Defying expectations...or not?
I'm caught up with my tv shows and it's an abundance of riches. So many thoughts in my head!I have to write down reviews.
First off, I'm loving this first season of Better Call Saul.
in "RICO" Jimmy gets dirty, but not the way one would have expected!
It's all in the dumpster scene. It the scene summing up what Jimmy is and what others think he is. What he is first? Well, he's hardworking and ready to do what other respectable lawyers would not. The flashback scene from the opening already pointed it out. Jimmy worked hard to pass the bar, while working as a mail man in his big brother's firm. It also told us that people don't think much of Jimmy, especially sleazy Howard, but even Chuck whose "as what?", when Jimmy suggested they could hire him, said it all.
Jimmy tries so hard to be good, to be respected...but to the others eyes he's just trash and can't be part of their world. Even Kim, despite the fact that she's fond on him. She likes him, but I suspect that she doesn't really expect him to make it as a lawyer.
Jimmy McGill shares with Walter White one feature: he craves acknowledgement. But unlike Walter, who was that respected teacher, that serious scientist, whom nobody would have pegged for a crime lord -- hence Hank's shock when he realised the truth --, Jimmy is a kind of joke to the people around him. They don't expect him to be good at his job, they don't expect him to be good period.
Now that Chuck is back on the saddle, and realising that his "condition" might not be what he said, will it help Jimmy or push him even lower amongs the lowlife? I also, expect some betrayal from Kim, and of course Howard will probably steal the class-action stuff, probably using Chuck's code.
Mike is already connected to the vet who has connections, and Jimmy already knows Nacho. Al he needs, in order to slip back to illegal business, and embrace once more the Saul Goodman persona (I say once more because it's the name he used for his former cons), is a little push. It has to come from the people he loves most.
One last thing, about Mike. I wasn't as impressed by the Mike episode as some viewers were. Yes, Banks was poignant, but I don't think that the episode would have worked if we hadn't known the Mike from BrBa. It worked because it solved the mystery of his background, revealing that Mike actually did not break back in ABQ, but was already a dirty cop in Philadelphia. Of course corruption is not murder, and killing the two dirty cops who killed his son isn't the same as working as a "cleaner" for criminals and being a cold blooded killer, but still.
i like that they are not doing with the BCS characters what they did with Walter White.
As for "Trust", it was again a hell of an episode! I can't believe that there are only two episodes left before Raylan Givens disappear from my screen.
I am not going to lie, I did see Mikey's betrayal coming from miles away (it was obvious since the previous episode), but I didn't expect Ava to shoot Boyd at the end of the 10th episode!
I liked it when a tv show surprises me, and Justified is always good at cutting through expectations. We all thought it would end with the Raylan vs Boyd stand-off, western style, that shooting Boyd in the chest before the finale seemed impossible. I don't believe he's dead but I don't see how he can recover from another chest wound fast enough to have that final showdown...unless of course there's a time gap at some point before the end.
The Justified team used what the viewers love against them. Because we all love the Raylan/Boyd sparring dialogues. I knew that Ava was a wild card but I didn't expect that card to play so soon and in that way.
On the one hand, it annoys me to think that this final season turns out to be about Ava, whose storyline was last season's weakest part, because I want Justified to be about Raylan. On the other hand I loved how it played, how Ava suddenly realised that the two men love-hate each other more than they ever cared about her, and were so into their frenemies story, so focused on one another ("he's too smart" as an echo pointed it out) that they had "forgotten" that her life was on the line!
She no longer trusts Boyd -- who doesn't trust her either as proved by his suspicion that she was working with her uncle; he simply underestimated her here--, and she felt that she couldn't count on Raylan to protect her from Vasquez either, no matter how unhappy he looked about it. Besides, we should have known that shooting Crowders (or men in general) is what Ava does best!
I also liked that her shooting Boyd was a sort of unknowing payback for that earlier dickish move of his, when he ratted out Katherine to Markham and had such a joy doing so. From time to time women have to win, damnit!
Speaking of winning women, I hope that mini-Mags aka Loretta will be the final winner. Her family is filled with tough women, even if Boon killed her grand aunt. Men will destroy each others and women will inherit the land.
As for avenging the wronged, I really hope that Boyd will end up in jail for killing Dewey Crowe. After all Carl and his brother have been arrested, because Boyd used them to create diversion, and they could provide some evidence concerning that murder. A few episodes ago, Carl seemed to be disappointed to see that Boyd didn't care much for his henchmen, so, even though he remained loyal to him and saved his ass in the mine, the fact that Boyd let them down could be the final push he needs to pull a Mikey on his boss!
Speaking of henchment, that Boon guy (who kinda looks like the anti-Sol Starr!!!!) showed up from nowhere, but they're giving him so much screen time that I expect him to play a huge role in the finale. I hope it doesn't mean that this Jesse-James wannabe will be the one to put Raylan done. It could be how it ends, while we have been expecting for years that Boyd would be the only one to beat Raylan (and vice-versa).
Maybe it's another distraction, a mere red herring, and Boon will actually be defeated by the one he calls "his girl", that is Loretta, while Raylan is actually elsewhere catching Ava, or facing Boyd indeed.
As much as I love a good western trope in Justified, I woudn't mind if the show decided to subvert it, and have Boon being deprived of the gunsfighters' stand-off he seems to crave, and Boyd being deprived of the outlaw's ending Raylan described to Tim. On the other hand, it's been a while since Raylan has showed how fast he is...
Anyway, I just don't want Raylan Givens to die. And btw, I also want Wynn Duffy to survive.
Maybe it will end with Raylan eating ice-cream in Florida...because ice-cream eating Raylan is also so cool! (look what I just did?!) ;- )
And finally, we've got my favourite show, The Americans, a series that never fails to provide breathtaking (sometimes hard to watch) scenes and first-class acting. You all know my love for Arkady Ivanovich, and I believe that Matthew Rhys' performances as Philip Jennings are among the best I have seen on television in the last couple of years, but what I also love about the show is that it is filled with terrific female characters. Elizabeth of course, as co-lead, but also Nina, Paige, and Martha.
And what a great season it has been so far for Martha!!!
This week the show's title was a tribute to another Philip (btw Blade Runner was released in June 1982 in the USA): "Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Martha was just fantastic in the previous episodes, and showed up such great skills facing Walter Taffet, and her scene with Philip at the beginning of the episode was great too. Her coolness and the way she provided intel about the mail robot was not something anyone would have expected from her in the first two seasons when she got the "poor Martha" nickname.
Is she playing the long game before turning on "Clark" or has she decided to blindly embrace the spy stuff, just out of love, no matter what it means and who she's working for?
Of course there's an obvious parallel with our young South-African student who is willing to do anything for Elizabeth, which totally echoes Jared's storyline from last season although Elizabeth didn't seduce Hans.
Poor Philip, as if he weren't already torn by the Paige issue and the Kimberley stuff, now he has to worried about Martha, a woman who has obviously grown on him, more than any other asset (she's definitely not an Annelise to his eyes). When he told Elizabeth that he trust Martha, it was a huge thing. And later, he said to Gabriel that Martha "will protect" him. It's usually Elizabeth who has that kind of power, who has his back. His relationship with Martha is evolving into a partnership, which is intriguing.
Another significant line was spoken by Gabriel "You should trust the organization". It could be read as a threatening thing, as if Gabriel is having second-thoughts about them, but I mostly see it as a point about Philip and Elizabeth. They now trust people first and foremost. People have become more important than anything else.
A good bolchevik was supposed to always choose the Party over any persons they knew, even family, because the Party was supposed to be avant-garde of the proletariat, to know better, its actions were supposed to being done for the good of THE people. But that kind of faith couldn't resist decades of bureaucracy, the rise of the privileged nomenklatura and the "immobility" of the 70's and early 80's. Russians' distrust of the organization developped under Brejnev to the point that when Gorbachev arrived, it was too late. They would no longer trust the organization.
Even though Elizabeth and Philip are not just Russians but KGB agents, whose youth happened during destalinization, and they left the Motherland before the period of zastoi, their mind frame has changed too (Elizabeth even understands Philip's feelings for Martha!). And so have their dreams.
The scene with the bookkeeper wasn't very subtle, but it was there to underline Elizabeth's current state of mind. Philip's harsh "she picked a bad time" also showed how much he's still a professional who only cares when it's people he knows well, or, in Kimberley's and Todd's case, teenagers who remind him of his children. Philip is mostly a father, while Elizabeth is still her mother's daughter, something the Centre (and Gabriel!) is using well to push her buttons and manipulate her; and she is a wife. The bookkeeper used to be a wife too, and was still seeking the lost connection to her late husband; and she had to remind Elizabeth of her own mother.
Feelings toward peoples make things messy, as much as missing a shot and chasing a wounded guy before strangling him.
The scene was poignant because we knew that despite her feelings, Elizabeth had made her mind after talking to Philip (and probably even before that given that she showed herself, sans disguise, to the bookkeeper), especially when she started revealing personal things to the doomed lady...but the bookkeeper was unaware of it, still chit chatting, until Elizabeth said the word "Russia" and then the old woman realised that her fate was sealed. And they keep on talking, while Elizabeth provided a "soft death" that looked like something between euthanasia (or assisted suicide) -- let's keep in mind that Elizabeth's own mother is sick and dying back in Russia -- and drinking the hemlock; and some miracle happened, she became an angel to the dying woman. Meanwhile Paige was reading her bible.
But before her last breath, the old woman questioned Elizabeth's actions, reprimanding her like the old teacher she used to be, and said that her excuse for killing was the same as what evil people said. It was a bit too on the nose, but I guess that the show couldn't Elizabeth just get away with playing the angel to her stand-in mother!
Most viewers think that Philip will be the one to defect, because he isn't a "believer" and he likes America, but I have always suspected that, by the end, it's Elizabeth who will break first or have a sort of epiphany that will completely change her loyalty.
That said, after the last Scrabble game, the Centre is going to become wary of Philip. I loved the way he metaphorically killed the father in the scene, first with a word (and of course it was Sphynx!!!!) and then by voicing his newly distrust and his awareness of Gabriel's manipulations!!!!
So, is Zineida a true transfuge or a replicant? Anyway, it was fun to have Oleg in disguise and I'm sure he actually had fun hitting Stan!
Are we allowed to 'ship Oleg/Stan yet?
ETA: Who went through a Voigt-Kampff-like test in the episode? Well, there's the Oleg/Zinaida scene of course, but also the Elizabeth/Old Lady scene as well, with Elizabeth proving that she does have empathy. And I'm going back to the Martha/Clark scene...in which Martha seemed to pretend to be a normal wife who has cooked for her husband, but rather sounded like a replicant!!!!
First off, I'm loving this first season of Better Call Saul.
in "RICO" Jimmy gets dirty, but not the way one would have expected!
It's all in the dumpster scene. It the scene summing up what Jimmy is and what others think he is. What he is first? Well, he's hardworking and ready to do what other respectable lawyers would not. The flashback scene from the opening already pointed it out. Jimmy worked hard to pass the bar, while working as a mail man in his big brother's firm. It also told us that people don't think much of Jimmy, especially sleazy Howard, but even Chuck whose "as what?", when Jimmy suggested they could hire him, said it all.
Jimmy tries so hard to be good, to be respected...but to the others eyes he's just trash and can't be part of their world. Even Kim, despite the fact that she's fond on him. She likes him, but I suspect that she doesn't really expect him to make it as a lawyer.
Jimmy McGill shares with Walter White one feature: he craves acknowledgement. But unlike Walter, who was that respected teacher, that serious scientist, whom nobody would have pegged for a crime lord -- hence Hank's shock when he realised the truth --, Jimmy is a kind of joke to the people around him. They don't expect him to be good at his job, they don't expect him to be good period.
Now that Chuck is back on the saddle, and realising that his "condition" might not be what he said, will it help Jimmy or push him even lower amongs the lowlife? I also, expect some betrayal from Kim, and of course Howard will probably steal the class-action stuff, probably using Chuck's code.
Mike is already connected to the vet who has connections, and Jimmy already knows Nacho. Al he needs, in order to slip back to illegal business, and embrace once more the Saul Goodman persona (I say once more because it's the name he used for his former cons), is a little push. It has to come from the people he loves most.
One last thing, about Mike. I wasn't as impressed by the Mike episode as some viewers were. Yes, Banks was poignant, but I don't think that the episode would have worked if we hadn't known the Mike from BrBa. It worked because it solved the mystery of his background, revealing that Mike actually did not break back in ABQ, but was already a dirty cop in Philadelphia. Of course corruption is not murder, and killing the two dirty cops who killed his son isn't the same as working as a "cleaner" for criminals and being a cold blooded killer, but still.
i like that they are not doing with the BCS characters what they did with Walter White.
As for "Trust", it was again a hell of an episode! I can't believe that there are only two episodes left before Raylan Givens disappear from my screen.
I am not going to lie, I did see Mikey's betrayal coming from miles away (it was obvious since the previous episode), but I didn't expect Ava to shoot Boyd at the end of the 10th episode!
I liked it when a tv show surprises me, and Justified is always good at cutting through expectations. We all thought it would end with the Raylan vs Boyd stand-off, western style, that shooting Boyd in the chest before the finale seemed impossible. I don't believe he's dead but I don't see how he can recover from another chest wound fast enough to have that final showdown...unless of course there's a time gap at some point before the end.
The Justified team used what the viewers love against them. Because we all love the Raylan/Boyd sparring dialogues. I knew that Ava was a wild card but I didn't expect that card to play so soon and in that way.
On the one hand, it annoys me to think that this final season turns out to be about Ava, whose storyline was last season's weakest part, because I want Justified to be about Raylan. On the other hand I loved how it played, how Ava suddenly realised that the two men love-hate each other more than they ever cared about her, and were so into their frenemies story, so focused on one another ("he's too smart" as an echo pointed it out) that they had "forgotten" that her life was on the line!
She no longer trusts Boyd -- who doesn't trust her either as proved by his suspicion that she was working with her uncle; he simply underestimated her here--, and she felt that she couldn't count on Raylan to protect her from Vasquez either, no matter how unhappy he looked about it. Besides, we should have known that shooting Crowders (or men in general) is what Ava does best!
I also liked that her shooting Boyd was a sort of unknowing payback for that earlier dickish move of his, when he ratted out Katherine to Markham and had such a joy doing so. From time to time women have to win, damnit!
Speaking of winning women, I hope that mini-Mags aka Loretta will be the final winner. Her family is filled with tough women, even if Boon killed her grand aunt. Men will destroy each others and women will inherit the land.
As for avenging the wronged, I really hope that Boyd will end up in jail for killing Dewey Crowe. After all Carl and his brother have been arrested, because Boyd used them to create diversion, and they could provide some evidence concerning that murder. A few episodes ago, Carl seemed to be disappointed to see that Boyd didn't care much for his henchmen, so, even though he remained loyal to him and saved his ass in the mine, the fact that Boyd let them down could be the final push he needs to pull a Mikey on his boss!
Speaking of henchment, that Boon guy (who kinda looks like the anti-Sol Starr!!!!) showed up from nowhere, but they're giving him so much screen time that I expect him to play a huge role in the finale. I hope it doesn't mean that this Jesse-James wannabe will be the one to put Raylan done. It could be how it ends, while we have been expecting for years that Boyd would be the only one to beat Raylan (and vice-versa).
Maybe it's another distraction, a mere red herring, and Boon will actually be defeated by the one he calls "his girl", that is Loretta, while Raylan is actually elsewhere catching Ava, or facing Boyd indeed.
As much as I love a good western trope in Justified, I woudn't mind if the show decided to subvert it, and have Boon being deprived of the gunsfighters' stand-off he seems to crave, and Boyd being deprived of the outlaw's ending Raylan described to Tim. On the other hand, it's been a while since Raylan has showed how fast he is...
Anyway, I just don't want Raylan Givens to die. And btw, I also want Wynn Duffy to survive.
Maybe it will end with Raylan eating ice-cream in Florida...because ice-cream eating Raylan is also so cool! (look what I just did?!) ;- )
And finally, we've got my favourite show, The Americans, a series that never fails to provide breathtaking (sometimes hard to watch) scenes and first-class acting. You all know my love for Arkady Ivanovich, and I believe that Matthew Rhys' performances as Philip Jennings are among the best I have seen on television in the last couple of years, but what I also love about the show is that it is filled with terrific female characters. Elizabeth of course, as co-lead, but also Nina, Paige, and Martha.
And what a great season it has been so far for Martha!!!
This week the show's title was a tribute to another Philip (btw Blade Runner was released in June 1982 in the USA): "Do Mail Robots Dream of Electric Sheep?"
Martha was just fantastic in the previous episodes, and showed up such great skills facing Walter Taffet, and her scene with Philip at the beginning of the episode was great too. Her coolness and the way she provided intel about the mail robot was not something anyone would have expected from her in the first two seasons when she got the "poor Martha" nickname.
Is she playing the long game before turning on "Clark" or has she decided to blindly embrace the spy stuff, just out of love, no matter what it means and who she's working for?
Of course there's an obvious parallel with our young South-African student who is willing to do anything for Elizabeth, which totally echoes Jared's storyline from last season although Elizabeth didn't seduce Hans.
Poor Philip, as if he weren't already torn by the Paige issue and the Kimberley stuff, now he has to worried about Martha, a woman who has obviously grown on him, more than any other asset (she's definitely not an Annelise to his eyes). When he told Elizabeth that he trust Martha, it was a huge thing. And later, he said to Gabriel that Martha "will protect" him. It's usually Elizabeth who has that kind of power, who has his back. His relationship with Martha is evolving into a partnership, which is intriguing.
Another significant line was spoken by Gabriel "You should trust the organization". It could be read as a threatening thing, as if Gabriel is having second-thoughts about them, but I mostly see it as a point about Philip and Elizabeth. They now trust people first and foremost. People have become more important than anything else.
A good bolchevik was supposed to always choose the Party over any persons they knew, even family, because the Party was supposed to be avant-garde of the proletariat, to know better, its actions were supposed to being done for the good of THE people. But that kind of faith couldn't resist decades of bureaucracy, the rise of the privileged nomenklatura and the "immobility" of the 70's and early 80's. Russians' distrust of the organization developped under Brejnev to the point that when Gorbachev arrived, it was too late. They would no longer trust the organization.
Even though Elizabeth and Philip are not just Russians but KGB agents, whose youth happened during destalinization, and they left the Motherland before the period of zastoi, their mind frame has changed too (Elizabeth even understands Philip's feelings for Martha!). And so have their dreams.
The scene with the bookkeeper wasn't very subtle, but it was there to underline Elizabeth's current state of mind. Philip's harsh "she picked a bad time" also showed how much he's still a professional who only cares when it's people he knows well, or, in Kimberley's and Todd's case, teenagers who remind him of his children. Philip is mostly a father, while Elizabeth is still her mother's daughter, something the Centre (and Gabriel!) is using well to push her buttons and manipulate her; and she is a wife. The bookkeeper used to be a wife too, and was still seeking the lost connection to her late husband; and she had to remind Elizabeth of her own mother.
Feelings toward peoples make things messy, as much as missing a shot and chasing a wounded guy before strangling him.
The scene was poignant because we knew that despite her feelings, Elizabeth had made her mind after talking to Philip (and probably even before that given that she showed herself, sans disguise, to the bookkeeper), especially when she started revealing personal things to the doomed lady...but the bookkeeper was unaware of it, still chit chatting, until Elizabeth said the word "Russia" and then the old woman realised that her fate was sealed. And they keep on talking, while Elizabeth provided a "soft death" that looked like something between euthanasia (or assisted suicide) -- let's keep in mind that Elizabeth's own mother is sick and dying back in Russia -- and drinking the hemlock; and some miracle happened, she became an angel to the dying woman. Meanwhile Paige was reading her bible.
But before her last breath, the old woman questioned Elizabeth's actions, reprimanding her like the old teacher she used to be, and said that her excuse for killing was the same as what evil people said. It was a bit too on the nose, but I guess that the show couldn't Elizabeth just get away with playing the angel to her stand-in mother!
Most viewers think that Philip will be the one to defect, because he isn't a "believer" and he likes America, but I have always suspected that, by the end, it's Elizabeth who will break first or have a sort of epiphany that will completely change her loyalty.
That said, after the last Scrabble game, the Centre is going to become wary of Philip. I loved the way he metaphorically killed the father in the scene, first with a word (and of course it was Sphynx!!!!) and then by voicing his newly distrust and his awareness of Gabriel's manipulations!!!!
So, is Zineida a true transfuge or a replicant? Anyway, it was fun to have Oleg in disguise and I'm sure he actually had fun hitting Stan!
Are we allowed to 'ship Oleg/Stan yet?
ETA: Who went through a Voigt-Kampff-like test in the episode? Well, there's the Oleg/Zinaida scene of course, but also the Elizabeth/Old Lady scene as well, with Elizabeth proving that she does have empathy. And I'm going back to the Martha/Clark scene...in which Martha seemed to pretend to be a normal wife who has cooked for her husband, but rather sounded like a replicant!!!!