Better Call Saul And The Spirit Of Your Ancestors, Shit Ass!
Musings on the ending of one show (Better Call Saul) and the rise to magnificence of another (Reservation Dogs)
Better Call Saul - AMC (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
Who would have ever imagined that the Breaking Bad saga would become a tragic love story where the lovers didn’t die in the end?
I didn’t see that coming, and that is so wonderful.
Since the finale of Breaking Bad aired in September 2013, I have held it up as the great modern tragedy. So let's pause to define tragedy as I'm using it here:
Tragedy (traa-juh-dee): a drama dealing with tragic events and having an unhappy ending, especially concerning the main character's downfall.
Walter White was a brilliant, almost kind man in the early moments of Breaking Bad. But he was an angry man and a sick man.
Walter White timidly never stood up for himself. Instead, life agitated him as a left-behind sock stuck in the washing machine during the next load.
And most of us know the story that, unfortunately, from there, it did not end well. Lots of people died, and more were hurt beyond repair.
Saul Goodman, a sleazy "Criminal" Lawyer, barely escapes the mess alive. Sorry, that's a spoiler, but since there was another show about this character, you have to assume he's still around.
Better Call Saul is not a prequel or a sequel to Breaking Bad; it's both. But it's also more than either. The second show begins after the first show but also tells the story of what happened years before Walter White decided to break bad.
Better Call Saul deals with the story of Jimmy McGill, a brilliant con man on his way to becoming a full-blown parasite. But, unlike Walter White, Jimmy is in love with a beautiful, intelligent woman named Kim Wexler. She's a junior lawyer in Jimmy's brother's law firm.
Jimmy's brother Chuck McGill is one of the most brilliant legal minds in the world. He's batshit crazy but also somehow pulled together like Mitt Romney at the podium. Chuck thinks Jimmy is a fuckup and borderline criminal. But Chuck also loves his brother and seeks desperately to take care of him and help him secure his future.
Better Call Saul is a love story about brothers before it's a love story between Jimmy and Kim.
Eventually, Jimmy McGill becomes Saul Goodman, a mask Jimmy puts on to serve the underserved criminal element of Albuquerque.
It is at the apex of his ascent to become the legal face of the criminal underworld of a drug cartel that Saul Goodman meets Walter White.
Saul introduces Walter White to Gus Fring, like throwing a match on kerosene. The whole world burned down for these characters. Most of them died. Saul Goodman lived because he always beats the odds set against him.
He moved town. Changed names. Started managing a Cinnabon franchise in Omaha. Jimmy, who became Saul became Gene.
The story of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul is one of putting on masks and, for one man, taking them off one by one until all that is left is the truth.
And the truth of it all is that Jimmy McGill was just as angry as Walter White. And, like Walter White, Jimmy used the one thing he was good at to get what he thought he deserved. And that hubris cost him nearly everything but his love.
Love is what distinguishes the fate of Walter White from Jimmy McGill.
This entire saga is a modern American tale of hubris, tragedy, and now love.
Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are worth 125 hours of your precious time.
Reservation Dogs -FX on Hulu- (⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️)
I must be careful about letting myself get too deep into writing about FX’s Reservation Dogs, a masterpiece in the making.
At first glance, you’ll think it’s a teen comedy about the current generation of indigenous Americans.1
The characters in this show are born into an insult and live under the assault of systemic poverty and cultural isolation that weaves throughout this small community of people living through pain alone together.
America’s best culture exists in some of its poverty classes on the streets while some of the worst part of America throws parties on penthouse roofs. We all know this; it’s Sunday School stuff.
But to see this historical assault play out in the lives of these young people caught between poor and nothing should take a meat tenderizer to your heart. If it doesn’t, it ain’t beatin’ right, and you should get it checked.
Reservation Dogs is in its second season now, nearly halfway through, and I can already tell you it’s a masterpiece based on what it has accomplished so far.
In Season 1, the community is fractured. A small group of friends, loyal to each other to the death, actually have to face that happening and work their way through it. It’s a long journey that is still happening.
Trauma is a universal human virus that flows through the streets and is exchanged on the rooftops of penthouses everywhere, all the time.
The first season of Reservation Dogs drew a framework of divergent suffering around this community filled with wonderful oddballs, all united in poverty and void of nearly all hope.
The second season is a convergence of all that suffering into a communal experience. I am getting teary-eyed just writing about this now; it means so much to me.
The last episode that aired this past week is titled, Mabel. The entire episode is about a houseful of siblings, cousins, and friends waiting for a matriarch to pass away peacefully in her comfortable bed.
Singing holy songs.
Telling sacred stories of past joys and whispering of old traumas still hanging around.
And there are wonderful spirits in this show who guide the ones who hurt most in their hearts in this living moment. The viewer gets a front-row seat to the healing that happens when words of wisdom meet times of trouble.
We live in a time of deep trouble. There are invisible forces unleashed on the Earth seeking to open the Box of Death in the Heart of Humanity.
It is an exciting concept to imagine our ancestors watching over our every woe.
It is a comforting thought to hear them constantly offer their invisible and immortal wisdom during our times of greatest need.
What if our ancestors are always here to help us understand that all this pain is an illusion?
What if our collective trauma is a strong wind that falls away like a passing breeze?
What if we were to comfort each other during times of woe?
What if we celebrate the passing of those who walk away in dignity from these suffering layers of our brief mortal lives?
What if we were better people in poverty and wealth?
And finally, what if there were no poverty at all?
What if?
Reservation Dogs is just getting warmed up, taking us somewhere sublime and vital.
For Paid Subs, what do you think of these shows?
In my halcyon days of collegiate learning during the multicultural 1990s, we used the term American Indians with respect. Please substitute whatever words cause the least offense because that’s how they are intended.
I just started Reservation Dogs last night. Just a marvel. Wonderful. Moving. Fun and funny.