I put together a little explainer for the season finale of The Old Man, which is very good, for Decider. Full review coming soon!
“Better Call Saul” thoughts, Season Six, Episode Nine: “Fun and Games”
I walked around my apartment, holding a beer and singing the opening riff to “Plainsong” by the Cure to myself. I wasn’t sure what else to do.
In the very first installment of my series of posts entitled My Favorite Music, I wrote about the Cure’s Disintegration, calling it an album about a sadness so huge you could land a spacecraft on it. It’s about outsized emotions, extravagant emotions, emotions in excess, emotions too big to be talked about, to be hashed out, to be discussed in logical terms.
In tonight’s episode of Better Call Saul, Jimmy McGill snaps. Instantly, as far as the magic of TV time is concerned. One moment, he’s being dumped by his wife Kim Wexler, who is so aghast at the horrors their conduct together has wrought that she gives up her life as a lawyer as well as his wife. The next moment, Jimmy awakens to a Journey song, next to a prostitute, in a ghastly and gaudy new apartment. He then makes the transition to his awful strip-mall office, with its inflatable Statue of Liberty on the roof and the ridiculous text of the Constitution written on its high-columned walls.
It happens that fast. He’s Jimmy for most of the episode, and then he’s Saul, forever and ever, amen.
I wrote about tonight’s episode of Better Call Saul for my Patreon.
“The Old Man” thoughts, Season One, Episode Six
[whispering to date while watching The Old Man when The Old Man first appears on the screen] That’s The Old Man
Apologies to Twitter user @vineyville, but that was the tweet that came to mind the moment John Lithgow’s Harold Harper, the simultaneously scheming and well-intention assistant director of the FBI, told Jeff Bridges’ “Dan Chase” that “the Old Man”—Joel Grey’s Morgan Bote—has his daughter, Alia Shawkat’s Angela Adams/Emily Chase. Their daughter, actually, if you want to count Angela/Emily’s close work relationship with Harold as a father-daughter thing, which both characters seem comfortable doing.
If that paragraph seems confusing, congratulations—you’re watching The Old Man! This penultimate episode of the skillful spy drama’s first season is an at-times dizzying display of conflicting loyalties, secret relationships, and sudden betrayals. Like the coded messages that Angela and Chase send to each other using secret bank accounts, it can take a lot of deciphering.
“Black Bird” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three: “Hand to Mouth”
Show of hands, and be honest here: Who among you thought this drama about a drug dealer cozying up to a serial killer would feature real-life mafia don Vincent “the Chin” Gigante in a supporting role as that drug dealer’s benefactor on the inside?
No one? Okay then!
Hell, I was taken aback, too. But at the suggestion of a friendly (more on that later) prison guard, our anti-hero Jimmy Keene, cop’s son turned gun- and drug-runner, becomes acquainted with honest-to-god Genovese family boss Gigante (Tony Amendola). Dubbed “the Oddfather” by the always-colorful New York press, Gigante was often found wandering the streets of Greenwich Village in his bathrobe muttering to himself — a ruse meant to keep law enforcement off his back that worked for nearly three decades.
By the time Jimmy meets him, that’s all over with: He’s been convicted and imprisoned, and so he’s now just an old Italian American gentleman who enjoys playing boccie in the prison yard and dislikes being disrespected by anyone, ever. Despite his Irish surname, Jimmy manages to get on the Chin’s good side with three-quarter Italian ancestry, good manners, and not-half-bad boccie playing. (He learned the game from his Irish grandfather, but the Chin doesn’t hold that against him.) If Jimmy really were just the humble Wisconsin gunrunner that his cover story makes him out to be, he just found the best rabbi in perhaps the entire American carceral system.
Better Call Saul’s Lalo Salamanca Was One of TV’s Greatest Villains
“Cats are a liquid,” the old internet saying goes; Lalo Salamanca is, or was, a liquid too. Unlike so many of his peers on Better Call Saul—Mike Ehrmantraut, shuffling along as if being actively crushed by the weight of his sins; Kim Wexler, whom the filmmakers constantly shoot as framed by cage-like latticeworks of windows and bars to suggest her fenced-in lack of options—Lalo could move. Leaping, jumping, climbing, falling, infiltrating: There was seemingly no structure he couldn’t infiltrate, no person he couldn’t reach. At one point, befitting his fluid nature, he even wound up in a sewer, though it didn’t hold him for long.
Perhaps it’s fitting that he died in a dirt-floored cave, choking to death on his own vital fluids. At long last, there was nowhere for him to go but down into the earth.
I wrote a little tribute to actor Tony Dalton and our mutual friend Lalo Salamanca for Decider.
“The Old Man” thoughts, Season One, Episode Five
It’s remarkable how much can happen in an episode where nothing really happens. That, at least, is the conclusion I’ve drawn from The Old Man’s fifth episode. As a matter of physical business, it’s almost profoundly uneventful: Harold Harper and Angela Adams sit on a plane and wind up in a records storage closet; Dan Chase and Zoe McDonald take a car ride to a pet hotel and a banker’s house. But within that basic framework, secrets are revealed and allegiances shift back and forth like shadows. I’m not sure how much I’m buying what they’re selling, but it’s never less than a blast to watch.
“Black Bird” thoughts, Episode Two: “We Are Coming, Father Abraham”
“Dogs of Lust,” by the The, blares from a stereo somewhere on a college campus in Indiana. A young woman walks through the hubbub and onto a deserted street with lamps that evoke Magritte’s Empire of Light. And all the while, a van has been following her. The van pulls up a bit ahead of her until it’s lost to the camera, tracking the girl’s walk. Eventually, she reaches the van, which has parked. The camera keeps on moving; the girl is gone.
It’s smart cinematic business, using the constant, steady movement of the camera to show us that the woman we’ve been following isn’t there to follow anymore. You feel the shock of her absence in the belly. And it’s just one trick up the sleeve of Black Bird’s second episode. Shrewd writing, expert filmmaking, powerful but understated acting — if you want it, you’ve got it.
I reviewed the second episode (or part two of the premiere if you prefer) of Black Bird for Vulture.
“Black Bird” thoughts, Episode One: “Pilot”
I mean this as a compliment: Black Bird is not a tasteful show. There’s lead character Jimmy Keene, a former high-school football star turned drug dealer with a body chiseled from marble who likes his music loud and his liaisons dirty.
There are the needle drops, smacking you over the head with Guns N’ Roses’ “Mr. Brownstone” and REO Speedwagon’s “Don’t Let Him Go” and Soundgarden’s “Fell on Black Days,” each with lyrics that speak directly to the plight of the protagonist.
There’s Jimmy’s opposite number, suspected killer Larry Hall, a serial confessor to crimes he didn’t commit who likes to cruise around in his Dodge van asking female passers-by about their “boobies.”
There’s the overall sense that we’re watching something sordid and sleazy, even — strike that, especially — when the Feds sweep in with their big offer to Jimmy: Befriend Larry, get him to confess to another murder, and get out of jail free. It’s so grotesquely transactional that you want to pull away from the screen lest you be coated in a thin layer of slime.
To all this, I can only say, great job! I’ve watched several “based on a true story” crime dramas over the past few months, most of which (Tokyo Vice, We Own This City, Under the Banner of Heaven) I liked, and at least one of which (Candy) I adored. But except for Jon Bernthal’s material in We Own This City, none of them had the swaggering bravado of this pilot episode. Credit to writer/creator Dennis Lehane and director Michaël R. Roskam: This one stands out in a crowded field.
40 Movies and TV Shows to Watch If You Like ‘Stranger Things’
In an update of an earlier Vulture piece, I recommended 40 movies and shows to watch if I liked Stranger Things and are jonesing for more.
The Boiled Leather Audio Hour #153!
Stefan Sasse and I take on Obi-Wan Kenobi in the latest episode of BLAH, available here or wherever you get your podcasts!
“The Old Man” thoughts, Season One, Episode Four
“Keeping you alive and safe: That became my priority, Zoe,” says Dan Chase—excuse me, “Dan Chase.” He’s talking to the woman he spirited away from her own home, which had been invaded by a hitman, by secreting her in the trunk of his car. Zoe’s understandable reaction is to back away from him like a beat dog. He tells her to call her son and let him know she’s being held against her will, in a ploy to keep the Feds from considering her an accomplice. She tries to do so, but her son is screening her calls and won’t pick up.
The next thing we know, FBI Assistant Director Harold Harper is saying “Dan Chase is gone.” The phone calls we’d just seen happened three days ago. Time flies when you’re a rogue black-ops veteran on the run from the government, I guess.
It’s bold little maneuvers like this—sweeping three pivotal days aside in a breath—that make The Old Man such compelling viewing, even three full episodes removed from the pilot’s astonishing long-take fight scene. The show, and its characters, are full of surprises, and spring them on us at nearly every turn.
“The Old Man” thoughts, Season One, Episode Three
It’s juicy material, all told. And if it isn’t quite as pulse-poundingly delivered as it was in The Old Man Episode 1 — Zoe’s witnessing of Chase’s battle with the assassin notwithstanding — it’s still pretty riveting stuff. Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, Alia Shawkat: If you were wondering if a series with these leads might be entertaining to watch, wonder no fucking longer. I’m still waiting for a return to that astonishing long-take battle from the premiere, but regardless, this is a spy game worth playing.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi” thoughts, Episode Six
Which leads to a larger concern I have about the show: Why, exactly, does it exist? As with so many Star Wars tie-in projects, it dances between the raindrops of existing continuity, while occasionally shifting that continuity to its own ends. Like, we kind of knew Obi-Wan had to whip Darth Vader’s ass, because in A New HopeVader tells Obi-Wan he was “a learner” the last time they met.
But establishing a pre-existing relationship between Obi-Wan and Leia—and in this episode, even Obi-Wan and Luke—adds a whole lot to the existing canon. And for what? A six-episode show with all the visual flair and emotional heft of a Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order cut scene? I don’t think the game is worth the candle. (This is why stuff like “Why didn’t he just kill him when he had the chance?” is popping up in my mind—not because I’m some CinemaSins-style pedant, but because the project’s overall sense of mild aimlessness gave my brain a chance to question plot holes I’d otherwise overlook.)
“The Old Man” thoughts, Season One, Episode Two
I’ll say this for The Old Man’s second episode: It was wise of FX to schedule it back-to-back with that bravura first episode. Many of the pilot’s strengths—the cat-and-mouse games, the bone-crunching combat, the barrage of surprises—are replaced by the (admittedly charming) relationship dynamics between Chase and Zoe on one hand and Harper and Adams on the other. And for all that the ep includes a brief monologue from Chase about a wise man who believed “the truth lived only in silence”—an echo of Harper’s Frank Lloyd Wright quote about space being “the breath of art” from the first episode—the ostentatious long takes and silences of the first episode aren’t really on display here. Aside from a lovely prolonged shot of Chase and Zoe taking and holding each other’s hands, it’s a much more standard episode of television, for whatever that’s worth.
Still, I think you’d be a fool to write off what Bridges and Lithgow and Brenneman are delivering here: thoughtful portraits of aging people by intelligent and extremely telegenic actors. I mean, I’d watch a romance about Chase and Zoe even without the CIA-killing-machine business. And I have some confidence, whether earned or not, that the show can return to the nail-biting thriller sequences of its debut if and when it wants to, especially with Harper’s assassin in play.
What I wonder, beyond hoping for a return of the premiere’s suspense, is whether The Old Man will delve into the wisdom, or lack thereof, of America’s imperialist counteroffensive in 1980s Afghanistan. When you look at the past 20-plus years of life on this planet, it seems pretty important to get that story straight, right? As a rabid anti-communist who helped the mujahideen (until he suddenly stopped, for reasons unknown), Chase is a hard figure to valorize. Will the show try, or is the futility of what he did a part of the narrative? Whatever my reservations about this episode, I’ll be sticking around to find out.
“The Old Man” thoughts, Season One, Episode One
Take another lengthy sequence, for instance—actually, it’s not a sequence, it’s one long shot that lasts for roughly five and a half unbroken minutes. In this shot, Chase rams his car into one of his black-ops pursuer, gets out of the car and shoots the guy to death, then has a seemingly endless mixed martial arts battle against the surviving agent, until Chase’s well-trained attack dogs chase the guy back into another car for safety. Remember that teary-eyed old man from the driver’s-seat phone calls? In his place is a vicious operator who manages to kill three highly trained men half his age, and we get to observe him in action without the camera cutting away. After all the attention the show has lavished upon Chase’s age, watching him defeat his enemies—with a little help from his dogs—is borderline miraculous. And indeed, Jeff Bridge’s masterful physical performance throughout the episode makes his every impressive physical feat feel like a borderline miracle. That power from that body? It feels incredible, and totally earned.
This is the kind of gripping, self-assured action filmmaking that awaits you in The Old Man’s pilot episode, the first half of a two-episode giant-sized series premiere. Based on the book by Thomas Perry and directed by Jon Watts (late of the Spider-Man franchise) from a script by co-creators Robert Levine and Jonathan E. Steinberg, who serves as showrunner, it’s the most engaging espionage thriller debut since The Americans.
I reviewed the series premiere of The Old Man for Decider, where I’ll be covering the show.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi” thoughts, Episode Five
Overall, it’s hard to look at the episode as a success from a suspense perspective, though when you think about it, that’s nothing new. Star Wars has always been about characters we know aren’t gonna die anytime soon, with rare exceptions; its great trick was in constructing action set pieces so gripping that they make you forget. (Seriously: No one on the planet thought Luke Skywalker was going to get shot down during the attack run on the first Death Star, but if your knuckles don’t still whiten at least a little bit every time you watch it, I don’t wanna know you.)
But a prequel show that features Obi-Wan, Darth Vader, and Princess Leia as main characters faces an extra challenge, just as the prequel movies did: We know, for a fact, that these characters survive, since we’ve seen their future adventures. For that reason, the action must be doubly exciting and inventive to maintain audience investment.
Does the show deliver on that score? No, I don’t think it does. It’s true that there are occasional moments of menace or awe, like when the Grand Inquisitor sweeps back in to gloat, or when Darth Vader uses his incredible Force powers to stop an entire transport from taking off. (It’s a decoy transport, but still.) And of course there’s that nostalgic duel between Obi-Wan and pre-Vader Anakin.
But the battle between the Path folks and the stormtroopers is indifferently blocked and shot—it’s just a bunch of people shooting guns at each other and somehow missing despite the fact that they’re like four feet apart. The Imperials are so bad at this that Obi-Wan’s lightsaber-twirling presence on the side of the good guys is barely needed. The fight between Vader and Reva, at least, is supposed to be a one-sided affair, driving home Vader’s superior power, and on that count it succeeds.
The Boiled Leather Audio Hour Episode 152!
The Boiled Leather Audio Hour returns with the latest installment in our series on ASoIaF’s “greatest hits”! This time, Stefan Sasse and I discuss the story of the Knight of the Laughing Tree—available here or wherever you get your podcasts!
“Obi-Wan Kenobi” thoughts, Episode Four
All in all, it’s a brisk little episode that reminds me of nothing so much as a cut-scene sequence from a Star Wars video game like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order. (It doesn’t hurt that the game features a Fortress Inqusitorius break-in/break-out sequence of its own.) It utilizes the spartan Imperial aesthetic to create an illusion of impregnability, then shows our characters shattering that illusion. It’s a tried-and-true method of Star Wars storytelling that goes all the way back to Obi-Wan, Luke, Han, Chewbacca, R2-D2, and C-3PO’s adventures on the first Death Star. And there are interesting glimpses of how the Empire has handled Force-sensitives since its establishment, namely a hallway full of Jedi bodies in suspended animation that Obi-Wan stumbles across. Entombing the Force sensitive is at least part of the Fortress’s true purpose, and that’s some good Dark Side storytelling.
But the episode brushes past some of the series’ most momentous moments to date. Take that confrontation between Vader and Obi-Wan in the previous episode. That scene was already burdened by the filmmakers decision to wedge in a new face-to-face between the two old frenemies that had little of the mythic power of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s confrontation on Mustafar in Revenge of the Sith or their final battle on the Death Star in A New Hope. Now, its one moment of real urgency, Vader using the Force to push Obi-Wan into a fire so as to mimic Vader’s own injuries, gets brushed away with a quick dunk in a bacta tank. Hell, Obi-Wan doesn’t even stay in the tank for the doctor-recommended length of time! If this was all that was gonna come of that confrontation, why have it happen in the first place, given how it short-circuits the “circle-is-now-complete” loop between Mustafar and the Death Star?