The 2022 Summer Movie Wager

Well, the summer movie season is tentatively on, so I'm pulling out this feature for the first time since 2019.  Following the rules of the Summer Movie Pool, I'm going to predict the top ten domestic box office grossers of the summer. It's not about which movies are the best or the most deserving, but which ones simply bring in the most cold hard cash, and the math has changed considerably thanks to COVID.  I am notoriously bad at this, but the pickings are slimmer this year, so I think my chances are pretty good.   Anything released between May 1st and Labor Day is fair game. Here we go.

1. Thor: Love and Thunder - Of the two Marvel movies being released this summer, I think "Thor" has the edge.  Taika Waititi is back in the director's chair, Thor is one of the most familiar and loveable Marvel heroes, and this has all the earmarks of a fun action-comedy.  That means it'll be perfect summer movie material.  I think "Love and Thunder" being released later in the summer, when COVID cases should be at their lowest ebb, should also work out in its favor.  

2. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - That said, "Doctor Strange" is certainly in the running for the top spot.  Maybe by May, the omicron wave will have receded enough that people are more willing to go to theaters.  It'll be coming after a five month gap in Marvel films, which might make a difference.  Strange's supporting role in the last "Spider-man" film might give his star a boost.  Still, I just don't see this film being the crowd-pleaser that "Thor" likely will be.  

3. Top Gun: Maverick - Tom Cruise in an action movie still has the ability to draw crowds, and I think that Paramount will have the resources to get everyone's attention on this.  Remember, this is one of the last holdovers from 2020, and Paramount has delayed it multiple times in order to protect their investment.  With the filmmakers involved, I seriously doubt that the movie will actually be worth watching in theaters, but I'm sure that it'll make a lot of money regardless.

4. Lightyear - This isn't quite "Toy Story 5," but it looks close enough that it'll probably attract existing fans who are curious about a different version of Buzz Lightyear.  PIXAR's first film back in theaters after three features sent straight to Disney+ means there's a lot riding on this release.  Animated films have had mixed success during the pandemic, and I think that this one has the best chance because it has considerable crossover appeal with older, nostalgic audiences.

5. DC League of Super Pets - With "Black Adam" pushed back to October, this is all the DC superhero action we're going to see this summer. However, I think even being superhero adjacent is going to give this one some points. The trailer is utterly adorable, way more appealing than any other animated film on the schedule. However, with a title this convoluted and characters that nobody has seen before, I figure that it's not going to make as big as splash as some of the other titles.

6. Jurassic World: Dominion - Colin Trevorrow is back, and this franchise feels like it's running on fumes, but this movie is going to make plenty of money simply because there aren't that many blockbusters getting theatrical releases this year.  Several cast members from the original "Jurassic Park" are slated to appear, which should make this easy to sell based on nostalgia, and the premise of dinosaurs living with humans being normalized might yield some original things - though I doubt it.

7. Minions: The Rise of Gru - So, the last "Despicable Me" film came out in 2017, and "The Rise of Gru" is technically the sequel to the "Minions" spinoff, which came out in 2015.  Then again, we're also getting a "Puss in Boots" sequel in 2022, so this isn't even the most egregious sequel this year.  I don't understand the appeal of this franchise, but historically it has made money, so the latest installment is on the list.  But if it's trounced by "DC League of the Super-Pets," I won't be surprised.    

8. The Black Phone - Now, we're finally getting to some of the more interesting titles.  Horror movies have been doing okay during the pandemic, and the most promising one on the horizon is this adaptation of a Joe HIll short story, from the guys who made "Sinister" and the first "Doctor Strange."  It was originally supposed to be a January release, but was moved to summer based on good audience responses.  That signals to me that this is a pretty good bet for a sleeper horror hit.

9. Nope - And then there's Jordan Peele's latest horror film, which we don't know much about, but it looks like it's going to be another genre picture with a great cast.  Mentally, I've been categorizing this as something in the same neighborhood as M. Night Shyamalan's "Old," which had a very mixed reception but did make a healthy amount at the box office regardless.  I'm willing to bet that "Nope," with its pedigree, will do a bit better.  

10. Bullet Train - Finally, we have David Leitch's latest film, which is essentially five assassins on a bullet train.  Brad Pitt will star with Sandra Bullock showing up in a supporting role (an inverse of "The Lost City" situation).  Columbia is clearly hoping for an action movie similar to Leitch's "John Wick."  I worry that the optics may skew too much toward older viewers, and as we all knew, nothing for older audiences made money last year.

Wild Cards (for extra points if one of them does make it into the top ten)

Firestarter

The Bob's Burgers Movie

The Man From Toronto

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Rank 'Em: The Best Picture Winners of the '40s

Decade by decade, I'm ranking the winners of the Academy Award for Best Picture.  From greatest to least great, here's the '40s.

1. Rebecca (1940) - Alfred Hitchcock famously never had much luck at the Oscars, but one of the films he directed did get the big prize, beating out classics like "The Grapes of Wrath," "The Philadelphia Story," and "The Great Dictator."  Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier have a perfectly lovely romance before the film pivots into one of the best psychological thrillers ever made, featuring a villain who leaves a chill even though she's never seen onscreen.

 

2. Casablanca (1943) - One of the most quotable films of all time remains a great watch to this day for its strong writing and characters, and excellent sense of humor.  It was one of several war themed films competing that year, the last time the Best Picture category would have ten nominees for several decades.  Out of all the films on this list, "Casablanca" left the largest cultural footprint, with parodies and homages that persist to this day.

3. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) - The cast is full of familiar faces, but the real star of the film is Howard Russell, the disabled WWII veteran who played Homer Parrish, and snagged an Oscar for his trouble.  The telling of Homer's story is awfully sentimental and perhaps too rosy from a modern viewpoint, but its the one that the U.S. needed  in the aftermath of the war.  Its hopeful outlook is still inspiring, so many years and so many wars later.

4. Hamlet (1948) - Still one of the most lauded Shakespeare adaptations ever made, and would set the bar for all the cinematic "Hamlets" to follow.  This was only the second film Laurence Olivier had ever directed, and its success would help propel his career on stage and screen to even greater heights.  This is a chilly, Gothic take on "Hamlet," but also a  very entertaining one, full of intrigue and suspense, with an exciting sword fight to cap it off.

5. The Lost Weekend (1945) - Billy Wilder's portrait of an alcoholic, based on Raymond Chandler, and played by Ray Milland, is a strong piece of melodrama.  Wilder nails the psychology of addiction, and is able to relay it in very visual terms.  The film is very dated now, but is still one of the foundational films about substance abuse and recovery.   Its also one of only three films to have won both the Cannes Grand Prix and the Academy Award for Best Picture.

6. Mrs. Miniver (1942) - Greer Garson is one of my favorite film stars from this era, and "Mrs. Miniver" gives her one of her best roles.  She plays the steady matriarch of a British family that encounters hardship and loss during WWII.  The film was a huge popular success, and highly influential for its portrayal of ordinary people displaying bravery on the homefront - to the extent that it's seen in some corners as a particularly effective propaganda film.  

7. Going My Way (1944) - Most of the film is a sweet religious comedy, about a young priest gently bringing an old priest and his parish into a more modern mindset. I actually prefer the sequel, "The Bells of St. Mary's," which gives Bing Crosby a more interesting scene partner in Ingrid Bergman.  Still, "Going My Way" is a perfectly charming old school feel-good picture, and lets Bing sing "Going My Way" and "Swinging on a Star" for the finale.

8. How Green Was My Valley (1941) - This was the film that beat out "Citizen Kane" and "The Maltese Falcon" for Best Picture, and definitely didn't deserve it.  I have no quarrel with this John Ford picture otherwise, one of his UK movies  about a Welsh mining family surviving in tough times.  It's a beautifully mounted effort, with some great production design and epic visuals.  It just doesn't happen to be a masterpiece like some of the other contenders.

9. Gentleman's Agreement (1947) - Issue pictures have been around longer than people think, and "Gentleman's Agreement" is a great example.  Gregory Peck plays a journalist who goes undercover to expose antisemitism in New York, and finds it in his own home.  Racial and religious prejudice was considered a brave subject to tackle at the time, and the film's success allowed director Elia Kazan to make even more challenging movies in the years to come.

10. All the King's Men (1949) - Finally, the reason this is the lowest ranked winner on the list is because I can barely recall anything about it, despite seeing the movie far more recently than most of the others.  This political drama and film noir about a corrupt Louisiana politician, Willie Stark, was so unmemorable that the only performance I remember is Mercedes McCambridge as Willie's affair partner.  Then again, I've never been too fond of film noir.

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"Mass" is a Wrenching Debut

I wish that "Mass" could have ended about two minutes before it actually did, because the film is so good up until that point, and I completely forgot it was coming from a first time filmmaker, Fran Kranz.  That ending is a perfunctory bit of smarm that was probably meant to help soften the preceding 108 minutes of emotional devastation, and ends up just feeling tone deaf. And it is the only issue I have with what is otherwise a very powerful and well-executed film.

"Mass" has a very simple premise.  Two sets of parents, Richard (Reed Birney) and Linda (Ann Dowd), and Jay (Jason Isaacs) and Gail (Martha Plimpton), meet at a church together to talk about a tragedy that involved both of their teenage sons.  The vast majority of the film is simply four very good actors in one room, having a fraught conversation.  This feels like a stage play converted to film form, even though it's not.  The script is easily the best thing that "Mass" has going for it, along with the excellent performances of the four leads.  It's exactly the kind of showy, cathartic, soul-bearing piece of melodrama that some audiences will dismiss as contrived, and others will appreciate for tackling such difficult and overwhelming emotions.  I fall into the latter camp.  Sure, we all know that getting these four particular characters into a room together is incredibly unlikely, but the writing is smart about it and the characters are very intelligent and self-aware.  They interrogate themselves and their own motives as much as they interrogate each other.  There are also constant references to legal matters, the media, the public response, and other factors that have influenced their decisions, ensuring that nothing feels like it's taking place in a vacuum.  

It's fascinating to take in the performances.  All four of the parents are in pain, but some keep that pain closer to the surface than others, and take longer to access and address it.  Reed Birney is probably my favorite here, because there is so much going on with his character under the surface.  He's so calm as to appear casual, and rattles off responses that he's clearly repeated many times.  He's not unfeeling, but the distance he maintains from his emotions has become a defense mechanism.  And he's much further along in processing his grief from the tragedy than some of the others, who are still grappling with it more immediately.  Ann Dowd is getting plenty of attention, and it's well deserved.  She has the ability to evoke empathy like few other performers, and delivers some incredibly vulnerable, harrowing moments.  Part of what makes the film so affecting is that it's clear that all four of these characters are good, honest, caring people who don't deserve what's happened to them.  

I hesitate to go into too much detail about the plot, because the actual relationship between all the parties involved isn't revealed until well into the film.  We actually start with a gently comedic introductory sequence with a pair of church employees who prep the room for the meeting.  I've seen a variety of reactions to this sequence, but I like that it's there to help ease the audience into the heavier material and prepare them for the tone of the ensuing conversation.  There's also a social worker, Kendra (Michelle N. Carter), who appears briefly to lay out expectations.  These measures help to ground "Mass" in the real world, and to quickly nix any possibility of the more conventional types of revenge or instant-fix narratives.    

"Mass" strikes me as a movie that is trying to act as a counterbalance to all the films about violence and tragedy by actually having people talk and try to deal with the violence and the tragedy.  We never see the terrible events that took place or anyone even directly involved, but the impact on their community is clear.  I appreciate that it's also not an outwardly political film, avoiding any stumping for potential corrective actions, but simply acknowledging the enormity and the horror of the situation.  It's not an easy one to sit through, for obvious reasons, but I found it rewarding and ultimately satisfying.  Fran Kranz clearly still has a ways to go as a director, but I am very interested to see what else he has in store.   

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Trailers! Trailers! It's Streamer Time!

It's been difficult to figure out how to do a trailer post for upcoming series, because the marketing works so differently.  Trailers often appear only a few weeks before a series comes out, with only a few bigger titles like "Stranger Things" or "Moon Knight" getting more extended marketing campaigns that go on longer.  There are shows like "Essex Serpent" coming out next month that we haven't seen a frame of yet.  It's hard to even pin down release dates for some projects.

However, it's the end of April and there are a flurry of shows being released, either to qualify for the Emmys or to take advantage of a very sparse summer movie season.  With competition ramping up among the streaming services, there's definitely been an uptick in marketing pushes lately.  I'm definitely more interested in some of these shows than the movies coming in the same time frame.   

All links lead to Youtube. 

Ms. Marvel - The Disney+ Marvel shows have been pretty much all in the same vein, all very broad and aimed at the same audience of established fans.  "Ms. Marvel" looks like it'll be a nice break from form because it's the first that seems to be aimed at younger viewers, and it features a Muslim-American teenager as its title character.  This will be a tough sell to some because the cast is mostly unknowns, but I expect the MCU will have built up enough goodwill by now that it'll find its audience.   

The Offer - This ten-episode miniseries will chart the making of "The Godfather," and the trailer is pretty good about showing off the cast.  I didn't know Juno Temple was in this!  And Matthew Goode is playing Bob Evans!  And Dan Fogler looks perfect as Francis Ford Coppola!  I don't know how much this material is going to appeal to people who aren't fans of either "The Godfather" or Hollywood tell-alls, but as a film nerd I'll be happily binging this the next time I get to Paramount+ in my rotation.

The Staircase - One of the show's creators is Antonio Campos, whose last few films I've liked., but all you really needed to do to sell me on this was the involvement of Colin Firth and Toni Collette as the Petersons, a couple at the center of a well-known murder investigation.  I haven't seen the documentary series this was based on, or the parody version, "Trial & Error."  I don't know any of the details of the actual case.  This puts me in a good position to go into this series blind, without any preconceptions.  

The Kids in the Hall (Red Band) - They're coming back!  All of the guys are old and decrepit now, but it only took a glimpse of Francesca Fiore and Bruno Puntz Jones to get me onboard.  My only real worry here is that the show might be more like their feature film "Brain Candy" or miniseries "Death Come to Town," and less like their original sketch-based format, which I greatly prefer.  The old "Kids in the Hall" was pretty bare bones, and the new series looks much more expensive.  However, I'll be there regardless.   

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - This is the "Star Trek" prequel series that's a spinoff of "Discovery," and features the younger versions of Captain Christopher Pike, Number One, and Mr. Spock, who were introduced there.  Kirk is scheduled to show up in the second season.  I like the cast well enough that I'll be happy to give this a shot, but the trailer honestly isn't doing much for me.  It's very focused on spectacle and sex over the characters.  Is this supposed to be more of a throwback "Trek"?

Stranger Things 4 - Part of me isn't convinced that this show is ever going to be released.  Three years after the last season, I'm actually pretty happy just seeing the trailer, with all the kids older, new monsters, new powers, and somebody rocking a sweet guitar solo.  This looks like a summer blockbuster, and I'm convinced that in a decade or two "Stranger Things" has a good chance of being rebooted as a film franchise.  Netflix has been having a terrible year, but they're far from out of the game yet.   

The Boys Season 3 (Red Band) - First, great song choice.  However, this trailer isn't doing much to convince me to keep watching the show.  I'm not too excited about seeing Jensen Ackles play Soldier Boy.  There's no sign that the plot is going to progress anywhere interesting.  The trailer is just emphasizing that we'll be getting more of what they think we want from the show - violence, irreverent humor, and Homelander behaving like a psychopath.  And are we supposed to know who the bearded guy is?      

Obi-Wan Kenobi - From what we've seen from Disney+ so far, they're selling a darker show than what they're actually going to deliver.  Most of the trailer is showing Ewan McGregor in desert environments and Moses Ingram being a badass.  I am really tired of Tatooine after "Boba Fett," so I'm hoping Kenobi isn't sticking around for long.  I don't have too many thoughts yet, except that there have been a lot more cast members announced who haven't shown up yet.  Fingers crossed.    

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"Nitram" and "Spencer"

Now, some controversial films about real people.

Let's start with "Nitram," the Justin Kurzel film based on the life of Martin Bryant, who perpetrated a mass shooting in Australia in 1996.  There are arguments to be made that it's in poor taste to be making a film about a notorious killer, especially one that humanizes him to the degree that this one does.  However, "Nitram" is a very well made film featuring some excellent actors.  Caleb Landry Jones as Martin is especially impressive here, delivering a performance characterized by poorly managed mental illness, loneliness, and self-loathing. 

The film charts the period of Martin's life before his rampage, starting from when he was still living with his parents (Anthony LaPaglia and Judy Davis) in suburban Tasmania.  They do their best to keep him out of trouble, but Martin is unable to restrain his impulses. His relationships with them, especially his icy mother, are increasingly strained.  Martin befriends and eventually moves in with a much older woman named Helen (Essie Davis), which gives him more independence.  However, a string of tragedies, the decreased supervision, and Martin's growing feelings of alienation put him on the path to the unthinkable.  From what I've read, the sequence of events is fairly accurate, and the film shows the lead-up to the massacre but not the actual event. 

"Nitram" is an excellent character study of a man of limited faculties who struggles earnestly to find a way to get along in the world, but just encounters one gutting disappointment after another.  He never has the tools or more importantly the support necessary for him to succeed.  His parents are clearly so destroyed by years of dealing with his behavior, it's hard to blame them.  The film suggests that it wasn't Martin's developmental disabilities or his fascination with guns that led to the tragedy, but his loneliness and isolation.  The film packs an emotional punch, not because of what Martin did, but because Martin snapped for reasons that are frighteningly relatable and familiar.  And Landry Jones' performance does all the heavy lifting of getting and keeping the audience on Martin's side, all the way to the end.      

And now, on to "Spencer," a Princess Diana movie like no other Princess Diana movie that has ever been made.  When I heard that Pablo Larrain was directing this, I was expecting something like "Jackie," his dreamy, lyrical Jackie Kennedy film.  This is not the case at all.  "Spencer" depicts the life of the Princess of Wales, played by Kristen Stewart, more like a psychological horror film.  The story is set at Sandringham House in 1991, where the royal family is gathered for Christmas.  Diana is expected to show up, dress and eat according to the carefully planned schedule, and play nice.  However, she's nervous wreck from her husband's infidelity, suffers from bulimia, and feels increasingly suffocated by the expectations and limitations of her position.  So, she starts lashing out.

I'm sure that nothing in this film is historically accurate, with many characters and events wholly invented.  However, it feels like an earnest attempt to dramatize Diana's  internal struggle at one of the low points of her life.  Watching her wage war against her wardrobe, her diet, and the household staff led by Equerry Major Gregory (Timothy Spall), is wild.  Stewart's performance initially put me off, because she looked so uncomfortable onscreen, holding herself rigidly, and radiating anxiety.  However, I soon realized that this was the point.  The film isn't about the graceful exterior that the public is familiar with, but getting us to see the deeply unhappy woman she was underneath.  I think some of the film's inventions, like Diana's fixation on her childhood home and visions of Anne Boleyn (Amy Manson) don't really work, but her fantasies of self-harm are wonderfully unnerving.      

       

I came out very mixed on "Spencer," appreciative of what it was trying to do, but unhappy about the execution.  The film is so tightly fixed on Diana's claustrophobic POV, and plays with so many different levels of subjective reality that most of its historical lapses don't bother me.  However, I still don't like Kristen Stewart's performance much, and I don't like the characterization of Diana as a little-girl-lost figure.  It's much too reductive for my tastes.  This is anything but another boring biopic about the royals, though, and I'm sure plenty of viewers will appreciate it.

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Miss Media Junkie v. Standup Comedy

2022 feels like the year that I've been playing catch up with pop culture.  Arenas that I don't pay much attention to, like gaming and music, have changed completely while I wasn't looking, and I'm not just getting used to new faces, but realizing that a lot of these new faces aren't new at all, but have been around for ten years and have an entire body of work that I was totally unaware of until now.  

Anyway, one of my pop culture blind spots is stand-up comedy.  I have a lot of hang-ups when it comes to comedy in general, because I have a pretty low tolerance for vulgarity and scatological humor, and for years comedy films were dominated by frat house and man-child comedy.  For most of my teens and twenties, it was the Farrelly brothers, Adam Sandler, the frat pack, "Jackass," and "American Pie."  After a while, I admit that I largely gave up on the genre, only showing up for the occasional Judd Apatow movie, or broader action-comedy.  The stand-up world was even worse for me, full of aggressive bad boys and garrulous middle-aged men griping about everything, and frankly they all sounded the same after a while.  The few prominent female comics like Sarah Silverman and Amy Schumer were often uncomfortably sexual.  They made me laugh, but they also made me queasy. 

So, for the majority of my life, I limited my comedy intake to sitcoms and late night talk shows.  "SNL" was about the limit for my tolerance.  And so, it took me a very long time to notice that things had started to change a little in stand up.  After I got through the Bo Burnham hyperfixation a few months ago, I started watching other comedy specials.  At first it was a lot of Tig Notaro, while I had HBO Max.  I liked Notaro from her recent acting roles, but didn't know any of her work as a standup comic.  She has a super deadpan, super even-keel style that I find very appealing.  Her breakthrough came in 2012, with a set called "Live," where she shared her recent cancer diagnosis and a string of other terrible things that had happened to her with a rapt audience.  There's an excellent Netflix documentary, "Tig," that uses the set as a framing device and examines this period in her life.

And then I found Hannah Gadsby.  Pretty much any discussion of recent comedy specials will bring up "Nanette," the 2018 special where Gadsby discusses her painful experiences as someone LGBT in Australia.  It slowly morphs from traditional setups and jokes to fiery activist cri de coeur, deconstructing and critiquing the format of standup comedy in the process.  Ultimately, she concludes that being a comedian and being who she is are sometimes in fundamental conflict.  "Nanette" is moving and it's challenging, and it's not particularly funny, but the standup context is absolutely vital to how it plays.  For pure entertainment value, I like Gadsby's most recent special, "Douglas," even better, which shows that she is perfectly capable of putting together a hilarious show based on material totally unrelated to her activism.  Her background is as an art historian, and I love the lecture-style material in her set, where she takes pot-shots at the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Louis CK. 

I don't know why it is that I have been connecting to white LGBT comics lately, as opposed to comics who look more like me - Ali Wong and Margaret Cho, for instance.  I think it's because Notaro and Gadsby aren't trying so hard to be transgressive.  They talk about themselves, and how they perceive the world, and trying to get through tough times as best they can, with brutal honesty.  Somehow, because they're so good at expressing who they are onstage without fear, that's plenty transgressive in and of itself.  I love Ali Wong to bits, but her acts are so relentless and so aggressive that I can't take much of it at once.  And I've never been as emotionally invested in her acts as I have watching Tig Notaro just talk casually about having a bad day.  It's 2022, and we've all been having a bad day.

Let me be clear that the Bill Burrs and the Chris Rocks are all well and good, and I admire what they do,  but it's been nice to discover that there are more laid back, more empathetic comedians that are out there providing an alternative - comedians who are more my tempo, and more my speed.  I still tread very carefully in these spaces, but I'm also happy to be finally catching up on something I didn't even know I had missed.       

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"Better Call Saul," Years Three and Four

Spoilers for both seasons ahead.

I remember the buzz around the early seasons of "Better Call Saul" that slowly died away as the show went on.  The series maintains its quality level just fine from what I've seen so far, but I can understand why some viewers started to drift away.  The third season is still fairly intense and fast-paced, focusing on the feud between Jimmy and Chuck that results in Jimmy having his law license suspended.  However, the fourth season, which takes place over a much longer stretch of time, is much slower.  There are two or three episodes that are all about how Jimmy is bored and frustrated, and they take more patience than the rest of the show has demanded up to that point.

We're steadily seeing more familiar faces.  Gus Fring, Lydia Rodarte Quayle, Huell Babineux, and Gale Boetticher have made appearances, with Gus becoming a regular foe for Nacho and Mike.  New characters include a heretofore unseen Salamanca, Lalo (Tony Dalton), who is sent up North to keep an eye on Hector and Nacho.  There's also Chuck's ex-wife Rebecca (Ann Cusack), and a group of Germans who are secretly brought to Albuquerque to work on constructing a lab for Gus, lead by the tragic Werner (Rainer Bock).  Both Jimmy and Mike have now passed the point of no return in their journeys to "Breaking Bad," Jimmy more gradually and Mike with more self-awareness.  It's also become clear that the defining relationship in Jimmy's life is the one with Chuck, even after Chuck dies.  Kim has emerged as the most sympathetic figure out of all of them, trying and failing to keep Jimmy on the straight and narrow, and letting herself become more and more compromised in the process.  I was really rooting for Kim and Jimmy to work out somehow, but Jimmy's inferiority complex and resentments have taken over by the end of season four.  His last really selfless act was torpedoing his career in elder law at the end of season three.

Mike and Nacho have the showier material in much of seasons three and four, getting wrapped up in Gus Fring's feud with Hector Salamanca, and later Lalo Salamanca.  Mike's ego is what gets him into trouble, his insistence on doing things his own way, and calling out the inadequacies of those around him.  (Hi, Marc Evan Jackson!)  This gets him more involved with Fring's operations until he takes on the construction project, and has to take responsibility for the fallout.  It's so much fun to watch Mike set up his little traps and schemes, it's easy to forget that he's taking a lot of stupid risks.  Nacho, on the other hand, knows he's in a bad situation from early on, and can't dig his way out from under the Salamancas.  Add Gus Fring on top of that, and I don't know how he could possibly survive until the end of the series.  So, like Kim, Nacho's one of the only really sympathetic characters left on the board.     

I like how the writers  handle the death of Chuck, the biggest event in the show so far.  More than that, I like that it's set up so far in advance, with Jimmy undermining Chuck at the trial, reporting the outburst to  the insurance agents to destroy Chuck's reputation, and putting Howard in the position to finish him off.  Similarly, the seeds are planted for Hector Salamanca's downfall throughout the third season before he has his stroke.  There aren't many television shows that really do long-form storytelling on the level that "Better Call Saul" does.  It's absolutely as good as "Breaking Bad," but is also confident enough to be more of a straight drama, keeping those big set pieces in few and far between.  Mike may have killed someone in the finale, but Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn deliver the most chilling scene in that episode with a two minute conversation.  

I'm giving myself a break before I get into the last two seasons.  I know what to expect at this point, and I'm confident that Vince Gilligan and company will be able to pull off a strong ending.  I admit that I'm glad that I decided to wait and binge the show so I don't have to deal with the long breaks between these final episodes.  Once I get started with these, I don't think I'll be able to stop until the end.

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