“DON’T.” The unknown messenger’s letter to Mike is a road sign as plain as any you could ask for. Passing it means oblivion, the annihilation of the self through the act of murder, and in the end Mike is still, for now, the man who can’t pull the trigger. He has maybe ten lines in […]
“Who’s the guy who won’t pull the trigger?” You can’t change the consequences of your actions. You can’t uncrack your brother’s skull or drag a kind-hearted stranger whose face you never saw out of his unmarked desert grave. Whatever joy you had before from the actions that led you to that one un-take-backable moment is tainted […]
“Oh, and point me to your best copier.” Better Call Saul is a filmmaker’s delight, a showcase for more cinematic tricks and techniques than most major motion pictures. Director Larysa Kondracki brings us into ‘Fifi’ with a continuous four-minute shot following a smuggler across the Mexican border, through customs, and into the embrace of the […]
“It’s exactly what I would have done.” So that’s where his suits come from. Jimmy’s odious wardrobe, part of a calculated campaign of self-sabotage meant to force Cliff Main into firing him without cause so that he can keep his fat corporate signing bonus, are a master class in how to connect the dots between […]
“Are you sure about that?” Jimmy and Mike are very different people going through very different things, but the beats of their stories often share a theme. It’s the glue that holds their parallel tales of corruption together, especially since season 2 has them walking paths that seldom intersect. ‘Bali Ha’i’ gives us two stories in […]
“It’s like he was born without the gene for it.” ‘Rebecca’ is a slow burn, an episode in which as much attention is paid to the lighting around Chuck as to the scramble faced by Kim and Jimmy in their respective legal purgatories or to Mike’s dawning realization that half measures leave loose ends. The […]
“That’s a bell you don’t un-ring.” The secret to not living in a state of perpetual regret is, of course, to make the right choice in the first place. Witness Jimmy scrambling to correct his eminently preventable error, one that saw Kim banished to document processing in the basement of HHM, and you have all the […]
“Feels like something’s up.” Using your hour of airtime to tell parallel stories with no point of intersection is a risky proposition. Jimmy and Mike may both feel the pull of older, easier ways of moving and surviving in the world, and they’re both muddling through half-assed attempts at turning over a new leaf, but that’s […]
“Are you still morally flexible?” ‘Cobbler’ follows a simple thread, observing the lives of the brothers McGill as they proceed absent one from the other. For Jimmy it means an end to the moral code he tried to follow to win Chuck’s favor, something he now knows he could never obtain. He’ll keep being a lawyer, […]
“SG WAS HERE” It starts and ends with the same conundrum. When the rules say no to us, whether it’s an alarmed security door barring our escape or a seemingly purposeless warning label on an otherwise normal light switch, what do we do, and why? How do we maintain our identities in a world trying […]
Nerdly recently had the opportunity to speak with Academy Award and Emmy winning producer Mark Johnson at the ATX TELEVISION FESTIVAL about Rectify, Breaking Bad, and interestingly, Better Call Saul.
