The Pat Hatter Buys a Microwave

(This week's recap of Better Call Saul will be delayed; I watch it with my wife and she's been working late this week, so we haven't gotten around to it)

The other day, my wife was trying to heat up some butter for garlic bread in the microwave. The microwave began to make an odd sound and there was even some weird smoke-like gas (possibly smoke) emanating from the machine. She stopped it immediately and became resigned to the fact that the microwave was probably cooked (heh).

While my wife may have skipped straight to Acceptance, I don't grieve over broken things in quite that fashion. I enjoy the Denial stage and spend a disproportionately large amount of time in the Anger stage. Usually I replace Bargaining and Depression with Have-A-Beer-And-Forget-About-It, but unfortunately this is still Lent. Point is, I approached the microwave again for some reason and tried once more to heat up the butter. Surely that was a one-off electrical error that wouldn't repeat itself, and hey look! It started up fine again!

::microwave flickers and pops angrily, cut to scene of entire town losing power and blacking out::

Oh.

When you have a 1-year old and are in a situation where both parents work, a microwave is simply not something you can do without. It is the reheater of easy leftovers, the cooker of frozen vegetables, the source of at least part of damn near every meal for my daughter. The microwave is a holy, sacred appliance that makes life do-able.

"I didn't have enough respect for that power and it's out now." ~ Ellie Sattler, Jurassic Park

I had a naive and simple plan on Monday evening. I would pick up my daughter from day care around 5:00, take her to Home Depot to purchase a microwave, get the microwave up and running in time to heat her up some food, and still wind up putting her to bed at a reasonable time.  It is remarkable just how perfectly every step of that would have had to work out for it to be anything resembling a success, but I convinced myself that things would go in accordance with this schedule.

I am a stupid person.

I picked up my daughter and we made the drive to Home Depot. At this time I realized that I had done little research on the matter in advance. Because I am a millenial and had an upcoming problem involving a physical object, I did what people of this generation usually do and called my parents for advice.  My mom answered and I was relieved to learn that microwaves are simple machines with few complications or necessary specifications. She did, however, remind me that I needed to measure the nook that our microwave sits in before buying one. Shit. I was meaning to do that all day and forgot. I took a detour and headed home to get the measurements: 2 feet wide, 17 inches high, and about 2 feet deep.

When I got to Home Depot, I made haste for the appliance section, understanding my daughter's general level of patience for sitting in a shopping cart for an extended period of time. I looked at the microwaves on display in the appliance section that were hanging above the stoves.  What the hell? These things are all humongous!

Eventually I got to talk to someone that explained that the microwaves on display were "over-the-range" microwaves and that the countertop models were smaller.  Well great, guy! Show me some of those! He takes me over to some sitting on shelves, and I explain the dimensions of the space to him. He tells me that all of the ones on display here should be fine, and sure enough, a tape measure confirmed that. I obviously have no clue what to buy besides wanting stainless steel for the look. There's this one Magic Chef microwave that seemed pretty cheap and another LG microwave that had a better look to it, but was about $50 more expensive.

This is where the power of branding comes into play. I have no history with purchasing products from LG. They might make great products with excellent customer service, or they might make crap that breaks down immediately and outsource their customer service to Comcast. What I do know is that "LG" is the name of a company I've heard of before and "Magic Chef" is most likely a company run out of a basement somewhere that sells its goods on infomercials at three o'clock in the morning, because it is called "Magic Chef". I took pictures of both microwaves and sent them to my wife, but she didn't respond so I just picked the LG one and moved on.

At the checkout register, they rang up the microwave for a price of $179.99. I was about to put in my chip card but I stopped and recalled that this was far in excess of the price on the tag back in the appliance section. I mentioned to the checker that I recalled it being priced closer to $150.  We tracked down the guy that was helping me make the decision and he went to investigate the situation.

Meanwhile, my daughter had been a little antsy during this trip, but no worse than that. Overall, she had been great, and now I had a little down time to play with her a little bit and get her smiling and laughing. The checker was absolutely loving this, and she joined in on the fun. She would tilt her head to the side and my daughter would do the same in reaction while cracking up like it was the funniest game in the world. Eventually, enough time had passed for her to determine that her co-worker had probably reached the Iowa state border by now and would not be returning. She told me that he was "probably going to honor it anyway", so she rang it up for $149.00 because I told her that I thought it was close to $150 but couldn't remember with 100% certainty.  This was a nice gesture.

I then went to the car to text my wife that I had finished the errand. It was at that point that I noticed the picture of the microwave I sent to her earlier. The price tag was in the picture and it was $159.00.

Oh no.

In the grand scheme of things, this was pretty much not a big deal given that I basically told them what price I wanted to be charged and they gave it to me without even checking things out. I thought momentarily about driving away, but I then thought about my Catholic guilt screaming "YOU STOLE $10.00 FROM HOME DEPOT YOU ASSHOLE!!!" at me the rest of the evening.  I walked back in with my daughter and explained to the checker what happened, basically asking her to put $10.00 more on my card.  She said she could not do that and that I would have to take the receipt to the "Returns" line on the other side of the Home Depot.

Okay then.

I head down there and there's one dude in line in front of me. Whatever he's working through with the person behind the counter is taking forever, and I keep making eye contact with the returns person to see if she could squeeze me in during some down time, but to no avail. Meanwhile, my daughter is again the star of the show, smiling and charming everyone waiting around the counter.  This could have been an awful errand and she was making it somehow fun. Eventually, the guy left. I began to explain to the customer service lady what had happened and she said "oh, they called and told me about you. You're good." Neat. You couldn't have just said that to me ten minutes ago?

Finally I take the thing home.  It's 6:45 PM already so all hopes of my daughter getting to bed anywhere close to her 7:15 - 7:30 bedtime are pretty much out the window. Hopefully, though, I could plug in the microwave and get her something hot to eat. When I took it out of the box, it measured at about 21.5 inches wide, so it should fit within the 24-inch wide front of the nook with some wiggle room. Then, I started reading the manual regarding installation. Everything was going swimmingly until I read...

Free air flow around the oven is important. Allow at least 4 inches of space at the top, sides, and back of the oven for proper ventilation.

You have got to be kidding me.

Four inches on each side?

After all that, I don't even have space for this thing??

I immediately called Home Depot back, irate at the fact that the person helping me to pick out a microwave did not care to mention anything about ventilation constraints, while simultaneously stressed that I still was making no progress in getting my progressively impatient 1-year-old any closer to fed, bathed, and put to bed. The kitchen department gave me a response roughly akin to, "Our department employees don't know anything about microwaves." Super!

A part of me began to hope that the four inches thing was just a boilerplate overly conservative instruction put in the manual to cover the manufacturer's ass. I pushed further with the kitchen department and I was transferred to some sort of interior designer over the phone (please do not ask me how the internal phone tree of Home Depot works). I asked this new person whether the instruction was merely a sick joke and she replied that in her capacity as an interior designer that she takes that specific four-inch ventilation specification very seriously when assisting clients with the layout of appliances in the kitchen. At this point, I was losing my mind and having already explained the situation with my daughter to her, pretty much all sense of personal decency had vacated me.

"HOW ARE THE STORE EMPLOYEES NOT EDUCATED ABOUT NECESSARY AIR FLOW REQUIREMENTS OF MICROWAVES WHEN THEY ARE PHYSICALLY THE PEOPLE IN THE STORE TELLING YOU WHAT TO BUY!?!??!?!?!?!!!!11!1!1!!!1!!!"

(I was so out of my mind that I may have actually spoken the "1"s.)

I was told that a store manager would call me back later. In the meantime, my mother-in-law came over and looked at the situation as well. While 24-inches was the clearance for the nook, past the front the width was more like 25.5 inches, so we actually had about two inches of air flow space on each side, half the ventilation requirements shown in the manual. Our family works with a contractor we trust, so she called this gentleman and his point of view was that two inches on each side should be perfectly adequate. Finally having some level of assurance that I'd purchased a product that could actually be used without overheating, I began to breathe a sigh of relief.

All that's left to do is plug the thing in.

The outlet where the plug needs to go is actually behind a drawer below the nook. As this area is otherwise inaccessible, the previous owners drilled a hole into the bottom of the nook so that the plug for the old microwave could pass through it. We tried to pass the new plug through the hole and ran into a little bit of a problem:

OLD PLUG STYLE: STRAIGHT

NEW PLUG STYLE: BENDY-SIDEWAYS-LIKE

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My Major Minor Streak of Sobriety

I do the whole Lent thing, so this year I tried doing something a little different. For awhile, I had been growing somewhat concerned about the amount of alcohol I'd been consuming. To clarify, I don't have an addiction -- that's a serious chemically-driven situation that requires attention and treatment -- but I had been drinking a lot simply because I felt like it and wanted to.

About a month ago, I had a few friends over one night just to hang out and play some board games. They were all driving home later that night. One of them had a cocktail with me earlier in the evening, but aside from that, none of them drank. So why did I have 4-5 beers over the remainder of the evening? That's not a problematic amount of alcohol to have in a single evening by any means, but this is what I meant by drinking a lot -- having more than just a couple when the situation really doesn't call for it. Doing that one or two times per week in addition to the social situations during which that would be more normal really adds up.

So for Lent, I decided to make a rule for myself. I am not allowed to drink more than the other people I'm spending time with. I was hoping that this would be a good way for me to still enjoy parties and nights out while keeping things in check during nights that are much more chill. When it's just the two of us at home, my wife usually doesn't drink more than two-ish glasses of wine in an evening, so this has helped keep my intake down.

Last weekend, I went to a concert on my Friday night out and didn't want beer because I wanted to avoid bathroom lines. After that, I hung out with my wife for the remainder of the weekend and she was sick. This, therefore, has led to a situation in which I've gone about 13 days without alcohol. 13 days sober didn't sound like a lot to me until I really tried to think about when the last time was that I went 13 straight days without having a drink.

If you don't really go cold-turkey on booze, it gets pretty ingrained into your life even if you don't ingest mass quantities.  Going out after softball or basketball games, bar trivia, an occasional glass of wine with dinner...there's just so many routine situations that could break up a potential such string of 13 days. If I had to guess, I probably haven't done this since winter break during my junior year of college. That was almost a decade ago.

I've read so many articles about people who quit alcohol and immediately notice a bunch of positive changes in their lives. They sleep better. They have more energy. They feel more physically fit. You probably have to go longer than I have to feel a lot of these effects, but I have to say that thus far, I'm not seeing it.  I play basketball twice per week, and if anything I've played worse lately and haven't been able to go as hard on the court. When my wife was sick last weekend, I was a wasteland of lethargy and didn't rise to the occasion the way I could have or should have. Maybe I was coffee deprived or something, but it felt like I had a hangover minus the headache and dehydration.  As for sleep? I guess I've slept fine, but that wasn't really an issue before. I don't miss hangovers, but aside from that, I don't think I've evolved into a higher-functioning person.  Again, one probably needs to go at it for longer than 13 days.

The upside? I'm sure that my body is thanking me for this reprieve, even if I can't directly feel it. Just knowing that I've been able to take it easy and not give in to temptation (quite as often!) has been a load off my mind. Part of me wants to see just how long I can push this out. I probably won't last the weekend, though, and with everyone's favorite Irish holiday coming up on the horizon, that probably won't cut my streak tremendously short. This may have been a temporary experience, but it was a good one for me even if I haven't found it to be all that "rewarding".

Better Call Saul, Season Two, Episode Three: "Amarillo"

Last week, Jimmy crafted an extremely creative and effective solution to a problem that Kim found to be fascinating and brilliant, but then he pissed Kim off when he crossed the line. This week is much the same, only Kim is left in the dark about the unethical parts.

Amarillo opens with Jimmy "indirectly" making a pitch to a bus full of Sandpiper residents. One of them, Alma Mae Urbano, replied to a letter from Davis & Main explaining the overcharging situation. When her bus breaks down, Jimmy slips on board and starts explaining in his usually charming manner what's going on using the analogy of a diner getting a bill wrong. Naturally, the other passengers just happen to hear about the situation and BOOM, 24 new clients for Davis & Main.

At the subsequent meeting back at HHM, Chuck sees right through what Jimmy did and calls it out for what it is -- solicitation. Technically, all Jimmy did was talk to the person who replied to the letter, but he orchestrated a situation in which there'd be others present. In response to Chuck, Jimmy flat out lies and explains that pure word-of-mouth got them the extra clients. But wait! Kim's not giving him any ankle-lovin' under the table, so he makes a show of agreeing to backtrack and find a way to get clients on the straight and narrow.

That alone doesn't win back Kim's good graces and it shouldn't. She put her neck out there to get Jimmy where he is and Jimmy's doing stuff that could get him disbarred at every turn. She again affirms her confidence in Jimmy's abilities but all but demands he put a stop to his funny business. For what feels like the seventeenth time already this season, Kim pulls Jimmy back on the honest side of the line. Obviously, that's temporary. It's going to be heartbreaking when we have to watch Kim give up on Jimmy completely, because we know it's coming.

To circumvent apparent efforts on the part of Sandpiper to prevent residents from contacting Davis & Main, Jimmy proposes an idea that's flat-out brilliant -- a commercial during Murder She Wrote, a TV show which is informally a scheduled event at Sandpiper facilities across America. Cliff says he's open to the idea, but that they should revisit the issue next week.

Jimmy proceeds to at the very least shoot the commercial in the interim and shows it to Kim, who finds it to be very compelling. Having shown that his charisma and creative mind can be put to good use in an ethical way, Jimmy falls back into Kim's good graces, and the two get cuddly again. Yet, there's just one tiny, miniscule, unimportant detail -- Cliff hasn't okay'd this yet. But that's a mere formality, right?

Well, Jimmy seems to think it's a more significant hurdle. He sits in his office and ponders what to do next while the camera focuses in on the alluring "Nest Egg" commercial tape. Jimmy walks the tape over to Cliff's office but stops short of going in. What have we learned, Jimmy? Oh yeah, that doing the right thing gets us nowhere. Cliff can wait. You need to send that commercial to the TV station right away.

Obviously, despite a very-well shot scene showing Jimmy's tension waiting for the phone to ring, the commercial is a rousing success and it inks Davis & Main over 100 new clients. Armed with his methods already having succeeded, Jimmy will be better able to spin his strategy when it's pitched to Cliff, but Cliff gets wind of it first and scolds Jimmy over the phone, even calling him an "arsonist" for using the name of his firm in a commercial without his permission. Poor Kim is left in the dark, as Jimmy keeps her believing that Davis & Main was a-ok with his methods.

The Mike storyline is so disjoint from Jimmy's at this point so I don't think it makes much sense to interweave them here. Mike's daughter-in-law is scared for her and her daughter's lives because she says she's hearing gunshots at night. To scope out the situation, Mike sits in his car all night, but other than a paperboy making a "plop" sound when tossing a newspaper on driveways, all is calm. The next day, she calls him frantically about hearing shots in the night and shows him what she believes to be a bullet hole. Mike begins to realize that she's crazytown bananapants, but he says he'll help move her out of the house anyway.

To do that, Mike needs money, so he goes to his favorite criminally-connected veterinarian to seek work. As it turns out, someone asks for him by name for a job. Just before the final credits, it's revealed to be Nacho.

If I have a complaint about Better Call Saul thus far, it's that the character work has been pretty straightforward aside from the two primary protagonists. For the most part, the only character viewpoints we get are those of Jimmy and Mike and they don't overlap all that much. Breaking Bad created a rich tapestry of characters and as a result, scenes could be centered around any of Walter, Hank, Skyler, Jesse, etc. We don't know all that much about the surrounding players in this story except how they relate to either Jimmy or Mike. This is why I loved that piano scene at the beginning of last week's episode so much; it was good to see Chuck being Chuck on his own. The show needs more moments like that.

Bullet Points

• Perhaps someone with a legal mind can explain what's wrong with solicitation in this form? Would Jimmy actually get disbarred for explaining to a bus full of old people that they're getting ripped off and offering to help them with the situation? I understand that in many cases someone doing this could be an annoyance, particularly when they're coming from a place less genuine than Jimmy is here, but it seems to me that he's doing the world a favor here.

• This Kim/Jimmy situation shows some of my worst fears in recommending someone for a job. I've never been put in this situation before, and it's not like I would recommend someone I know to be as ethically questionable (generous!) as Jimmy, but it'd be a little scary to attach my reputation to someone else's level of effort unless I'd actually seen them in the workplace before.  I feel like doing a favor for a friend I've never seen operate in a professional capacity in this manner could get pretty dicey. But again, I've never had to cross this bridge.

• "You gotta ask, dude, dolly's extra."

• "Does anybody like you?"

• "Hey, don't be jealous of my big bowl of balls; it's unbecoming."

• "For you, I could make any chair in this place vibrate."

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