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I was so thrilled and excited to have B99 back in my life... then the episode started. This show has become too woke for its own good. Let's hope the cringe AF writing was all crammed in the premiere so they get it out of the way and move on politics free for the rest of the season.:fingers_crossed:
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@khawlah not engaging in politics is, by itself, a political act, particularly if we're talking about a cop show in 2021. There was no easy way out for them
[8.1/10] I’m a believer in the idea that television shows should die the way they lived. And “Come Along With Me” pretty much does that. Sure, there’s some special things that Adventure Time pulls out of its hat to signify that this is its series finale, but this show was never shy about having climactic battles and bouts of elliptical symbolism and poignant bits to tug at your heartstrings. Putting a capstone on a series this wide in scope, this versatile in terms of tone, this...well...adventurous, is a big task, but for the most part “Come Along With Me” rises to the challenge in a way that feels true to the spirit of the show.
The episode begins with Shermy and Beth, a pair of Finn and Jake-like adventurers in some distant future, tracking down the fabled King of Ooo about Finn’s robot arm. The King of Ooo turns out to be BMO, and the explosive events of the series finale are mostly told through his eyes, as he recounts the Great Gum War and the fight with Golb to the pair of adventurers. This frame story is packed with easter eggs and teases, but mostly serves as a nice way to bookend the episode and deliver some exposition in a cute and unobtrusive way.
When we get to actually live through those events, the show occasionally tries to pack too much in, but still manages to hit the major themes of the show and the characters, which is ultimately satisfying, if not jaw-dropping.
“Come Along With Me” puts a capstone on Finn the pacifist. From the moment that young Finn refused to destroy an “unaligned” ant, he’s been on a journey of learning that there’s more to heroing than just puncha-ing yo buns. Now, on the brink of war, he does everything in his power to keep the forces of Princess Bubblegum and the Uncle Gumbald from coming to blows. He enveigels them into a dreamland, forcing to confront their common ground. And he does the same for himself and Fern, trying to show them as two sides of the same coin, and refusing to fight.
I like that Finn’s final adventure in this show is one to stop violence and foster understanding, even when he has every opportunity to thrive in glorious battle. For a sometimes wacky cartoon show, Finn has grown a great deal over the course of ten seasons, and his noble commitment to stopping his misunderstood foes without resorting to violence, to ending a war before it stops, and to loving his enemy as much as himself are a tribute to the laudable place that Finn has reached at the end of the series.
There’s also a sense of empathy to all of his, another trademark of the show. After some characteristically loopy and engaging dream scenes, Jake retrieves Finn’s vault, which is enough to show both him and Fern that they’re fighting the same fears, having to confront the darkness head-on, and it’s only then that they can free Fern of the grass curse. It united the two of them, even if leads to a tragic but poignant departure for Fern.
At the same time, Princess Bubblegum, who’s pragmatic to a fault, develops some empathy too. She gets to experience what it was like for Gumbald to be reduced to a brainless candy person, while Gumbald experiences PB’s anxieties over protecting her kingdom. Sure, Gumbald seems poised to doublecross her anyway, but it’s enough to convince the war-hungry PB to stand down after understanding where her opponents were coming from. It’s the sort of war-averting swerve, founded on pacifism and empathy, that feels true to form and to the values of the show.
But it wouldn’t be a series finale if there were no fireworks, so we get the surprise appearance of Golb, the god of chaos whom we saw for the first time (I think) in the Pillow World episode. A combination of Betty, Normal (nee Magic) Man, and Maja the Sky Witch have summoned him to Ooo, and he creates a pair of eldritch monsters who have the creative, colorful, and mildly disturbing designs that you would expect for this show and its climactic battle between the good guys and bad guys.
“Come Along With Me” uses Golb to tie up a few loose ends that have been running through the show for a long time. A close call with one of Golb’s minions makes it seem like Princess Bubblegum has been crushed to death, causing Marceline to spring into action and defeat the creature in a fit of fury. When PB recovers (thanks to some magic/scientific armor), Marceline expresses her concern and feelings for Bubblegum, and the two of them kiss on screen for the first time in the series. (Rejoice Bubbleline fans!) It’s all kind of rushed, but the dynamic is right, and the moment is earned after all we’ve seen previously, so it’s a nice sop to the fans at the end of the series.
It also uses Finn, Ice King, and Betty being swallowed up by Golb (after a failed attempted by Ice King to use fan fiction to reach Betty’s heart and snap her out of her trance) to turn Ice King back into Simon. It has something to do with Golb “digesting” them, by peeling away their layers. As with PB and Marcy, it’s all a little quick and a little convenient, but developments always did come fast and furiously on this show, and having a brief moment of lucidity between Betty and Simon, plus the neat claustrophobic design of the trio being caught in an ever-shrinking cube which creates a sense of urgency to thing, helps cover for some of the rapidity of all of this.
After all, Adventure Time is a show that has always run on its out of the box creativity and heart more than any consistent logic. Sure, there’s continuity nods and character development, but even its more byzantine and intricate plots have the flavor of an eleven-year-old’s playtime imagination, even when suffused with far deeper and more adult themes.
But one of the core themes of Adventure Time has been harmony -- of these disparate and often weird individuals coming together to do things both great and silly (and sometimes both at the same time). It’s fitting then that the show literalizes that idea, with BMO’s stirring song, meant to comfort Jake, becoming a weapon against the discord of Golb, especially when all of our favorite characters join in the melody, and free the heroes trapped inside his belly.
It’s the content of the song, however, that poses the most potent theme in “Come Along With Me.” While the series finale is certainly about tying up all those loose ends and putting a semicolon, if not quite a period on the adventures of Finn and Jake and all their pals, it’s just as much about coming to terms with the end of things.
That is, in the great Adventure Time fashion, literal, meta, and more than a little philosophical. The episode has both Finn and Jake fearing that this will be the end of the road for them in the midst of Golb’s attack. Finn believes his capture in Golb’s gullet to mean curtains for him, remarking that he envisioned himself dying in the process of saving someone. Simon reassures him that no one gets to choose how things end, and it’s a small moment of shared comfort in the face of tragedy, of a piece with Toy Story 3, in wrestling something deep and affecting out of what is nominally children’s entertainment.
Naturally, there’s a last minute reprieve for everyone but Betty. She remains behind to use the crown’s power to try to defeat Golb, and when that’s beyond its capabilities, she asks for the power to keep Simon safe. The result is that she melds with Golb, becoming a part of him and losing herself in the process. There’s the sense that Betty couldn’t accept that her time with Simon had ended, couldn’t accept that there would never be a permanent end to those threats, and couldn’t accept that it wouldn’t erase the time they’d shared together, becoming part of a monster in her denial.
BMO -- ironically the one character we know survives until the unspecified future that makes up the episode’s frame story -- does accept that though. Her song is an effort to comfort Jake, to remind him that even though something ends, that doesn't mean it goes away. Their “happening happened.” Their piece of the timeline will always be there.
That lesson fits for a series finale. There may be no more new Adventure Time episodes to come, but we’ll always have these 283 stories, etched in ones and zeroes if not quite etched in stone. In a way, “Come Along With Me” is meant as a gentle easing into that, a reassurance that it’s okay for one of your favorite shows to come to an end. All the old stories will still be there, and they still mean just as much, even after they’ve come to an end.
There is a force to that beyond the meta-notion of a television series playing its final episode. Adventure Time’s finale contemplates, without seeing through, the notion of all of our heroes dying. But it offers the same comfort to them that it does to us -- that the relationships we make, the friendships we build, the experiences we have, are still sewn into the fabric of the universe.
The opening lines of BMO’s song, suggesting that time is just an illusion to help us make sense of things, and that the whole of our existence is all still there, can’t help but call to mind similar ideas posited in Slaughterhouse 5. There is reassurance in it, in the very notion of endings, that the marks we have left, the lives we have touched and that have touched ours, cannot and will not be erased, no matter what happens after.
That’s the trick. There are no endings. This may be the last episode of Adventure Time, but there is a startling but refreshing lack of finality. Sure, the show loops back around to its closing theme, given new poignance by the episode’s demonstration of the literal power of music. And there’s a montage full of hints about where our heroes’ lives lead them in the future. But that’s all we get -- hints and suggestions, more to show us that the story continues than to put a firm “The End” on one.
To put it differently, everything stays, but it still changes. There’s reassurance in that too, in the frame story that tells us that Finn and Jake and PB and Marceline and more simply “lived their lives” after the curtain falls on our glimpse into Ooo. And the adventure continues. We know, from the remade treehouse born of Fern, from a lumbering Sweetpea, from a denizen who looks a lot like a rainicorn pup, that the characters we’ve come to know and love over the course of Adventure Time have left a legacy, echoes that still reverberate a millennium later.
The episode ends with that sense of cotninuity and continuation, with Shermy and Beth following in the footsteps of Finn and Jake in a world still rife with adventures, striking a familiar pose in a fashion that suggests their spirit lives on. Television shows should die as they lived, and this finale accomplishes that.
Adventure Time is a show that became so much broader in scope than a story about a boy and his dog rescuing a princess from an evil wizard. It expanded to cover trauma, parenthood, growing up, politics, community, spirituality, horror, music, and straight up goofy humor. It had a soul that could not be contained, by the bounds of expected children’s television or even the bounds of time. This finale is just as ambitious in scope, expanding to fill the space, and reassuring its fans that Finn and Jake may depart, the show may leave the airwaves, but what it accomplished, the ways it touched us, moved us, and surprised us, never will, even if it has to come to an end.
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@andrewbloom as we discussed not even a week ago, I got here, and I'm gobsmacked with the scope and ambition of that show. I'll have to watch some Youtube videos with Pen Ward - I'm so impressed with how tight every loophole is contained (even if sometimes too conveniently). I wonder if he imagined the full scope from the get-go and just fleshed it out over 10 seasons, or if it was something organic, that evolved with the show.
As always, great review. I'll need some time for it all to sink
Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP9
[8.1/10] Ambiguity can be both frustrating and brilliant. There is a natural impulse in most people to want to know the answers, to resolve the unknown, but the unknown is also a part of life, and if a television show can harness that, use it to make meaning, it can hit outstanding notes. David Chase knew that with The Sopranos , his protégé Matt Weiner knew it with Mad Men, and Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland seem to know it with Rick and Morty.
Because the last thing you’re likely to think about when you flip off “The ABCs of Beth” (if you’re not reflecting on the amusingly self-aware answering machine gag) is whether or not Beth replaced herself with a clone and left to go mount the universe. Rick and Morty is a show that usually delivers answers, even if it’s content to delay them for months or, in the case of Evil Morty, even years. But maybe some questions shouldn’t be answered.
I think that’s the point of “The ABCs of Beth.” Rick gives his daughter two options: either she can create a painless substitute that will carry her current life forward while she prowls the galaxy in search of meaning or adventure, or she can live her life as is, knowing it’s what she actually chose with clear eyes and real alternatives on the table. The Beth we meet at the end of the episode could be either -- the content clone or the real, happy Beth who’s satisfied at having picked this rather than having it forced upon her.
That’s the cinch of the episode. For many of us sitting home, we have similar choices, even if they’re not quite so fantastical. We can radically change our lives, pursuing abstract principles and goals at the expense of all that we know, or we can go forward with how things are, finding comfort and joy in the day-to-day. There are multiple paths to happiness, Rick and Morty seems to posit, or at least multiple paths to wholeness, and which path you take there isn’t necessarily evident or comprehensible to an outsider observer. But it starts with accepting who you are and what you want.
That’s the noteworthy parallel “ABCs” draws between its outstanding A-story and its less-inspired B-story. Both Beth and Jerry spend much of the episode attempting to deny who they are, blaming unfortunate events on family members, rather than owning them, accepting that the consequences are a product of their own actions.
For Jerry, that means accepting that him dating an alien huntress is a pathetic attempt to make Beth jealous. It’s an interesting way to mirror the two stories, but Jerry’s half of the episode just isn’t as strong. Maybe it’s the hard-to-watch way his kids just bust on him constantly (not that he doesn’t deserve it). Maybe it’s the divorced dad humor that’s pretty tepid, even if it’s spiced up in Rick and Morty’s intergalactic fashion. Maybe it’s that the ultimate twist -- that the huntress ends up going after the Smiths, only run into her ex -- is amusing but predictable.
Jerry’s part of the episode isn’t bad or anything. The bubble gun is enjoyable. Jerry’s barely-sublimated space racism and smugness is used for amusing effect. And there’s some more frank exposing of Jerry’s true colors. But it mainly feels like Rick and Morty needed something for the rest of the cast to do while Rick and Beth hit the high notes, and little that happens in Jerry’s dating life, however explosive, can match it.
But really, who could match the horrible realization that not only was your childhood fantasy land real, but that your childhood friend is still stuck there in it. There’s so many endlessly interesting things that spin out from the unveiling of “Froopyland.” I’d be lying if I said that the reveal that Beth’s friend survived by “humping” the fantastical creatures and then eating his own children didn’t gross me out, but Rick and Morty manages to wring the humor from even that with its bizarre little forest creature play about it.
Stronger still is the emotional and character material. For one thing, we learn that Rick created this fantasy land for his daughter. He claims it’s a practical measure, something to keep her occupied and to keep the neighbors from getting suspicious. But as the Citadel episode hinted with its Rick wafers, there’s a part of Rick that really does care about his daughter, even if it means he shows it in weird ways like creating deranged toys, or letting her help him clone her childhood friend, or giving her a way out of her family.
For another, we learn that Beth, despite her seemingly greater morals and guilt and issues with her dad, is just like him. That’s been a subtle thread throughout Season 3, with particularly resonance in “Pickle Rick.” Beth admits it herself, realizing how she denies the utility of apologies, and elides her own mistakes and past by casting those things as simply how others interpret her greatness. Her unwillingness to face that she pushed her childhood pal in the honey pit, and her then getting into a bloody confrontation with him, is an odd form of self-acceptance, but also a cathartic one.
It leads Beth back to the choice that represents the crux of the episode. If you are the daughter of Rick Sanchez, the miserable, amoral, genius, do you go out and try to ride the universe until it gets tired of bucking you, or do you try a different way, a way that finds happiness in being a part of your family, in doing the everyday. It’s the clearest suggestion yet as to what choice Rick himself made when he left Beth and her mother all those years ago.
But as much as they have in common, Beth is not her father. She feels enough guilt to want to save her friend’s dad from death row, to look at those pictures of her family on the fridge and feel the wistfulness of the thought of leaving him. We just don’t know if that’s enough to change her mind.
Maybe we shouldn’t know. I bet dollars to donuts that one day we will, that the “real” Beth will come floating down in Season 5 and cause some story sparks just like Evil Morty and the Cronenberg Universe Smiths did. But regardless, the force of the ambiguity is clear. There are different ways to live, different ways to try to make your peace with who you are and what you want out of this universe. What we choose, and why we choose it, can be opaque, even to ourselves, and the art that reflects that vagueness, that uncertainty, can be all the stronger for it.
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@andrewbloom as usual, nailed it. I have to admit that this is one of the episodes that affected me the most - I truly lost it in the next few episodes when Beth questions her condition and we're left, as you pointed out, in ambiguity. This show has something else going on for it that I don't think I ever found on TV before
It's no exaggeration to say Adventure Time ushered in a new generation of cartoons. From animation styles to senses of humor to there being a renaissance of cartoons on its network at all (remember CN Real?), its influence can be felt everywhere. And another area its hand can be felt is the slow but steady rise in gay romance. Benson and Troy of Kipo. Adora and Catra. Ruby and Sapphire. Korra and Asami. And more and more others. I can't resist a shout out to Red Action and Enid, and Boxman and Venomous of OK KO, and Luz and Amity of Owl House, but there are some I don't have time to mention, and that alone is a promising sign. Korra and Asami are often pointed to as the turning point. If not them, Steven Universe. And ignoring the fact that there's no single moment and it's actually a collective effort of marginalized creators fighting for representation and their voices... before any of them, there was Marceline and Bubblegum.
Marceline and Bubblegum have been there through every step of this evolution. First just as the two female characters who of course can't get along. Then the two who are oddly close, with a history and loads of subtext, but it could never be text; even Olivia Olson said at a con that while they would love to make it canon, network restrictions with the excuse of 'we'd be censored in other countries' held them back. And then, as the years went by, with the Korras and the She-Ras, the two joined the ranks of the Gay Finale Kiss. We have nothing left to lose, the show's over anyway, let's go for it. This isn't to begrudge those two shows; with Korra it was literally all they could get, and with She-Ra the love story was built into the premise. But shows like Kipo and Steven Universe presented a new possibility; gay love not as ending, but a beginning, a constant. And with this special, Bubblegum and Marceline enter that latest stage, still a microcosm of this hard earned progress even now.
That's a lot of prelude before I even get into the special itself, but there's a point to it. The process of time and evolution is central to this story. Marceline is no longer the angry young punk, fighting against the world and hiding every hint of vulnerability. Bubblegum is no longer the cold ruler holding her cards to her chest and placing everything else above her own heart. They aren't the young lovers wildly passionate and ready to blow at any moment, or the bitter exes still drawn to each other despite it all- two premises for romance more often central than what they are now. Domestic. Happy. Soft. And good for each other. Marceline in particular is so resonant here. I know so many gays who can relate to her here; I know I did. Lashing out and angry, so sure we'd be all alone and wouldn't it be better if it was our choice? And then we found our people, and our loves, and we grew.
That's the thing. Marceline and Bubblegum didn't only grow with the rise of gay romance in cartoons. They grew with us. And like Marceline, we might worry about being soft, if being happy is somehow wrong. But when you're with the right person, sometimes you feel invincible. Like you'll take your licks, get knocked down, and get back up. Like you have all of eternity together. And this special so encapsulates that feeling of becoming more, of becoming a better version of yourself. Walch and Olson sound so much like a couple in love, the love and joy radiating off the screen, and the rest of the voice cast, Michael Dietz as Glassboy especially, are as endearing and hilarious as ever. And even the antagonist has a hard hitting resolution of healing and growing from pain into something beautiful.
You can grow old. More seasoned, more sentimental, more soft. But that doesn't mean you have to grow old to each other. And both Adventure Time, and the pairing of Bubblegum and Marceline, have gotten better with age, feeling fresher than ever. They've lived long enough to know exactly what they want to say. I know that everything ends, but I can't help but be selfish and hope just a little there's more Adventure Time after these specials. I especially hope there's more of Marcy and PB, a couple that's influenced and grown with the medium in equal measures, and grew with us even more.
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@jc230 this is an impressive analysis - thank you for sharing with us
This movie is absolutely worse if you understand physics or are a student of physics. Nolan burnt hundreds of millions into this and didn't bother to consult even a high school physics teacher? Does he know what entropy is. Does he think entropy and time are same things? I understand we need to keep our brains at home when watching scifi but the plot is so convoluted and complex that I cannot forgive the stupidity of the premise. This movie is a stupid person's idea of what an intelligent movie might be.
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@harshk9 I think it's called fiction, not science. A physics conference might be more to your taste it seems
There's a subtle construction that is sustained in two long sequences during the first part: the interview and the class. They are the two springs that raise the main themes of the film, and for this reason the structure proposed by Todd Field is exquisite and intelligent. The secrets are the inner demons, the symbolic representation of a persecution that is more psychological. Supported by a superb Cate Blanchett, the film has that Kubrickian film planning that at times can be too obvious, but feels comfortable in the construction of spaces that suffocate and imprison, despite their breadth.
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@miguelreina Great observation - the interview and the class indeed dictate a lot of the themes that come throughout the rest of the movie
Long boring hippy propaganda, nothing new and awfully played.
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@wolf666 HAHAHAHHAAHHAHA I can't believe you really wrote that
Heard great things about this episode, is it possible to watch it without being up to date with the show?
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@ant-ds at the same time, so much of the fun of this episode is having a better understanding of the character's psyche, so I wonder if it's better to just watch in order?
A fact-free film, an homage to the urban guerrilla guy who wrote a "handbook" of guerrilla tactics worthy of a Hamas or Al Qaeda militant, a guy who considered civilian deaths collateral damage while seeking to establish a communist dictatorship . But these are things not seen in the film, which even falsify the historical character's skin color. The film itself tries, without success, to show a traumatized and cornered protagonist, who had no option but to fight against the dictatorship that ruled Brazil at his time, trying to humanize the main character to the point of making the performances and situations very shallow and boring. And the film still fails to make clear what goal Marighella wanted to achieve. 4/10
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@poizonb0x You say 4/10 yet scored 1/10 - why?
I can't understand the good scores of this movie, is just plain and boring.
As a translator I was expecting something completely different too because of movie name.loading replies
@the_argentinian spot on there, my friend
I think this was somewhat disappointing to me, as the movie made promises and expectations that didn't uphold for me.
Other disappointments in story spoiler:
Basically, the goal was set in early in the movie where to get the pregnant women to, but you would expect it happens way faster and the story continues from there. It doesn't. Instead, the goal is taking all the movie to reach, and then the movie just ends.
It wasn't answered where the phenomena of women not being able to bear children came from in the first place. Or how it would be fixed. I think both could be done easily and quickly somewhere.
You would, at the very least, expect a way more futuristic setting. It felt dragging along way too long, sometimes with some action scenes or dialogues you just forget about after again. Or just...silence and nothing happening.
Rating: 6/10
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@basinator Fair enough! I think the movie's marketing didn't help it, a lot of expectations were created but were never in place in the finished movie. If you ever watch the movie again, I would be interested to see if your perception of it changed or not :)
I think this was somewhat disappointing to me, as the movie made promises and expectations that didn't uphold for me.
Other disappointments in story spoiler:
Basically, the goal was set in early in the movie where to get the pregnant women to, but you would expect it happens way faster and the story continues from there. It doesn't. Instead, the goal is taking all the movie to reach, and then the movie just ends.
It wasn't answered where the phenomena of women not being able to bear children came from in the first place. Or how it would be fixed. I think both could be done easily and quickly somewhere.
You would, at the very least, expect a way more futuristic setting. It felt dragging along way too long, sometimes with some action scenes or dialogues you just forget about after again. Or just...silence and nothing happening.
Rating: 6/10
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@basinator sorry but couldn't help as to comment on a few things you felt that "detracted" from the movie:
Basically, the goal was set in early in the movie where to get the pregnant women to, but you would expect it happens way faster and the story continues from there. It doesn't. Instead, the goal is taking all the movie to reach, and then the movie just ends.
One could expect what you mentioned, another could not. I never saw the "goal" of the movie as getting the pregnant women to the Human People or whatever. That could be marked as the destination, but the beauty of the movie is in the journey. I felt it ended in the right spot: actually, it could have ended before we see the research boat approaching, after all, this is a movie about Theo, not about everything else (although everything else adds a lot of realism and movement to the plot)
It wasn't answered where the phenomena of women not being able to bear children came from in the first place. Or how it would be fixed. I think both could be done easily and quickly somewhere.
No one ever said that would be explained. Do you have theories? Which ones do you think are more probable? Is it really that bad to have to think critically about explanations and wonder about them instead of having them handed down to you in a silver platter?
You would, at the very least, expect a way more futuristic setting. It felt dragging along way too long, sometimes with some action scenes or dialogues you just forget about after again. Or just...silence and nothing happening.
Why would you expect that? Now that we are in 2020, we can see that the movie probably characterizes 2027 quite well (seeing how society has evolved in the 17 years since the movie was made). The themes are very modern. If you wanted Blade Runner or Minority Report futuristic, my question is: what made you want that? I don't think the movie ever promised that. Also, whenever there's silence, pay attention: there's a lot of stuff happening, the director just doesn't want to distract you with unnecessary, filler dialogue.
Look, I'm not personally attacking you in any way - I'm just challenging you to loosen your expectations because by reading your comment, I think it got in your way of enjoying the movie fully.
That was a great episode, but not a good black mirror episode
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@allyssonsouzam My thoughts precisely right here
An authorized biopic is always a double-edged sword, even more so if it highlights a kind of messianic plan of the father rather than his daughters' own values. Because, after all, the Williams sisters are to their credit, as black women in a primarily white sport. A film designed in the shape of the Oscar, it contributes little to the staging of tennis and runs for about two and a half hours totally unnecessary.
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@miguelreina wow, harsh review but it rings extremely true. I could not have said it better myself. I tried to like it more, then tried to like it less, and I'm still ambivalent on how I feel about it
Wes Anderson is an extremely talented director, and his expertise shines in Rushmore. This can't however make up for the fact that the main character is a pretentious little prick who focuses throughout the entire movie on forcing a young teacher (Williams) to stat rape him. I loved the first half of the movie, it was fun watching the guy go about his clubs and enjoy life, and I didn't have a problem with him crushing on the teacher, however about halfway through his crush turns into a creepy obsession. This obsession leads him to destroy the life of his best friend (Murray) and cut the brakes to his car. The movie ceases to be cute and fun and turns creepy and annoying. Anderson's talents shine in the production, but the protagonist absolutely destroys what could have been a good film.
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@msheahan99 good points. I like Wes Anderson's style, but Max is so hard to like and the movie moves into creepy territory quite early. Probably my least favorite of the Wes Anderson movies because of the way it explores its characters, of which Max is one of the least interesting
Review by Marco
Another good episode and whatever could have been done good or wrong with it, this was going to be an easy win in the end just because the return of a Star Wars icon like Boba Fett was destined to steal the scene anyway.
Still I didn't like the gratuitous violence that (as usual) Rodriguez felt so necessary to tell his part of the story, I mean all those slashing and armors fragments flying al around, and especially a couple of shots where the camera indulged few seconds too much on a smashed helmet or a dead stormtrooper body. Pulp Wars uh..?
Melee combats have always been a Star Wars trademark, still coreography and visual storytelling never needed graphic violence to bring to life the most epic Star Wars fights, action and pathos. We have been through mutilations and body slashing before in this universe, but always with a certain narrative style.
Besides the fact that this is still a show and a franchise for the whole family, little kids included, gratuitous violence remains just that. Not sure why the production let this pass without any apparent restriction, but at least Rodriguez spared us some blood splatter so in the end should we even be thankful somehow I guess?
Plus I found some other weaknesses in the screenplay that gets streched a bit too thin for me in the central part of the story, where the more stormtroopers lands, Mando goes back and forth from Grogu always getting bounced back by the Force field, etc...well this is just what keeps happening for like ten minutes and to be honest is not exactly great writing, felt more again, like an excuse to have Rodriguez to carry on his smash and bash thing, which we all knew how good he is at..if only it didn't felt so misplaced in a Star Wars story. I remain with the feeling that this episode has been largely saved by the charisma and weight of a powerful character like Boba Fett that luckily managed to eclipse all the rest.loading replies
@goonie Robert Rodriguez brought the episode and the overall series narrative down. I hope they can bring back any of the prior directors, as they did a much better job of creating a Star Wars universe instead of a Transformers universe.
An entertaining episode but some of the action scenes here are so ridiculous you can’t take them seriously.
Stormtroopers missing every shot or just running up to people with melee weapons so they can be beaten.
The guy on the turret who just tries shooting a rock until it runs him over :man_facepalming:
It’s laughable but feels at odds with the mostly serious tone and high production.
Also agree with others that the lack of jet pack is just a convenient plot device and a bit of a plot hole.loading replies
@sebm88 I know I'll be swimming against the current here, but this episode felt the weakest of them all. The action was extremely sloppy, I counted 10 stormtroopers dead in 10 seconds at a certain point. It felt like watching a Michael Bay movie, and this is not what I came to expect from the series
[8.1/10] For the entirety of this season, Kim Wexler, and the audience, have been waiting for Jimmy McGill to genuinely deal with his brother’s death, to confront it in some way, rather than moving on as though nothing happened. From the season premiere, where he brushed off Howard’s tortured confession with a happy air, to last week’s raging out, we’ve seen Jimmy sublimate his feelings about Chuck and his brother’s death. We’ve seen him repress them, run from them, and act out because of them, but never really face them head on.
Those feelings are at the core of “Winner”, the finale of Better Call Saul’s fourth season. The latest scheme from Kim and Jimmy requires Jimmy to cry crocodile tears at Chuck’s grave on the anniversary of his death, to get earnestly involved in the scholarship grants made in Chuck’s name, to loudly but “anonymously” throw a party for the dedication of the Chuck McGill memorial law library and seem too broken up to enjoy it. It’s all a big show, to attract as many members of the local bar as possible, in the hopes that word will get back to the committee judging his appeal for reinstatement as a lawyer.
It is an effort to put on grief, wear it like a mask, for self-serving purposes. The knock on Jimmy, the thing that held him back in his first hearing, was a lack of remorse or concerning or mournfulness about his brother. So he and Kim send every signal imaginable to the legal community, in lugubrious tones, that Jimmy is a broken man still shaken up by his brother’s passing, only withholding mention of Chuck because the memory is too painful to bear.
As usual, it’s a good plan! It’s hard to know for sure whether the signs of Jimmy’s faux grief make it back to the review board, but they at least seem to be effective on his immediate prey. And Kim is there by his side, shooting down his more outlandish ideas, workshopping his speech to the committee, and helping her partner mislead people in the hopes of regaining something that was taken away from him.
But the key to it all working is Jimmy’s speech to the review board. He goes in with a plan to recite Chuck’s letter to him. Jimmy wants to let his brother’s eloquence and feeling carry the day so that he doesn't have to put on that mask of true feeling and seem insincere. But he departs from the script. He improvises. He offers what sounds like an honest assessment of his relationship with his brother, the reasons why he became a lawyer, the difficulty of gaining Chuck’s approval, the truths about Chuck’s demeanor and the hardships their sibling relationship faced at times.
The the impact of those words is heightened by the karaoke cold open that shows Jimmy as needling but caring, Chuck as condescending but proud, and the two of them as loving siblings. It clearly moves the review board. It causes Kim to wipe away a tear. And you’d have to be made of stone to sit in the audience and not feel something as Jimmy offers what sounds like a heartfelt and honest eulogy for his brother and their relationship.
But it’s a canard, a put-on, a lie. It is an echo of similar faux-sentimental assessments from Chuck, and once again, I almost believed it. Jimmy revels in having put one over on the review board. His cravenness about tugging their heartstrings astounds Kim, underlining her worst fears about the man she loves. After tearfully echoing the passage from his brother’s letter, about his pride in sharing the name McGill, Jimmy asks for a “doing business as” form to practice under a pseudonym instead. Saul Goodman, scruple-free lawyer to the seedy underbelly of Albuquerque, is born out of the ashes of his brother’s life and name.
There was no truth in Jimmy’s seemingly sincere pronouncements. There was no outpouring of grief or real feeling in that confessional moment, or if there was, it was anesthetized and calibrated to be used for dishonest purposes. For ten episodes, we’ve been waiting for Jimmy to acknowledge what his brother meant to him in some genuine way, and instead, he gives us, the review board, and most notably Kim, what turns out to be just another performance.
It is, in a strange way, a negative image of how Mike behaves in this episode. When he speaks to Gus about Werner’s disappearance, he seeks mercy on his friend’s behalf, trying to avoid a mortal response from his employer. He pleads caution, forgiveness, the possibility of correction. But when he speaks to Werner himself, he’s colder, angrier, more taciturn and practical in the way we’ve come to expect as the default for Mr. Ehrmantraut. He too has a divide between the face he presents in his profession and the one he presents to his erstwhile friend.
But at least “Winner” gives us some good cat-and-mousing in that effort. For all the heady material in Better Call Saul, it’s hard not to enjoy the petty thrills of detective work and chases gone wrong all the more. Seeing Mike pose as a concerned brother in law, and piece together where Werner’s likely to be is an absolute treat. And the way he manages to loses Lalo Salamanca -- with a gum in the ticket machine ploy -- is a lot of fun.
Lalo himself, though, really drags this portion of the episode down. He’s a little too cartoony of an antagonist on a heightened but still down-to-earth show. The fact that he crawls through the ceiling like he’s freaking Spider-Man was patently ridiculous. And his single-minded pursuit of Mike and ability to ferret details out just as well veered too far into the realm of contrivance. I appreciate the promise of greater friction to come between Gus and Mike’s operation and the Salamancas, but the bulk of Lalo’s business in this one was unnecessary, and kept Nacho, who’s been underserved in general this season, on the sidelines.
Still, it leads to a tragic, moving, heartfelt scene between Mike and Werner where what needs to be done is done. Between Werner’s naive requests to see his wife, Mike’s matter of fact resignation about what needs to happen, and Werner’s slow realization of the position he’s in all unspools slowly and painfully.
The upshot of it is simple though. Mike found a friend, and he has to kill him. There’s sadness in Mike’s eyes, evident beneath the anger that it came to this. There’s pain in Werner’s, and for yours truly, when Werner tells Mike that he thought his little escapade would result only in frustration but ultimately forgiveness and understanding from Mike, because they’re friends.
There’s not room for friends in this line of work, at least not under Gus Fring. Ultimately, it’s not up to Mike, and underneath the stars of New Mexico, at a distance, with a spark and a silhouette, we see him have to end the life of someone he’d rather let go, because it’s his job. Werner is the first man that Mike kills for Gus, but he won’t be the last. And it all starts with a man who made one mistake, that can’t be forgiven, because the powers that be would never allow it.
That’s what ties Mike’s portion of the episode to Jimmy’s. Jimmy delivers what is basically the Saul Goodman Manifesto to a young woman who was denied one of the Chuck McGill scholarships since she was caught shoplifting. He tells her that chances at respectability like that scholarship are false promises, dangled in front of lesser-thans to convince them they have a shot when they were judged harshly before they even stepped in the door. The system is stacked against you. The rules are to their benefit. So don’t abide by them. Make your success without them. Do what you have to do. Rub their nose in your success rather letting yourself be cowed by something unfair and biased against you. The world will try to define you by one mistake, but fight back and don’t let them win.
That’s a comforting worldview, one that lets the viewer off the hook to some degree. We want to like Jimmy. He’s affable. He’s fun. He’s good at what he does. It’s easy to buy in Jimmy’s own sublimated self-assessment -- that the white shoed system is unwilling to overlook less credentialed but hard-working individuals who’ve had missteps but overcome them, so he has to fight dirty. It’s tempting to buy into that narrative -- that the people with the power aren’t playing fair, so why should he? Why shouldn’t scratch, claw, fight, and cut corners along the way to getting what he deserves?
But the truth is that “the system” hasn’t done much to keep Jimmy down. Howard Hamlin wanted to give him a job after he became a lawyer. Davis & Main gave him every opportunity to succeed. Even the disciplinary committee is not unreasonable in questioning Jimmy’s penitence when he offers no remorse for the person he hurt with his scheme. Jimmy’s made plenty of his own mistakes, but it’s not “them” trying to hold Jimmy McGill down; it’s “him.”
That’s the trick of this season finale. Despite all the put-ons and subterfuge, Jimmy does genuinely reckon with the death of his brother, he just does it in the guise of unseen forces set against him rather than a cold body in the cold ground. It’s Chuck who tried to keep Jimmy from being on the same level as him. It’s Chuck who instigated the disciplinary proceedings that continue to be a thorn in Jimmy’s side. It’s Chuck who judged his younger sibling solely on his mistakes, who overlooked his hustle, who saw those missteps as all that Jimmy was or could be. When Jimmy rails against the system that he sees as holding him down, when he uses that as an excuse to color outside the lines, he’s really railing against the brother, and his feelings of anger and pain and grievance, that no longer have a living object of blame to sustain them.
Because Jimmy has to be the winner. If Jimmy is denied his reinstatement, if a young woman with a checkered past but a bright future can’t earn a scholarship in his brother’s name, if it’s ultimately judged that someone like Jimmy isn’t allowed to be in the profession of someone like Chuck, then it means that Chuck won, and Jimmy can’t bear that.
Despite the loss of his sibling, we only see Jimmy truly cry once this season. It’s not in front of the review board. It’s not in a quiet moment with Kim. It’s in his car, by himself, when the engine won’t start, when he feels stymied, when it seems like the forces Chuck set in motion will pull him under for good, cosmically confirming his brother’s harsh assessment of him.
There is grief in Jimmy McGill, pain caused by a severe loss. But that loss didn’t happen when Chuck died. It happened when Chuck broke his heart, turned him away, told him that he didn’t matter. As with others on T.V. this year, death didn’t mean the loss of a confidante for Jimmy; it meant the end of the possibility of approval, of pride, of the sort of family relationship Jimmy had always wanted and thought he might one day gain.
There is truth in those tears behind the wheel of an off-color sedan, a mourning in private to contrast with the show he puts on in public. And Saul Goodman -- the real Saul Goodman -- is born. Because if Jimmy couldn’t earn his brother’s love, then at least he can win, he can try to become what Chuck never thought he would, reach heights his brother never reached, no matter what lies he has to tell, what corners he has to cut, or who he has to hurt or deceive to get there. That’s Jimmy’s truth now; that’s his response to his Chuck’s death, and that’s the force that moves him from the decency and concern of the man we meet at the beginning Better Call Saul to the amoral, win-at-all-costs mentality that comes with the new name that distinguishes him from his brother.
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@niquezvosu with twice as many likes as the second most rated comment, so I'd say the answer is yes - a lot of people are going to. Whereas I already regret having read your non-comment, as it brought nothing of value to anyone
Shout by Lineage
SPOILERS FOR FUTURE EPISODES
The flashback of Gustavo and Max was foreshadowing what happens in the series finale. Gustavo is Jesse and Max is Walter.
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@legendaryfang56 I'm confused if that's a series finale spoiler. The fact that it has the spoiler tag doesn't prevent this comment from being shown to people that watched this episode (but have not finished the series, like me). If you're really spoiling the series finale here ... well ... that's just low
Until this point, Bebop is a fun anime with a neat aesthetic. This episode changed a lot of that for me. The montage as Spike is falling from the cathedral is magnificent.
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@filmboicole got it, that makes sense (it seems they changed the right order for a messed one)
Until this point, Bebop is a fun anime with a neat aesthetic. This episode changed a lot of that for me. The montage as Spike is falling from the cathedral is magnificent.
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@filmboicole hmmm this episode is about Ed, nothing about falling cathedrals
If you really need to have a rooftop scene, please make it a bit more convincing than that. Thanks.
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@zejho hahahah that scene was pretty poorly edited, I don't recall anything so lame in the show so far
Some lazy writing. Good thing I didn’t watch this when it originally aired.
Not sure why all the high reviews about this show. Maybe it gets better because season 1 was alright, it wasn’t the greatest show like everyone makes it out to be.
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@jackstraw I'm waiting for big things after reading your review because, in fact, Season 1 was good but by no means great
The difference between a more mature anime with those less mature is the way they portray their villains. I love the way they portray Asimov's girlfriend as a person with hope and desire to get a better life, shown simply through a short, humane conversation between her and Spike. At the same time, it shows death and violence only the most necessary: despite a lot of shootouts, you can count the casualties, even among the goons - most who survive are saved by cartoony knockouts/running away - making death has more impact when it does happen.
Other than that, this episode has slick animation especially on the action, and the plot moves tight, establishing our main characters rather quickly. The ending also defines this show right from the start: a bittersweet, tragic life of those who has to deal with the underworld.
Great pilot.
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@xaliber errmmm, this is not the episode you're reviewing. This episode is about Abdul Hakim and the data dog
Really not getting the hype behind this show. It was ok, but also very predictable I mean haven't they looked at the walls of their sleep room at all. Not shocked at all by the big reveals of the brother and the 001 man. It was all too predictable. Doesn't need a season 2 for me.
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@mogwaylaven I still don't get the hype
Review by Andrew Bloom
[9.8/10] One of the kindest things you can say about Better Call Saul is that it rarely feels like Breaking Bad anymore. Sure, there’s still stories that intersect with the cartel, and a prequel to the war between Gus and the Salamancas, and the time-honored practice of writing your characters into a corner and forcing themselves to figure a way out of it. But despite its roots, Better Call Saul has become its own thing, with its own voice, own world, and own style that’s connected to the story of Walter White, but distinct from it.
And yet, something about “Bagman” feels distinctively Breaking Bad-esque. Maybe it’s that Vince Gilligan is in the director’s chair. Maybe it’s so much time spent beneath the New Mexico sun. Maybe it’s the tale of an uncommonly common schmuck crossing paths with drug-runners and getting more than he bargained for. Whatever it is, stranding Saul and Mike in the desert wouldn’t feel out of place on Better Call Saul’s predecessor.
The sand-swept isolation calls to mind Walt and Jesse’s similar struggles in “4 Days Out.” The small scale personal story told within a larger moment makes “Bagman” feel strikingly like “Fly.” Hell, for folks whose prestige television memories run back twenty years ago, the episode has a whiff of Christopher and Paulie stuck in the Pine Barrens.
There’s a reason television shows, not just Breaking Bad, return to these sorts of stories of struggle and isolation and mutual survival. They give creators the chance to put characters through hell, challenges that they may or may not be prepared to face, and in those challenges, reveal them.
Because the episode reveals Saul Goodman. It humbles him. It both brings him down to one of his lowest points, his willingness to die and give up and fail in a way the crafty huckster never has before, only to build him back up when he’s reminded what’s at stake. This episode isn’t Jimmy McGill’s finest hour, but it may be Better Call Saul’s.
The setup for the episode comes from an off-hand comment in last week’s outing. Lalo needs seven million dollars to make bond and taps Saul to pick it up for him. There’s a logic there. The Cousins are too hot to avoid suspicion from the Salamancas’ competitors. Nacho is reliable, but Lalo correctly intuits that this kind of money would be enough to send him packing. Jimmy is too plain, too apart from these internecine squabbles, to arouse that kind of suspicion, so he’s nominated for the job.
He doesn't want it though. He knows it’s dangerous. He told Kim he wouldn’t do it. But he bargains his way to a hundred thousand dollar commission and can’t bear to turn that kind of money. Jimmy tries to break it to his wife gently, plying her with fajitas and old el paso (exotic!), except that Kim knows better. She is aghast. She practically demands that he back out. She all but pleads with him, please that Jimmy, naturally, ignores.
And why wouldn’t he? Saul Goodman is invinceable. He has never found a scrape or a tight spot that he couldn’t wriggle his way out of. He is, as he told Howard last week, a god. So why not ramble into the desert, take a pick-up from murderous crime bosses, and drive away crooning a bastardized version of “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall”? No fuss, no muss.
Until, of course, everything goes pear shaped.
The striking thing about “Bagman” is not just that this plan goes horribly wrong. It was practically destined to. Rivals, or simple opportunists, tipped off by a mole in a Salamanca safehouse, ambush Saul, there’s a firefight that leaves him cowering and in shock, until Mike saves the day. This isn’t the first exchange of gunfire on Better Call Saul or the first scheme that hit a major bump for Jimmy.
What stands out, though, is how ill-equipped he is to handle this. Normally Jimmy is the expert, the resourceful planner, who uses his silver tongue and conman instincts to work something out. Here, though, he has nothing to fall back on, nothing to do, but contemplate his own hubris. Bullet barrages are not his game. Survivalist treks through the desert are not his specialty. Saul is, in short, completely out of his depth, in a way we’ve never really seen before.
But Mike isn’t. Mike is very much in his element. One of the great features of episodes like this one is that forcing two people to work together like highlights the differences between them. Mike is, in his own way, just as talented and resourceful as Jimmy is. As his Private Investigator routine showed, he can even pull a con just like Saul can.
The difference is that Mike is tough. He is determined, with a background in special forces that makes him resilient in these circumstances. He came prepared for this in a way that Jimmy didn’t. He was ready for contingencies and failsafes that Jimmy wasn’t. And even he is tested and pushed to his limits. What does that leave for a softie like Jimmy McGill?
It leaves a man to be brought low by his failure to realize what he’s getting into. Gilligan uses the tricks of the camera not only to once again show us the scenic beauty of the New Mexico landscape, but to contrast this colorful shnook, at home in the circles where he operates, from the harsh environs he now finds himself wholly unprepared to deal with.
Gilligan shows The Cousins looming on either side of a close up of the back of Jimmy’s head, creating the image of intimidation. He gives us Mike and Saul wandering through a valley as the clouds sweep overhead, communicating how small they are in the far stretches of this place. He uses glow sticks to light their faces in different colors, providing high contrast so we see every weathered line. He puts the camera in the field of vision of a cactus, a shoe, or a hole in the ground, forcing us to look upon our heroes from unnatural angles, dwarfed by what’s around them. He highlights the unforgiving, if gorgeous, features of this arid deathtrap that threatens to tear down the seasoned vet and the hapless civilian in turn.
In the midst of that struggle, the show stealthily nods to little symbols, little pieces of who Jimmy and Mike have been and what led them to this moment, as so many of them end up either lost or just what the pair need in a given moment.
Mike saves Jimmy’s life with a sniper’s rifle, presumably the same one he bought to kill Hector in “Klick.” When he packs up what’s worth scavenging from Jimmy’s car, he takes the gas cap, likely having used it to track Jimmy just as Gus tracked him in “Mabel.” The Mike we see resolutely trudging his way through the desert is the product of so much, some things we’ve seen, and a great deal we haven’t, but those things have made him better able to face this moment.
Instead, Jimmy sees the things that have defined him slowly stripped away. His mismatched colored Suzuki Esteem ends up flipped into a ditch. The “Second Best Lawyer” mug Kim gifted him, one he’s desperate to hang onto, ends up with a bullet through it. He sweats through one of his colorful suits and strips it for protection against the penetrating rays of the sun. His perfectly manicured image and visage of self-assured confidence gives way to a blistered, sunburnt wretch, laid low and shown what he cannot simply bluff his way through.
But the ties to events past go beyond the tools that Mike and Saul lose or use in the process. There’s a brotherly vibe about the two of them together, Mike grumpily herding Jimmy along like a pestersome younger sibling he’s reluctantly responsible for. The glowsticks the two share while “camping” help set a mood, letting Gilligan up the contrast and show the weathered lines of each of these men’s faces. But it also conjures the image of Jimmy and Chuck as young boys, lit by a similar light in “Lantern”, and comparison that becomes all the more salient when Mike wraps himself up in a “space blanket” to save off the cold, something that Jimmy can’t bring himself to partake in for obvious reasons.
There’s a deeper connection there too, though neither of them fully knows it. Saul tells Mike that Kim will be worrying about him, and Mike is aghast that Saul let his wife in on what he’s up to here. Jimmy protests that Kim’s smart enough not to do anything rash (a faith Kim echoes to Lalo), but Mike just gives him an incredulous look. Mike tells Jimmy that he’s made Kim a part of the game now, something that Kim identifying herself to Lalo reinforces.
That’s scary for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, for seasons now, Better Call Saul fans have been on pins and needles hoping that Kim survives. The fact that she’s implicated, even tangentially, that Lalo knows her by sight, makes her survival of the series that much more perilous. It’s scarier, though, because Mike knows full well that you can’t just be lightly involved and float above this kind of muck. He watched his son try to be in it without being a part of it, and saw where that leaves you and them. His skepticism is an admonition and a cosmic warning for Kim.
But when Jimmy’s latest shortcut has failed, when his effort to work smarter not harder has left him losing packs of hundred dollar bills, pulling spines out of his foot, and melting in the sun, it’s the thought of Kim’s well-being that keeps him going.
Mike gives him what can only become his signature speech of the series, about not caring whether he lives or dies, but choosing to go on because there’s people whose lives he wants to make better. Mike has been through some shit, crawled his way out of it, and had every reason to tap out on the other end. But he has Stacey and Kaylee, and he has been willing to dirty himself and fight through the muck, to keep them safe and supported. It is as clear a statement of purpose as we’re likely to get from the famously taciturn survivor.
Jimmy takes the critique to heart. Rather than hide or give up, he swallows his pride and wraps himself in the space blanket, gaining the attention of the criminals trying to hunt them down. This is not a slick con or a clever ruse. It’s a desperate ploy, one where Jimmy is willing to make himself bait, to put his life on the line, in the hopes that it will see him through this and get him back to Kim, hopefully with the money and wherewithal to make her life better too.
The sequence that follows is incredible. Despite knowing that both characters survive, Gilligan draws out the tension and terror as a car bears down on Jimmy and Mike lies in wait with his rifle. A missed shot, a swerving car, an upturned chassis, and a newly-determined foil-wrapped man who can’t even look at any of it, leads to the heart-pumping catharsis of an episode’s worth of character choices bound up in a rollicking climax.
In the end, Jimmy is willing to face his lowest moments, debase himself to make it through this, because Mike reminds him of whom he’s doing this for. He’ll swaddle himself in the shining memories of his dead brother to catch the gangsters’ eye. He’ll drink his own urine out of a water bottle branded with the law firm he swindled. He will make himself bait, the last resort of a man with nothing left to offer. And when it works, he will trudge on, having shed the niceties and pretensions and pride that made him think he was better than this, or capable of this.
The stock and trade of both Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad is change and self-realization. More than the arid trappings, more than the isolated chance for two characters to measure themselves against one another, that is what makes “Bagman” of a piece with our first televised journey to Albuquerque. Amid sand and blood and piss, Jimmy receives one last wake up call, one last chance to change his path, one last chance to remember who it’s worth making that choice for.
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@andrewbloom wow, I had completely missed the significance of the space blanket and of the lanterns, good catch! After reading your review, I agree that I'm concerned about what happens to Kim :/
Until this point, Bebop is a fun anime with a neat aesthetic. This episode changed a lot of that for me. The montage as Spike is falling from the cathedral is magnificent.
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@filmboicole got it, that makes sense (it seems they changed the right order for a messed one)
I feel really bad for Sheldon, people are just jerks with him for no reason. Like the first part where he interview Leonard and Penny, they were rude for no apparent reason. Then there's Amy treating him like a kid. Weak sauce.
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@rafaelpires815 great words to spare about an annoying sociopath
Isn't that stock broker the same guy who Walter White blew up his car at the petrol/gas station in Breaking Bad??
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@datadad Ken Wins! That is him
I'm seeing a lot of hate towards Skyler here and I just want to know: what exactly would you have done differently in her situation?
If the IRS begins a serious investigation about Ted, it wouldn't take them long to find out that the woman who cooked his books is now running a business that she bought with undeclared money. If Ted goes down, everybody else goes down with him. Skyler didn't ask to be in the situation she's in, and yet, she's the only person that is actually thinking about the consequences of Ted and Walt's actions in the long term and trying to save both their asses in the process.loading replies
@carolinaoftarth Just read the comments, and to be honest, very few comments show hate towards Skyler (and the ones that do get no likes). I particularly feel sorry for Skyler, I feel she's blamed for all that is bad whereas Walt's ego and pride deserve much more blame, and seeing the number of likes and the comments, it seems as a whole the audience gets she's getting the worse of it but don't deserve to be hated
