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Review: “Confessions,” Breaking Bad season 5, episode 11

A man speeds through a red light in order to save somebody’s life. Another stops at a red light on his way to ruin someone else’s.

One is doing the right thing. The other is doing a just thing.

The distinction between “right” and “just” isn’t all that hazy; it’s the distinction of intention that matters. Or, at least, it should.

But I’m speaking from a very unique perspective here: my own. In my world. With my experiences. My expectations. My hopes for everyone around me.

In the world of Breaking Bad, the simple distinction between “right” and “just” seems to be driving the course of these final episodes. We know which is which; that’s not the issue. In a just outcome, Walter would go to prison. In a right outcome, his family would be spared from harm. They’re not even mutually exclusive. It sounds easy. But I’m glad it’s not, because it’s making for stellar television.

On the side of the just we have Hank, obviously. He’s not worried about how Walt’s children will respond to their father being locked away, and he’s not content to know either that his crimes are behind him or that he will be dead shortly anyway. In Hank’s eyes, Walt needs to be punished. And he needs to be punished in a very specific way: by this country’s legal system.

On the side of the right, we have Walt. Don’t we? …not really, no. So let’s shelve him for a moment.

No, on the side of the right we have both Skylar and Marie. They’re working at odds, but they’re working at odds for the same reason. Neither Marie’s intended abductions of the White children nor Skyler’s perjury and her ongoing complicity are just, but they are — if you were to ask those characters to explain their motives — right. Marie is willing to break the law to protect the children. Skyler is also willing to break it, and tarnish the name of an innocent man, in order to protect the children. They’re each doing despicable things*, but their intentions are the same.

So where does that leave Walt?

I want to say “in the middle,” but I’m not sure I can. Off to the side, maybe. Without a doubt what he’s done is illegal, and our criminal justice system wouldn’t be (and shouldn’t be) satisfied by the fact that, hey dude, he’s like totally done cooking meth forever and he’s super sorry. On top of that, it’s hard to argue that he’s trying to do the “right” thing after a full episode of his selfish manipulations.

And that’s Walt’s situation right now. In my hypothetical example that opened this review, you could defend the actions of either motorist: one is selflessly putting himself in danger in order to help somebody else (right), but the other is following the traffic laws that have been put in place to protect us (just). Conversely, you could condemn either of them: one is endangering the lives of others by not obeying the rules (unjust), and the other is on his way to deliberately do harm to another human being (wrong).

Walt is both unjust and wrong. We’re beyond the point that we can defend him at all. It’s not a matter of finding a place on the just / right continuum; it’s a matter of acknowledging that his data point is on a different chart altogether.

Hank rightly calls Walt on this during a (brilliantly) tense dinner at a Mexican restaurant. Who is Walt to talk about right and wrong? The cosmic editors who structured the world of “Confessions” must be on Hank’s side, because every time we see Walt turning on the charm in this episode, it’s in order to bend somebody else to his own ends.

Whether it’s using his own son’s devastation against him, delivering a heartfelt “confession” to the camera that frames Hank as the criminal mastermind, or finally returning Jesse’s affection in the desert so that he can get the boy out of his life, Walt is neither doing the just thing nor the right thing. He’s doing the selfish thing. This is his world now, and you’re going to do what he says. We’ve seen him use anger and brute force to further his ends in the past…now we’re seeing him work the emotional angles as well.

“Confessions” is a great episode. A great. Great. Great episode, and while it pivots in some unexpected directions, it always does so on sturdy ground.

For starters, the episode’s centerpiece — Walt’s “confession” video — was an absolutely brilliant way to reinforce the Walt / Hank stalemate. Earlier in the episode Marie was upset because Hank waited and didn’t rat Walt out to his DEA colleagues. She then intimates that it may already be too late…and she’s right.

First Hank tried to get Skyler to fill in the blanks that would connect Walt to Heisenberg. Then he tried to get Jesse to fill in those blanks. Neither would, so good ol’ Walter steps up to fill them in himself.

And, yes, it certainly would be ridiculous for anyone to believe that Hank was the drug lord…but no more ridiculous than it would be for them to believe that it was a dying chemistry teacher with no criminal history. In fact, Walt’s story would have the edge over Hank’s, simply because he knows more of what actually happened. He’d be able to connect dots that Hank didn’t even know existed. That’s leverage, and it’s significant.

But the truly crowning moment took place in the desert, in what’s probably the single most emotional scene the show has ever done. After allowing Walter yet another long manipulation, Jesse calls him on it. “Would you just, for once, stop working me?” Jesse asks, short of breath and overcome with conflicting emotions. “For like ten seconds straight?”

Jesse’s not on the verge of a breakdown…he’s at the lowest point of an ongoing one. We’ve seen Walter manipulate him in the past (many, many times), but this is the only time we’ve seen Jesse seriously stand up to him. It was a well-earned moment, one five seasons in the making, and Aaron Paul’s hesitating, breathy delivery gives us a Jesse dizzy with internal conflict. He knows he should tell Walter to go fuck himself…and yet he doesn’t want to. He wants to be wrong about all of this.

But he’s not. As much as we’ve seen Jesse look up to Walter as a surrogate father in the past, we never got anywhere near an equal balance of Walter seeing Jesse as a surrogate son. Flashes, yes…glimpses…but he was always quick to tear his partner down rather than support him. Walter was only a father to him in the sense that he was able to emotionally manipulate and strongarm him as a son.

And Jesse calls him out on it. Jesse, heartbroken, does tell him to go fuck himself.

At which point Walter, seeing exactly what the audience sees, hugs him. Now is the time, he knows, to finally support the boy.

And it works. Because the one time Walter supports him, it’s so that Walter can get what he wants.

Of course it doesn’t end there. (Though the hug would have made for a perfect EXECUTIVE PRODUCER VINCE GILLIGAN moment.) Nope. Because Jesse is being manipulated even as he rails against being manipulated, and once he realizes** that, the betrayal is felt a thousand times more sharply.

We end with Jesse attempting to burn down the White residence, and Walter rushing after him with a loaded gun. And yet that’s still probably the least thrilling moment of the episode; I was held much more rapt by Bryan Cranston speaking slowly and carefully to the people whose lives he’s destroyed.

Such is the power of Walt’s manipulations.

—–
* Honest question: can the case be made that what Marie did (or wanted to do) was just as bad as what Skyler did? To me, Marie is pretty clearly ahead of her sister, morally-speaking, despite the fact that they both have criminal solutions to the problem. Is that just me? I’d love to hear somebody equate the two…either by tearing down Marie’s or building up Skyler’s.

** Jesse also “realizes” that Walt poisoned Brock. That felt to me like a bit of a jump, as finding out that Huell lifted the ricin cigarette is still three or four logical leaps, at best, from concluding that Walter poisoned his girlfriend’s son. I’m not complaining, but I think it was jarring because one scene ends with Jesse looking at a packet of cigarettes, and the next begins with him instantly aware of what happened. I’m willing to believe that’s down to the quickness of the edit, though…it works a lot better if we believe that Jesse had a long walk back to Saul’s office, during which he angrily worked his way through every detail. Personally…I think I would have preferred to see that.

Review: “Buried,” Breaking Bad season 5, episode 10

I can review this episode using only five words: “Now that’s more like it.”

Or, wait. Maybe I’ll go with “I fucking love you, Marie.”

Either of those I think would say it all…but, for old time’s sake, let’s pretend I have more to say BECAUSE OF COURSE I DO.

My issue with “Blood Money” was mainly down to pacing…but really the problem was that I didn’t put enough trust in Vince Gilligan and his writing staff. I’m sure I can count on one hand how many times a perceived flaw in a television episode was actually down to me watching it completely and totally wrong but…I confess…that’s exactly what happened here.

It’s not entirely my fault…Gilligan set the trap. I was just dumb enough to walk into it.

The first half of season five ended with Hank finding Walt’s incriminating copy of Leaves of Grass, which seemed like it would set the mad scramble toward the finish line into motion. I expected, more or less, that the first episode of the back half would be the metaphorical starter’s pistol. Then it didn’t come. As I felt unfulfilled.

My bad, y’all.

Because it came. I was just listening for the wrong sound.

When “Blood Money” ended with Walt’s “tread lightly” admonition to Hank, I felt almost cheated. It seemed like such an artificial move by the writers…a desperate attempt to give us one memorable late-game play in the style of “I am the one who knocks,” or even “I’m in the empire business.” It was a hollow gesture, and I sensed that.

…but I sensed that it was hollow on the part of the writing staff. No no…it was hollow on the part of Walter White.

It was indeed a desperate attempt to mimic more powerful times. It was Walter’s desperate attempt. He remembers his glory days as well as we do. He emptily tried to stir up some of that old mojo…but it didn’t quite get there. Yes, as I mentioned in my review of that episode, it felt like a lot of work to shift us back into neutral. But it wasn’t the writing staff shifting back. It was the character.

And that’s, pardon my French, effing brilliant.

“Buried” sees Walter leaving the garage right after that clumsy attempt at bad-assery…and he falls apart instantly. He peels out in his car only to pull over still in sight of Hank’s house, and place a panicked — and unsuccessful — call to his wife. Walter’s made his power play, and already the wheels have come off. He’s a deeply idiotic man.

This episode works a lot better in isolation, I feel, than its predecessor…right down to its breaking point, which won’t rely on a post-episode tonal shift the way “Blood Money” did. Nope. Hank has Jesse. And Jesse…well, Jesse’s broken. Things can go either way. Skyler might have chosen not to turn on Walt — more on that to come, of course — but Jesse just might.

Which is something that…well, I can’t put it into words very easily, so I’ll just have to say that it’s showing me something I’ve been appreciating about Breaking Bad without even realizing it: it’s made me, gradually, want Walter dead.

When the show started, it was easy to be on his side. Yes, of course, he was doing something very stupid. But was there anybody out there who didn’t want him to triumph in some way? Even if that triumph was something as small as realizing the idiocy of his plan and getting out alive?

There was an initial humanity to Walter White, which we could see even as he did terrible things. But, slowly, the balance shifted, and it was the terribleness we were seeing primarily, with the humanity only rarely glimpsed. I don’t know exactly when it “turned” completely for me, but I’ve gone from rooting for the man to rooting for his death. And that’s the fruit of fantastic storytelling.

Getting back to the episode, Hank’s case — as many have suspected — still hinges on conjecture. He knows it was Walt…and that’s great. But he still can’t prove it. Skyler, Hank correctly supposes, can fill in the blanks he needs, and that scene between the two of them in the diner is a fucking masterpiece of selfish tension. Each of them has so much invested in the outcome of this case, and each of them even has the same end goal in mind (that the rest of the family is kept safe). Yet they are each driven by their pride to not help the other. Skyler won’t fill in the blanks…Hank won’t let her get a lawyer. Two people want the same thing for the same reason…but are each madly protective about it in conflicting ways. It’s moments like that that I’m going to miss most of all, because I can’t think of any other shows on the air that could pull that off believably.

I also loved the mirrored moment of Marie slapping Skyler, because hot damn Marie!

Sorry, I’ll try that again.

I also loved the mirrored moment of Marie slapping Skyler, which dovetails nicely with her husband slugging Skyler’s husband in the previous episode. The difference, I think, is that in “Blood Money” I was all but screaming for Hank to hit him…which he then did. Here, the slap was totally unexpected…but not at all unearned. Poor Marie having to recount the events of the past year in reverse to figure out how long Skyler’s known…getting as far as Hank getting shot…it was heartbreaking, and while I wouldn’t have said it before that scene I’m absolutely able to say it now: Skyler deserved that crack every bit as much as Walt did.

Oh, and I just thought of a joke:

Looks like Walt’s got a case of Schrader-Brow.

Wocka wocka.

Anyway, I like that moment, mainly because Marie’s obliviousness has always been played for comedy, whereas Hank’s has largely been played for drama and suspense. This isn’t a problem…this is A Good Thing. Because it gives the audience a moment like this…when the rug is pulled out, and you realize that all of this so-called comedy was really, through the clever switching-out of a lens, the slow-motion dismantling of this woman’s life. Marie had and has every bit as much invested in this tragedy as anybody else. She might have come off as a TV ditz…but beneath it she was a real person, with a real husband, and came really close to losing the man she loved most.

Retroactive character-work ahoy.

Elsewhere Lydia and Todd and Todd’s Nazi uncle go apeshit. I’m not quite sure what to make of this scene yet — though I have my suspicions — but I would absolutely hold it up as evidence of just how richly composed this world is. Even when we don’t quite know what’s going on, we have the sense that we’re in capable hands. And I can’t say enough good about what Laura Fraser does with this late-coming character.

Seriously, rewatch that scene. Every little gesture and detail and line reading suggests more about Lydia than we’ve actually yet seen. The way she fixes her hair in the rear view mirror after her blindfold is removed. The way she arrives over-dressed to a bloodbath. The way her heels sink into the sand but she doesn’t take off her shoes. This is great stuff.

I don’t know. Details like that are probably what I’m going to remember when all’s said and done. For good reason most will think back on Gus’s demise, on Mike’s “half-measures” speech, on Skyler in the pool.

But I’m going to remember things like Lydia’s heels sinking in the sand.

Because any show can do the big moments.

Not every show can make you look for the little ones.

Review: “Blood Money,” Breaking Bad season 5, episode 9

Breaking Bad begins (or continues…it’s debatable) sliding its pawns toward their final positions. “Blood Money” is the kick-off to this final batch of episodes, and it’s a strange one. So strange that I’m tempted to call it unsatisfying. Tempted, but I won’t, because Hank driving a long-overdue fist into Walter’s head would automatically make any installment of this show satisfying.

I think it’s the pacing that throws me off in “Blood Money.” Certain episodes (most notably “Fly”) deliberate, and allow deliberation. They take a small moment or set of moments, and revolve an entire hour of television around them. Other episodes (perhaps most notably “Gliding Over All,” which ended the first batch of season 5 episodes) skip quickly onward, showing us escalation in place of meditation. And most episodes, of course, fall somewhere in between…but “Blood Money” is the first time I’ve felt that I was toward one end of that spectrum, only to learn that we were very much at the other.

For starters there’s the flash-forward, which follows on from that of episode one of season five. Walt’s got hair, a full beard, and a trunk with a machine gun in it. His home — the home of his family — is torn to pieces and vandalized. This seems to take place around half a year* into the future, and it immediately presents us with a sense of false momentum.

That’s okay. Gilligan is toying with us right now. Just as Hank once toyed with Gus…and Walt, until very recently, toyed with Hank. They know more than someone else knows. They’re having fun with it. That’s good. That’s allowed.

But after that, the episode feels almost determined not to move us closer to that point. It’s as though the show itself has received a glimpse of its characters’ futures, and it’s digging in its heels so that they don’t actually have to get there.

Yes, the first batch of episodes ended with Hank finding Leaves of Grass**, which absolutely suggests, as the kids are all saying nowadays, that shit is about to go down. But even that’s toying with us…yes, Hank found the book. But with eight episodes still left to watch, it’s pretty clear that taking Walt down won’t be that easy. It looks like we’re at the edge of the cliff…but really there’s, structurally speaking, a long way left to climb.

So the big moment with Hank on the crapper gives way to an episode that’s…well…oddly peaceful. Walter actually begins working at the car wash. He’s more playful with his kids. Lydia stops by to invite Walt back into the criminal underworld, but he refuses and she doesn’t make a scene. Then Skyler kicks her out of the car wash and she still doesn’t make a scene. Saul gets a massage. Jesse sits silently while his friends discuss Star Trek***.

Shit’s about to go down…but then shit doesn’t go down. And suddenly the massive shakeup in the previous episode turns out to be a storm in a bottle. Hank may feel like the world is crashing down around him…but when the camera pulls out, life continues as usual. It’s telling that the little boy with his RC car is in the background as Walter and Hank finally have it out…he’s toying around too. It’s all a game.

Which is fine, but it really does feel like we went from barreling ahead (the flash-forward) to going nowhere (the car wash) to barreling ahead (Hank slugging Walt) to going nowhere (Walt planting a seed of doubt). It’s a kind of pacing that doesn’t feel particularly well-paced, and it’s doubly puzzling in the face of the fact that there are now only seven episodes left to get Walter to that future point (and then wrap things up from there). Shit’s about to go down? Shit needs to go down…and “about to” can’t cut it for long.

I’m not sure what to make of “Blood Money.” As scene-setting it’s just fine…but I feel like it wanted to be a little more than that. It comes close in its final moments, but then kind of lets things come undone before the credits drop. If we’d ended on Walter talking to Hank about the tracker, fine. If we’d ended on Hank punching him, fine. If we’d ended on Walt still feigning innocence, fine. But the “tread lightly” addendum just felt like a bit too much work to shift us back into neutral.

At that point, I’m sorry, Hank really should have just kicked Walter to death in the garage and dealt with the consequences later. God knows he hasn’t been above that kind of street justice in the past, and now he knows an extraordinarily dangerous man is onto him and knows he’s a threat. As dim as Hank might have been to some clues dropped in the past, I’m willing to chalk that up to his basic, fallible humanity. Now…he just seems like an idiot, making the wrong decision while knowing it’s the wrong decision and will likely get he and his wife and sister-in-law and niece and nephew and partner killed. C’mon Hank. This isn’t you.

Am I down on “Blood Money”? It sounds like it, but I really did enjoy it. It’s more of a dip of the toe than a full on plunge, and I just wish it committed to that instead of trying to also qualify as the other.

I will say this, though…Jesse’s attempt to send money to the Sharps and Mike’s granddaughter was the most touched I’ve ever been by this show. Poor Mike worked his whole life — and did some truly terrible things — to give that little girl stability. She was his meaning, and with Mike dead and his original deposits seized, he wasn’t able to leave her with anything. Not even a goodbye.

Jesse steps up — hypothesizing Mike’s death for the same reason Lydia hypothesized it earlier — and attempts to bridge that gap, fulfilling the man’s intended legacy. Only for good ol’ Walter to step in and knock it all back down again, all while convincing Jesse that Mike’s alive, living on a farm somewhere with the rabbits.

The conversation between the two of them was a great exploration of what makes them truly different. They’ve both done and been through some horrible things, but whereas Walter finds it easier to let go and move ahead (with a little bit of his humanity being let go every time as well), Jesse holds onto it. Walter is a man whose ethics have been stripped and worn down by the terrible things he’s done, and Jesse is a man whose ethics are inflamed and troubled by them. They’ve been through the same year, and they’ve been through it together. One of them became a monster, and the other is deeply troubled because he didn’t. It’s great character work.

It’s going to be sad to say goodbye to a lot of these characters. Even the ancillary ones, like Marie. I’m going to miss what Betsy Brandt does with Marie…the way she manages to be just off-putting enough to be loveable for it, the little flourishes of purple around the house so that you know exactly how much say she had in decorating, even just the way she rushes to poor old Hank when he’s at his lowest.

And though we’ve only just met her, I’m going to miss Laura Fraser. Lydia’s skittish professionalism has been an interesting addition to the show, and I’m curious to see where it takes us. She’s also icily, scarily hot. SO THERE’S THAT.

But the episode ends and nothing’s really resolved. Hank and Walter had better resume that conversation next Sunday, because I don’t think a jump ahead is going to cut it. We need to know what happened in that garage. And something had better have happened in that garage.

Come on Hank. You’re a better man than you think you are. Do what needs to be done. Otherwise, it’s getting done to you.

—–
* I’m estimating based on things I’m not interested in arguing about so by all means if I’m wrong, let me know. But it reminds me of something interesting: since we’ve seen a more or less uninterrupted year pass in Breaking Bad time, why have we never seen anyone celebrating Christmas? Or New Year’s? Or Thanksgiving or Halloween or Easter or…am I just forgetting? I’m not complaining, but I wonder about that. I can’t imagine many shows following its characters along this methodically for 12+ months without even acknowledging the holidays as they pass. Not that I wanted “A Very White Christmas” or something where Walter is visited in the night by the ghosts of Krazy-8, Tuco and Gale, ending with a celebration of life and Walter Jr. declaring “Good breakfast, every one.” But still.

** Genuine question: what’s the legality of this? If a police officer is in somebody’s home by invitation, say a friend or a family member, and they just happen to find some piece of incriminating evidence that has to do with an ongoing investigation, is it actually admissible? In Hank’s case it’s a physical object, which could easily have been planted, and he didn’t help his case by taking the book with him (though I guess Walt’s — and Gale’s — prints are all over it so that’d have to have been a hell of a clever plant), but no matter what it is…a bloody handprint, a scorch mark from a fired weapon, anything. Could you actually do anything with that? Or does the fact that you weren’t on the clock merit an OJ-style forfeit?

*** Skinny Pete’s right, by the way. It’s a punchline in the show, but in reality there is some science behind the idea that a Star Trek style teleporter would actually kill you, and a copy — not actually you — would come out on the other end. I read an essay about that in some philosophy text years ago. It might have been The Mind’s I. Wherever it was, go Skinny Pete. You found a nut, you blind squirrel you.

EDIT: I just realized Jesse Plemons was listed in the credits, but Todd wasn’t in the episode. I guess there was a deleted scene or something where Todd comes over to pick Jesse up so they can go out and kill some kids, and Jesse was all, “NO I DON’T KILL KIDS THAT IS WRONG” and Todd is like, “IT IS FUN TO KILL KIDS” then he smiles and Jesse says “I DISAGREE WITH YOUR WORLDVIEW” and they punch each other.

Review: “Blockheads,” Arrested Development season 4, episode 15

Serving as the final installment of a 15-episode swirl of twists, plot-threads and exciting glimpses of…oh, to hell with it. I can’t even finish that sentence as a joke.

Arrested Development season four was a mess. “Blockheads” is a mess. It might have seemed like somewhat less of a mess if it wasn’t the final episode, but as it stands its almost overt refusal to offer closure to even one of this season’s frustratingly aimless storylines makes it seem that much worse.

There’s not much plot going on here, aside from the fact that Michael and George Michael realize they’re dating the same woman (which happens, of course, in the very last scene, because if we saw anything beyond that it might have taken some narrative effort), so I guess I might as well talk about Isla Fisher — who I’m not sure I’ve even mentioned yet — and the season as a whole.

Talking about Isla Fisher will be easy, because there’s not much to say. Like all of the characters invented for season four, there’s nothing to hers. At least in this case, however, they don’t attempt to mask “nothing” with cartoony shenanigans. Come to think of it, I guess they figured the fact that she’s an exceptionally beautiful woman would hide it enough…and while that’s not particularly good writing it does at least manage to avoid being particularly bad, which qualifies as an accomplishment here.

When compared to Michael’s previous romantic interests, though, it’s immensely lazy. We’ve seen him canoodling with Charlize Theron, Jill Ritchie, Christine Taylor, Heather Graham and Julia Louis-Dreyfus* and while they’re all very attractive women, that never stood in the way of developing them as characters. They all managed to still feel human, with quirks and charms of their own. Isla Fisher as Rebel Alley is just an attractive red-head. Oh, and she wants men more when they are mean to her, which is a character trait that would have been seen as embarrassingly sexist for a writing staff back in 1958. In 2013 it just feels like the setup to an easy subversion that never comes.

They toy with her hard-partying lifestyle a bit, but it never really lands. Every so often we cut to her having to appear in a PSA, and those are for the most part pretty funny, but it would be nice if this had something to do with her character rather than serving as an irrelevant running gag.

I can’t say much bad about Rebel Alley, but considering how much time we spend with her there’s no excuse for her character to be stuck in neutral the entire time. We need to see something from her, unless she’s just a receptacle for Michael and his son to cum into at different times, and the more I think about it the more I realize that’s actually all she is.

So, yeah. Better than China Garden, Dr. Norman and the Asian Women Housewife Reality Show Prisoner Shits, not as good as Heart-Fire or Kristen Wiig as young Lucille.

And that’s it. George Michael learns that his father has been porking his girlfriend (or vice versa) and punches him in the face, then the credits roll. The punch is a nice, shocking moment, but in retrospect it pales in comparison to Maeby calling her mother a whore. Maybe it’s just me, but that felt like a much “truer” punch in the face…it’s a word that would hurt Lindsay no matter how accurate it was, and it’s something that Maeby’s thought for a long time and has only now brought herself to articulate. In comparison, the physical punch between George Michael and his father was just a reaction…a heated moment with a physical, isolated punctuation. It’s not bad, but there’s not as much to it.

It also works better in Maeby’s case because it’s not the end of anybody’s episode or storyline. In George Michael’s case it’s both, which doesn’t leave any room to do anything with it. Maeby’s punch to the face is metaphorical, but it lingers, and it stings. George Michael’s just leads into some silly song playing over the credits. Ho hum.

I guess we can also talk about how hilarious season four thinks it is when adults have sex with minors, as it’s a major component of three stories this season (Tobais, Maeby and George Michael) and a tangential one for at least two others (as GOB and Michael supply the homes for the sex offenders).

I think it worked in the Maeby episode, for the reasons I outlined there (and also the fact that Alia Shawkat can evidently sell anything you give her), and I at least see what they were trying to do with Tobias, but with George Michael it feels exceptionally cheap, and watching a pile of shirtless men tackle him on the lawn to passively grope his genitals isn’t awkwardly funny…it’s just awkward.

It also keeps up the tradition of the second episodes each character gets being worse than the first, as George Michael’s first episode was a coming-of-age character sketch that worked, overall, quite well, and this one can’t think of anything to do but surround him with slavering pedophiles who hang around outside his window and masturbate.

As much as this season did right, I’m going to remember it most for the one thing it did that I never expected: it took away all desire I have to see season five.

I no longer care about the show. At the end of season three I felt sad that there was still obviously so much more for these characters to do. Now, however, that I actually have a season four I’m sad because the things the characters are doing are things I have no interest in watching them do.

Because nothing was resolved in season four — and we spent 15 episodes wrapping up a relatively clean ending in season three — we can get a pretty good idea of the kinds of things season five will be about, and I don’t care to see any of them.

We’ll learn more about the wall, which was apparently built but who knows. We’ll talk more about the land it’s built on, and who it belongs to. We’ll check in with Marky Bark and his face blindness, and what he’s up to now that he blew up a boat. We’ll hear something about DeBrie. Tobias is a sex offender and we’ll have to talk more about his Fantastic Four play. We’ll have more tedious back and forth with GOB and Tony Wonder. Sally Sitwell will continue her transformation into Snidely Whiplash. Buster is going to jail, or something, where his robot hand will do hilarious things in the shower. George Sr. has low testosterone and dresses like a woman. Michael and George Michael will have to deal with the fact that they’ve both been dating Generic Woman #4. Maeby is also a sex offender. Lucille 2 is dead or missing or who cares. Herbert Love is in a coma. Lindsay may or may not run in Love’s place, and Sally may or may not run in Lucille 2’s place. Sudden Valley is a haven for kiddie rapists. And so on and so on and so on, and as the pile grows, I realize more and more that…

…I just don’t care. I really don’t.

I don’t.

None of this matters to me, but with 15 episodes of dancing around and through all of this crap, I can tell it’s supposed to. I came out of the other end just thankful that it was over. And I guess there’s going to be a season five, and I guess that’s a good thing for the people who get their paychecks from this show, but it’s not something I’m even interested in watching.

I wish I wanted to see it. I wish I was excited. I wish I cared.

But I don’t. I’m not, and I don’t.

As I said before, if this show didn’t have the Arrested Development brand on it, I never would have sat through the entire thing. But I have, and the last thing I want is to see more of it.

Maybe season five will be brilliant. I don’t know. Going by what a lot of other sites are writing about season four, this is supposed to be brilliant too.

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I’m a stick in the mud. Maybe Tobias in a Thing costume and Marky Bark covered in blue paint and China Garden screaming in the desert are right up there with anything else the show has ever done, and I’m just stubbornly refusing to admit it.

Who knows. All I know is that I no longer care. If it took 15 episodes to explain what happened after the Queen Mary, it’ll probably take 150 to dig us back out of this mess. And frankly, I just don’t have the patience for that.

Arrested Development made this bed. It’s not my responsibility to lie in it.

Forgive me for sitting the next one out.

Episode 15: “Blockheads”
Central Character: George Michael
Other Family Appearances: Michael, GOB, Maeby, George Sr., Lucille, Buster
Most Clumsy Reference to Original Run: Nothing that I noticed. I assume there was a deleted scene in which Ron Howard and Brian Grazer negotiate the rights to Mr. Bananagrabber.
Scene That Most Needed Tightening: OH GOOD MORE PHONE TAG AND DORM VOTING
Best Line / Exchange:

MICHAEL: You want this as much as I do. As much as I want this extension. Two different thises.

—-
* Maybe not everyone’s cup of tea, I know, but I’d definitely say she’s a very attractive woman. Also, in the course of double-checking the spelling of her name I learned she’s 52 years old. Fifty-two! Puttin’ women half her age to shame. (Call me, Julia.)

Review: “Off the Hook,” Arrested Development season 4, episode 14

The previous two episodes, which centered around Maeby and George Michael, were great and very good, respectively. They represent exactly the late-season upswing I had been hoping for, and I’m overall quite happy with them. And there’s no reason “Off the Hook” couldn’t have been just as good. Instead, though, it’s a reversion to the bottom-rung material that’s hung like a smothering cloud over season four. Those two episodes were flukes, and “Off the Hook” wants to make sure we know it.

By the way, I’m not just saying that this episode could have been as strong for rhetorical purposes. Buster, as a character, was very much in the same boat as Maeby and George Michael; he lives in the shadow of a parent, and while the fact that he’s an adult makes that somewhat more tragic, it was otherwise a great complement to the situations of the actual kids.

Maeby lives under parents who don’t notice her, George Michael lives under a parent who doesn’t hear him, and Buster lives under a mother who actively holds him down. And just as the previous two episodes explored how those children grow up when separated from that defining dynamic, Buster’s can do the same. The plot has already taken Lucille from him, so what now? Where does he go? What does he do?

Almost any other answer to that question would be more interesting than what we got, which is an episode that uses Buster as a hook (ahem) upon which to hang both the Love campaign and Lucille 2 murder-mystery aspects of the season…which we might as well start referring to for simplicity’s sake as the two least interesting turds on this mountain of shit.

Buster’s always been a fascinating character, mainly because the show never quite knew what to do with him. I don’t offer that up as a criticism, but rather an endorsement. Even without a clear character trajectory, Tony Hale managed to bring a level of naive sincerity to the character that made him at once the most likeable and most fucked-up Bluth. He rarely got episodes of his own, and was just as rarely an integral part of somebody else’s. That’s why “Off the Hook” has more or less carte blanche; we have no expectations. A Buster episode can be anything, so all they really need to do is make it funny.

So what do they do? Replace the hook with a giant robot hand that plays music and breaks things. Great character work, boys.

This is the problem I’ve had with Arrested Development all season; for one reason or another, the writers seem to think that puns and pratfalls define their characters…and that’s absolutely false. Audiences responded to Arrested Development for exactly the opposite reason: these were characters in spite of those things…not because of them.

Did we like GOB because he was a deluded, conflicted charmer, or because he chased people around with bees and had buttsex with men because lol buttsex? Did we like Lucille because she was an icy, domineering presence or because she wrote songs for comic-book musicals and tussled with offensive Asian stereotypes?

Season four not only takes the laziest route through these episodes, but it also takes the most irrelevant. Consider Buster’s hand. Yes, the fact that he gets a robot hand is true to the character in the sense that in season two he also had his hand replaced by something, but isn’t that the most superficial connection imaginable? It’s literally skin deep.

What does this new hand say about him? I could write pages about what the hook said about him, both specifically and in more general terms about the tragedy of a missing hand being inflicted upon the already tragic Buster. It was funny, and it had resonance.

The robot hand has neither. Buster absent-mindedly attempting to rub Oscar’s shoulders with a hook is funny, and it taps into character work going all the way back to the first episode. Buster standing in the kitchen while his robot hand malfunctions and plays silly music isn’t funny, and taps into absolutely nothing.

The writers then knew what to do with a hook, and that’s why they did it. The writers now know nothing of what to do with the robot hand, and they do it anyway. That’s the season four difference.

Seeing Buster at the start of the episode with Ophelia Love is a great beginning, mainly because of the good will engendered by the previous Buster relationships we’ve seen…not the least of which was with Lucille 2, which was always such a tragically perfect pairing in itself. We have every opportunity to trod interesting ground here, but it goes nowhere. Ophelia falls for him, then doesn’t want him, then the episode ends. And Gene Parmesan is back because I guess Martin Mull was free for another day of shooting and they didn’t want to waste him.

Of course I’m cheating slightly, because the Ophelia thing does tap into one aspect of Buster’s personality: his need to be mothered. This is something the episode toys with, which is great. What’s not great is that it only toys with it, and never bothers to explore it. We never get anything deeper than Buster repeatedly stating outright that he wants to be mothered. I know I’ve used this comparison already, but the more I think about it the more I really do believe that season four of Arrested Development is exactly what the Robot Devil sees in his nightmares.

That’s not character work, any more than Dickens making Scrooge say, “I’m such a mean old man, and so stingy, and I won’t change my ways until some ghosts come and make me” would qualify as character work. That’s just characters explaining, and in a season that already relies far too heavily on a narrator to do exactly that, it’s completely pointless. It doesn’t suggest an understanding of the character at all…it suggests that the writers reminded themselves of who the characters were by reading a paragraph-long bio on Wikipedia.

The episode ends, of course, with something that has genuinely nothing to do with anything we’ve been watching for the past half hour: Buster finding the “dead” body of Lucille 2 on the staircar. Huzzah.

It has nothing to do with the story we’ve just been told, which is bizarre, because you’d think showing the “dead” body of a major character would be…y’know…worth building up to, or something.

I really do believe they dropped the ball substantially with this mystery aspect of the plot. For starters, I don’t care about it…but here’s why I don’t care about it: the season doesn’t convince me I should care about it.

Over the course of 15 episodes we only get a handful of mentions of Lucille 2’s death or disappearance (it’s the latter, of course, but we might as well play along), and most of them are exactly that: mentions. I think we spend more time with the fuckin’ ostrich.

So season four doesn’t even seem to be interested in her death itself. Why should I? Lucille 2’s fate is a shocking moment, but it’s shocking mainly for just how clumsily it’s revealed. This isn’t clever, this isn’t interesting…this is just there. Here’s a character, here she is lying in some blood (it’s not, of course, but we might as well play along), here’s George Sr. dressed as a woman talking to the cops. Great stuff!

The best comparison point for this is probably the Rita arc in season three. While it wasn’t overtly positioned as a mystery the way this Lucille 2 crap is, it followed the general template: we get a sense there’s something strange afoot, we’re led to believe it’s one thing, all the while hints are dropped as to the truth, and we arrive, at last, at a revelation that causes certain details and moments to play differently in retrospect. The mystery is solved, and when rewatching we can pick up on new things for ourselves, and hear the same old dialogue in new ways. It’s great; Michael’s a terrible detective figure and we’re likely to arrive at the conclusion ahead of him, but that doesn’t make it any less fun.

Here’s the template the Lucille 2 mystery follows over the course of season four: nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, she’s missing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, DEAD BODY IN SOME BLOOD, nothing, nothing.

Like everything else, it’s just a thing that happens. It has nothing to do with the character, or any of the characters, at all.

Maybe she got an attack of vertigo and fell over. Maybe Gene Parmesan went insane and slit her up with that knife he bought for no reason a few episodes ago. Maybe GOB put a Tony Wonder mask on her and anally fucked her to death.

Whatever happened, I don’t care. Neither do the writers, and neither does the episode I just saw that climaxed (in the loosest possible sense of that word) with her unconscious body lying on the staircar.

Here’s what a mystery is: a story told in tantalizing and well-layed fragments that eventually resolves itself into a clearer picture for the audience and, often, the characters involved.

Here’s what a mystery is not: a cheap flash of an old woman in some blood, and the assumption that someone gives a shit.

Because we don’t.

You’re killing me, Buster.

Episode 14: “Off the Hook”
Central Character: Buster
Other Family Appearances: Lucille, Michael, Tobias
Most Clumsy Reference to Original Run: The literal doctor.
Scene That Most Needed Tightening: Buster falling out of his chair and the Army treating it like an actual plane crash. I’d like to say it sounds funnier than it is, but…you know.
Best Line / Exchange:

BUSTER: Well, they said the miniaturization comes later. I mean you remember how big your first cell phone was!
LUCILLE: That was a phone. This looks like you’re pointing to a place that buys your gold.