Noiseless Chatter Archive

Is it too early for Better Call Saul to produce a masterpiece? Maybe. But I’m calling this one anyway. “Mijo” is an incredible piece of television. A tragic comedy in four distinct acts, each showing us another side of James M. McGill, amounting to what is essentially a portrait of the man we will be spending the rest of our episodes with. I’ll start by saying that I cheerfully retract my concern that McGill was already Goodman. While there’s an awful lot of overlap, there’s a crucial difference; McGill has a conscience, and a reluctance to stay at the table after being dealt a lucky hand. It provides us, at least potentially, with an idea of the psychological territory Better Call Saul might chart. What will it take for him to willingly silence his conscience? How much must he stand to gain before he stops saying, “Absolutely not” and starts saying, “Yes, please”? “Mijo” illustrates that very clearly in my favorite scene of the night, but we’ll come to that in du...

Let me get the elephant out of the way first; I don’t have cable. That means I’ll be a day behind on my Better Call Saul reviews. I don’t think that will matter in the long run, but in this particular case it means I’m writing about episode one while you’re all watching episode two. Do me a favor and try to avoid episode two spoilers in the comments, but otherwise feel free to pick apart the fact that everything I say here has already been disproven by the second installment. (Oh, and, needless to say, these reviews may well contain their own spoilers, so if you haven’t watched the first episode yet, go do that. It’s good.) So, here we are. Breaking Bad is over, but we have another opportunity to dip back into its universe. It’s a spinoff. And a prequel. And…a sequel. But we’ll come to that in a moment. If any character from Breaking Bad seemed like he could carry a show on his own, it would indeed have been Saul Goodman. Saul always did seem to me like an in...

One of my most appreciated (and appreciative) friends, Emily Suess asked me to share a request. And…yeah. The moment I read the post, I knew I’d be more than willing to help. Emily’s post about it is here , but I’m going to paste the content below. It’s short, and I don’t want an extra click to stand between anyone and participation. At Christmas, Cheryl Gregory had a stroke. She is unable to see her two sons. Her siblings have been doing their best to visit her and keep her spirits high, but recently she was transferred to a new facility. She wasn’t recovering as well as the doctors like, so they transferred her to a new location in a different county. While the distance makes visiting her more difficult, it also doesn’t help that her brothers and sister are only allowed to see her for two hours a day. Recovering from a stroke is hard enough, but fighting depression and loneliness makes getting better even more challenging, no matter how good the doctors and nurses m...

You know, drilling down into this movie and really picking it apart several minutes at a time reveals to me just how magical it is. Sometimes the closer you examine something you love, the easier it is to spot its flaws. The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou , though, is a little different. It wears its flaws on its sleeve. You don’t have to dig to find them; they’re all in plain view. (And we’ll be discussing one of them today.) The deeper I dig, I feel as though I’m only uncovering layers of beauty. As though its cracked, weathered exterior — like everything in Team Zissou’s arsenal, right down to the rickety foosball table we open on Pele and Ogata playing this week — is a design decision, hiding some deeper purpose. Or, at least, some deeper intention. The care Anderson put into assembling this world is without equal, something easily measured in terms of the toll it took on the cast. Bill Murray at one point even said that if he didn’t get an Oscar for going ...

  ALF Reviews: “Breaking Up is Hard to Do” (season 3, episode 3) How do you solve a problem like the Ochmoneks? Before we watch the episode struggle to answer that, it’s worth reminding ourselves that as much as I’ve griped about its many (many) problems,  ALF  has at least managed to acknowledge and correct some of its issues. A great example of this is the relationship that developed between ALF and Lynn last season, repositioning the two of them as friends that share a special, honest bond. Another is the introduction of Jake, which was a solution to the problem of the writers not wanting to do anything with Brian (apparently) but still wanting a young boy around. It was by no means a clean solution, but it shows that they were aware of an issue and took some kind of action to correct it. This week we attempt to address a different problem, whether the show is conscious of it or not: the Ochmoneks. Originally introduced as a pair of annoying neighbors, they’ve managed ...