Red Dawn – Dangerous Universe

TV

Better Call Saul season 4

The crux of the AMC TV series Better Call Saul is that its lead character Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) will one day become the titular Saul Goodman — a lawyer for drug dealers and other bad elements in the Albuquerque, New Mexico of Breaking Bad. Ever since the first season the creators of Better Call Saul have teased that one day chipper Jimmy McGill will cease to exist and be replaced by not so good Saul Goodman, and every season too there’s been more teases about characters from Breaking Bad also crossing over to Better Call Saul, in which a handful have. Now I can’t imagine we’ll ever see Aaron Paul or Bryan Cranston sharing the screen again with Odenkirk, though stranger things have happened, but that seems to be the focus of all the online chatter before each new season of the show.

Maybe it’s because I was never a fan of Breaking Bad but I’m perfectly okay with this. In fact, I think Better Call Saul is a better show because of this.

While there are some ties with Breaking Bad, for the most part Better Call Saul is its own show. Sure, there’s Jimmy and Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) who are the leads of Better Caul Saul and who were players in Breaking Bad, but I don’t think you need to have watched a single minute of that show to understand Better Call Saul. The characters are different here, less set in their criminal ways if at all.

But some of this is changing, it does seem as if both Jimmy and Mike are becoming more in-line with the criminal element than they have in the past with this latest fourth season of the show.

In fact, I’d go as far as saying that Mike’s “crossed over to the dark side.” Whereas Jimmy does have some criminal elements to him, Mike’s now taking a paycheck from bad people to do bad things. And if Mike’s “broke bad,” then how long will it be until Jimmy fully becomes Saul Goodman?

The first episode of the fourth season of Breaking Bad was a little slow, but I find that first episodes of established shows usually are. Much of the episode deals with a very big ramification from something that happened in the final episode of the third season which has left Jimmy a distraught, and nearly destroyed man.

That is until he isn’t distraught or destroyed anymore. There’s a scene at the end of this episode that left me wondering, was this the real debut of Saul Goodman, a man only interested in his self willing to do whatever’s necessary, to hurt anyone for his own gain?

Only time will tell.

Lodge 49

Another AMC series premiered last week, this time the brand new Lodge 49 — NOT another zombie show, shock! Starring Wyatt Russell (Black Mirror), AMC has been promoting this series as the TV version of The Big Lebowski. Heck, Russell’s character even goes by “Dud” which is a lot like the “Dude” from The Big Lebowski. Yet to me Lodge 49 was a lot more like the working-class movies and TV shows of the 1970s and 1980s than The Big Lebowski, though there was a little of that for flavor.

Here, Dud is twenty-something that’s drifting after his life came crashing down before him. He got bitten by a snake and the wound hasn’t yet healed, his dad drown while surfing and he and his sister Liz lost everything from their family home to their family business afterwards. Now, Dud metal detects on the beach for what he can and borrows what he must at high rates from a pawn shop. Until one day he finds a ring on the beach and finds that it’s from a fraternal lodge, of which he’s interested in joining if only to find a way out of his spiraling life.

Lodge 49 really isn’t what I thought it was going to be. It’s a lot more quirky and funny than I was expecting, though there is a dash of darkness to it too. I was intrigued by this show and really liked the characters within it.

The one thing that concerns me about Lodge 49 from promos I’ve seen online is that it seems like there’s quite a bit of mysticism in the series. There is a bit of that in the first episode, but what could be mystical could easily be something else. I could be totally wrong or this might make the show stronger than I think it is, but I hope Lodge 49 stays on the level and doesn’t go all John from Cincinnati or anything.

What To Watch This Week

Avengers: Infinity War – Tuesday
The biggest hit of the summer, and one of the biggest movies of all-time, Avengers: Infinity War is available on DVD and Blu-ray this week.

Patient Zero – Tuesday
This movie about a world overrun with zombies and the one guy who can speak zombie (Matt Smith) was originally due out two years ago but was shelved until now and is getting an on-demand release this week.

Disenchantment – Friday
The first season of the Matt Groening created animated fantasy series Disenchantment debuts this Friday on Netflix.

Red Dawn – Saturday
The commies invade Calumet, Colorado in this classic red-scare World War III movie that I’ve seen waaaaay too many times to count on HDNET MOVIES.