Better Call Saul (AMC)
is now better than halfway through its sixth and final season, and had
its mid-season finale this past Monday -- it'll be back July 11th to
start working through the final six episodes. This focused, mostly
prequel series to Breaking Bad, has been excellent out of the
gate, and with this being the final season everything is coming to a
head in what is centrally the origin story for Saul Goodman, who started
out as Jimmy McGill. After bringing a caper to a head, a dangerous parallel story came in to stun the characters and the audience in the final moments of this most recent episode.
I really should (carefully) seek out some others who have been watching the show all along so I have someone to talk with about it before we hit that final stretch. No one in my immediate circle's been watching, many of them not even having gotten through Breaking Bad. Anyway, top-notch television, and I'm here at the point where I simultaneously want to see the final episodes, yet don't want it to be over. It's still funny to me to think back to when I first read the pitch for the series, and wondered why anyone would be interested in providing an origin story - and post-script - to a supporting player from Breaking Bad. Fortunately, they knew better.
Today sees the final two episodes of the first season of Bosch: Legacy (over so soon?!) arrive on the free streamer Freevee. Continuing the story of detective Harry Bosch following the seven seasons of Bosch that ran over on Amazon Prime. They managed to wrap most of the storylines up, but I'll warn you that they left us with a major cliffhanger. At least we know it's coming, as the series was given a season two go-ahead four days before this season launched. No word at this early date when we would expect season two, though.
As noted in some earlier pieces, this new series' first season is in many ways Bosch season eight -- it just took advantage of a career milestone/change for the title character as an opportunity for a slightly different look and feel -- and theme song. We even had some nice bits of involvement from several members of the extended cast from the old show. Reportedly they're very interested in working with Connelly on other (spinoff?) series.
All based on a series of novels by Michael Connelly, this leads me to a seque for something that arrived on Netflix back on May 13th -- though I took a week or so to get around to it. Connelly created at least one other character who went on to star in a series of novels: Mickey Haller, an attorney popularly known as "The Lincoln Lawyer" for his habit of conducting so much business from the back seat of a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car. Harry was created back in the 1992 novel The Black Echo, and is the more storied creation of Connelly, while Mickey Haller was created in 2005 with, suitably enough, The Lincoln Lawyer.
While it's less likely to be something they'll handle in one of these live action series - which tend to be strewn with legal landmines - in the novels it was established that Harry and Marty are half-brothers via their father.
Anyway, I enjoyed the ten-episode first season of The Lincoln Lawyer over on Netflix, and am hoping it's successful enough to be picked up for additional seasons. Here's the trailer:
It
manages to form satisfyingly complete arcs for at least a couple of
stories, while leaving us in the final scene with a reminder that
important, threatening mysteries remain.
Speaking of Netflix, the first "half" of the long-awaited season four of Stranger Things arrives today. Seven episodes. (The final two, the second of which will be 2.5 hours, will arrive July 1st.) While it's not been quite three years since season three arrived on the Fourth of July, 2019, it somehow seems longer. Advance reviews have been encouraging.
Here's the season four trailer
If
you're feeling a little at sea, here's a shot at a recap of season
three that Netflix posted. It helped revive multiple details for me.
I've yet to feel a strong urge for a series rewatch, so this is the
right speed for me.
I've now watched through the seven episodes of this portion ("half") of season four. We'll be getting the remaining two (one of which is supposed to be 2.5 hours long) come July 1st. The overall season will run nearly twice the length of any of the previous ones, with the episodes running longer. I didn't focus on that much while watching it, because I didn't feel it was being padded. It gave them more time to spread out over the cast. As ever, your mileage may vary.
They have managed to recapture much of the early feel of the show, and this season has a distinct Nightmare On Elm Street theme running through it. Period pop cultural references throughout, of course, but for the most part it all worked for me, feeling no more forced than those actual things did when we went through them back in the '80s.
Meanwhile, the latest Star Wars series begins on Disney+. While they've been sticking to a Wednesday release schedule for new series - and the remainder of the series will be released on following Wednesdays - the premiere for this one is on Friday. Speculation is that there will be some event tie-in with the Star Wars event in Anaheim on the 27th. Or, it could be that they just wanted the direct, head-to-head holiday weekend competition with Stranger Things.
Set mainly in the time between Episode Three and Four (Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope), we'll see Ewan McGregor reprising his role as Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Hayden Christensen as Darth Vader. As with all things Star Wars, I'm going to let them tell me the story, and not race to research all of the advance name-drops of other characters. It's the 6-episode miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi I'm somewhat on the fence with this mainly because it's trying to fill in a time period between the end of the prequel movies' Episode Three and 1977's A New Hope, and to do so regarding not just the lead character but some other prominent ones for that original movie. It's already stretching my credulity considerably, both in allowing what became Episode Four to remain intact, and in doubling down on the simple problem of where Ben chose to "hide"young Luke. If you can manage that bit of advanced mental yoga, then you may be able to enjoy the adventure being offered.
With just two episodes down, though, it's already extremely difficult to even imagine the 1977 film that started it all managing to remain intact sans some selective memory wipes. It's likely a good time to remember that Star Wars has always been a fantasy series with a sci-fi setting and trappings, not science fiction. repeating "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." as a mind-clearing mantra may be a good recourse in the absence of some really good meds.
I've just started watching an 8-episode series on Amazon Prime, a drama that hinges on a sci-fi premise. Sissy Spacek and J.K. Simmons star as an elderly couple, weighed down by the years but much more so by a profound loss many years earlier, who have a secret portal on their property that leads to a sort of observation deck on another planet. It's Night Sky
Comedian Norm Macdonald was diagnosed with cancer back in 2012, but managed to keep it private. Jump ahead eight years to the summer of 2020, with his secret still kept, Norm was working on new material for a Netflix special when he needed to schedule a hospital procedure.
“His test results were not good, so during the heart of COVID-19 pandemic and literally the night before going in for a procedure, he wanted to get this on tape just in case — as he put it — things went South. It was his intention to have a special to share if something happened.” He recorded an hour, in his living room, in a single take.
The procedure went well, and the tape was tossed in a closet. A year later, though, Norm became very ill -- too ill to be able to film the material in front of an audience, as planned. Remembering the tape, he asked Hoeskstra to dig it out so he could watch it, which he did before he passed away last year. After watching he even suggested a self-deprecating title.
Norm MacDonald: Nothing Special (1h 26 min) - which will include clips of various comedic contemporaries of Norm, recorded during the recent Netflix Is a Joke Fest - will be arriving on Netflix May 30th -- Memorial Day. Given the nature of the special, it's understandable that they didn't put together an elaborate promo piece, and didn't even post this teaser & clip before the day the special went live. That's going to be my next viewing stop here on Memorial Day -- after I take care of a few chores/obligations.
Two days later, on June 2nd, Hulu will finally see the arrival of The Orville: New Horizons. It's been over three years since the final episode of season two of the show aired on Fox.
It's been a long wait, and on more than one level I'm interested to see how this goes down. During those two seasons on Fox, the show was generally panned by critics (especially the first season), while scoring strongly with the audience. For one subset of the fans the "throwback" theme and feel of it struck a chord, and it became the Trek they wanted, as opposed to Star Trek: Discovery, which many of them at the time were rejecting. I've become a strong fan of Discovery, but even among those who haven't gone that way the recent debut of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - a series set aboard the Enterprise under Captain Christopher Pike, set ten years before it became James T. Kirk's ship - seems to be enjoying almost universal praise. (Now four episodes in, I've certainly been enjoying it.) "Fans" being what they are, who knows how long that'll last, but for now at least official Trek has a series with a very human, accessible captain and relatively old school sensibilities. We'll see if the pandemic-delayed series' return, here in a new place, works well enough for them, or if the moment's passed.
As for sleep-starved me, I have to bury myself in calcs and reports today before I can get back to watching anything else! Wishing you (and, frankly, myself) luck in finding the quickest, safest exit to the weekend! See you next Friday, when, among other things, some twisted hyper-violence will be returning over on Amazon Prime. (No, I'm not referring to Bezos' union-busting.) -- Mike
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