Constant Reader Book of The Month Club July: Suggested Reading by Dave Connis

 

Do I dare disturb the universe?”

Robert Cormier, The Chocolate War

(Yes, it’s really T.S. Eliot, but trust me,

Cormier used it better.)

 

I think since the beginning of time there has been a fundamental disconnect between the job of a parents and what parents actually are. And I think that disconnect has led us, in a way, to so many of society’s problems.

A parent’s first job is to keep their child safe. The definition of ‘safe’ keeps changing over the years and centuries and millennia, but that is the basic idea. Once you become a mother or father, your job is to keep your child safe. It can become hard to abandon that responsibility the older your child gets, when they’re no longer in your sightline every day, when they having relationships with people you might not personally agree with philosophically, when they leave your house entirely and venture into adulthood. A parent will always believe it is their job to keep their child safe.

I don’t know when it became some kind of accepted term that parents were necessarily wiser or knew better than everybody else – whether they are adults without children, or teachers, or even their own children. Unless there’s some vital initiation rite that I am fundamentally unaware of, parents are not given the wisdom of God. They do not know anything and everything. Any parent whose five-year old keeps questioning them about anything knows this better than I could ever say. But somewhere along the line, it became gospel that parents are better suited not only what is best for their own children, but all children, always and forever. No matter how different the world between when they were children and now, no matter how they lived their lives as children, no matter what anyone who isn’t a parent says, they know what is best for the children. They know this so well that they don’t even have to ask their children if that’s okay with them – and based on how our society treats them, they probably don’t.

This is a larger theme that I intend to expound upon in some of my other Constant Reader columns. I took a fair amount of flack on it when I made some – in my opinion, tepid suggestions about high school sports -  in my review for We are the Wildcats and I suspect I will take quite a bit more in this column and others to come. But these issues and others are some that society has to address. Maybe the best way to do so is looking at how some writers view these conflicts.

So to move to the specific: for those parents who have spent the past several years trying to regulate the kind of books their children read, I’d like to address you: You’re adorable. No, seriously. All the threats that your children are facing – the last few years have made clear what a lot of them are – and you still think that the biggest problems facing your children are whether or not they read The Hunger Games or The Perks of Being a Wallflower. To quote the book I’m about to get to: “you’ve spent much of your lives putting out the wrong fires.”

This has always been one of the biggest pet peeves when it comes to parents and their problems with certain literature, and Suggested Reading actually goes so far as to have some of its character say it out loud.  Forbidding certain books from schools as always struck me as a disconnect between the current generation of children as well as their fundamental nature.  All students – particularly high school ones – hate reading. It’s basically something they have to be bullied in to doing, no matter whether it’s a public school, or as in the case of this book, a private one. The head of Honors Lit tells a character:

 “…with every class that comes through that door, there are fewer and fewer interested students. Not to mention students that are willing to tear them to shreds or speak to them. If something happens to these books I’m pushing, are they going to even care?”

I can answer that question. Most of them already don’t.  With each generation, more and more children give up reading. Not just Catcher in the Rye or Great Gatsby, but Harry Potter and Twilight. It’s not just the fact that the illiteracy rate in the country keeps getting higher, it’s that there are so many other distractions out there that promise instant gratification. No book will ever give you ‘instant’ gratification.  It takes days or weeks, and few people –children or adult – have that kind of attention span. You can blame television or social media or all the devices we have, but all of them are just part of a long standing problem in American society. How we got there is really irrelevant to the fact it’s where we are.

To the second point, parents wanting books banned goes against the fundamental nature of how most children – and I include myself at their ages – view something being forbidden.  Whether its pornographic magazines, the V-Chip or anything on the internet, the surest way to make sure a child – or really anybody – will want to see it is to explicitly say that it’s bad for you or forbidden. I guarantee you that no teenager in the last decade has ever said: “I was going to watch Game of Thrones but since my parents told me not to, I’ll heed their advice and watch another episode of Full House.”

Indeed, I honestly think we solve the banning of books issue very simply with simple reverse psychology. All organizations that think Rainbow and Park and Speak are bad for your children to read. Make them required reading in your schools instead! Run ads on social media saying that you couldn’t put down The Chocolate War! I guarantee that the children themselves will be creating bonfires of them in their backyards the second you told them that.

Because I assure you, characters like Clara Evans, the protagonist of Suggested Reading are few and far between as it is. Clara opens the novel about to begin the Evans Highlighter All-Nighter, a tradition she’s had for years of reading a selected novel from beginning to end the night before high school begins.  The novel is question is by her current idol the fictional Lukas Gerhardt which is about a book about two boys who build a forbidden library to stop a war in a dystopian future. (If nothing else, Suggested Reading makes you really wish a book like this actually existed.)

Clara attends a very traditional Tennessee private academy. She is entering her senior year living what she considers a humdrum life.  Her one great love is books. She volunteers as her school library. She donates to books to charities. She holds her own book club.  She may not know that Thomas Jefferson once said: “I can not live without books’, but if she heard it, she’d call it her mantra.

I should add that Clara is far from perfect. She has exactly one friend in the entire school, LiQui Carson, and she seems happy with it. She has very negative opinions towards most of the other, richer students in this academy who she derivatively refers to as ‘star-stars’. She honestly seems closer to the librarian, Mr. Caywell and her Honors Lit teacher Miss Croft, then anyone else at the Academy. And its likely she have stayed that way – happily – if she hadn’t accidentally read an email that went out from the headmaster about expanded the list of banned books. Or to use their euphemism “prohibited media’.

Clara is immediately angered (Her immediate reaction is a page of WTFs written one after the other.) She’s even angrier when she told that this has been going on for awhile and that she, the librarian’s assistant, has never noticed it. She goes around in a daze for several pages, spouting off to everybody, before deciding to write a letter to the headmaster Mr. Walsh, who spends most of his time at the academy walking the halls, the better to avoid conflict. When he meets with her and barely gives her the time of day, she gets mad and then rebels. Her rebellion is to bring forbidden books into Lupton Academy with white book covers, hand them out in secret, and ask her readers to write anonymous comments about how the book made them feel. (Most of the books, by the way, are the ones I’ve already mentioned in this review.)

Her rebellion, I should point out right now, is done not out of some higher purpose, but really out of spite. Like most teenagers, she has little view of the potential consequences of her actions. And she comes across somewhat self-centered for much of the book (like so many teachers). So perhaps she is giving herself too much credit when the faculty begins to react to the prohibited media ban, first by Miss Croft changing her lesson plan and eventually resigning and then Mr. Caywell beginning to feud with the Principal. The dominoes continue to fall in a more personal way as her life becomes increasingly interwoven with Jack Lodenhauer and Ashton, two of the star-stars she’s spent her high school life taunting without even bothering to get to know.  Her certainty that books are the solution to every problem becomes increasingly hard to put up the more she becomes aware of the demons that Jack in particular is carrying.

There is a lot to worship about Suggested Reading. It avoids far too many of the clichés that are going on. On several occasions, the characters themselves point out how so few students are uninterested in life outside their own bubbles that they would just as simply accept the school board’s explanations and ask few if any questions, like Clara ends up doing. It also never makes it clear just how broad the revolution that Clara is leading actually is among the student body – a revelatory segment near the end of the book actually points out that all of Clara’s actions may only be affecting a relatively small portion of Lupton Academy.  Nor does Clara herself fall victim to the clichés of so much YA literature – her friendship with a ‘star star’ does not lead to a romance like so many lesser books would, and a decision to make her rebellion the subject of a vital dinner that could affect her future doesn’t pay off for her personally.

 And perhaps most importantly (spoiler warning) you could make an argument that her rebellion changes nothing. As you’d expect with so many of these kinds of stories, eventually everything that has happened at Lupton Academy does make the national media and becomes a story. But when the smoke clears, ‘All they did was shuffle people around. Replace board members with relatives.” The prohibited media ban remains in the student handbook and it is possible the board decides not to do anything about the inciters simply to let the scandal die down. (The last page of the book indicates that they have underestimated the student body in that regard.)

But that’s not really the point of Suggested Reading. At its core, this book is about the power of words and the way they change people’s lives, even the people you think may well beyond saving. At a critical moment near the end of the book, Walsh calls Clara in to his office. Clara is certain that he is going to expel her. What Walsh says to her and the last set of actions between the two of them give perhaps the greatest sign of hope in a book that can be thoroughly depressing about so many things, particularly this disconnect between adults and keeping children ‘safe’.  “Books are a light… that melts ignorance and hate,” Clara says near the end of the novel. Maybe some of the characters in this novel keep considering them fires they have to put out. Clara’s rebellion has proven that’s not all that some fires are good for, and that if used the right way, they can provide a path forward for us and other generations to fight for. Clara says she’ll fight for that world. So will I and I hope for the sake of our future that she and I are not alone in that fight.

 

Tom Swift Wasn't A Good Series. That's Not Why It Was Cancelled

 

Having watched the CW’s update of Tom Swift, I have to acknowledge that it wasn’t a very good show. It had some ambitious ideas, I do grant you – most of it based on turning the title character a gay, African-American young man – but ultimately it just didn’t work. The title character was too self-absorbed to ever be likable, most of the characters around him were never fully drawn outside of their relationship to Tom, the messaging became increasingly heavy-handed the longer the series went on, and in the final analysis, a broadcast cable network may not have been the ideal home to deal with some of the issues – or sexuality – that the idea deserved.

So I do understand why the CW chose to cancel the series. That’s not my problem. My issue is that, in many ways, this series came pre-cancelled.  The average rating for an episode, according to imdb.com, was around 6 to 6.5, which means it was viewed as being barely above average. But before the series even aired an episode, it had been ranked as 2.6.  People didn’t even have to watch it to know that it was terrible.

In a way, this continues a very disturbing trend that has plagued so many of the CW series since Greg Berlanti and his crew began making it a home for updates of the DC universe. Fans were fine with the updates of franchises that were secondary, such as The Green Arrow and Flash but the problems began, well, pretty soon after Iris West was cast as African-American. Candace Patton, who played the character on The Flash for eight years, has since got public about the immense hostility she has faced from the internet as well as in real life because the show’s writers had cast her. Patton revealed she would have left the series years ago and has gotten little protection from the network for that feedback.

Similarly, fans have expressed outrage over Jimmy Olsen being played by Meshed Brooks in Supergirl and utterly tormented Ruby Rose for playing Batwoman as a lesbian to the point that she had to leave the series after the first season. (There may have very well been behind the scenes conflict behind the latter decision.) Nor did this kind of outrage limited to comic book based series; similar hostility was cast about Nancy Drew for a portrayal of the title character as a cynical, promiscuous teen – and there was similar anger when Tom Swift was introduced on this series in the manner he was.

All of the hostility towards many of the above characters is not implausible to fathom given the general attitude of so much of the internet misogyny and racism; the same people who find endless problems with Moses Ingram in Obi-Wan and will also use it to blame their problems with the new Miss Marvel. I’m frankly tired of this mindless trolling, but at a certain level I’m not shocked by it - fanboys simultaneously want new versions of their favorite series but only in the setting, not in the characters. But the hatred for Tom Swift before it aired an episode just goes to show how far the bigotry online goes to these kinds of series.  I’m willing to bet that well before he debuted on Nancy Drew – a series, I’ll remind you, most of these same fans dismissed out hand without seeing – the Internet had no idea who Tom Swift was. He was a character in a series of books that went out of print before the Internet was even a thing, who probably have no idea what Tom Swift’s legacy to phraseology and weaponry were.  But that didn’t make a lick of difference. Tom Swift is black and gay – pandering and defamation. Should be hated, doesn’t deserve to even be watched.

This is the fundamental problem with pop culture fans today. People will complain about the lack of originality, but their ideas of originality start and end with variations on John Wick and Taken. They will argue for original characters, but those characters are always white males. Doctor Who can transfigure 12 times, but somehow he must always be a white man. He can travel through time, but he can’t talk with anything that involves real history – or you know, historical figures who aren’t themselves white men. Ghostbusters 2016 was a disgrace, nothing like what Ghostbusters: Afterlife was. In other words, if your character is black, Latino, LGBTQ+ or really anything that isn’t a straight, white male, you do not get to play the lead in any major series, movie or comic book. Any attempt to do so is ‘pandering’. And if you try to argue that these groups are entitled to their own heroes and stories, they will be dismissed by saying roughly the equivalent: “Keep them out of our franchises.”

They won’t go so far to say that stories focused on them are ‘separate but equal’ because they’re not in their eyes. Even before the term ‘woke’ became subject of abuse, the fanboys had no use for shows that didn’t feature white males at the center. This is something that has been reflected throughout Peak TV as well with millions idolizing the horrible deeds of Tony Soprano and Walter White and turning Carmela and Skyler into harridans because they want to protect their children or even themselves from these horrible men. I’ve never liked Shonda Rhimes and I will never find anything worthwhile in Scandal or How to Get Away with Murder but I do understand why those series were popular among a certain kind of fan base – they were a tonic to everybody who was sick of so many series with White Male Antiheroes.

 The irony that one of the great series about an all-powerful group of women, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, was essentially created and staffed by what appears to be the definition of the toxic male showrunner doesn’t escape me either. In truth, we probably should have clued in earlier when you consider that most of the regulars who were killed off on the series were female while the males survived, there were almost no minority characters of note in the entire seven year run – and most of them got killed – and while it was loved by a generation of LGBTQ+ fans, most of the gay and lesbian characters died pretty horribly too. (I remember reading in so many disclaimers for Buffy and Angel fanfic: ‘Joss is a dick’ to apply to how he handled romantic relationships. That itself should have been a clue as well to his nature.)

That is the reason series like Tom Swift are important, even if they are failures, as the hostility towards them before they even debut so upsetting. I would have liked it if Tom Swift had managed to stagger on for two or three more seasons, like so many clearly inferior low-rated CW series have over the years. Perhaps it could have improved over time, perhaps it would have just been another mess like Legends of Tomorrow or Riverdale, series that had interesting ideas at first, but ultimately became bogged down in their own messaging and mythology. These kinds of ideas for series don’t get much room for growth even in the era of marginal audiences. I know some fans out there will be glad Tom Swift failed – they will say it got what it deserved. The problem is, it didn’t – and those fans will never understand that.

 

What Do You Get Jeopardy When It Turns 40? A Big Ass Tournament - And Its Never Too Late To Start Planning

 

As the first full season of Jeopardy without the presence of Alex Trebek comes to a close, it is very hard to argue that it has been one of the most spectacular seasons in the show’s history; especially considering all the controversy behind the scenes leading up to it and quite a bit after it began. Given the enormous success of so many extraordinary Jeopardy Champions this season – five have won eleven games of more – and the sizable boost in ratings over the previous year, Jeopardy has regained its place as the most popular game show on today.

Since it only seemed a possibility when this season began, I did not wish to discuss it. But given the immense success of Season 38, I think it might do well discuss a subject that is not that far off on the calendar – though I do know that some viewers may consider it premature.

First, a little background for those of you who have not read the lion’s share of my blogs or have come to Jeopardy relatively recently.  Since the new version of the show debuted, every time there has been a significant anniversary, the show has held a special tournament to commemorate it. They held a 10^th Anniversary Tournament in 1993, held the Ultimate Tournament of Champions in 2005 to commemorate (more or less) their twentieth years on the air, held the Battle of the Decades in 2014 to commemorate their 30^th Anniversary and the All-Star Games in 2019 to honor their 35^th season on the air. (The odd tournament out is the Million Dollar Masters in 2002 which doesn’t quite coordinate with any direct anniversary.)  It now seems relatively inevitable that Jeopardy will do a tournament to honor the show’s fortieth season, which will begin in September of 2023.

Some might argue it’s still too early to plan ahead. The reason I think it’s worth discussing now is based on my knowledge of how Jeopardy picks the lion’s share of its contestants for these tournaments. The Ultimate Tournament of Champions occurred not that long after both the end of Ken Jennings' original run and the 2004 Tournament of Champions. I have little doubt the producers and executives started planning not much long after that. None of the participants in the Battle of The Decades had appeared on the series prior to the 2013 Tournament of Champions which ended more or less one year before that Tournament began. And the Jeopardy All-Star Games made its selections for its participant only after the 2017 Tournament of Champions took place in November of that year. Jeopardy has a habit of planning things well in advance. (This applies to other tournaments as well; Brad Rutter, the biggest money winner in Jeopardy history only qualified for the Million Dollar Masters because he had won the 2001 Tournament of Champions.)

So bearing that I mind, I think it is worth discussing what Jeopardy should and shouldn’t do it for its fortieth anniversary tournament: my ideas for how it should be run and my suggestions for who should participate. I don’t pretend to substitute my judgment for the producers; that would be callous of me. But at someone who has measured out his viewing life in Tournaments of Champions, I do think I have a certain level of qualification.

So let’s start with what wouldn’t work. To a typical Tournament of Champions like the Million Dollar Masters wouldn’t make sense: fifteen players could not make up full scope of Jeopardy’s greatness over forty years. The All-Star Tournament, which ended up featuring eighteen players playing on six teams, doesn’t sound like a valid concept either. After it happened, even Alex Trebek himself thought it would have been better to do a more traditional tournament. And considering that those eighteen players basically only covered players from 2000 to 2017, I’m not entire sure their selection process made much sense their either.

I don’t think going to the other extreme of the Ultimate Tournament of Champions would work much better. That tournament, as I may have indicated in an earlier article included 144 participants and took the better part of two months just to get through the first round.  This involved the exclusion of many Jeopardy competitors who were as qualified as some of the other participants as well as byes for certain players who may not have been as qualified as those who didn’t. I won’t deny it was appointment TV for nearly four months, but it was also very messy. And that, of course, was nearly twenty years ago.  I like to think I’m a clever person, but I can’t begin to conceive of doing a tournament like that now. Starting with the fact there have to be at least five hundred Jeopardy champions who have qualified for Tournaments of Champions, and you’d have to devote the entire season to be fair. I love Jeopardy Tournaments; I don’t love them that much.

So I think we should settle for a middle ground. To that end, I would suggest something resembling the Battle of the Decades. That involved fifteen champions from each decade in the show’s history – the 1980s, the 1990s and the 2000s – competed. There were five matches in round 1 to determine fifteen winners. Those fifteen winners played in what a traditional Jeopardy Tournament format – five quarterfinals that produced five winners and four high scores among non-winners, leading to three semi-finals, and a two-game total point affair to determine the winner. I’m assuming it would be one million dollars because with the exception of the UTC which had a two million dollar cash prize, all Jeopardy tournaments in this century have been played for a million dollars. (I grant you for some of the contenders, a million is pocket change but not for the lion’s share of the participants.)

My model would also involve forty five players. However, we have to take in consideration that many of the champions who played in the first fifteen years of the show’s history are getting much older – and in several cases have already died. To be clear, I have seen many tournament matches involving much older players whipping far younger ones. And indeed, I wouldn’t object to a Seniors Tournament around this time, where many of the winners from the 1980s and 1990s could face off. Jeopardy even had a Seniors Tournament for the first decade in its history, so it’s not that they have to start from scratch there either. (It’s been nearly a quarter of a century since it was discontinued and I still have some bitterness about it.)

However, in the interest of fairness, I believe that the forty five players who participate in this tournament should consist of:

 

1)      Every Tournament of Champions winner from 2000 on

2)      Every Jeopardy champions whose won ten or more games (Ken Jennings obviously excluded)

3)      Jeopardy champions who don’t fit either criteria but have been competed in either Battle of the Decades: The 2000s or The Jeopardy All-Star Games

4)      Several selected finalists from Tournaments of Champions who finished second.

 

Ideally we would come up with forty players from this initial group (which would have a certain symmetry given the anniversary) .The remaining five would be selected by the fans from a ballot of ten.

(Many of the names on these participants would no doubt be familiar. However, rather than list them all here, I intend to do a series of articles explaining their accomplishments and why they should be here over the summer hiatus. I have some ideas who I would choose if I had my way for the field of ten but I’ll save that for later.)

Once chosen, there would be a series of drawings to determine who played in the first round. After the first round was over, there would be fifteen winners and play would follow the model I listed above.

I think at this point it should go without saying that Mayim Bialik would host this tournament and not Ken Jennings. Having watched Jennings host over the past year, particularly as players like Amy Schneider or Mattea Roach have made runs at his record, it’s clear he can be completely impartial about long streaks.  I’m not entirely certain what kind of attitude he would take if so many of these participants – many of whom he’s played against and defeated in the past – would be on the lectern in front of him. I may be overreacting, but given all the behind the scenes controversies with the show past year, I think Caesar’s wife must be above reproach.

This is, of course, merely the roughest of drafts for this concept and I can see why some people would have objections, mostly because there would still be a disproportionate male to female ratio in this tournament. This problem has plagued Jeopardy tournaments for decades and there still isn’t an easy solution. Looking at my first draft, the ratio of male to female is two to one. I may have some suggestions as to other qualified participants, but I’ll save that for later.

And indeed, this whole concept could be thrown out of whack when the Tournament of Champions happens next fall. Anyone with even the most casual knowledge of these tournaments knows very well there is no guarantee that any of the five winners who won at least eleven games will end up winning this tournament. Given how these tournaments work, at least two aren’t even going to be competing in the finals.

For all these reasons, I think the work should begin sooner rather than later. No Jeopardy super tournament has ever completely satisfied the fanbase, and I know this model won’t either. But honestly, I think it is a compromise that, compared to so many other tournaments, would make the fewest people unhappy. Then again, Jeopardy may surprise me yet again. It has a habit of doing so – just not always pleasantly.

We Say Goodbye to Kim - And Jimmy Better Call Saul Episode Guide: Fun And Games

The closer that Better Call Saul came to the end of its run, the more I have feared for the life of Kim Wexler.  As I said when I first began writing my reviews of the final season in April, I made it clear that it wasn’t what happened to any of the characters we already knew – despite the best efforts of Gilligan to make us forget it, we all know that many of their fates are sealed – but what would happen to all the characters that were in Jimmy’s orbit before he became Saul Goodman.

I confess that the deaths of Nacho Varga and ultimately Lalo Salamanca did not come as much of a shock (though given what I now remember from the introduction to Saul Goodman, maybe I shouldn’t have been.) That said when Howard Hamlin met his end solely because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time – immediately after Jimmy and Kim had finished destroying his reputation – it was one of the most stunning moments I’d seen on this entire series since – well, let’s be honest Nacho killed himself a few months ago. (I’ll be getting to that in a bit)

But the closer we got to the end, the more truly terrified I began to feel about what would happen to Kim. It’s not just because Rhea Seehorn has infused Kim with such heart and dignity that even when she does horrible things, you find yourself admiring her (and I’m still pissed that she only received her first Emmy nomination last week) Part of it comes from the flashbacks we’ve seen of her, revealing that she has come from a far worse background then Jimmy did and makes the duality of her nature – wanting to use her legal skills to do go, but constantly being drawn into the orbit of her darker side – as sympathetic as we have been to Jimmy at times. The more we come to know her; we know that Jimmy McGill and Kim Wexler are true and utter soulmates. And the reason that becomes more and more horrifying is because we’ve seen Jimmy’s future – and Kim isn’t in it. Even if Breaking Bad was a less bloody series, we’d know there were few good outcomes her. When Kim and Jimmy got married way back in Season 5, it was honestly the most quietly frightening thing I’d ever seen. ‘Til death do you part’ took on a whole new meaning.

Well, we now know at least part of Kim Wexler’s fate, and it wasn’t death but it was just as devastating as all the characters we’ve seen die watching both Breaking Bad and Saul over the last fifteen years. The series opening with a silent teaser of the very next day after everything from ‘Point and Shoot’ happened. Saul went back to work; Kim went on trying cases, and Mike and his crew finished cleaning up their condo. They came back and home and Jimmy, perhaps trying to convince himself as much as he was Kim said: “Maybe some day it’ll be like it never happened.”

Most of the episode that followed didn’t have anything to do with Kim or Jimmy (I’m going to get to that briefly) but after a few weeks passed, we saw the two of them attending Howard’s memorial. “Twenty minutes. We can get through twenty minutes of anything,” Jimmy said. It turned out they couldn’t/

All the attorneys we’ve seen over the years were there. We learned the inevitable fact that Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill was dissolving – inevitable fallout of Jimmy’s path to Saul Goodman. Then the two of them went to talk with Howard’s wife. We learned awhile ago that the Hamlin marriage was on the rocks – Howard confirmed it before he died – and the implication was that a lot of no doubt had to do with at least some of the fallout from the last few years, which was because of Jimmy’s actions. But Carol said the last thing either of them needed to hear: that she didn’t believe that he was on drugs.

Jimmy did everything he could to deflect what was going on. Kim, however, told a complete lie. She said when she was still working at the firm late one night; she walked into his office, saw him snorting something, and never told anybody. “Maybe if I had he’d still be alive.” This was a lie worthy of Walter White – lying to protect someone. Unlike with Walter until the very end, Kim took responsibility for her actions. In the garage of the firm – where we first met Jimmy and Kim sharing a cigarette – Jimmy said: “Let the healing begin.” Kim kissed Jimmy passionately and drove off.

In the very next scene, we saw her in court refusing to argue a motion – because she had resigned from the bar. Then we saw Kim doing what we’ve seen her doing so many times, smoking a cigarette on her own. We heard Jimmy pull up to the house, and then doing everything in his power to plead his case to talk her out of what he was doing. He tried to bring them to go back to the hotel where they’d had so many good nights, and walked in to their bedroom – where she had packed up everything.

The next scene was one of the most wrenching and painful in fifteen years of the Breaking Bad-verse’s existence. There was no violence, no bloodshed, and no emotional daggers. Instead, there was utter and complete honesty – which broke your heart just as much. Kim finally told Jimmy something she had finally realized: “We’re great together…But we’re terrible for everyone else.” Jimmy, seeing his life flash before his eyes, tried everything in his power to convince her that none of this was her fault, that all of this was on this was on Lalo – and then Kim told the truth. She’d known Lalo was alive for a month, and the reason she hadn’t told Jimmy was not so much so she wouldn’t scare him but because she knew what he’d do: she have them end the scheme that they’d spent months working on to destroy Howard ‘and I couldn’t do that. Because I was having too much fun.”

In a way that line is as devastating as Walter White saying after he returns home after Hank’s murder and Skyler attacks him in his hall saying: “We’re a family.” In that moment, the lie that he told himself for five seasons finally dissolved. In that same sense Kim has realized a larger truth and knows that the only thing she can do right now is leave.

And when she does, she commits murder. The next scene is a flashforward of an indeterminate amount of time. We are in the mansion of Saul Goodman, who awakes next to an escort, no doubt the latest in a long series. For the rest of the episode, we see Saul in action, and it's everything we remember him being from when we first met him in Breaking Bad, loud, obnoxious, completely just saying lines of bombast and bluster. At one point, we hear an ad for him on the radio and he calls the station, threatening to sue if they don’t make his voice louder. He walks into his office, takes out a neck brace, hands his secretary, already frustrated with him, and sits behind his desk.

When Kim left his life, Jimmy McGill died. The memorial service was as much as a memorial for Jimmy as it was for him, and now that Kim is gone, there is no one left from the old life of Jimmy McGill. He is Saul Goodman, for better and worse. I’m really not sure we need another four episodes to see what will happen the rest of the way, but considering that some critics consider that the last four episodes of Breaking Bad could each serve as an ending for it; I imagine there will be just as many who consider ‘Fun and Games’ a similar one.

And quite a lot of what happened outside the realm of Jimmy and Kim was a matter of cleanup. Gus went to the cartel to talk with Don Eladio and the remainder of the Salamanca clan about Lalo’s murder. Hector made his accusation and Gus, knowing full well it was true, didn’t even acknowledge it. Don Eladio listened, dismissed it, and said goodbye to Gus. “You know what I saw in your eyes, Gustavo. Hate. A little of it is good.” None of the people there know of course that all of them will meet their ends because of Gus; Eladio doesn’t know he will die outside the very swimming pool just a few years later. Gus returns home and demands constructions of the Superlab resume, not knowing that he’s digging his own grave.

Mike returns home and tries to resume normality, but the guilt he feels about the fate of Nacho plagues him. He finds himself going to the home of Mr. Varga, and essentially telling him the fate of his son, that his father will be protected, and that there will be justice. He is hoping for some kind of absolution. Mr. Varga doesn’t give it to him. “It never ends,” he says dismissively. “You gangsters and your ‘justice’”, he says in Spanish. “You’re all the same.” There is a brilliant shot; Mike is behind a wire fence; Varga on the other side of it. The implication is clear; even though Mr. Varga is technically inside the fence, it’s Mike who’s trapped. The shot on Jonathan Banks’ face is stoic as always, but we know enough to know that he is still trapped and will never escape.

I’m not certain what the final four episodes have to tell us about what comes next; I know that we will see Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul soon, but I’m not sure yet. The real question is simple: what happens in those black and white flashforward that we have yet to see in the final season? How will Jimmy/Saul/Gene ‘handle’ his situation? Is he going to cross the one line we have never see him do in either series? And most importantly, why did he go to Omaha? We know that’s where Kim grew up, and it’s likely where she went back to. Is that the real reason he wants to handle things himself? And what will happen after he does?

 

 

Rest In Peace, Howard Hamlin (Lalo, Not So Much): Better Call Saul Final Episodes Recap 'Point and Shoot'

 

 

For those of us who were terrified to see how Jimmy and Kim would escape the jackpot situation they were in when Lalo showed up on their doorstep, casually shot the drunk Howard, and then just as calmly said: “Let’s talk” in the midseason finale  of Better Call Saul, the last two months have been close to an eternity. Even after all the stress I’ve been going through I still desperately needed to know how things would unfold as the final six episodes of Better Call Saul began. And last Monday proved it was worth the wait.

An understandably terrified Jimmy and Kim had to wait as Lalo calmly told Jimmy what he wanted him to do. He gave directions to him about a house to drive too, told him to walk up to the front door, ring the bell, and just ‘point and shoot’. He was going to just walk in and start killing until Gus Fring was dead. Then he would take a picture of it, and he would come back. If he didn’t get it done in an hour, Kim was dead. Even in the most terrifying situation in his life (to that point) Jimmy managed to use his ability to BS to convince Lalo to let Kim make the drive and do the task. After several seconds of back and forth, Lalo allowed it to happen. I’m still not sure of the reasoning there. Did Jimmy do it simply to save Kim’s life or did he honestly believe he might find a way to talk Lalo out of it? Considering Lalo’s actions it’s pretty clear he merely considered the two of them pawns, and knowing everything we do about him, it’s pretty certain that no matter what happened, he had no intention of letting either of them survive the night. Lalo, as we now know, had bigger fish – or maybe chicken is the better word – to fry.

In a terrifying sustained four minute sequence, we saw Kim drive to Gus Fring’s house. There wasn’t a single word uttered in the interim, and Rhea Seehorn – in case we needed more proof – demonstrated how brilliant an actress she is just by expressing the terror in her face all the way there, especially in a thirty second period where a police car pulled up alongside her and we saw her frantically weighing all the options in her mind. She made it to the house and walked up to the front door, and even though given what we saw in the last five minutes of the mid-season finale, it was inevitable what would happen, it still came as a shock when Kim was grabbed off the stoop.

Mike then managed to calm Kim down before he got her to speak. (Another sign that Jimmy made the right choice in sending her; there’s no way Jimmy could have maintained enough sanity to say what he needed to.) Kim conveyed why she was here – and we finally got to see Mike in action. He moved with efficiency through the underground passage, commanding forces as the ex-cop he was, and ordered Gus not to move. In a fascinating sequence, Gus asked Kim why she had come instead of Jimmy and Kim said her husband had talked Lalo into it. It’s one of the few times in the nearly ten years we’ve known Gus that he looked truly stunned by something. Then again, he may have had an inkling what was coming.

The moment Mike’s forces left, Lalo – who had left Jimmy tied up and had been hiding in the car a block away – ran into the Laundromat. Gus, who clearly knew what was coming and in a rare dropping of security that only the Salamanca’s bring out in him, ordered two of his men to come with him to the Laundromat. And this time, it nearly killed him

Gus knew what Lalo was planning and he picked up on the sign, but Lalo managed to get a drop on the Chicken Man killing his guards and seeing that he had body armor on. It was very clear that he had every intention of killing Gus, but he was still following Hector’s advice and was determined to get the proof. He directed Gus to take him to the hidden tunnel where the Superlab was being built. Gus refused initially – and Lalo shot him in the chest. Only his body armor kept him from meeting his end before Walter White would take him out in the future (and, knowing how Breaking Bad works, in the past).

There are those who think that Lalo, who demonstrated such cleverness throughout the last two seasons, seemed to fall prey to that all-too-common cliché of the talking villain, something that didn’t seem to jive with every brilliant move he’d made to this point. I would only point out that was a mitigated by Gus’ decision to play – for what would be the only time in his entire life – the exact same role when he made his final statement. And to be clear, it was magnificent.

Gus Fring has spent his entire career – both on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul – putting up a façade of restraint. In this scene he managed to give a statement that was as much a stall as well a complete mission statement going forward. He made it very clear that he thought everyone in the cartel, including his boss, had no vision for what they intended to do. And he express in genuine rage his pure and hatred for the Salamanca’s, including his plan to destroy the entire family and save Hector for last – something that we know he would eventually carry out. It was a stall to destroy the lights and get a gun that he had stashed there weeks ago, but it was as pure a moment of honesty we’ll ever see from. Esposito deserves a nomination, if not the Emmy itself for that scene. He managed to kill Lalo, of course, but even at his end Lalo was smiling. Out of admiration for being outplayed? Who knows?

In the aftermath, of course, Mike was furious. (The scene where Gus calls the manager of Pollos Hermanos and tells the manager of ‘a family emergency’, making plans to handle the shop’ all the while being treated by a doctor for the bullet wound he had obtained, is pure Vince Gilligan.) The relationship between Mike and Gus is usually solid, even though it has its ups and down over the years, but this may be the angriest we’ve ever seen Mike be at his boss. “Are you happy with the way things turned out tonight?” he tells him. “Because I’m not.” For Mike to Gus, that’s practically calling him a moron. This demonstrates the clear blind spot Gus has always had towards Hector and fundamentally confirms something many fans of the series have suspected – if Mike had not been recovering from his injuries in ‘Face-Off’, there is no way Gus would have ever been able to walk into Casa Tranquila and meet his maker.

In the final minutes, Mike returned to Jimmy and Kim’s condo. There’s a certain measure of things coming full circle in the scene that followed. When we first met Mike way back at the Season 2 finale of Breaking Bad, Saul had called him in to help clean up the scene of Jesse’s home after Jane’s death, walking through a basically numb Jesse as to what will happen when the police show up. Now we see him removing Howard’s body into a refrigerator box and telling the equally (if not more so) numb Kim and Jimmy about what’s going to happen the next few days. Howard’s car is going to be driven a few hundreds mile away, it will seem like he has committing suicide due to his erratic behavior the last few weeks. (Neither Kim nor Jimmy react when Mike tells them this was their plan all along.) He tells him what the police will do going forward, that Howard’s body will never be found, and that they must act completely normal the next few days. Then he tells them both that they have to clean up and get dressed to go to work as if the horrors of the night before have never happened. Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn have almost no lines of dialogue in this scene, but their work is as great as ever, as they dumbly listen, accept the facts as they have been told – as well as the consequences of their actions – and then quietly and calmly tell Mike what they’ll need to get through the day.

And in the last scene of the episode, we see the final resting places of Howard Hamlin and Lalo Salamanca – just as Lalo said before his death, the place has become a tomb, but he’s going to be buried in it instead of Gus. Mike is calm and quiet through all this. The only emotion he shows during the entire scene is when he thinks two of his associates are being too rough with Howard’s body and he sees ‘Easy’. That, and the moment he spends looking over the bodies before he leaves, is sad in a way so many of the deaths in Breaking Bad have never been.

Howard Hamlin was never a bad guy. He was a man who spent the first half of Better Call Saul under the shadow of Chuck McGill and because he did, Jimmy bore a lifetime of enmity towards him. He spent the next two seasons trying to do the right thing, only to become a pawn in the manipulations of Kim and Jimmy. Now his career and reputation have been destroyed, and he is dead for the simple fact of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And even in death, he will now become a cautionary tale more than anything else. He is a true victim of Saul Goodman’s rise to power. The fact that Saul will be fall in turn makes it all the more tragic.

If there is a flaw in ‘Point and Shoot’ it is mainly in context of Breaking Bad. Given everything we have seen Jimmy go through in the past two seasons in connection with Lalo, it is hard to fathom that he would willingly go anywhere near Mike, Gus or the cartel again, much less really think that just by guiding Walter and Jesse to them in Season 2 that there could be anything like a good result. Some will say that this event may end up drawing Kim and Jimmy closer together, but given what she has witnessed in the last twenty-four hours I think it far more likely that this will be the breaking point between them. I will have to watch the next few episodes to be sure, but I feel safe in predicting that Kim, who was the always the more realistic one in the relationship, will want to get out while there’s still a chance to survive.

This is one of the most superbly acted and directed episodes of 2022 so far, and it shows us that Better Call Saul is working up to one hell of an ending. It shows that Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn earned the Emmy nominations they got this week and demonstrates yet again the folly in the Emmys refusal to acknowledge either Giancarlo Esposito or Jonathan Banks. We know what the end is for everybody else on the series, including for Saul Goodman. But what I care about most is how does it end for Jimmy…and Kim.

My Reactions To This Year's Emmy Nominations, Conclusion: Some of the Limited Series Nominees Showed How Limited The Emmy Can Be

 

I’m not quite as upset about the nominations for Limited Series as I am about the appalling selections for Drama, but it’s a near thing.

Let’s start with the fact that other organizations – like the Broadcast Critics and the HCA – allow six nominees for Limited Series (as we saw with the latter, that’s actually twelve) and that the Emmys is still, after the immense expansion in the Limited Series market over the past six years, still stuck on five. I knew that there some deserving series were going to be left out. Even allowing for that codicil, the selections this year are still very disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong: The White Lotus more than deserves the nominations it got (though perhaps they overdid it when it came to the acting awards). Dopesick more than earned the nominations it got, and having basically binged the first four episodes of The Dropout in a week and a half, I’m actually irked it got fewer nominations then it did. But the other two choices appall me.

I can’t for the life of me understand why the Emmys fundamentally chose to ignore Scenes from a Marriage or Landscapers – two far superior HBO dramas that told stories about a married couple – in favor of Inventing Anna  a series that fundamentally was barely liked by many critics or audiences. This is a story that could have been told in far fewer parts and wasn’t well liked. The aura of Shondaland is frankly the only reason this series got nominated.

But that slight pales to the unconscionable decision to give eleven nominations including Best Limited Series to Pam and Tommy, a series that had no business for existing and who’s story could have been far better told in a two-hour movie. This decision becomes particularly appalling when you consider the options the Emmys had. I can understand in principle why Gaslit was overlooked – the Emmys seem incapable of acknowledging the existence of Starz.  And while I thought Impeachment was a far superior series, I gave a full list as to why I expecting it to be shafted by the Emmys. (I’m actually kind of impressed the Emmy actually gave it some major nominations.)

But to give the nomination to Pam and Tommy over such a remarkable series as Maid appalls me to its core. Maid is exactly the kind of story that the Emmys love. Based on the nominations it has received from the Golden Globes, the Critics Choice and the HCA, it seemed an inevitability. And yet, for all intents and purposes, the heartfelt and realistic story it told was overshadowed by a comedy over a sex tape.  This isn’t as nearly as horrific an omission as ignoring This is Us was, but it’s pretty hard to justify. I have not watched Pam and Tommy I will confess, but nothing I have heard about it makes it seem like it would be worth my time, and I’m not entirely sure I have the wherewithal to watch it even now. Just like the nominations for Euphoria, this is a case of the Emmys acknowledging the superficial over the substantive.

That said there are some things about the nominations I do like. To reiterate my opinions about Limited Series nominations would be superfluous, so let’s continue to acting.

 

OUTSTANDING ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES

Michael Keaton and Oscar Isaac were among my favorites for this category. I expected Andrew Garfield to be nominated for Under the Banner of Heaven. I think I’ve made it clear that I’m kind of appalled at the nomination of Sebastian Stan for Pam and Tommy. I’m willing to give a certain amount of latitude involving Colin Firth because honestly there weren’t enough good series with male leads.

I’m honestly not sure why Himesh Patel was nominated for Station Eleven over Sean Penn for Gaslit. But trust me; I’ve got a bigger rant ahead of me.

 

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR MOVIE

Margaret Qualley and Amanda Seyfried I have absolutely no problem with. I honestly didn’t think Sarah Paulson had a chance in hell for getting nominated for her superb work as Linda Tripp on Impeachment.

The other three…no. Toni Collette is a great actress, but there’s no way her work is anywhere near the level of Michelle Pfeiffer or for that matter, Gillian Anderson or Viola Davis in The First Lady. Julia Garner is a major talent, but compared to Julia Roberts in Gaslit, not even in the same zip code. And any Emmy voter who saw Jessica Chastain’s work in Scenes from a Marriage and decided, no, I like Lily James better, needs their membership revoked immediately. Renee Zellweger would have been a better choice, but the Emmys didn’t like Pam apparently.

 

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Now we have the issue of frontloading so many major series. I have absolutely no problem with Murray Bartlett for The White Lotus, or Steve Zahn, or, if I’m being totally honest, even Jake Lacy. Similarly, I’m thrilled that Michael Stuhlbarg was nominated for Dopesick as well as Peter Sarsgaard and Will Poulter. (Well, Poulter might be a bit much.) That being said, I would have been far happier if Poulter or Lacy had been left out for say, Naveen Andrews or William H. Macy for The Dropout or Nick Robinson for Maid or either Dan Stevens or Shea Whigham on Gaslit. It goes without saying how I feel about Seth Rogen’s presence. I admire his work, I really do, but he doesn’t belong here.

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES

Now we seem to have overkill when it comes to The White Lotus. I’m perfectly fine with Connie Britton and Jennifer Coolidge being nominated. I honestly hoped that Natasha Rothwell would get nominated for something this year, and she did give one of the few utterly sincere performances in The White Lotus.

From then on, the credibility is thinner. Alexandra Daddario was interesting to watch at times, but she wasn’t that captivating and Sydney Sweeney did even less for me here than in Euphoria. Neither of them holds a candle to the work Andie MacDowell did on Maid, whose being ignored is nearly as appalling as giving James a nomination over Roberts or Chastain.

I honestly have no problem with either of the nominees for Dopesick. I gave a strong argument for Kaitlyn Dever and I would have made a push for Mare Winningham’s work had I not thought it far more likely that Rosario Dawson would be chosen instead.  I just really think that, along with Supporting Actor, the Emmys seem to have forgotten there were more than two Limited Series.

 

As for TV Movie, I’m glad to see that Ray Donovan and Zoey’s Extraordinary Christmas were nominated. Will they both probably end up losing to The Survivor? Maybe. But I do appreciate the fact that the Emmys were at least willing to honor them.

I am grateful that Maid did get nominations for Directing and Writing and Impeachment for the latter, which was more than I expected. The nominations Dopesick and The Dropout got were more than valid. And it is very telling that Pam and Tommy didn’t get a nomination in either category.

As for Nonfiction, I am glad to see David Letterman and Jon Stewart back in the ranks, and as for Variety Talk, I’m overjoyed that the Emmys finally saw the light and nominated Seth Meyers over Bill Maher. Of course, John Oliver will almost certainly win again, but I’ve watched all five nominees. None of them are bad choices. Now can you please find room for Desus and Mero next year?

 

Eventually, I’ll get to the predictions, but I’m saying upfront. I will be following the HCA awards in August with far more delight and anticipation. As is the case with so many past years, trying to predict the winners this September will be more like an obligation than a joy.

 

My Reactions To This Year's Emmy Nominations, Part 2: Drama, and I'm not Just Talking About the Nominated shows

Let’s deal with by far the biggest problem with the nominations for Dramas this year. Besides the usual shutout of brilliant series like Evil and The Good Fight, the continued pretense that Big Sky doesn’t exist, the fact that Yellowstone doesn’t seem to even register on the Emmys radar. It is the inexplicable decision to basically pretend that the final season of This is Us did not happen.  And there are some very clear reasons as to why.

I can accept if not understand why the Emmys decided to recognize with more than twenty nominations Succession, a series where the fact that everybody is horrible and nothing ever happens are apparently selling points. I can comprehend why Ozark, despite the general dislike of it by millions was recognized for its final season – as I’ve said multiple times that it is the definition of an Emmy bait series. But the nominations for Euphoria – both for Best Drama and Zendaya over Mandy Moore – appall me. They didn’t come as a complete shock – when the HCA nominated it last week, I had to accept it as a probability. But somehow I had thought that a series that recognized the fundamental goodness in people, that had its characters suffer through real crises, not hyperimagined ones, where every single character was a real human being and not the equivalent of a caricature, where the torment we have gone through with was earned and not utterly manufactured, and perhaps most importantly, was one of the greatest series of all time in its final season could somehow earn nominations over a series like Euphoria which – as I described in detail yesterday – is a parody of what most people HBO dramas are without having to watch them. Apparently, I was mistaken.

I don’t know if Euphoria is the worst series to ever be nominated by the Emmys for Best Drama. I haven’t seen nearly enough series. But the decision to nominated in and so many of its cast and writers over This Is Us has to rank as one of the worst collective decision the Academy has ever made, right up there with basically deciding to shaft The Wire, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Battlestar Galactica. I’d actually argue its worse because none of those series ever had the advantage of incumbency which guarantees that once you get in, you’re in for life. The decision to shaft This is Us for so many inferior series with so many more likable characters and realistic situations in it has made it clear the path the Emmys will make going forward when it comes to dramas. I don’t just mean the decision to emphasis the dystopian and depressing or the best in broadcast over the worst in cable, which they made years ago. No, it’s the fundamental decision that the struggles of the every man and the average family, no matter how realistic or human they are, will always come in second to the superficial and the awful.

I may rethink this decision in years to come – the signs of voters loving kindness in comedies such as Ted Lasso last year and Abbott Elementary this year may point a way forward. But the fundamental decision of the Emmys to ignore the brilliance of similar themed dramas like A Million Little Things does not leave me feeling hopeful. The end of This is Us was the end of an era. And the Emmys chose, much as they did with The Good Wife several years earlier, to pretend it was irrelevant.

End of the second rant. I will now move on to my reactions to the individual nominations, but there will be a fair amount of venting going forward.

 

OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES

I’ve already vented about three of the choices. As for the rest. I have absolutely no problem with Better Call Saul or Yellowjackets; I predicted the nominations of Squid Game and Stranger Things, and I will later this month, finally get around to watching Severance. As to the rest, well I’ve ranted about those series for months and no doubt will again about two of them. You know the series that I thought were superior that were shafted. At this point, I don’t have the heart to say anything else.

 

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES

Now, to be clear four of the six nominated actors I thought would recognized were. I really wanted Bob Odenkirk and Adam Scott to be nominated, I expected Jeremy Strong and Lee Jung-Jae to be nominated, and its really not much of a stretch to think that Brian Cox would have.

Now I admit it was always a strong likelihood, a near certainty in fact that Jason Bateman would be nominated for Ozark. The question becomes, why couldn’t they have found room for Sterling Brown who has been nominated for This is Us every year the series has been eligible. I don’t know who you could have justifiably left out; I acknowledge what a strong field this is, and that’s before you consider the shut out of Kevin Costner. Couldn’t the Emmy have found a way? I just don’t know.

 

OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

Let’s just set Zendaya aside for now; I made it very clear when I went through this category a month ago that she was going to be nominated whether I liked it or not. I also was fine with Laura Linney and Sandra Oh being nominated; I advocated for both of them. I wanted Melanie Lynskey to be nominated for Yellowjackets and I’m overjoyed she was. (Juliette Lewis was a pipe dream.) But how can the Emmys justify overlooking Mandy Moore?

Jodie Comer, I understand why she was nominated even though Killing Eve was basically shutout the rest of the way. And as someone who was thoroughly angered at how Reese Witherspoon went 0 for 3 in the 2019-2020 season, I would be fine with her being nominated. Hell, I’m actually happier she was chosen over Jennifer Aniston who I thought would be nominated. But…couldn’t they have waited another year? Witherspoon and Aniston will have other opportunities. This was Moore’s last chance, and now its gone. I may never forgive the Emmys for this. The Gilded Age…there will be more chances.

 

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA

All right, they expanded it to eight nominees which I’m grateful. Let’s pick it apart.

Kieran Culkin and Matthew MacFayden, I advocated for both of them even though I don’t like Succession. Billy Crudup, I’m fine with that.

I think the biggest problem I have is that three shows took seven of the nominations. I’ll withhold my commentary on John Turturro and Christopher Walken until after I see Severance, but I don’t foresee much of a problem. Both the actors from Squid Game; I will have to watch a lot of it to be sure. But what is it that so many people see in Nicholas Braun on Succession?

Perhaps the real issue is that there isn’t a single nomination for any of the brilliant actors on Better Call Saul. Giancarlo Esposito can get nominated for all of his other series but not Saul. The window for Jonathan Banks keeps closing. And I’ll admit Michael Mando’s nomination was a longshot but after the HCA I had hope. Emmys, this is where you blew it the most. But at least you didn’t nominate Eric Dane.

 

OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA

Honestly this category I have very few problems with any of the nominees.

Understandably I’m over the moon that Rhea Seehorn was (finally!) nominated for her work on Better Call Saul. I am just as elated that Christina Ricci was nominated for her work on Yellowjackets. I had hoped that J. Smith Cameron would join Sarah Snook as a nominee from Succession. I expected that both Jung Ho-Yeon for Squid Game and Julia Garner for Ozark would be nominated. I might find it in my heart to see the reason behind Patricia Arquette’s nomination for Severance when I see the series.

What do people see in Sydney Sweeney? And to be specific, what does she have that Millie Bobby Brown or Sadie Sink on Stranger Things and Susan Kalechi Watson or Chrissy Metz on This Is Us apparently don’t in the eyes of the Emmys? It’s not as inexplicable as the love for Zendaya but its close.

 

Guest Actor and Guest Actress in a Drama…to quote Bill Murray whenever he was asked to consider the winners in Supporting Actor and Actress for the Oscars: “Who cares?” I certainly can’t bring myself to. Seven nominees from Succession; two from Euphoria. I can’t even bring myself to work up enthusiasm for such actors I admire as Alexander Skarsgard or Hope Davis because of the series they’re nominated for. Usually I love watching the Guest Actors and Actress on the Creative Arts Emmys. This year, I may change the channel.

As for directing: I will pull for Yellowjackets and Severance. And in writing, I will hope that the midseason finale for Better Call Saul will finally get it an Emmy over the series finale for Ozark and the season finale for Succession. I’m not optimistic though.

 

Tomorrow I will wrap things up by covering Limited Series and a few more errata. I have to tell you, I’m only marginally happier with the choices there.