Better Call Saul, Season Two, Episode Two: "Cobbler"

So the baseball cards were real after all. I'm a little ticked that Wormald, geek and Worst Criminal in the History of the Universe, just HAS to be a gigantic baseball fan. Look at you, Vince Gilligan, giving us who obsess over the great American pastime a bad name.

Anydangway, Chuck plays piano! The opening scene of this week's episode was outstanding without much at all happening. Our favorite Worst Brother in the History of the Universe is practicing playing Sicilliene and it seems like a very precise, painstaking process. He's got one of those ticky devices to keep the rhythm (a "metronome" -- I learned something today!) and when he screws up (which takes awhile, Chuck is actually quite good), he gets frustrated and starts back over from the beginning, not allowing himself to continue from the point of the mistake. No shortcuts allowed. It's a nice character moment that lines up well with everything Chuck wants himself to stand for.

Eventually, Chuck's unique brand of self-torture is interrupted by a visit from Howard Hamlin, who drops by and informs Chuck that Jimmy will be working the Sandpiper case in his new role with Davis & Main. Chuck plays this off like he's happy for Jimmy. I genuinely don't get this -- shouldn't Hamlin already be pretty familiar with how Chuck feels about Jimmy practicing law? How did their conversation go last season when Jimmy wanted to join HHM? Lots of unanswered questions here.

Anyway, as work kicks off on the Sandpiper case, we see a couple signs that Kim's still interested in Jimmy. She swaps other peoples' seats at the table so that she and Jimmy are next to each other and there's some super-hot ankle rubbing going on under the table. When discussing Jimmy's future home, she has a bit of a Freudian slip, saying "we should get one of those smokers, barbeque for days", including herself in the vision. The two kiss before Jimmy departs to pick up his brand new corporate car.

Meanwhile, back in Wormald land, Danny Baseball is showing up at the police station, for some reason, to pursue recovery of his baseball cards using the help of cops, for some reason, in his gigantic "blinking neon sign of a vehicle that says 'drug dealer'", for some reason. Mike advises him to cut off communications with the police, in part to protect his own safety, but winds up on the hook to recover the baseball cards to prevent the distraught Wormald from proceeding with his hilariously stupid plan.

Mike tracks down Nacho working at his family's upholstery repair shop and pressures him to return the cards. When Nacho refuses, he invokes Tuco Salamanca's name to scare him into cooperating, and even promises Wormald's monstrous Hummer in exchange for far less cash than it's worth. The plan works, and Mike kills two birds with one stone. Nacho tells Wormald that their business is concluded.

Back at HHM, Jimmy talks strategy on the Sandpiper case and is briefly overcome by Chuck entering the room until Kim gives him a quick shot of confidence. The two have a strange encounter after the meeting, and immediately after, Jimmy gets a call from Mike asking him if he's still "morally flexible". Seeing an timely opportunity to continue to distance himself from everything Chuck stands for, Jimmy replies in the affirmative.

As it turns out, the job Mike had in mind was to convince the cops of Wormald's innocence. Jimmy gets in a room with Daniel and the cops, and after a minute or so of Wormald making the situation worse for himself, as he is wont to do, Jimmy takes over the conversation and begins to begin a spectacularly bizarre yarn about what Wormald was hiding behind his baseboards. He claims that Wormald's the creator of some sort of "art" videos and repeatedly insists that they're private. What sort of videos could these be?  Why, "squat cobbler", of course!  Crybaby squats, in particular. Anyhow, the police seem to temporarily buy this story that Wormald gets into a costume, tapes himself sitting in pie, and that there's a certain category of sicko in this world that becomes aroused by that behavior. "Hey, the world is a rich tapestry, my friends."

He discusses the charade with a very amused Kim over pie (what else?), during which Jimmy reveals that he asked Wormald to make such a video. It's fabrication of evidence and she calls him on it. Now that Jimmy's shenanigans have spilled over into his legal responsibilities, it's no longer fun and games for Kim and she tells him that she can no longer hear about such deeds.

Bullet Points

• I'd practice piano exactly the same way as Chuck. Maybe that contributed to my fascination.

• Jimmy's gift from Kim is a coffee mug that says "World's 2nd Best Lawyer". It was interesting seeing that gift revealed right after Jimmy finished making Kim feel nice and jealous about Jimmy's new gig.

• Man, those salon girls really lost it over seeing the weird guy living and working out of the back room getting delivered a Mercedes-Benz.

• The World's 2nd Best Lawyer coffee mug doesn't fit into the Benz' cupholders, but it fits nicely into the one in the little yellow shitbox. Is there a message here, Vince?

• "I tried to learn in high school, but then I decided there were easier ways to get girls."

• So even though we're no longer supposed to think that Hamlin is a dirtbag, is it weird that every time he talks he still seems like the scum of the earth?

• What's your pleasure -- Hoboken squat cobbler, full moon moon pie, Boston creme splat, or simple Simon the ass man?

• That. Pie. Looked. Awesome.

Better Call Saul, Season Two, Episode One

When I reviewed my TV experiences of 2015, I tried to enumerate all the shows that I watched during the year to give folks a sense of what I'd seen and what I hadn't. Pretty inexplicably, Better Call Saul slipped through the cracks. The prequel to Breaking Bad came out early in the year and had somehow slipped my mind by year's end. Honestly, there's a decent chance that if my memory was better, it may have unseated Mr. Robot in my top five, though the latter had the benefit of being viewed in December, so, you know, #RecencyBias.

Anyway, Better Call Saul is back this year and I'd like to try to review these episodes as they come out. They will be spoilerific, so please don't read if you haven't seen the episodes. While I'm aware that the amount of comments that have been posted here is....well...not huge, I'll ask that spoilers for episodes beyond the one being reviewed stay off here, as I may not be able to keep up sometimes. I'll try my best though.

Anyway, I'll post this block text to keep people from reading more than they'd like.

SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW! SPOILERS BELOW!

When we last left Jimmy McGill, he was driving away from Mike Ehrmantraut humming "Smoke on the Water", seemingly vowing to never sacrifice personal gain for the sake of "doing the right thing" again. The conclusion of Season One left it a little vague as to just what caused Jimmy to have this change of heart. He's looking at Marco's pinky ring when he seemingly makes up his mind, but Marco never made a whole load of sense as the underlying cause. It was all pretty confusing, but we don't have to get too far in the first episode of Season Two to realize that there was more to it than we got to see last spring.

Jimmy greets the partners of Davis & Main and promptly asks Kim for a sidebar, which turns into a deliciously awkward scene delivered very well by Bob Odenkirk. He tries to put himself out there to see if there's a future between himself and Kim if he takes the job, stumbling through it horribly until she very correctly points out that "one thing has absolutely nothing to do with another". Jimmy often says that he's been trying to get his act together to please his brother, Chuck, but Kim is very clearly at minimum a secondary reason, as her relatively negative response prompts Jimmy to punt on the job opportunity. We then seen the familiar scene of Jimmy leaving the parking lot after talking to Mike with new context.

While one might have thought this would immediately lead to the creation of "Saul Goodman", Jimmy's next stop is to some resort, where he sunbathes and drinks in the pool. Kim confronts him and Jimmy explains that doing the right thing had never gotten him anywhere, and that the skills that made him a good lawyer are applicable outside the legal realm. Kim doesn't understand, so Jimmy decides to demonstrate his talents on a loud, arrogant stock trader across the room. He approaches the man with Kim claiming to have a small fortune to invest and playing dumb about how to do it. Just like that, Slippin' Jimmy is back in his element.

What makes the scene interesting is Kim's changing reaction to the grift. At first, she stands back wanting basically no piece of it, but gradually the thrill of the idea and watching Jimmy work the man gets her into the act. Before long, she's playing into it just as much as Jimmy and sees it through to the end as the trader buys them what had to be over a thousand dollars' worth of food and alcohol to sell them his services. Feeling the rush of the alcohol and the excitement of the con, Jimmy and Kim wind up hooking up.

Of course, Kim was never going to up and abandon her life over one exhilarating night and she flatly explains this to Jimmy the next morning. Before long, Jimmy's back in the pool begging Kim to return and join him. The sun's not shining as much as it did the first time, which I thought was a nod to how much less glamorous the lifestyle seemed with Kim having departed. Alone, Jimmy decides enough is enough and goes back to Davis & Main, who accept him back into the proposed partnership.

The scene at the law firm is instrumentals-only and looks like my worst nightmare as Jimmy shakes hands and introduces himself to dozens of nondescript faces (I can't be the only person who would dread this, right?  They're all going to know your name the next time you see them because they had to learn one name that day, while you have to learn about thirty during your navigation of a completely new environment). It's obvious though that Jimmy's not here to play it straight given how much attention Marco's ring gets during the montage. The episode ends by focusing on a light switch with a sign that says, "Always leave ON, never turn OFF". If there was ever any question whether Jimmy was making a second attempt at playing it straight, it's firmly answered when he plays with the switch.

Meanwhile, in the world of Ehrmantraut, Mike has been taking further protection jobs from a.k.a. "Price", who has splurged on a flamboyant Hummer. Mike refuses to ride in the ridiculous car to the deal with Nacho, which leads to Price dumping Mike's services prior to the meet, as the deals with Nacho have been going peacefully anyway. Without Mike, Price carelessly shows off his vehicle to Nacho and allows the latter to acquire his name ("Daniel Wormald") and address from the registration in the glovebox. Robbery ensues, and Wormald gets the police involved for some reason, who get suspicious of him quickly. There's no way this guy is gonna last long, right?

Bullet Points

• "Daniel Wormald". Seriously? The guy's already a walking Type-B dork stereotype and we need to give him a last name like "Wormald"?
• "Please do me a favor. Take a pillow, put it over that stock's face until you hear the death bed queef."
• Admit it, you probably really want to know what a $50 shot of tequila tastes like.
• I wonder when we're going to meet Huell Babineaux.

Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is a game that's been soaring in popularity over the course of the past couple years. The Settlers of Catan was the gateway to European-style board games, but surely Ticket to Ride is the second-most popular of the bunch.

Up to five players can join in on the fun of Ticket to Ride. The goal is to score the most points by strategically building train routes along the map before the game ends. Points are scored by:

1. Simply placing train routes along the board
2. Completing specific mission routes drawn from the deck
3. Owning the longest continuous route on the board, similar to Catan's 'Longest Road' card

Each player has just 45 train cars to work with over the course of the game, so part of the strategy is figuring out the most efficient way to spend those limited resources. Longer city-to-city routes net you more points per train car placed, so selecting routes (when you have a choice) that allow you to play through the five- and six-car routes along the periphery of the board are generally preferable unless you draw an assortment of route cards that have significant overlap and can be built concurrently.  Here's a look at the board (U.S / Canada map).

Another trick is understanding when to build your routes.  Players can either draw route cards (which are used to build routes), draw new route missions, or build a train route on their turn. Much of the game is spent stockpiling cards, but you need to be careful that someone else doesn't beat you to a route you have your eye on while you're trying to save up for something else.  This is particularly the case when you have to go through the middle of the board -- there's a lot of routes that run through there and the one- and two-car routes make it easy for another player to quickly impede your progress at any time.

The other primary component of the strategy is how to go about drawing cards. Players can choose from a selection of "face-up" cards or random ones from the bank. There are also wild cards that can be used to build routes of any color. If a player chooses a face-up wild card, they are only entitled to draw one on their turn versus the normal two. This leads to debates between taking a card you know you can use versus taking a risk on pulling one or two random face-down cards.

As with many good board games, the key to Ticket to Ride is to have a plan. It's most beneficial if you decide probably about 1/3 of the way into the game how you would ideally "spend" all of the train cars in your bank, then make all of your remaining moves with an eye towards that goal.  The tough part about having a plan is that other players frequently ruin plans, so you need to be cognizant of possible back-up plans as well as the "critical paths", individual routes that you absolutely have to have to stand a chance of being successful. You also need to be aware of how many train cars other players have left; if someone is down to two, one, or zero cars, that could trigger the end of the game before you've completed what you need to do.

All in all, Ticket to Ride has a very approachable complexity and difficulty level. It's easier to understand than both Carcassonne and The Settlers of Catan and it's a great option to introduce people into euro-style gaming. The fact that you'll draw different route cards every game allows for some replayability, but that's limited in part by the fact that after playing a few games, you're aware of which longer route cards exist, so it's hard for players to hide what they're building towards. It doesn't have as much advanced strategy as some other games I'm into, but a luck factor helps newer players have a chance against veterans. Ticket to Ride is plenty of fun and should be a part of any serious board game collection.

Rating: 8.5/10

The Wire Character Rankings

I'm creating this as a post to consolidate my rankings of characters on The Wire.

If you have not seen The Wire:

Step 1) Stop reading immediately (though you probably would do this anyway). There are spoilers in the below links, and I will not be held responsible for ruining the greatest show of all time.

Step 2) Watch the entire series on HBO Go. If you do not get HBO, this is a fixable problem.

Step 3) Come back and read all of these wonderful character reviews.

Character Ranking Posts
Characters #30 - #26
Characters #25 - #21
Characters #20 - #16
Characters #15 - #11
Characters #10 - #6
Characters #5 - #3
Characters #2 - #1