Bingo

Overall, for this episode, I liked the plotline and the scenes around the Kettlemans, but I found the rest less compelling and in some places a little puzzling.

As was often the case with Breaking Bad, I really liked the opening shot of this episode. The implication as they scan down a list of pictures of Wanted Men and end on the real-life face of Jimmy was very interesting. The way they kept returning to shots with different speakers in the scene, mainly Jimmy, Mike, and/or Detective Sanders, but with the Wanted Men bulletin board framed behind them also seemed very apropos given the logical inferences from their conversation. In particular, I'm thinking about Detective Sanders suggesting that Fensky and Hoffman got what was coming and saying "The whole precinct was a sewer.", "Might be a good thing. New blood.", and "Some rocks you don't turn over." To my ears, that whole sequence was a sharp condemnation of both Sanders and Mike. If the precinct was a sewer, and new blood is needed to make things better, there's a sizable chunk of culpability that falls on them. Especially if their attitude is that when you see things going wrong, you don't look any closer. It seemed at once a nice little wrap of the previous episode and a sign of the difficulty of conforming to set episode lengths where Mike's story, which I thought was the best arc so far, awkwardly spilled over into both the preceding and succeeding episodes.

I found the scenes between Jimmy and Chuck, and in Jimmy's potential new office space with Kim a bit puzzling. The scene with Chuck didn't really seem to serve much purpose, it more felt like they didn't want to do an episode without nodding to Chuck's existence, but didn't have a real goal in mind either. I did really like the way Jimmy left Chuck a bunch of files knowing he'd go through them, the way you hope they will build on that in the future, but I was disappointed that they didn't come back and fulfill that promise in this episode. If that setup was their only real purpose, the scene seemed a bit thin. And I felt like Jimmy ought to know that Kim wouldn't accept his offer to go into business together, that the scene between them was a clumsy attempt to set up a later payoff. In general, I found the fact that we know so little about how Jimmy and Kim feel about each other, that they seem to be important to each other but don't ever have a conversation that moves past the superficial, that Jimmy seems to actually think Kim might join him, really problematic. I'll deal with this in more depth at the end, since the episode circles back to the office later.

I'd say the thing that most interested me about the Kettlemans, a thing I'm not sure I would have picked up on so quickly had I not been watching closely, is the dynamics of the relationship between Betsy and Craig Kettleman. I saw it first as they're holding hands talking to Kim, and Betsy pointedly releases Craig's hand as Kim delivers bad news, like if Craig is going to jail, Betsy wants nothing to do with him. I'm not sure if Craig is whipped or just meek, but you see it in the way Betsy frequently answers questions for him, interrupts to finish his sentences, leads him by the arm. I found it an interesting dynamic that she seems to care much more for her image and her family's financial fortune than she does for whether or not Craig goes to jail.

But inasmuch as I enjoyed observing the dynamics of the Kettlemans' relationship, I was frustrated watching Jimmy throughout the episode, not having access to his motivations. To start, I was mystified at why Jimmy didn't want to take the Kettlemans as clients, even before he spoke with Kim. There are implications he thinks they're too crazy to take on, that their goals/demands are unreasonable, that he knows they're Kim's clients and is suspicious of what's transpiring. But on the other hand, he was perfectly willing to take them on before, they can demand whatever they like but if they go to trial he'll be making a boatload of money that, protest as much as they like, they'll have no legitimate means to recoup, and he was actively trying to steal them from HHM before. I guess this is my way of saying not only did I want to know more about Jimmy's mental state through all this, information that could have come out in his conversations with Kim, but I found his actions implausible, as if the writers were steering him down a particular course because it suited their ends, because they wanted to get Mike involved and to get to the final confrontation between Jimmy and the Kettlemans.

I enjoyed the sequence with Mike at the Kettlemans. The whole watching Mike, thinking along with Jimmy, trying to figure out what's going on is something Better Call Saul does very well. I found it a little odd that money that had been lying around in a backpack in episode 3 is now stashed away in a hidden compartment inside a hidden compartment in a cabinet. But I thought the final confrontation between Jimmy and the Kelletmans was pitch-perfect, well-executed, and well thought-through. I liked the way Jimmy sees the exact dynamics he needs to exploit--the wife's sense of her own self-interest--and plays to that. I liked the way Betsy sprang up and ran for the money. I like the tension that runs through the scene were the consequences for both sides are really, really high and you're not quite sure where things will end up, but the logic and force behind Jimmy's lines, that "criminals have no recourse", and that he's "got nothing to lose" is compelling and impactful. I thought it was interesting how well this scheme of Jimmy's came off compared to the total or partial failure of pretty much all his other schemes so far, and it left me wondering whether the difference was Mike's involvement, Kim's involvement, or just dumb luck.

But as nicely as that scene is put together, there's one thing that bothered me really strongly. What is Saul's motivation? The episode ends with him taking his anger and his frustration out on his potential new office space. There's a sense that he's angry and disappointed because he's lost something, and the scene has some impact because it's clear that he has, but I can't tell you what he's lost. Is he angry because Kim won't be his partner? Because he lost out on the Kettlemans' case to help Kim? Because he secretly loves Kim and we just don't know it yet? Because he lost the money he had to return to the Kim's to set things right? Because he really wants to be a successful lawyer but he doesn't know how to make it happen? The most important question of the episode, why does he go to so much trouble, take such big risks, lose an opportunity to make so much money litigating the Kettleman's case, to help Kim stay at HHM is totally unanswered. As much as I liked the Kettleman arc in this episode, to end it by highlighting that there is this central, fundamental, really important thing that we don't know about Jimmy left a bitter taste in my mouth.

Better Call Saul: Five-O

I have to say, I really enjoyed this episode. I have a few quibbles, which I'll save to the end, but I thought it told a really compelling story that was interesting on many levels.

The episode starts with a string of really beautiful cinematography. Beautiful shots aren't really my thing, I can appreciate them when I see them, but I'm generally more interested in stories and themes. That said, if cinematography is your thing, this episode starts with beautiful shots following a train, some really well-chosen lighting and angles in a train station, a sequence of revealing shots of Mike's lumpy and aging body, and moves onto some more nice use of lighting and angles to show Stacey's backyard and Mike pushing his granddaughter Kaylee on a swing.

The episode then moves into promise-making mode. For those of you not familiar with the narrative concept of promise-making, it involves implicitly suggesting to the viewer that certain things are going to occur or be explained in the course of an episode. If a story fails to deliver on those promises, it generally leaves the viewer/reader feeling cheated. If the story makes big promises, as this one does, and delivers on most of them, the impact is heightened because the story's mastery of technique, of showing the viewer the inevitable, well-crafted chain of events that leads to the conclusion, earns, so to speak, the viewer's admiration and emotional or intellectual response.

The conversation between Mike and Stacey makes a lot of promises. The implicit accusations Stacey levels at Mike, and Mike's halting denial promise us that Mike does know what the phone conversation Matt had was about, he knows what Matt was involved with, he knows something about who killed Matt. The tension that builds between Stacey and Mike promises us some resolution, whether in this episode or another. Mike also makes an explicit promise, that he's better, solid, that he'll be around to help with Kaylee. This last one is definitely not resolved in this episode, and sets the stage for commitment to Stacey being a recurring theme in future episodes.

At this point, Jimmy makes a brief appearance that I think is really interesting for what it says about the narrative he's building for himself. First, I'm a big fan of the Matlock look. I liked the tribute, I liked the awkward way Jimmy wore it. Most of all, I liked the way it signaled that Jimmy has internalized the criticism that he's the type of lawyer criminals hire, but that he thinks he can solve it with superficial changes to his appearance. This interacts beautifully with the whole sequence where Jimmy verbally refuses Mike's request to spill coffee on the officer, but does it anyway and then asks Mike how he knew he'd be willing to spill the coffee. The answer, which Mike does not give, is that the Matlock guise is insufficient, that Mike too recognizes him as a criminals' lawyer, that the thirst for success, for approval, the need to please, marks him as such. Again, we come back to Dunning-Kruger, if Jimmy can't see these traits, doesn't really seem to be able to conceive of them, he won't be able to fix them.

The confrontation between Stacey and Mike furthers some of the central mysteries of the episode. Mike, very emotional, insists that his son wasn't dirty, and we're left wondering whether that's true or Mike, for some reason yet unknown, just really needs to believe that it's true. A further promise is made here, that is, that we will find out. Along with the suggestion in the police interview that Mike killed Hoffman and Fensky, these scenes in combination left me wondering why Mike doesn't want this mystery solved.

And this leads to the gut of the story, to a flashback sequence that starts with Mike popping open the door to a police car with a bit of string. I loved this scene. It gave you just enough information to be able to think ahead as the scene unravels, but not too much that you know everything. Then he walks over to two cops and tells them, "I know it was you." At this point I was thinking two things, first why not turn them in if he knows it was them, and second, what he is baiting them into. The rest I had all worked out as it unfurled, that he was playing at being drunk, that the gun they found on him was unloaded and he hoped they would try to kill him with his own weapon, that he probably had stashed a weapon of his own earlier in the sequence, but I thought it was all beautifully done. Nice tension, nice pacing, nice sense of letting the viewer think along with you but not being absolutely certain of what's coming up.

But given all that, I thought the most interesting part of this slice of the story was the contrast it sets up between Mike and Jimmy. Mike has thought ahead, at all times he's several steps ahead of Hoffman and Fensky, and his plan unravels exactly as he expected it to. He's the model of competence. Jimmy, on the other hand, has plans that are never thought out more than a step or two in advance, that always twist and bend in ways he's not prepared for and doesn't seem to have made even the slightest attempt to anticipate. He's sly and capable enough that we can't call him incompetent, but he is a purveyor of chaos.

The closing conversation between Mike and Stacey was my favorite part of the episode. We see Mike's despair. The hopelessness of asking cops to be straight when they're busting drug deals involving more cash than they make in a year, the corrupting necessity of going along to get along. We see the way our society is setup to fail. That alone is really interesting to me. Then layer on this complex narrative of Mike and Matt. Of the ultra-competent, street-smart, tough guy who's raised his son exactly the right way, upright and strong and tough and stubborn. And those traits, the very traits that reveal what a good father Mike was, what an outstanding person Matt was, are the traits that get him killed. I didn't find Mike sobbing over breaking his boy to be as compelling as some might. I thought that perfect tragic setup, Mike raising a boy who was doomed the moment he lovingly followed in his father's footsteps and joined the police, I thought that was where the true beauty and irony was in the story, and I thought the episode suffered a little for missing the emotional and intellectual power of that inevitability.

And for readers who are starting to get a sense of me, I'm sure it won't come as a surprise that as much as I found this conversation powerful, I had a lot of trouble with it. For one, I found the continual jumping around in time really disconcerting. When, exactly, is this conversation supposed to have taken place? And why does it need to come at the end? I think that's actually a big mistake. The conversation gives away no details of what happened between Mike, Hoffman, and Fensky. If we know how Mike feels about his son, about his time on the force earlier, it would have made the scene between the three that much more powerful, we would have known exactly what the stakes were for Mike, exactly why he was doing what he was doing, exactly how important it was to him. As it was, I will, with a slight twinge of embarrassment, admit, I didn't even realize that it was Hoffman and Fensky he met in the bar until later. I thought, if his son wasn't dirty, Hoffman and Fensky might not be dirty too, they might have all been killed the same way. And that Mike's beautifully conceived and executed plan might have been to avenge all three of them by killing two other dirty cops.

But this background story about Mike also reinforces this desire I've expressed before to see a different kind of narrative arc in the whole of Better Call Saul itself. Rather than a show that glorifies Mike's vigilante justice, his calm execution of vengeance, rather than a show that glorifies the chaos that Jimmy leaves in his wake, I'd like to see the show where Matt figures out how to stay alive. Where he's able to meld his strength of character with his father's street smarts, with Jimmy's legal expertise and showmanship, and somehow, someway, change the culture of Philadelphia. What does it take to clean up the Philadelphia PD, a change in culture, a change in politics? There's nothing difficult in writing a show about criminals, about the moral compromises they make to justify their actions, about the things they might wish they didn't have to do to stay alive. What would really take guts and imagination is to write a realistic show about strong and tough and cunning little guys who are able to wrest power away from those who have built the system that ensnares so many in choices that inevitably lead to corruption. Frankly, I don't have any conception of how they could possibly succeed, but I think the web of deceit among the upper echelons of politicians and police leadership would make the web of deceit among criminals look pale and paltry by comparison.

All this is even more important because of the narrative Mike has written for himself. He's a victim, a victim of a set of systems he was powerless to change because he never tried. Being a victim is convenient, it absolves Mike, it absolves us, of responsibility. But a funny thing happens when everyone's a victim, when people give up trying to band together to change the circumstances of their lives. Predictably, the next generation falls victim to the same problems.

Alpine Shepherd Boy

Overall, I'd say I found this episode a bit dull. A lot of the stuff in the middle concerning Chuck held my interest, but while there was a certain humor in Jimmy visiting his kooky potential clients, I personally was more bored than I was amused. I'd say the same things for the ending scenes where he's visiting a senior home and we're following Mike as his story develops. There's a certain tension the show does very well at building, say, when we're following Mike around, or when Jimmy's talking to the guy who wants to create his own country, where you know something's going to happen and you're wondering not just what it will be, but how it will affect the character and what it will reveal about them. I definitely feel that tension, I appreciate the skill of their slow build, but I feel like the payoffs just aren't there, like the wait feels empty in retrospect. The scene where Jimmy's writing up a will for his client's dolls particularly felt slow to me and left me wondering why, if you have that time for such a slow build with such a low payoff, why can't you show a really deep, meaningful discussion between, for instance, Kim and Jimmy.

One thing I did like is the opening series of shots. I thought the pan up from the lizard to the pan across the lush lawns to a slow focusing on Chuck's foil blanket showed both a really nice sense of what makes a shot visually appealing, beautiful if you will, and how to simultaneously set a scene. And I liked the moral quandary posed to Jimmy by Chuck's situation. Do you follow his wishes, enabling him to keep up the pretense of whatever it is that's going on with him, or do you go against his wishes and get him real help that might actually get to the bottom of what's going on? I really liked the way when Chuck first gets home, he seems almost unable to move, and then after the conversation in which Jimmy promises to play by Chuck's rules, Chuck almost jumps up to go make coffee.

One thing that did bother me about Chuck's condition is the characters' willingness to buy into the science of it. Now, I understand it's a quack condition, that Chuck is going to be a terribly unreliable narrator when discussing it. In his own words, he calls it electromagnetic hypersensitivity and talks about it being a reaction to the electromagnetic fields that electronic devices produce. Being inside his house is supposed to help him. The problem is that wood, or even concrete, doesn't block electromagnetic fields. If the power lines outside his house are a problem, then being in a house won't solve it. If the electronic devices in his hospital room are a problem, then the electronic devices in the room next door should be a problem too. If the electromagnetic radiation from artificial lights is a problem, then sunlight contains the same frequencies of radiation, as does the light from a white gas lantern. And what about radio waves? Obviously, we all know, that those penetrate to the interior of houses.

Now, of course, it's reasonable that Jimmy and Kim and Chuck don't know this off the top of their heads. But I'd expect at least one of them, or one of the psychologists Chuck purportedly saw, over the course of this multi-year episode, to have spent two minutes googling and come to Chuck to confront him with the dissonance of his condition. To me, something feels off in the way the science behind this condition is handled, and I expect better from a show with Breaking Bad in its DNA. If I were writing the episode, I would have tried to turn this to my advantage by reducing the length of the bits that I described above as slow and focusing on the hospital scene. Maybe Jimmy and Dr. Cruz team up to confront Chuck, who prides himself on his lucidity, on the science behind the condition. Maybe Jimmy sits down with Chuck and has a real heart-to-heart about whether or not he wants to continue this way. Maybe Kim and Jimmy have a more detailed conversation in which we actually find out what Jimmy sees as the pros and cons of each path rather than just getting an unexplained decision to take him home and then a reversal when Howard shows up that feels petty and thin. Maybe when Chuck jumps up to go make coffee, Jimmy confronts him and asks him if he actually really wants to get better, if the trips to psychologists didn't work out of stubborness. I think there are so many opportunities to explore really interesting issues about forced medical care, the failure of our medical system to deal with cases that have even a modicum of complexity, helping someone vs enabling them, the complex psychology of mental illnesses and normality, how you go about deciding what's best for someone. We get a tiny taste of this, but instead end up mostly with some cheap, cringe-worthy laughs about a sexually suggestive talking toilet.

Really quick, I did find it interesting that this episode and the previous episode had themes that mirrored each other. The last was really about how everyone's a crook, from Jimmy, Marcon, and the bar patron they con, to the Kettlemans, to Nacho, to HHM, back to Jimmy himself with his publicity stunt. This one is about how everyone's a kook. From Jimmy's three crazy clients that open the episode, to his brother, to Jimmy himself. And I expect this to be one of the overall themes of the show, how human beings are such bizarre creatures. We believe weird things, we want certain things, but behave in ways that prevent us from getting them, we make up strange mental illnesses for reasons our conscious minds won't acknowledge, and so on.

Which brings me to the pair of points I want to end on, both revolving around the narrative we see that Jimmy has built for himself, or maybe the course of his life that he cannot escape. After all, the early part of the episode shows us the results of his publicity stunt. A bunch of kooks for clients, none of whom suggests that he's going to break out of being the kind of lawyer that criminals hire. This reminds me of the posts I wrote a while ago on the Dunning-Kruger effect, that is, the cognitive bias that causes people who are bad at a task to overestimate their ability on it. This leads to, for instance, sizable majorities of Americans describing themselves as terrific drivers. Another way of framing Dunning-Kruger is to point out that if you can't see what you're doing wrong, you'll never be able to correct it. This is the way I want to frame it when looking at Jimmy. He can't see himself, his techniques, for what they are: stunts, schemes. It's a shame there's no mention of any law firm other than HHM because what Jimmy needs, to me, is to be part of a professional organization for a stretch of time, to learn from them and absorb the culture of professionalism and success. While I sympathize Jimmy's disdain for this kind of corporate law machine, and he might well refuse to sign up, it seems like it's on Chuck to guide him in that direction.

The opinions of family members can play a large role in determining the narrative we build for ourselves. This condition Chuck's developed, the moral absolutism we see at the end when he essentially shames Jimmy for advertising, are naked attempts to control Jimmy. A large part of Jimmy's actions, his narrative, seem to be to escape from Chuck the moral scold. I'm not quite sure what to make of this yet, but I do think it's a shame we know so little of their relationship. Why is Jimmy so attached to Chuck, why does he look up to him so much as to say he's smater than himself? Why does Chuck care so much about Jimmy that he creates a psychological condition to try to control him? I expect we'll learn more about their relationship as the show continues, but I expect these questions will never be answered. Since they'd reveal so much about why Jimmy, and Chuck, end up on the path they're on, I think that's a real shame.

Hero

I found this episode much more compelling than the last for two reasons. First, the arc of the show was very well put together and very satisfying in the end. I thought the sequence of the guy falling off the billboard was fantastically conceived. There's a nice setup with Jimmy and the cameraman bickering over the shot. Then, when the man falls, there was a span of time where, flashing back to Jimmy bargaining for the lives of his skateboarder accomplices, I was thinking how, whatever his flaws, Jimmy's instincts so often lead him in the right direction. Then, as he's mumbling to himself not to look down as he climbs, it occurred to me that this was likely a scam of some sort, a publicity stunt. I did have some quibbling problems with the scene, however. Jimmy presumably hauls up the man using one arm while dangling sixty-five feet up. I noticed when I was watching, and it's really conspicuous on rewatching, that the safety rope holding the man up is being reeled in during the course of the shot. There is never any slack in the line. Honestly hauling the worker up would require planting both feet and pulling with both hands, which might not give you dramatic, tight camera shots, but has just as much room for tension and danger. Also, early shots of Jimmy extending his hand show a significantly bigger gap between the two men than later shots. All this is obviously done to build doubt, tension, and suspense, but I'm not a big fan. Better Call Saul is certainly not the only show to engage in these moving-the-goalposts-closer techniques, but I think they're sloppy and insulting to the viewer.

The other reason I found this episode compelling is because of some early head nods to issues I've mentioned in earlier reviews, that is, issues around the narrative Jimmy has built for himself in his head. In back-to-back scenes, Mrs. Ketterman tells Jimmy "You're the kind of lawyer guilty people have." and Jimmy says to Mike "You assume that criminals are gonna be smarter than they are." The first is great because I think it's a pretty spot-on assessment of the way Jimmy comes across, and because of Jimmy's obvious surprise and his unusual difficulty in coming up with a response. It's clear he doesn't see himself that way, and I immediately began to wonder if he was going to have the self-control and the self-awareness to attempt to change. The question is almost immediately answered in this episode. Yes, he is going to try to change. Trying to copy the HHM brand and the publicity stunt both seem like attempts to appear more upscale lawyer and less ambulance-chaser. But no, he is going to fail, he is who he is, and the character flaws and general approach to doing things that Mrs. Ketterman sees will continue to emerge. This is shown most convincingly in the way he still goes after HHM, the way a kind of cheap, immediate vengeance still dominates his mind when what he really needs is the wisdom to exact his revenge by becoming successful and pursuing a life well lived.

I really appreciated the second line because, though Jimmy wasn't aware of it when he said it, it was obviously also directed at himself. And this feeds back into Jimmy's whole inability to see himself for what he is, an ability necessary for true change and for building the kind of successful, stable life that Jimmy wants for himself but which we know, from where he ends up, that he will fail to achieve. I don't know how much more development we'll get of this idea that Jimmy can't see himself clearly, but I'm personally kind of fascinated by it. If you've read a good bit of my writing, I'm sure it won't surprise you to learn that I'm super self-aware, self-aware to a fault, to a point of dwelling too much on things I've done wrong and on my shortcomings. So it's always fascinating to me to see someone who is also obviously intelligent like Jimmy, but very much lacking in self-awareness. Also, and I doubt we'll ever get much of this, but it makes me even more interested to learn how Jimmy sees himself, to get a sense of how much he might know or not know that his schemes and his loquaciousness are going to perpetually cause him trouble. To know how well he handles, for instance, uncertainty, how well he anticipates and prepares himself for the range of outcomes his actions might produce.

The other big scene I wanted to devote some time to is the conversation between Kim and Jimmy in the nail salon. I personally found this scene frustrating. I didn't get Jimmy's angle, why he was making things personal. With the money he's come into, he has a chance to kind of start over, to start a new career unharried by an immediate need for money, to build his own distinct brand. It was interesting to me that he told Kim that she could work anywhere, but that he can't see himself clearly enough to know the same is true of him, to see that this is his opportunity. I wasn't happy that he avoids Kim's question about why he's pursuing a path of vengeance and trying to provoke HHM, and that she doesn't press him on it. And this entire conversation was, to me, emblematic of the problems with television. If this was real life, if Kim truly cares about Jimmy, this conversation would have been hours, it could have been a real opportunity for both of them actually to try to persuade the other to pursue a different course, to learn about each other and themselves. But because this is television, you have to distill that whole soul-searching conversation into three minutes, and there's no opportunity for Kim to hold Jimmy to the fire, to pin him down and get him to think about, to tell her why he's pursuing this path.

Now, I'm sufficiently self-aware to know that these are my preferences, that I'm describing the kind of show I want to watch, that I would want to write, the kind of conversation I would try to have if I were either of their friends. I know that the world is wide enough that there are people for whom the conversation I'm suggesting they might have would be totally vain and frustrating, and that Kim might know that and just avoid the difficulty and the pain. I get that, I get that anytime I criticize the show there will be people out there who love the very things I dislike. I hope that anyone who's reading this, even if they disagree with a good portion of the things I say, is getting something out of this, another perspective, a new angle on things they might not have picked up on, a deeper dive into issues they wouldn't think about if they just consumed the show and forget about it.

I'll end with a couple miscellaneous comments. I found it both shocking and refreshing that the Kettlemens are so unapologetic about the money they've stolen. I think as far as a show like Better Call Saul has a message, it's this, that people are selfish jerks who will do anything to gratify their most pressing impulses and have little compunction at having done so. I think there's a certain truth to that, that a large part of society operates that way, but I've rarely experienced it. My work atmospheres have generally been populated by competent, mostly self-controlled people who are able to work as a team towards some large goal. Well, at least until upper management pops their heads in. I didn't have a problem with Jimmy accepting their bribe, but I'm also aware, as I write this, that the show once again used this trick of setting up a character (here Jimmy) as sympathetic by contrasting them with someone less sympathetic. Finally, I don't get Jimmy's relationship with Chuck. Based on what we've seen, if someone treated me as Chuck treats Jimmy, given what Jimmy is doing for him, I would not want to subject myself to the hassle. I imagine at some point we'll get some insight into Jimmy's inner view of the relationship, I gather he's looking for approval, trying to get respect and an I-told-you-so by showing he can be the responsible one.

Monday, August 10, 2020

Better Call Saul: Nacho

I have to say, this episode didn't work for me, and I have to wonder if I would have reacted the same way to it were I not committing myself to watching it closely, with a fresh mind and a notepad, ready to write up my thoughts afterward.

I'd describe the show's arc as Jimmy does some questionable things, ends up in trouble, through a combination of coincidence, wits, desperation, and determination, solves a mystery, proves the cops wrong, potentially saves his own skin, and blows open the case against the Kettlemans. And I think that arc, especially with the nice tidy ending, could be really satisfying to a casual viewer. But as someone watching the show critically, it fell flat for me. My wife and I, having watched all the original and Next Generation Strek Trek episodes together, are now watching Star Trek: Enterprise. The writing's always been a little uneven, but we're now in the third season, and the writing is noticeably worse. By about five minutes into literally every episode in the third season, we've rolled our eyes at each other multiple times while questioning aloud why the characters are doing particular things that don't make sense and obviously are going to cause them problems. A show requires a sort of benefit of the doubt, a suspension of disbelief, in order to work, and this episode lost mine.

Now, don't get me wrong, Better Call Saul is absolutely much better written than "Enterprise". I do like the complexity and the kind of real-world grit of characters like Jimmy and Mike. I like how the show prods you to think along with the characters, trying to answer questions like what is Jimmy doing, how is he going to get out of this, should he tell Kim everything he knows about Nacho, where did the Kettlemans really go? But there are too many odd decisions or coincidences in this show, and by the end I was no longer willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

To start, I didn't understand what Jimmy was doing in calling Kim and the Kettlemans, whether he was trying to warn them or play them and why he thought, if he was trying to warn them, things would not backfire. Then there were the multiple phone messages he left for Nacho which, while I understand he was nervous and hunting for a way out, just seemed to me over-the-top asking for trouble. There's the whole interaction with Mike, which has never made any sense to me. Why is he always short on stickers, hasn't he learned yet, why not just pay the extra money, why make a big fuss that will obviously make things worse, why, in this episode, does he have pocket change to make who-knows-how-many pay phone calls, but doesn't have enough cash to pay nine dollars in parking fees? I understand Jimmy's impulsiveness, his impatience, his desperation in this particular episode, I understand there's a certain humor at work here, but it's always struck me as a bit contrived. Still, I consider all this relatively minor. When Jimmy makes the desperate and/or foolish decision to look for the Kettlemans himself by walking randomly, with no tracking skills, for what, given the progression of lighting from later afternoon to evening, must be hours, and manages to find them, that's when the show really lost me. Things didn't get any better when the Kettlemans just happen to leave the backpack with all the cash near the door to their tent, and it's the bag Jimmy just happens to grab and start pulling on.

Another reason I found this episode frustrating is that I want access to at least some of Jimmy's internal monologue, the narrative he's building for himself. The show goes to great lengths, especially when he's calling to warn the Kettlemans, to show his indecision, to show how hard he's wrestling with himself over the course of action he's taking. But we have no idea why he's wrestling with himself, what his concerns are we don't even, even during the calls to Kim and to the Kettlemans, we don't even really know what he's trying to accomplish. I personally thought he was still trying to play them somehow. I understand the show is trying to build suspense, to arouse in the viewer a desire to see how things turn out and what's really going on, and I'm sure that works for a lot of people. But when a show withholds important information that a character obviously has access to, I recognize that as an artifice employed by the writers, and it frustrates me, it shows the seems in the presentation. I personally would find the show more meaningful, more engaging, more revelatory of Jimmy's character, if we found out what he was thinking, which demons he was wrestling with, how much doubt he harbored over the wisdom of his path, what he thought his chances of success were, what his ultimate plan is, or if he even has one.

I think the show itself senses this deficiency. When he hangs up from talking to Kim, he mumbles "I'm no hero." At the time, I took it as additional evidence that he was trying to play them somehow, but in hindsight I think it's intended to show his regret from trying to scam Mrs. Kettleman/Tucos' grandmother. Either way, that utterance indicates to me that the writers realized that Jimmy had to make some kind of comment on his internal mental state, that they couldn't just leave everything to showing us his actions. His regret needed to be vocalized. I just don't think they went far enough. There's so much meat in this part of the story that's left on the bone, so much opportunity to complicate Jimmy's narrative and his character that's wasted.

The last thing I want to comment on is the opening scene between younger Chuck and younger Jimmy. I certainly thought it was cool to see the younger Jimmy, but again, that scene didn't work well for me because so little information was conveyed. We already knew Jimmy had a troubled past, and that's all we really learn. I also found it really confusing when Jimmy appeared sincerely (to my eyes) to want to turn over a new leaf, and it just made Chuck mad at him. This was another case where if we had more markers of internal mental state, both from Jimmy and from Chuck, it would give us a lot more insight into their characters, make the scene easier to understand, enrich some of the later interactions, and help us understand why Jimmy in the present seems in such danger of falling off the narrow path, especially with his family offering so little support.

Monday, July 27, 2020

Better Call Saul: Mijo

I liked this episode less than the first, but it was still very well done.

There was, however, one exchange that really stood out for me, and I want to talk about that first. It starts the moment that Jimmy, after securing his freedom from Tuco, turns to negotiate for the freedom of his accomplices. That turning, in and of itself, is a nice moment, a nice revealing of Jimmy's character, but the dialogue between them, the back-and-forth as they were negotiating, struck me as brilliant in terms of the values that were discussed. For reasons related to my writing (and Candidate Spectrum), I've been thinking about civilization a lot recently. Conflicting values had already been set up when Tuco mentioned he wanted respect, and Nacho pointed out that Jimmy had been respecting him and shouldn't die. In their negotiation, a flood of additional values emerge: a desire for justice for a wrong done, Jimmy's use of the boys' mother in making appeals for mercy and for pity, the concept of proportionality in law.

On a first pass, the tension between these values is interesting because of how they play out in the context of the scene. The punishment that they ultimately agree to has a certain logic to it, a certain fitting irony, you can almost feel it coming from the very start of the negotiation. But in many ways, it's completely illogical. There's no proportionality in it, no justice, it includes a tremendous amount of physical pain, loss of livelihood, medical expenses, that is in no way reflective of the crime that Jimmy and his accomplices intended to commit, not to mention the one they actually committed. But something that isn't supposed to be a part of a judicial proceeding, the balance of power, the leverage, lies so much on Tuco's side, that the negotiated outcome is so much better than them dying, and Jimmy has no choice but to accept.

And this kind of leads me to the first thing that bothers me about the episode, the glorification of violence. Sure, as their legs are broken, we can watch Jimmy's expression, we can imagine the range of emotions he's feeling as he saves their lives at the cost of their snapping legs. But the joy Tuco takes in breaking the boys' legs ought to be an ugly thing to witness, instead of having a sense of justice about it. In my eyes, the cinematography, just how well the scene is shot, the angle of Tuco jumping down, the sounds, the screams, it all glorifies his actions. And the viewer is already primed to associate with Tuco. We've seen these boys be utter morons in trying to hard-sell their injuries miles away from where they purportedly occurred, in their almost ludicrously ugly behavior, in trying to intimidate a little old lady, and calling her a biznatch. We don't see their mother, if they have one, their suffering, whatever might have driven them to these crimes of idiocy, but we do see Tuco's grandmother, her distress, his deep commitment to her. These all contribute to the framing of Tuco as the sympathetic character, to the framing of this scene as a just result. And maybe it's all necessary, maybe the scene doesn't work any other way, but it bothers me that in order for us as a society to be entertained, we have to be so glib with violence, we have to be led into sympathizing with criminals in this manner.

And I want to stay with these themes of justice, of getting what you deserve, of proportionality, because I think they indicate what else this show could be other than a celebration of Jimmy's slide into criminality. We know who Jimmy becomes, we know where this series is going, but I feel like there's a better show, a more interesting, uplifting, revelatory show lurking in the premise. Jimmy's obviously talented. This negotiation with Tuco, the montage of court scenes later, proves that. We're also shown, somewhat selectively, that he has both a troubled past and a desire to put that past behind him. I anticipate we're going to witness a lot more of Jimmy's backstory, and I expect it to be dark. But there's a parallel between the story of the skateboarders and Jimmy's story.

Jimmy's been wronged. He has the talent to be a big-time lawyer, but he hasn't gotten the opportunity. Is it the fault of HHM and other big law firms, the failing of all the people who ought to have taught him, including Chuck, to be an effective mentor, the system, his family, his own faults combined with not having been given a second chance? In so many ways it doesn't matter. The systems that govern our lives know so little about justice, proportionality, respect, mercy, about who's deserving of what. The show I want to see doesn't glorify criminals and violence and trace the floundering moral path that leads a man to a degenerate life as the lawyer of said criminals. The show I want to see depicts the same man, depicts Jimmy as we see him in this episode, on a long struggle to fight back against and illuminate the flaws in the system that has put him where he is. It reveals the ways that the balance of power and the leverage in our actual court system favors the rich, the privileged, the HHM's of the world and their clients. It paints a path, at least for one man, out of the morass and towards justice. As crisp and compelling as a show like Better Call Saul is, I believe the show I'm proposing could be just as compelling, just as entertaining, but with a message that points us toward the light instead of toward the darkness.

There's one other thing that really struck me in this episode that's very subtle but I want to bring to everyone's attention. That is, the role of confirmation bias. The first time it comes up is very obvious. Tuco believes Jimmy is with law enforcement, and tortures him until Jimmy affirms his belief. Then he walks away, satisfied that he's correct, that the narrative he's building for his life has been validated. The second time it comes up is more subtle. When Chuck first finds Jimmy on his couch, there seems to be a twinge in his arm. The twinge leads him to look for a cause, and he finds and discards Jimmy's cellphone. Both characters' false worldviews are validated. They see what they want to see, both in a way that prevents them from engaging with reality as it truly exists.

I think this is something almost everyone does. We have a story of our lives, a narrative we build for ourselves, we trap ourselves in. Tuco and Chuck aren't the only ones to succumb to this tendency in the show, Jimmy is very obviously struggling with the narrative both he and others have constructed for him, you can almost see him slowly being reeled back in. I'll be very interested to see if this theme was accidental in this episode, or if it gets picked back up again. As an artist, the idea that certain kinds of shows and books and stories are entertaining and engaging, and others are too dry or philosophical, is very relevant to me. I think we, as a society, have also built a narrative for ourselves, a narrative the people who decide which shows get made, which books get published, all too often reinforce. But I want to encourage everyone, myself included, to understand that it is possible to break the narratives that ensnare us. It is possible to become something that even we ourselves might not believe we can be.

Sunday, July 19, 2020

Better Call Saul: Uno

Overall, I liked this episode a good bit. The opening sequence showing an older Jimmy hiding and then reliving the glory days gets you into the dreariness of his later existence, the sense of dread of what might happen, the nostalgia for better days. The pull-away in the scene when he's kicking a trash can after leaving HHM to show the woman smoking outside is a beautiful piece of cinematography. The build-up and tension before the skateboarders take a hit for Jimmy is very well done. And the twist of it being a different person driving, going to a place where unexpected things are going to happen is a nice way to illustrate how maybe Jimmy isn't quite as bright as he thinks he is and whatever his intentions, things aren't going to work out as he wants.

The first episode showcases a lot of the things I liked about Breaking Bad. The writing, the cinematography, the acting, everything is top-notch. The tension, sense of mystery, and story-telling are as good as it gets on television. I love the Saul character himself, his irreverence, his energy, the head-ticks and hand motions and subtle mouth movements that really fit the character and are consistent scene-to-scene, episode-to-episode.

Having cataloged the good, I want to talk a bit about the things that I found troublesome. The Better Call Saul-style of show does a magnificent job of immersing you in a character's world visually, of conveying possible mental states through images, but it almost universally ignores those mental states. I think that's a shame. For instance, as the older Jimmy is watching his old commercials, what is he really thinking? The viewer can impute thoughts to Jimmy, but I firmly believe that asking us viewers to do that misses a huge opportunity. His feelings must be very complicated, much more complicated than we could imagine. Does he miss those days because he thought he was serving justice, because they were exciting, because he was full of optimism and hope for the future? What regrets does he have, does he realize how corny he sounds, how shady, what does he think he might have done to avoid ending up a Cinnabon peon of unknown address?

These moments, for me, continually come up throughout the episode. When he's kicking the garbage can, we can certainly feel his frustration, his rage, but we know so little about why he's angry. Does he suspect he's being played, that HHM might well have spoken with Chuck, does he really think that he might accomplish whatever it is he's up to? Speaking of which, why exactly does he not cash the twenty-six thousand? There's no evidence that doing so would end the payments, in fact, he's expressly told more would be forthcoming.

I understand the sense of mystery that the show is trying to build, I'm conscious of the way my mind is being engaged and challenged to fill in details, and I admit to taking a certain pleasure in that process. But ultimately, I find that process a bit empty. I believe that in avoiding filling in the complications, subtleties, and nuances that access to an interior monologue might provide, the writers miss an opportunity to say something truly interesting about the character of Jimmy, the details of his life, the state of our world. I think in aiming for the low-hanging fruit of pulling us into Jimmy's world, making us feel as if we inhabit it with Jimmy, they rob us of the chance to really get to know Jimmy as a person in all his complexity, his moral nuances, the strength of his emotion, whatever doubt and conflict he must feel. In my opinion, this is the essence of why books always end up being better than movies, because you have more access to a character's mental states, and that's where the really interesting work gets done. I think it's a shame that a show as well-done as Better Call Saul settles into familiar cinematic story-telling techniques rather than really innovating.

There are a number of other more nit-picky holes that bothered me on watching this episode. To start, why did he not plead his initial case in the morgue out? He clearly had no chance to win, and going to trial was far more time-intensive. I'm also not thrilled with the level of coincidence involved in the twist that ends the show, that is, a different person driving a car almost indistinguishable from the target car with the same start to the license plate at the same time and on the same road, making the same turn, as the target. And while the idiocy involved is amusing, I'm also think it's a little sloppy that the twist relies on the boys being so stupid as to jump up after getting the supposed injury on tape and follow the car to try to complete their scam when they've got a lawyer on their side.

Finally, there are two big, important questions that go unaddressed because we're not given any access to any character's internal state. The first revolves around Chuck. Why is he having such trouble facing the end? Why is he in so deep with conspiracy theories? Can he not see how much grief he's causing Jimmy? Why does Jimmy, even granting that he wants to indulge a dying brother, not try harder to have an honest discussion about both where Chuck and Jimmy are headed? Naturally, I don't know where the show will take this relationship, but there are so many potentially interesting paths to pursue here about end-of-life care, about narratives we build for ourselves to avoid unpleasantness that end up trapping us, about motivations to avoid the truth, about the nature of friendship. I'm sad that all these fascinating avenues will get sacrificed to tell a purportedly more compelling story.

And those questions also tie into Jimmy. I'm sure, more than the questions around Chuck, the show will develop some of these themes. Even so, in the first episode I'd like to know more about whether or not Jimmy views himself as a good guy or a bad guy, as an opportunist, a hack, an incompetent, a smooth operator? I find his motivations baffling. His actions, like being reluctant to take money from Chuck, and his seemingly sincere attempts to do well for his morgue clients, are portrayed in a positive light, but his interactions with HHM and his attempts to ensnare the Kettlemans seem more like a huckster trying to make a quick buck. While I understand that a character pursuing a more staid career would have much less entertainment value, it's a big hole in the character to not understand why Jimmy isn't using the resources that Chuck might provide along with his own hustle and intelligence to establish a more legitimate and respectable career.

Better Call Saul Kickoff

This is the grand launch of the review section of my website. The general idea is to regularly post content on something that I think my visitors might be interested in, and might want to read my thoughts on. I intend to post new content before 9am eastern every Monday.

I'm going to start by watching The AMC show "Better Call Saul", nominated in 2017 and 2019 for the Outstanding Drama Series Emmy, and posting my thoughts. I'm picking "Better Call Saul" both because it's received a good amount of critical acclaim, and because, while I expect to enjoy it, I anticipate my views will deviate from the consensus in illuminating ways.

I will be cross-posting all reviews to my blog in case people want a more traditional, subscription-based site. Part of the idea of doing reviews is that I could never quite get a regular schedule of posts going for my blog. In large part, that was because whenever I started to write something, it was often related to things I wanted to write fiction about, and it interfered with my fiction writing. With these reviews, I hope to generate content where I can express my views and aesthetics without interfering with my fiction productivity.

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