt see as a betrayal rather than a boon.

It's hard to know, and probably some measure of all three at once. There are conflicting impulses at play for almost every major character on the show that push and pull them in different directions. But that's one of the beautiful things about Better Call Saul, how so much can unspool from just a couple of inventive, telling sequences and a few meaningful looks, whether it be the impending confrontation between Mike and Hector, or the swirl of influences on Jimmy as he cuts and copies his way to an act that will have a major impact for the woman he loves at the expense of a brother for whom his feelings are much more conflicted. It's intricate and messy and complex, and that's part of what makes it great.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better Call Saul is great when it comes to contrasts, especially when it comes to its two most significant characters (who are, incidentally, its two legacy characters from Breaking Bad). "Amarillo" shows Jimmy as a man trying to do the wrong thing, or at least the underhanded thing, and being pushed to do the right one by those closest to him. It also shows Mike as a man trying to do the right thing, the right way, and having him pushed back toward crime and the seedier side of his new home because of those closest to him.

We know that Jimmy McGill tends toward the con, toward the misdirection, toward the razzle dazzle in an "ends justify the means" sort of way. So when we see him pay off a bus driver from a local Sandpiper nursing home in Texas (with a beautifully shot opening of our hero dressed in white against the Lone Star State's flag painted on the side of a building to boot), it's par for the course. There's something intoxicating for Jimmy, and for the audience, to see him work his magic on that bus full of seniors. Sure, there's something a little underhanded about it--even part from the payoff, it feels like he's manipulating them more than a little bit with his "send your nephew to talk to the manager routine--but he's so damn good at it! If there's one thing viewers love and admire, it's talent and competence, and Jimmy is a talented, more than competent client outreach specialist.

I promise, at some point I will stop comparing this show to Breaking Bad, but it's hard not to see the parallels between Walter White and Jimmy McGill here. I'm not suggesting that there's the same sort of pride or evil lurking within Jimmy that there was as Walter slowly let Heisenberg out of his cage. But both Walter and Jimmy are very good at something (making meth and talking their way into/out of anything respectively) and that makes them each loathe to give up plying their trade even when the rules make it a dangerous proposition. Each knows where their talents lie, and know what got them to where they are, and each is unhappy, if not afraid, of the idea of letting go of that and risking ending up back where they started.

Besides, when it comes to Jimmy's situation here, what's the harm, right? It might not be totally above board to walk the line between following up on a mailer and soliciting, but he's not taking advantage of these people. He's trying to help them! Sure, he's helping himself at the same time, but there's no real victim here.

Then, we run into Chuck, sitting across the table from his brother and pouring cold water on Clifford and Jimmy's good news about the number of clients Jimmy managed to sign up. It's a wonderful sequence in the episode, and one of the things that makes it interesting is the way that Hamlin and Clifford both realize this is a family feud and try to stay neutral, diplomatic, and supportive of both sides in the argument.

And it's quick, but it's a hell of an argument. In Game of Thrones, Tyrion Lannister once describes his own sibling as more than capable of using true feelings for something false. In that vein, I love situations like the one presented here, where Chuck is 100% right about the concerns he expresses about Jimmy's outreach efforts, and yet not exactly for the right reasons. Jimmy's brother isn't wrong when he points out that any questions about the way their legal team obtained their clients, especially with seniors, leaves them vulnerable in a way that could torpedo the case. And he's also not wrong to be suspicious of Jimmy wrangling 20+ clients while following up on a single mail-in response, particularly given what he knows about Jimmy's past behavior and what he (rightfully) suspects about his current behavior.

It's a risky, arguably foolish thing that Jimmy did. And Chuck's rightfully pointing that out, but coming from him it feels petty. Chuck's made it clear that even if it's bound up with his own sense of pride in his work and accomplishments, he can't shake his skeptical, dismissive view of his brother. Chuck may very well be legitimately and earnestly concerned that Jimmy is going to poison this whole deal. Maybe Chuck even thinks that given Jimmy's financial stake in the outcome, he's saving his brother from himself on that front. But it also can't help but feeling like he's trying to just knock a brother he doesn't believe in down a peg, to try to show that he doesn't belong here. The contrast between those two things--asking the right questions but for the wrong reasons, with so much bad blood there--makes it an endlessly interesting little scene.

Jimmy, of course, uses the same skill he did his fellow attorneys that he did with those seniors. He comes up with a plausible story; he sells it to the assembled with little trouble, and a despite the uncomfortable air between them, he managed to shut his brother up. But Chuck is, no doubt, unconvinced, and neither is the only other person in that room who knows Jimmy well enough to smell his B.S. In contrast to the last time the two of them were in the boardroom together, Kim moves away from Jimmy's advances under the table, because even if she doesn't say it, she agrees with Chuck.

And as sorry as I am to go back to the well of Breaking Bad, it makes me worry that she'll receive the same kind of reaction that Skyler did. Without delving into the thorny issues of sexism, at base, people don't like to see their protagonists thwarted. Jimmy is the main character of Better Call Saul. We get the show through his perspective, and that means that, consciously or unconsciously, we're psychologically on his side. We're with him on this journey, even if in the back of our minds we can acknowledge the actions that he takes as morally questionable. Storytelling is constructed to make the listener sympathetic to the person the story's about. That creates a risk that someone like Chuck, with sketchy motives, comes off worse despite the legitimacy of his concerns, and between this and the end of the prior episode, it risks turning Kim into something audiences like even less -- a scold.

Kim has more or less replaced Chuck as the cricket on Jimmy McGill's shoulder, as the person in his life who keeps him aspiring to be better and do better. Chuck's admonition at the table doesn't move Jimmy; it just gives him cause to strike back. But Kim's response causes him to interrupt and emphasize that yes, in fact, all of his client outreach will be above board.

And when we see Kim push back against Jimmy after the meeting, she offers a damn good reason for why she took Jimmy's news with the same skepticism that Chuck did. She put her neck out for Jimmy. He is, if not a nobody, than a hustling public defender who would have otherwise had to spend years in the pit before he ever had a chance to so much as sniff a partner track job like the one Kim finagled for him. She put herself out there for Jimmy, with her boss, with her colleagues, and with her own reputation and prospects at stake. She's absolutely right when she says that everything Jimmy does in this job reflects on her and her judgment, and that Jimmy doesn't just have himself to worry about when he's scheming and flim-flamming his way into more clients.

There it is. Suddenly that incredibly amusing, downright charming scene with Jimmy on the bus seems a little more sinister, a little less harmless. While adding more wronged individuals to the class seems like a good thing on the surface, if it's done in a way that doesn't pass muster, it could mess up a good portion of the case and leave the HHM/Davis & Main team playing from behind when trying to pursue justice for these people. And if it goes wrong, if Jimmy is chastised for stepping outside the lines, it could also screw over the person who stood up for him and put him in a position to have a seat at the table, the person whom he seems to love.

But what's great is that the show does the opposite with Mike. Mike is trying to stay on the straight and narrow. He's trying to do right by his son, by his daughter-in-law, by his granddaughter, and that, ironically, pushes him to use his skills and talents in a way that he's not necessarily inclined to -- to help criminals. Mike is doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

And what's so striking about it is that Mike knows he's being taken for a ride. When Stacey left a pregnant pause after telling Mike about her money troubles back in Season 1, it was a nod toward the idea that she wanted support from him, but there was enough ambiguity as to whether or not she really meant it, whether she was specifically trying to guilt Mike or, rather, just venting her anxieties to a sympathetic ear without any ulterior motives.

But that wiggle room pretty much goes out the window in "Amarillo". The question now is whether Stacey is deliberately and intentionally playing on Mike's guilt, or whether it's merely something subconscious. But the phantom bullet mark, not to mention the token resistance she puts up to Mike's suggestion that Stacey and her daughter come live with him before immediately agreeing to it suggest the former rather than the latter.

That makes Mike seem noble even as he slowly but surely starts heading down a path that we know will lead him to "big time jobs for big time pay." He doesn't want to be a criminal, at least not at a lethal level. What's more, he knows he's being taken advantage of in some sense, that, at a minimum, Stacey isn't just being straightforward with him and asking for help and support, but laying on guilt trips and making up stories to get him to intervene, with the knowledge that he's too broken up about his role in what happened to Matty that he can't resist. So Mike compromises some of his principles. He steps back into a world he seemed to be trying to avoid, all in an effort to do the right thing.

Nobility comes less naturally to Jimmy than it does to Mike, but poked and prodded or not, he too tries to do the right thing. It's heartening to see Jimmy using his creativity to succeed within the rules rather than to find clever ways to get around them. Again, his idea of a targeted commercial, based on his intimate knowledge and diligence about the schedules of the folks at Sandpiper, is fairly genius and perceptive.

When we see him constructing the commercial, it shows his innate understanding of human nature, of how to affect and have an impact on his target audience. The fact that he's channeling it into something legitimate, that he's succeeding even when boxed in a bit, is an encouraging sign. By the same token, it's hard not to feel proud for him when Kim watches the commercial, put together by Jimmy and a couple of college students, and walks away impressed with him. She is, after all, a big reason why he's doing this rather than continuing his less-savory ways of finding clients, so her approval is big.

It's also heartening to see him try to work his magic on the phone system, just like he did when sequestered in the back room of the nail salon, and see the results of his work roll in. There's such a great bit of tension in the air in those moments where we wait to see whether Jimmy's ad-buy scheme is going to work. His frantic dissecting of the gameplan with his subordinate conveys how anxious he is about the whole thing, how much is riding on this play for him. That makes the moments where the phones start lighting up, where it all falls into place, that much more exciting, for Jimmy and for us.

But that excitement is short-lived. Even when Jimmy's doing right; he's doing it wrong. He doesn't run the ad by Clifford. He thinks about it. He comes close. But at the end of the day, he just can't face the risk of failure or rejection. He can't face the possibility that he has this brilliant thing he put his heart and soul into, and that someone could tell him no. That's Jimmy's game -- do whatever you think needs doing, and bet on the fact that the results will justify whatever actions you took to get there.

The problem is that Jimmy isn't just betting on himself here. He's gambling with Kim's reputation, with his brother's I-told-you-so's, with whatever ethical rules for attorney advertising he may or may not have paid particularly close attention to when making the ad that could, again, jeopardize the case as a whole. Jimmy is trying. He is trying so hard in the best way he knows how to both keep things above board but achieve at what he sets out to do, and that's why he's sympathetic but also complicated.

And yet even as he tries, there's a piece of Slippin' Jimmy still left in him, a part of him that thinks the best way to show Kim and Chuck that he's worthy of their love and respect is simply to succeed, and that the ends will justify the means. The tragedy is if that effort, motivated by a desire to show those close to him what he's made of, is what drives them from him, and turns him into the relatively scruple-free huckster we come to know down the road.

I liked this episode well enough. The cold open was interesting; the Jimmy story had its moments, and Mike and his employer was the type of humorous vignette that this show does so well. But it's hard for me to get too on board for a simple reason: it was largely a recapitulation of last season's finale.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of Jimmy feeling the pull of his old life as a con artist, and his new one as a legitimate attorney, but we just did this. There's an argument for realism, that someone as fickle as Jimmy, who's going through something as personally devastating as what happened with his brother would not just pick one path or another, but would instead backslide and sew a few more wild oats before he settled back into the straight life he had slowly but surely been building.

And maybe, this wouldn't feel like such repetition if I had seen the first season finale last year rather than a few days ago. In the age of binge-watching, DVRs, and streaming services, it's hard to know how much to judge a show for reestablishing its premise, and the position its protagonist is in, when starting a new season.

When I wrote about "Marco", I noted that the entire idea of the episode seemed to be that with the incentive of Chuck's approval gone, Jimmy attempted to revert to the life of being a huckster, but after getting it all out of his system, he found that, Chuck or no Chuck, he felt compelled to return to the new life he'd made for himself, with real clients and honest work and a decent, honest future ahead of him. Marco's death hit the nail on the head a little too strongly for how shallow the appeal of that life was for Jimmy now, how sad it was to have that be not only the most exciting thing he'd ever done, but really all he'd ever done.

And then, since they didn't know whether one season is all Better Call Saul would get, they had to change Jimmy's trajectory, so that if the season finale was the last we saw of Jimmy between there and Breaking Bad, the progression would still make sense.

But then there was more Better Call Saul. And so instead of rolling with unchained Jimmy, we essentially do the same whole song and dance again. Jimmy returns to his life of flim-flamming, he has a big "score" so to speak, and in the aftermath, he feels the emptiness of it and feels compelled to go back to the straight life now that he has that out of his system.

Now it's obviously not exactly the same. The addition of Kim as his new potential partner in crime adds an interesting wrinkle to the whole routine. Unlike Marco, it gives him some other form of joy to wring from life other than the cons themselves -- the excitement of working with, and being with Kim. It's something that was hinted at last season with Jimmy's offer to make her a partner, and underlined even more with his sidebar about their relationship when meeting the lawyers from Davis & Maine.

I can't say I'm crazy about the Jimmy/Kim relationship. There's not a great deal of chemsitry there and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the difference in their ages or a certain stoicness in Kim's demeanor that seems to clash with Jimmy's more ebullient personality. Still, there's something to like about the idea of it as something Jimmy wants, even if it may not be what's best for them, and the scene where they brush their teeth together was adorable and went a long way toward selling a rapport between the two of them that could motivate something romantic. But overall it seems like this episode spent a lot of time just resetting Jimmy's storyline to where it was 60 seconds before the end of last season.

There were still elements of the episode I liked a lot though, and even when Better Call Saul is spinning its wheels a bit, it's an entertaining show. For instance, the scene at the end where Jimmy tears the tape off of the lightswitch that forbids him to flip it to the off position, turns the switch off, and then after nothing happens, just as casually turns it back on is his character in a nutshell. Jimmy is someone who has to test his boundaries, no matter how arbitrary they are, but it's an instrumental good to him, not an inherent one. There's no goal but to break the rules, and once he scratches that itch, he's satisfied.

And it's a nice contrast with the beginning episode, where he's in much less swank surroundings, and all he has to do is break the rule of a similar warning sign in order to get out of his predicament, but his experience have tamped down on that impulse, but another stick that looms larger than the carrot after the events of Breaking Bad. It's a notable contrast for how Jimmy is at various stages of his life and the way that he's changed.

And, of course, there's Mike, whose appearance in this episode is brief, but who knows a sinking ship when he sees one. His would-be employer was an endless, Fargo-esque source of comedy, with ostentatious hummer, vanity plate, and shoes, his blithe meeting with Nacho, and his baseball card focused conversation with the cops each being hilarious in their own way. There was a naive homespun confidence to the nerdy guy that made his bad decisions as amusing as they were misguided, and it's a demonstration of not only Mike's good judgment, but on Nacho's recognition that Mike was the brains of the nerdy guy's operation, and with him gone, it was open season. It also showed a certain amount of cleverness on Nacho's part, but taking advantage of a rube like that is not necessarily any great achievement. Still, it seems like it's setting Mike and Nacho up for someting. We'll see where it goes.

All-in-all, it's a well-done episode that had a lot of great images and direction, and as always, quality performances. I just wish the story the episode was telling didn't feel like such a recapitulation of the one the show just told.