Please update your bookmarks and the RSS feed to: www.medium.com/dans-media-digest/
It's a little miracle that Better Call Saul can deliver such a fantastic season finale, without the need for anything particularly earth-shattering to happen. Events just allowed to unfold in a very plausible way, and we're now so invested in the core relationships that the tiniest of things can cause a great deal of tension, heartache, and sorrow. Continue reading...
Given the title "Nailed", you’d be forgiven for thinking the big climax of Better Call Saul's penultimate hour would involve an exciting set-piece where Mike (Jonathan Banks) uses his homemade 'spike strip' on one of Hector Salamanca's drug-carrying trucks. Instead, it came down to Chuck (Michael McKean) simply arguing with an employee of a xerox shop, and was all the better for it. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the genius of a character-based series like Better Call Saul. Continue reading...
It's fair to say Netflix's Daredevil was one of 2015's biggest surprises, because it did something fresh with a superhero indebted to Batman, in a show with conceptual similarities to The CW's Arrow, while overcoming a negative perception of Daredevil thanks to a misfiring 2003 movie. In going darker and meaner than everything else in Marvel's Cinematic Universe, Daredevil offered something for the slightly older crowd who crave deeper emotional stakes, narrative complexity, and mature content. Continue reading...
We're hurtling towards the season finale now, but things remain surprisingly sedate in the world of Better Call Saul. I've heard grumblings from people that season 2's been a disappointment, but I wouldn't go that far. It's just understandably tougher to turn the life of a crooked lawyer into gripping spectacle, and the writers are alleviating this issue with a plot for Mike (Jonathan Banks) that leans heavily on associations with Breaking Bad. And this show will never be Breaking Bad. I made my peace with that from the very beginning, and suggest others do the same. Better Call Saul more a quirky character study that goes to some surprising, strange, occasionally tense places. Continue reading...
Certain things about Better Call Saul are fated to happen, as we know where Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) will end up in several year's time. The fun is seeing the details of the journey, but chances to truly surprise us are difficult to execute. Jimmy's tenure at Davis & Main was doomed from the start, of course, and last week I theorised that he may try and start a law practice with Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn), and "Inflatable" saw both of those things happen. Continue reading...
There was understandable cynicism when Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was announced—born of suspicion it was a cynical way to rekindle interest in a sequel to the faltering Man of Steel, and concern that The Dark Knight trilogy had dropped the mic when it comes to modernising Batman. Continue reading...
As we ease into the second half of Better Call Saul's sophomore year, it's becoming clear that Jimmy McGill's (Bob Odenkirk) storyline isn’t a strong as his occasional partner-in-crime Mike’s (Jonathan Banks). I've had concerns about this being the case before on the show, but I think season 2's highlighting the split more because the writers are giving Mike far more exciting stuff to do—and in a hour like "Bali Ha'i", it was noticeable just how secondary Jimmy felt to everything of real importance. Indeed, now that Kim’s (Rhea Seehorn) getting more attention as a character, there were times when Jimmy felt very marginalised.Continue reading...
 |
| DMD - circa 2007 |
I love how Better Call Saul fleshes out its own narrative, with glimpses of the past that inform the future (which is also, slightly confusingly, the past to fans of Breaking Bad). The opening of "Rebecca" answered the obvious question the title provokes, with a lovely vignette set during the time Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) was working in the mailroom of HHM, as he was invited for dinner at his brother Chuck's (Michael McKean) and his wife, the eponymous violinist Rebecca (Ann Cusack). Naturally, a further question was left to swirl around our heads during all these scenes: where is Rebecca McGill now? I suspect we'll get the answer before the season's over, but one presumes it’s a further reason for Chuck's dislike of his brother. Did Jimmy split them up, intentionally or not? Did Rebecca die? Was she perhaps even killed? Did this trauma result in Chuck's mental breakdown? Continue reading...
There's a long tradition of stories about groups of people being hunted and killed, one by own, by a mystery assailant (most owing a debt to Agatha Christie's 1939 novel And Then There Were None, maybe a few to 1987's Predator). There’s an even longer real-life tradition of soon-to-be-married men being thrown raucous parties, to celebrate their final days of bachelordom. Combine the two and you have BBC2's three-part comedy-drama Stag, about a group of Englishmen on a weekend trip of drinking and deer-stalking in the Scottish Highlands, only to find themselves as the prey. Continue reading...
