Noiseless Chatter Archive

I love video games. For nearly all of my life, I’ve loved video games. Some of my earliest memories — and a huge portion of my fond earliest memories — involve video games. I remember playing a skiing game on Atari with some friends at one of my birthday parties. We’d hand the joystick around and love every second of a game that was probably embarrassingly simple and still too hard for us to play properly. I remember playing another Atari game with my uncle. I forget what it was called, but you each controlled a cowboy on a different side of the screen and you had to shoot each other while obstacles scrolled by. Only I didn’t want to play it that way. If you shot an obstacle, part of it disappeared, pixel by pixel. I wanted my uncle to help me shoot the stage coach that roamed vertically across the center of the screen until it was completely gone. I remember that being fun. And I remember later, when we had an NES. My mother would come into the room I share...

In many ways, I think the best way to review the final episode of season two is to refer back to my review of the final episode of season one. Season one was, I felt, largely brilliant. It got off to a bit of a sputtering start, but it didn’t take long to carve out a distinct and rewarding identity of its own. Its supporting cast got their chances to shine, we developed Jimmy McGill as a character distinct from Saul Goodman and therefore one worthy of separate study, and it seemed less and less fair to view the show in the shadow of Breaking Bad . It wasn’t perfect, but it was often great. And Rhea Seehorn, a relative newcomer, proved herself to be the most valuable member of a cast that included old pros like Bob Odenkirk, Michael McKean, and Ed Begley, Jr. In short, Better Call Saul had promise. That was no surprise. What was surprising was how quickly it fulfilled that promise. Then came the final episode of the season, “Marco,” which wasn’t exactly the best thing...

I’ll stand by my comments about the previous episode, but I think it’s only fair to say that “Nailed” absolutely pays off “Fifi” to a degree I never anticipated. This is one of the best episodes the show has done, and the fact that it comes on the heels of one of the weaker chapters goes a long way toward justifying my faith in Better Call Saul . Sometimes, sure, things seem to go off the rails a bit. But stick with it, and you’ll be rewarded. Also reassuring is the way in which Jimmy’s plot and Mike’s plot comment thematically upon each other. Sure, they’re still conflicting protagonists in unrelated stories, but “Nailed” sees each of them going out of their way to interfere with somebody else’s business, turning an easy success for their rival into a failure, and claiming it for themselves. In each case they’re even caught …except that there’s no evidence. Nothing can be proven. They’re guilty and everyone knows they’re guilty…but without proof, they get away with...

Intentional or not, I’d say that my break from Better Call Saul has helped the reviews. I don’t think I felt like I was tired of the show, or sick of writing about it, or anything like that, but coming back to it after a delay has given me more to talk about. Better ways with which to express my feelings. Larger questions to raise. In short, it turned out to be a good thing, and I believe my past few reviews are superior to the ones that came before. Now there’s an episode like “Fifi.” And, man…how on Earth to talk about “Fifi”? Is it bad? No. Is it good? Eh. Is it interesting? Getting warmer, I guess. In the review for “Gloves Off” we talked about middle chapters. “Fifi” is another one, but instead of suggesting any forward momentum or decisive character moments, it’s just kind of there. Frankly, I think “Fifi” is the result of the logistical constraints of serialized drama. When writing a sitcom, for instance, you’ll know that you have, say, 22 episodes t...

Well, this one was certainly fun. That doesn’t necessarily translate to “good,” but as necessarily disappointing as “Inflatable” is, I enjoyed it, and I think it’s going to prove to be one of Better Call Saul ‘s most memorable episodes. I say disappointing not because I didn’t like it, but because it represents a likely hard stop for many aspects of the show. Yes, we all knew Jimmy’s employment at Davis & Main was a detour at best. He wasn’t going to be there for long. That’s no surprise. But aside from the daring commercial, its inevitable fallout, and, now, Jimmy’s bombastic farewell, the arc didn’t bear much fruit. I think I’m disappointed because Davis & Main fulfilled its narrative necessity without digging too deeply into the possibilities it offered for characterization. Ed Begley Jr. is always a delight, but now that he’s out of the regular supporting cast it’s easy to see that he didn’t do — or contribute — much of anything to the show. Jimmy’s bris...

This week’s big post is actually on another site! For Valentine’s Day, perfect stranger Casey Roberson asked me to do several things that I wasn’t comfortable with, so we compromised and I reviewed an episode of Saturday Night Live instead . Did you know that Bronson Pinchot hosted that show? I sure didn’t. That’s probably because Saturday Night Live had just weathered some massively shitty years and took a serious blow to its cultural cachet…but Bronson was lucky enough to host just as the show started to experience an upswing. The episode is an interesting time capsule of a sketch comedy show just starting to find its second wind, but it’s not very good. It’s mainly notable for Bronson assuring audiences nationwide that he is a massive fucking dick at both the top and bottom of the episode. Dude had a message to convey, apparently. Anyway GO READ .

The second half of a season of a heavily serialized show like Better Call Saul needs to suggest momentum toward some clear — though obviously temporary — terminal point. “Bali Ha’i” suggests that the show is fully aware of this, as it edges our three primary characters toward decisions they won’t be able to take back. And that particular number of primary characters — drifting around, having independent arcs, setting out on rarely overlapping adventures of their own — can prove troublesome at such a time. No, it’s not difficult, narratively speaking, to push Jimmy, Mike, and Kim separately onto the next step of their developments. But as their paths seem to diverge more often than they converge, what does that mean for Better Call Saul ? Doesn’t that make it less about how Jimmy McGill becomes Saul Goodman and more like some shared-universe anthology series? I’m speaking hypothetically here about the problem, and I don’t mean to suggest that Better Call Saul actually h...

Above you’ll find a picture of Bono. The dog, not the human. (The human Bono is not pictured.) Bono is my girlfriend’s dog. He’s also my dog. He’s also my friend. He’s also family. A few days ago we received some unfortunate news. Bono stopped eating. My girlfriend made an appointment for him with the vet. In the meantime, he started eating again. That was good, but then, just as suddenly, he stopped a second time. And he stopped having bowel movements as well. He went to the vet. They weren’t sure what the issue was. He didn’t seem to be in pain, and he seemed healthy otherwise. They X-rayed him. They saw nothing. They asked if we wanted them to perform an ultrasound. We didn’t really have a choice. Not that the vet was pressuring anybody…it’s simply that it was either have an ultrasound, or be okay with the fact that Bono wasn’t eating or going to the bathroom. In short, we’d have to be okay with knowing he was slowly dying. We went with the ultrasound. ...