Part 2: The Cartel And The Dead Being Given New Life In one of his first scenes in Breaking Bad, after Walt and Jesse have mangled an attempt to take him prisoner, Saul assesses the two of them as the criminals they are and offers to become their Tom Hagen…

Part 1: How the People in Jimmy’s Orbit Have Affected Him As Saul Goodman once said as the battle between Gus Fring and Walter White was reaching its climax: “We are in the end of days.” And that is where we are as of Monday night: the end of the…

And Those Bottled Episodes? Not as Bottled As We Thought. One of the questions that have to be boggling the minds of those of us who, like me, are huge fans of FX’s Atlanta: What has been going on with Season 3? The series has always been willing to operate…

Then You’re A Bleeping Moron The last few months David Mamet, one of the greatest writers in the history of theater and film, has been making the rounds for some, shall we say, controversial comments he’s been making about politics and sexuality. I won’t repeat them, because most of you…

Celebrity Jeopardy Comes To Primetime This Fall. It Might Be Fun. It Won’t Be Pretty. Usually when I write a column about Jeopardy it’s usually to gush about a great contestant or rave about the level of play. …

A Trend on Television That’s Nearly as Troubling as The Reboot Late last week, I was floored to learn that Hulu had decided to renew Nine Perfect Strangers; the David E. Kelley led adaptation of a Lianne Moriarty novel, for a second season. I was a big fan of the…

(Despite The Opinion of One Particular Letter Writer to the New York Times) A colleague of mine has a phrase about the stupidity of certain people he doesn’t agree with. I’m not going to use that phrase because I don’t want to rip it off. But when I finally finished…

I Didn’t Realize How Right I Was Yesterday, after a Final Jeopardy in the category LET’S SPEAK ITALIAN that no one was able to answer correctly, Daniel Nguyen a high school math teacher from San Jose became champion with $7,199. It was, by all standards, an utterly unremarkable game except…

Breeders Returns For Season 3 One of the quieter pleasures I enjoyed last year was the FX presentation of Breeders, a dry and very brittle comedy about a middle class family trying to raise two very problematic children. Martin Freeman and Daisy Haggard, two of the subtly greatest actors on…