Television

Justified Returns!

justifiedseason4

Justified returns tonight on FX to begin its fourth season, and to this I say: Hoo. Ray. TV critics can fight one another all year long to prove who loves Breaking Bad or Homeland more, but for me, Justified is the best-written and most enjoyable show on TV. There’s a number of reasons why Justified is so great: the casting is top notch, the performances are routinely excellent, both the season-long arcs and the case-of-the-week stories are interesting, fun, and surprising, but most of all, the writing is just thoroughly fantastic.

Here’s one example of a single scene that, to me, sums up what is so special about the way Justified is written.

In a Season Three episode, Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) had paid a visit to a recurring bad guy, Wynn Duffy (played by the enjoyable Jere Burns). They’d clashed before, and Raylan had run him out of town with a warning to never come back. At this latest meeting, Raylan knocked Duffy down, ejected a bullet from his gun, and dropped it on Duffy’s chest. As a threat, Raylan said: “The next one’s coming faster.”

Now, that’s a cool thing to do and say, but doing a cool thing and saying a cool thing is hardly groundbreaking for a hero cop on TV. The creators of Justified, however, don’t just leave it at that.

Several episodes later, Wynn Duffy and his boss, Robert Quarles (Neal McDonough) try to frame Raylan by leaving the shell casing from Raylan’s bullet, with his fingerprints on it, at the scene of a murder. A homicide detective, an FBI agent, and Raylan’s boss, Art (Tom Searcy) question Raylan about this shell casing and how it wound up with his fingerprints on it. Let’s watch!

In case that video has been removed by FOX or Vimeo, here’s a transcript of the scene:

FBI Agent: “You’re in the motor coach, with Robert Quarles and Winn Duffy, there’s a bodyguard out front, but that still doesn’t explain to me how you got your fingerprints on a bullet casing.”

Raylan: “I threw a bullet at him.”

Homicide Detective: “You threw a bullet at him.”

Raylan: “Yeah.”

FBI Agent: “Wait. You… threw a bullet at him?”

Raylan: “No-no, I, like… dropped it.”

FBI Agent: “On the floor?”

Raylan: “On Duffy.”

FBI Agent: “So, Duffy was on the floor.”

Raylan: “Yes.”

Homicide Detective: “You failed to mention that, Deputy.”

Raylan: “Well, I’m… mentioning it now.”

Homicide Detective: “How’d he get on the floor, I wonder?”

Raylan: “Look, you wanted to know how my prints got on the casing, now you know. Okay?”

FBI Agent: “Wait, why-why did you throw a bullet at him?”

Raylan: “I was trying to make a point.”

Homicide Detective: “Which was?”

Raylan: “Get the hell out of Kentucky, and don’t come back.”

FBI Agent: “How was throwing a bullet at him going to accomplish that?”

Raylan: “Told him the next one might be coming a little faster.”

FBI Agent: *Long pause* “Deputy. That might just be the coolest thing I’ve ever laid ears on.” *Laughs*

Art: “Did you come up with that all on your own?”

Raylan: “Heard it on the Johnny Carson show once. He was telling some old gangster story, I always thought it was kinda cool.”

FBI Agent: “Well, that just gets better and better, huh?”

Homicide Detective: “It’d be a lot better and a lot cooler if it had actually worked.”

FBI Agent: *Laughs* “But still!” *Pauses* “It’s a shame we have to lock you up.”

To me, that’s just brilliance. There’s no shortage of cop shows on TV, and no shortage of cops doing and saying cool things. But now we have a cop doing something cool and saying something cool, and then later having to explain it, step-by-step, almost deflating the coolness of the act for the audience, who witnessed it the first time. Then, another cop sits back and admits how cool he thinks it is. Which is rare: again, people are always saying and doing cool things on TV, but how often does anyone actually point out how cool the cool things are? And finally, Raylan somewhat sheepishly has to admit that he’s not cool enough to have thought up the cool thing by himself, but that he heard it on an old episode of Carson.

Coolness. Deconstruction of coolness. Acknowledgement of coolness. Admitting coolness isn’t quite as cool as it seemed. I love it. To me, that scene is the best bit of writing to come out of TV last year, and that kind of writing is what makes Justified the best show on TV.

Movies | Television

Movies I’ll Always Watch If They’re On

I was flipping around the TV channels tonight, and saw they were showing Predator on AMC. Well, that’s my evening, right there. I’ll always watch Predator. Always. If it’s half-over, if it’s just starting, if it’s the final few minutes… if it’s on, I’m watching it. If it’s on again tomorrow night, I’ll probably try to catch the parts I missed tonight, and depending on my laziness, I might just watch the parts I didn’t miss tonight, again. I think everyone probably has a few movies that, if they come across them on TV, they’ll always watch, no matter what.

These movies are generally not even what I necessarily consider my favorite movies. I tend not to own these movies on DVD (I don’t own Predator). A few of my favorite movies that I own —Blade Runner, Brazil, Seven, Das Boot, L.A. Confidential, No Country for Old Men — I rarely watch, maybe once every couple years. And I don’t watch them on if they’re on TV.

While I was watching Predator, I started trying to picture a movie channel line-up filled with my Always Watch movies that would keep me on the couch a full 24 hours because I can never pass up watching any of them. Here’s what I came up with.

What’s on your Always Watch line-up?

KNIGHT RIDER | Television

Deadly Maneuvers

I’m watching the 80’s TV show Knight Rider on Netflix, and it only now occurs to me that Knight Rider is probably considered science fiction. I mean, there’s an intelligent talking car, right? That’s science fiction. But it feels more like a shoddy detective show about a pretty incompetent detective. Anyway, on to the episode!

Season 1, Episode 3: Deadly Maneuvers

En route to a mission, Michael Knight stops to help an Army lieutenant, Robin Ladd, who is having car trouble. He drives her to her Army base where she finds out her Army father has been killed after driving off a cliff. Robin points out that her dad was good at driving, and that she couldn’t remember a single instance of him driving off a cliff and dying before. Seems fishy. The investigation begins.

After finding a spent shell casing near the crash site, Michael bribes a food truck owner to borrow his apron and paper hat, so he can infiltrate the Army base disguised as a giant handsome food-selling person. Predictably, his shitty disguise fools no one and he’s immediately arrested by military police.

Luckily, his interrogation takes place in an office that contains a single folder that might as well be labeled “THAT ARMY LADY’S FATHER AND HOW HE DIED IN A CRASH”. He gives the MP’s free candy bars, knowing they will weirdly walk into a corner and face the wall to eat. They do, and Michael slyly takes the folder, which mentions that Robin’s dad had blue paint on his hands when he died.

Michael and Robin go to dinner, they joke and chat about a few things, and eventually get around to discussing the details of her father’s recent horrible tragic murder. They quickly decide that spending part of an afternoon investigating was plenty, and that they should just give up. However, some evil Army guys try to kill Michael that night, so he reopens the case.

We then meet KITT’s mechanic, Bonnie, who, as a ten-year old Knight Rider viewer, I decided was the most beautiful woman in existence. I had a major crush on Bonnie. I pretty much spent all my free time fantasizing that Bonnie and I would get married, she’d fix my talking car, and I WOULD KISS HER MOUTH WITH MY MOUTH.

Can I run my fingers through your hair? It will take a while.

Michael breaks into the ammunition bunker at the Army base. Well, he walks into the ammunition bunker. Hey, here are some facts about the ammunition bunker.

  • It is completely unguarded
  • It is completely unlocked
  • It contains several hundred crates of artillery shells.

Here are some facts about the artillery shells.

  • The armor piercing artillery shells are painted with a blue stripe
  • The tactical nuclear artillery shells are painted with a yellow stripe
  • There is otherwise no way to tell the difference between the two types of WAIT DID I JUST SAY TACTICAL NUCLEAR ARTILLERY SHELLS
  • Yes, I did.
  • Did I mention they were kept in an unlocked unguarded room in a bunch of crates? Okay.

Still with me? Michael discovers that blue paint was used to cover up yellow paint on some nuke shells, and that a bunch of evil Army guys were smuggling the painted nukes out to sell them, and that Robin’s dad was killed when he discovered the plan. Robin, meanwhile, is snooping around, and gets locked in a tank on the ordinance testing range by her evil Army boss. Michael then drives KITT out onto the artillery range to save Robin, while stock footage of artillery guns shoot at them.

The Army general running the evil scheme orders three heat-seeking missiles fired at KITT, because heat seeking missiles can hone in on warm car engines, I guess? Michael uses KITT’s “rocket booster”, which I assume is different than his turbo boost, because it doesn’t launch KITT in the air, it just makes him poop out flames onto some grass, distracting two of the heat seekers.

Trivia: KITT is the first sentient car to light a fart on national television, paving the way for countless others

The third heat seeker blows up the food truck from the beginning of the show, which is putting out extra heat because of a broken thermostat. Look, I don’t know, I can’t explain, I’m just reporting this to you. Michael rescues Robin, and chases the general who is trying to escape in a giant slow-moving tank. KITT poops fire onto it, melting the treads, and the general is caught. The episode ends with KITT sporting a “GO ARMY!” bumper sticker, because the producers of Knight Rider want to let the Army know that they really do like the Army, despite depicting them in this episode as a network of lying murdering nuke-smuggling terrorists.

MICHAEL’S INCOMPETENCE: LOW
Disguises himself as food vendor, fools no one, is immediately arrested, but at least manages to steal a file.

MICHAEL’S ROMANCE: LOW
Walks arm-in-arm with Lieutenant Robin Ladd, but doesn’t get a kiss.

KITT’S POWERS:
Video game console (Michael plays a racing game while KITT drives), rocket booster (poops fire)

KNIGHT RIDER | Television

Knight of the Phoenix, Part 2

Season 1, Episode 2: Knight of the Phoenix, Part 2

How can we tell Knight Rider was made in the early 1980’s? When Michael escorts a waitress to a demolition derby, and her young son Buddy immediately disappears, no one is worried. “He’ll turn up,” Michael says, showing off his crack investigative skills by turning his head slightly to the left for one second to look around. Such an innocent, carefree decade, when a young boy could wander away at a crowded auto race and nobody immediately jumped to the conclusion that he’d been abducted/run over.

Another sign of the 80’s: Michael often has the sleeves of his leather jacket pushed up to mid-forearm.

We did this with our blazers and sport coats, too. God, we were terrible.

Anyway, in Part 2 of the series premiere, Michael Knight and KITT are hot on the trail of a gang of evil Silicon Valley masterminds who brutally murder cops, callously commit acts of industrial espionage, and fiendishly sponsor demolition derbies for charity. Michael and KITT have entered the race and Buddy, the irascible scamp that he is, has stowed away in KITT’s back seat and pops up mid-derby. KITT finally starts pulling his weight as a super-science car by driving on two wheels, which has the strange scientific side-effect of making Michael suddenly appear to be a heavyset middle-aged stunt driver wearing a giant black wig over a helmet.

Buddy, meanwhile, has turned into a mannequin who is, inexplicably, also wearing a giant black wig

More of KITT’s science powers are revealed during the derby, like oil slicks and smoke screens, plus the turbo boost (though it’s not called the turbo boost yet) which allows him to launch himself through the air as if flying off a ramp. All of the other cars get smashed up, Michael wins the race, and he tells the evil Tanya (the woman who shot him) that he’s interested in selling his science car, hoping to lure her into a trap. Tanya discusses it with her evil partner, and they agree that, yeah, Michael is definitely a cop.

Michael stops to use a pay phone (80’s!) to call Devon Miles, and the comical hoodlums from Part 1 show up and steal KITT. KITT drives them to a police station, where he demonstrates yet another power, the ability to throw ethnic caricatures out of himself using slide-whistle technology.

After some good-natured bickering that will become their hallmark, Michael and KITT head to a bar where Michael gets into a fight with all the other derby drivers. Another 80’s staple of television and film is utilized, as the fight is just a montage of goons getting thrown through doors, across tables, and onto floors, with no actual shots of punching. Michael is arrested and KITT is towed to COMTRON (the evil company) headquarters.

Michael’s response to being pestered by this guy: “Sit and spin.” Burn.

KITT escapes COMTRON by driving through a window, then bashes through the prison wall to free Michael. They drive back to COMTRON, and KITT ejects Michael onto a ten-story roof, this time silently (I guess the slide-whistle only works on minorities?). Michael reveals to Tanya that he is really Michael Long, and a security guard shoots him in the shoulder. He overpowers another guard named Baker and takes his uniform to fool everyone into thinking he is Baker, a clever ruse that works for literally zero seconds. Seriously, his plan fails so immediately it must be seen to be believed:

I love this for two reasons. First, it’s always good to see a classic good-guy plan shut down before it can begin. Secondly, the evil murdering boss is familiar enough with his security thugs that he not only knows their names, he can recognize their voices. It’s sweet. I bet every time he comes in for an evil day of work, he says “Morning, Baker! How’s Francine and little Emily?” And he’s genuinely interested, because he’s the evil boss who cares.

Michael escapes the building and is immediately captured by yet another guard, but KITT comes to the rescue. They drive to the airport to catch the evil COMTRON people, who send a fleet of evil truck drivers to intercept them, but KITT just turbo-boosts through one truck and over another. At the airport, Michael crashes KITT into the fleeing COMTRON jet, disabling it. Tanya runs over to KITT and tries to shoot Michael in the face again, but the bullet bounces off KITT’s window and kills her instead. The cops arrive and arrest all the bad people. Michael decides being a crime fighter with a talking car is a good idea, and the deceased Wilton Knight uses The Force to talk inside Michael’s head, reminding him that one man CAN make a difference.

In these episodes, KITT’s body and interior constantly look smudged and filthy. Will they hire someone to wipe him down between takes in later shows? Discuss.

Tally for the premiere episodes:

MICHAEL’S INCOMPETENCE: HIGH
He’s shot in the face, drives through a wall, falls asleep at the wheel, blows his cover, loses a boy, has his car stolen, gets arrested for brawling, allows KITT to be towed, gets shot again, strips a guard naked to steal his uniform and fools absolutely no one, and gets caught by another guard. Not a great start.

MICHAEL’S ROMANCE: LOW
Gets a kiss on the cheek from a waitress.

KITT’S POWERS:
Collision detection, two-wheel driving, oil slick, smoke screen, turbo boost (x4), ejection system (with comical whistle for ethnics), bulletproof everything, dual sunroof

KNIGHT RIDER | Television

Knight of the Phoenix, Part 1

I recently noticed that the 1980’s television show Knight Rider is on Netflix Instant. I was about 10 when this show came out, and I loved it, because what wasn’t to love? David Hasselhoff as Michael Knight was cool, wore a leather jacket, had huge hair, solved crimes for pretty ladies and then kissed them, and drove a talking black Pontiac Trans Am named KITT that was made out of SCIENCE. For a little boy, the only thing that could have made Knight Rider any better would have been if Michael Knight had also had a pet dinosaur.

I watched it religiously back then, but I’m sad to say I don’t remember a heck of a lot of specific details about it now. It’s all sort of a vague, shadowy blur of turbo boosts, that vooh-vooh noise KITT makes when it thinks, and the recollection that Michael Knight and KITT both had evil twins at some point. So, I thought I might watch a few episodes to see if it’s actually a decent show, or if I was just a stupid kid.

Season 1, Episode 1: Knight of the Phoenix, Part 1

I’ve watched the opening few minutes of this show twice, and I still can’t tell what’s really going on. There’s Detective Michael Long, his partner (who is disguised as an electrician), a woman stealing secret plans from a casino hotel room, Michael’s boss who is working with Michael and also working with the thief-woman, an old gambler who Michael is protecting from something, and the old gambler’s wife who is working with Michael’s boss and the thief-woman. Everyone follows each other around and talks into wristwatch communicators, then Michael’s partner gets shot in the parking lot by Michael’s boss’s henchman, then Michael gets shot in the face by the old gambler’s wife in the desert. This all happens in about four minutes.

KNIGHT RIDER!

Michael is taken by helicopter to a sprawling mansion, where an old man named Wilton Knight gives Michael a new, surgically altered face, changes his last name to Knight, and has Michael Long declared dead, all without asking Michael’s permission. The plan: to turn Michael Knight into a crime fighter, a man capable of taking down the criminals the law can’t touch, by giving him a Trans Am filled with computers. Michael demonstrates to his new employer, Devon Miles, what a great choice he is for the task by immediately driving the car through a fucking wall.

Wilton Knight dies, Michael Knight puts on a red mock turtleneck and a black leather jacket, and heads out to find the woman who shot him, who is working in– as Devon puts it– “a place called Silicon Valley.” Ooh, sounds futuristic. En route, Michael discovers that his car can talk. The Knight Industries Two Thousand, or KITT, introduces himself, and Michael, rather than being completely amazed by his talking car, is just slightly annoyed. He tells KITT to shut up, drives away, and promptly falls asleep at the wheel. Luckily, KITT can drive himself, though there’s some comical business where Michael has to pretend he’s a deaf man with an injured neck to fool some cops who pull him over (I don’t really feel like explaining it any more than that).

KNIGHT RIDER!!!!!

Michael reaches Silicon Valley and visits a restaurant where the woman thief from the casino happens to be hanging out. He tries to slyly get some information from a hot waitress, arousing the suspicions of the thief, who calls the people who shot him, who immediately decide he must be a cop. Smooth, Michael. You’ve got a new name and a new face and yet you’ve been made six minutes after arriving in town. Meanwhile, in the parking lot, a duo of adorably offensive stereotypes spot KITT and excitedly plan to steal him later.

“JOO WANT TO STEEL THEES CAR, MANG?” “WORD, BRUTHA!”

Michael follows the waitress home where he discovers the same people who shot him also killed the waitress’s husband, and she and Michael team up to bring down the whole evil Silicon Valley crew. Michael meets the waitress’s son, Buddy, who says adorable TV kid things, like “Are you gonna marry my Mom?” causing everyone to smile, because kids, they’re such awkward dicks. Michael tries to figure a way to get closer to the people who shot him, and it turns out they’re sponsoring a demolition derby. Hey, that’s convenient, since he has an indestructible car and all. The demolition derby is tomorrow, also convenient, because if it had been, say, yesterday, he’d have to spend 364 days sitting around the waitresses’ shitty apartment, hoping like hell it was an annual event.

That’s the end of the first episode. Something I noticed about Michael Knight that completely escaped me as a kid: he’s ridiculously incompetent. In the space of forty minutes, he gets his face shot off, drives through a wall, falls asleep while driving, and blows his cover. I’ll have to keep an eye on this in future episodes, and see if he continues to be the worst secret detective agent with a talking car ever.

KITT doesn’t do much in this episode, but I remember, as a kid, being in awe of KITT’s digital speedometer. That seemed like the coolest thing back in 1982. I still don’t have a digital speedometer. My odometer is digital, but it’s not really that exciting.

Television

12 Things I Learned From The 2012 Olympic Games

The 2012 Olympics are OVER! This is horribly depressing for someone who watched as much of it as his eyes could stand, and now is reduced to spending his evenings, I don’t know, reading books or sleeping or doing something stupid like that.

Here’s what I learned from the 2012 Olympics:

Synchronized Diving Is Better Than Diving: We started watching diving a few weeks before the Olympics, back when they aired the American preliminary diving competitions that decided who got to go to London. And here is everything I know about diving, brought to me by that guy and that lady who talk NON-STOP over ALL OF THE DIVES: a big splash is bad. That’s it. That’s all I know. That’s what hours and hours of their constant talking have taught me. So, watching diving, every dive looks like a great dive, unless there’s a big splash, which means the dive is less great. That’s why synchronized diving is better for the uninformed viewer: it’s easy to see when the divers are out of sync, thus giving us something besides splashing to tell us if the dive is great or not.

Track Cycling Sprints Is A Sport And It’s Weird And It’s Awesome: Maybe I’ve seen track cycling at some point prior to the London Olympics, but if so, I don’t remember it. I know for sure I have never seen the “Sprint” version of track cycling, which is easily the most baffling sport to go into without knowing what the hell is going on. Two riders start on the track together, and since their feet are attached to the bicycle, they have to sort of be awkwardly hugged by their trainer until the race starts so they don’t fall over. Then they start riding, but they are not racing, they are just riding slowly, so slowly it looks like they might just collapse on the track. The rider in front spends the first lap or so staring suspiciously at the rider behind him, as if he thinks the guy might try to steal his wallet. This goes on for a while, as they circle the track at .0003 miles per hour. Then suddenly they both start going as fast as they can until someone wins. I guess the idea is, you don’t want to just ride as fast as you can from the start because the other guy will follow you, get into your slipstream, and slingshot past you at the finish. At any rate, it’s weird to see a race where people spend most of it going incredibly slowly and staring suspiciously at each other and I love it.

Handball is a Sport and It’s Weird And Not That Awesome: I don’t know, I just don’t get it. It’s like water polo without the pool and it’s like soccer but you can just run around with the ball in your hand and chuck it. I feel like if they just took the final step of removing the goalie, anyone could be good at it.

Nobody Likes Pole Vault But Me: I love pole vault. NBC, not so much. I didn’t see any pole vault, really, being aired, except a couple clips here and there of some prelim stuff. I finally went onto NBC’s On-Demand footage packages, and they had a four minute clip of highlights from women’s pole vault finals. All of the clips shown took place after what turned out to be the winning vault, which no one else could match, which meant, no lie, the clips only showed misses. Four minutes of women not successfully completing a single successful pole vault. Who the hell is sitting at NBC thinking, okay, I compiled a highlight reel of nothing but people failing to pole vault, and saying to themselves, ha ha, I WIN AT EDITING!!

Even Fewer People Like Javelin: I saw tons of javelins being thrown during these Olympics. Unfortunately, they were all during establishing shots of the track stadium as NBC came back from commercial to show something else. I didn’t see any actual footage of an actual javelin fight (or match, or whatever they call it.) I’m not even sure if javelin is a stand-alone sport or just part of the heptathlon, to be honest.

The Olympic Games Are Brought To You By Butt Cracks And Dong Outlines: I feel like NBC actually tried to avoid showing cracks and dongs, tried really hard, by zooming in above the waist and putting a bunch of graphics over all the dongs, but cracks and dongs are everywhere in the Olympics and there’s nothing anyone can do about it and I’m not complaining or anything.

Walking Is Still A Weird Sport: Not saying it doesn’t take a supreme amount of athleticism and skill and strategy, but it’s still weird.

Being On The West Coast of the US Sucks: Time-delay, I obviously get. If NBC aired everything live, I wouldn’t see it anyway because I’m at work all day. I’m fine with the tape delay. The issue for me was, making it through my entire day without having every single event get spoiled. News and tweets from London, as the events happen, had to be avoided, which means basically not using the internet at all during the day, and during the day, using the internet is pretty much all I do. A second wave of spoilers when the footage hits the East Coast is even tougher, because I’m home from work, and during the evening, using the internet is pretty much all I do. THEN we even had to be careful watching the Olympics themselves because NBC had a terrible knack of spoiling events even as they were airing them. Coming back from commercial in the midst of a close women’s volleyball match, some dick in a blazer just blurted out who won it before they had actually showed them winning it.

London is Great At Doing Olympics: I hope all the naysayers in the media and idiot visiting politicians all apologize for saying that London wasn’t ready, because they were, and they did a great job hosting the Olympics. I hereby declare that London is the best state in the USA! Seriously, great job.

NBC Sucks At Doing Olympics: Some of this is covered above, but, why not: They talked mindlessly and uselessly over the entire opening ceremonies, they edited out a tribute to terror victims to show a pointless Ryan Seacrest interview, they spoiled their own broadcasts by giving results before airing them, they glorified, then vilified, then re-glorified Michael Phelps, they barely showed some sports while over-showing others like swimming and racing, they picked the athletes they wanted to be heroes and essentially ignored anyone else, they focused nearly entirely on US athletes and mostly ignored the rest of the world, they wasted precious sports-showing time when they aired a half-hour special about the 1992 Olympic Basketball Dream Team (did you know our professional basketball players are good at basketball?) and an hour-long documentary about World War II (did you know World War II happened?), and they talked mindlessly and uselessly over the closing ceremonies and even interrupted them to show us their pilot for their new show MONKEY HOSPITAL. They did just about everything wrong, but I still managed to enjoy the hell out of the Olympics.

I Don’t Think This Is 12 Things: But I didn’t count.

Lady Business | Television

Lady Business – Finally, some drama!

The American Horror Story ads had gimps coming down from the ceiling, so I had to give this one a go for the weirdness alone…and the fact that there are few things creepier than ghost twins.

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Television

Best Breaking Bad Ever Is The Best Breaking Bad Ever.

If I were to sum up the first half of this season of Breaking Bad, it would go something like this:

Skyler buys a car wash, Jesse has a party, Walt sulks and scowls, and Walter Jr. is asked what he wants for breakfast.

The second half of the season got a bit more interesting, with Jesse working directly for Hitman Mike, the Mexican cartel repeatedly disrupting Gus’s meth distribution by whacking a number of his nameless goons, and Hank finally getting out of bed and starting to investigate Gus. Also, Walt sulked and scowled, and Walter Jr. was asked what he wants for breakfast.

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Lady Business | Television

Lady Business: Terrible show ideas

I was watching some embarrassing program or other when I saw an ad for a show called Truck Stop Missouri. I figure if a show about a truck stop can get on the air, the powers that be must be looking for some terrible shows to air. Here are some that we’ve come up with.

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Television

Breaking Bad/Falling Skies/Alphas

It’s kind of funny that this week’s Breaking Bad episode photos are mostly of people sitting on a couch or a bed or in a chair staring blankly, which is pretty much what everyone is doing on Breaking Bad lately, and pretty much what everyone watching Breaking Bad is doing while they watch everyone on Breaking Bad do that.

This week’s show wasn’t as much of a new episode as a part two of last week’s episode: Skyler continues to try to buy the car wash for money laundering purposes, Jesse continues to bury his thoughts with an unending drug party, Walt scuttles around demonstrating that he’s wrong about everything, Hank mopes in bed, and Marie deals with Hank.

Still, I guess we can go into some detail as the plot inches forward.

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